Frank’s Case Book

There is probably no single person in the decade before the September 11, 2001 attacks who labored more passionately than Richard Clarke to convince US political leadership of the dangers posed by bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Clarke began his career in the Federal Government’s Senior Executive Service in 1973 under Richard Nixon and has served the presidents in between in various capacities. During the Clinton Administration, Clarke served as chairman of the National Security Group, which coordinates the anti-terrorist activities of the Departments of State, Defense, and Justice. Ironically, Clarke was so persistently focused on Al Qaeda that he may have undercut his own credibility. Government officials familiar with Clarke were not sure whether he possessed the single mindedness of a genius or a nut.

It is easy to appreciate the reluctance of political leaders to act on Clarke’s recommendations. Undercutting Al Qaeda would require military action in Afghanistan, literally American boots on the ground. Until September 11, it was much easier, and perhaps more prudent, to believe that the terrorist threat from Al Qaeda could be managed by more aggressive intelligence gathering and law enforcement. It is hard to imagine any president would be so concerned about Al Qaeda prior to September 11 that he would have led the country into a difficult foreign war probably without allies.

By the mid-1990s, Clarke believed the Al Qaeda threat was sufficiently grave to justify the capture or killing of bin Laden. A similar consensus did not exist in the Clinton Administration. For example, despite zealous arguments from Clarke, the US did not accept Sudan’s offers to turn over bin Laden. The Justice Department was not convinced there was sufficient legal evidence to convict bin Laden. With the perfect clarity and wisdom of retrospection, this and other opportunities were lost.

With this prescient history, Clarke could legitimately assume the mantle of a prophet in the wilderness. The experience, judgments, and credibility he could have brought to the 9/11 Commission have now been squandered with his book Against All Enemies. There are real systemic issues about intelligence gathering and fighting terrorism that will now be lost in partisan battling. Before Clarke’s book and excluding some silly speculation by presidential candidate Howard Dean, there was little partisan effort to blame any particular Administration for September 11, 2001.

The few critiques of the Clinton Administration are at best second guessing, while the Bush Administration simply had too little time to come to grips with the situation. In his testimony before 9/11, Clarke even conceded as much. Clarke was specifically asked, “Assuming that the recommendations that you made on January 25th of 2001 which had been an agenda item at this point for two and a half years without any action, assuming that there had been more Predator reconnaissance missions, assuming that that had all been adopted say on January 26th, year 2001, is there the remotest chance that it would have prevented 9/11?” Clarke answered “No.”

It is now clear that the best way to stop Al Qaeda would have been to launch a pre-emptive strike against Al Qaeda and the Taliban years before September 11, 2001. It is more than ironic that many who now criticize Bush’s action in Iraq and the pre-emption doctrine in general seem to be suggesting that the US should have launched a pre-emptive strike. If Bush had launched such an attack against Al Qaeda and 9/11 had still happened (which is likely given that the attack had been two years in planning), the second-guessers who infest Washington like locusts would have blamed 9/11 on the pre-emptive action.

It is unprecedented for a national security official to write a critical book about an Administration that he served in while that Administration is still in office. National security is not supposed to be a partisan issue. Indeed, although Clarke had a high level position in the Clinton Administration, he was retained by the Bush Administration in the hopes of maintaining national security continuity. After the new precedent of Clarke’s book, if there is a Kerry Administration, it will likely sweep all former national security personnel away, sacrificing continuity for fear that a Bush partisan may use his or her access to later undercut Kerry Administration foreign policy. After Clarke’s book, we are now arguing about who to blame for September 11, when we should reserve anger for Al Qaeda. Too much energy is being wasted pointing fingers at each other.

The two most contentious arguments by Clarke are: (1) The Clinton Administration had no higher priority than anti-terrorism, while the Bush Administration did not appreciate the urgency of the threat. (2) The Bush Administration was too preoccupied with Iraq to the detriment of the fight against Al Qaeda. Clarke argues there was no relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

The first argument is so obviously untrue to even the most casual political observer that it must be disingenuous. Depending on your view of the Clinton Administration, the last months were preoccupied with either mediating negotiation between the Israelis and the Palestinians or arranging for pardons of political contributors. Anti-terrorism may have been important, even very important, but it certainly was not the highest priority of the Clinton Administration. Indeed, Clarke himself, in an incredible intellectual somersault illustrated that higher priorities did exist for the Clinton Administration. He explained in a Frontline interview that a specific response to the attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 American sailors was withheld for fear of derailing the Middle East peace process. Perhaps that was a wise decision at the time, but the fight against Al Qaeda was clearly not the highest priority as Clarke recently claimed.

In a 2002 press briefing, Clarke outlined how the Bush Administration was not content just to maintain the Clinton Administration policy of merely keeping Al Qaeda at bay, but it was willing to go aggressively after Al Qaeda. This implies that anti-terrorism was a higher priority in the Bush Administration. If Clarke’s previous testimony to Congress is declassified, we may learn for certain, that apparently, Clarke made similar positive representations about the Bush Administration under oath.

When questioned about the apparent contradictions by the 9/11 Commission, Clarke, in essence, said he was spinning to give a positive impression of Bush Administration policies in 2002. Clarke hints that to do otherwise would have jeopardized his position. What a self-damning statement. If one is willing to mislead to preserve one’s job, is the one also willing to publicly mislead to sell a book? Once Clarke admits to selling out the truth for personal aggrandizement, he devastates his own credibility.

In his 60 Minutes interview Clarke claimed there was never any connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq and criticized Bush for inquiring about such a relationship. Despite Clarke’s claim, and he should know better, there have been a number of connections, including a visit between bin Laden’s chief deputy in the Sudan to Iraq in1998. A chief suspect, Abdul Rahman Yasin in the 1993 World Trade Center bombings fled to Iraq. According to the Washington Post, Clarke himself made the association between Iraq and Al Qaeda as partial justification for the attacks on the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in August 1998. The attack was a response to the bombings of US embassys in Africa by Al Qaeda.

It is not possible to look into another person’s soul, but Clarke’s own words are now at odds with the recent assertions in his book. Even when they are not contradictory they seem rancorous, bitter, and petty. Why else would Clarke suggest that someone as smart and experienced as National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice did not know about Al Qaeda until he told her? This latter assertion has since been disproved by pre-Bush Administration interviews with Rice.

Is Clarke just pushing a book to make money? Does he have partisan aspirations? Is he just angry at not having received a higher level position in the Bush Administration? Does he believe that Rice did not accord him sufficient respect? Did he take offense that CIA Director George Tenet rather than he provided the President Bush’s daily threat briefing. Perhaps Clarke is just a powerful mind that has gotten confused like a ship with billowing sails and no rudder. Whatever his current motivations, the public record of pre-2003 Clarke is irrefutably at war with the current Clarke. The collateral damage of this war has been to politicize the 9/11 Commission, to introduce unnecessary partisan rancor over a national security issue, and to insure there will be less national security continuity between Administrations of different political parties. Shame on Clarke.

In the immediate wake of the bombings in Madrid now attributed to Al Qaeda that killed over 200, Socialists won an election that days before the massacre, conventional wisdom believed the more conservative party of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar would win by a safe margin. The public did not support Aznar’s modest contribution of troops to the Coalition that is now stabilizing Iraq, but given the totality of issues, they were set on returning Aznar’s party to power. Now apologists for the Spaniards suggest that the last minute electoral reversal was not appeasement to the killers of 200 Spaniards, rather it was a show of anger and frustration over the fact that the ruling party had at first attributed the explosion to the native Basque Separatists.

There may be some merit to that argument, but that is certainly not what the Spaniards and the Socialists, in particular, are saying. The New York Times made a point of highlighting the quote from a Spaniard, who lamented “Maybe the Socialists will get our troops out of Iraq and Al Qaeda will forget about Spain so we will be less frightened.” Yes, and maybe the Nazis will be satisfied with the Sudetenland.

Let us stand back for a moment. An evil (Why are people so reluctant to use such an obviously apt description?) group decides that to advance its political agenda (Which is to impose a global Islamic theocracy?) it will deliberately kill innocent civilians. The response of the Spanish people is to grant the Islamofascists the political victory they crave. A dangerous precedent is set: kill a large number of random civilians and you can change elections. Will this make groups like Al Qaeda more or less likely to plan similar actions against countries that are ambivalent about the War on Terror? Will the Basque terrorists that have plagued Spain for so long be persuaded that force is a fruitless strategy? British Prime Minister Tony Blair is under political pressure. Is it not more likely that terrorist groups will now try to influence British elections by killing British citizens?

The new Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero calls the situation is Iraq a “fiasco.” Current Iraqi problems are not the fault of the majority of the Iraqi people who want to move to a democratic government. They are not the fault of the Coalition forces that are trying to provide security and are helping Iraqis build a free and prosperous Iraq. Before the war, Iraq was slowly collapsing with negative growth rates, Iraq had enormous economic growth in the last year and in 2004, it expected to achieve experience 19% growth. All of this while schools and hospitals have been rehabilitated and opened. Before the war, thousands were killed by the oppressive Iraqi regime who skimmed enough money from the Oil-for-Food program to insure the death of thousands of children from malnutrition. Now the Iraqis have a provisional legal structure that protects individual liberties.

The remaining problems in Iraq are primarily the consequence of a minority of Baathist Party remnants angry at their loss of totalitarian control and Al Qaeda bent on nipping an incipient Arab democracy in the bud. The Spanish have just granted such forces a symbolic victory. If everyone followed the Spanish example and pulled out of Iraq without completing the necessary economic and political development, it would invite untold hardship and oppression of the Iraqi people by the same movement that killed 200 Spaniards.

The new foreign minister of Spain Miguel Moratinos has sagely intoned, “We think we have to use very complex and different instruments to counter terrorism, rather than simply force.” This statement is so deliberately and willfully untruthful that it is not even wrong. Certainly, force has not been the only response. A large fraction of the effort in Iraq, a noble effort that the Spanish may be withdrawing from, is to build a functional and free society in Iraq that will help stand as a bulwark against terrorism. Moreover, Moratinos’s statement illustrates a systemic confusion about terrorism. The cause of terrorism is not poverty or ignorance any more than Nazism was justified by the German post World War I experience. There are many who are poor or disenfranchised who will not target civilian populations with bombings calculated to maximize deaths. Islamic-radicalism like Nazism is an evil ideology based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature and rights of man.

Hundreds of Spaniards are killed, millions in Iraq need help, and Spain cowers behind its borders congratulating itself on its fine-tuned moral sensitivities. Others will remember the admonishment of Dante, that “the hottest places in hell are reserved for those, who in time of great moral crisis maintain their neutrality.”

Former Democratic contender Governor Howard Dean can testify to the notion that endorsements are not always as desirable as they appear. When Vice-President Al Gore endorsed Dean on December 9, 2003, he passed along to Dean not only an endorsement, but the famous Gore luck and impeccable sense of timing. Less than a week later, the United States armed forces captured former Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein and punctured the balloon of Dean’s previously ascending anti-war campaign. The event was a symbolic turning point for Dean.

Nonetheless, politicians instinctively seek out endorsements like moths to a flame. Sometimes, they even boast of them when the endorsers are too shy to make their endorsements public. On March 8 of this year, the sure-to-be Democratic presidential nominee, Senator John Kerry bragged that, “I’ve met with foreign leaders who can’t go out and say this publicly. But, boy they look at you and say: `You’ve got to win this. You have got to beat this guy. We need a new policy.’ Things like that.” Of course, the way the boast is framed, it is impossible to refute. There have been some public denials by foreign governments, but these could be proforma so as not to spoil relations with the Bush Administration.

The Washington Times tried to infer which foreign leaders Kerry might have met and from whom Kerry might have received an endorsement by looking at State Department and other public records. The only time when Kerry and a foreign leader were in the same city at the same time since Kerry became a presidential candidate was when the New Zealand Foreign Minister Philip Goff was at the State Department in Washington. There is no record of a Kerry-Goff meeting.

But it is too demanding to hold politicians to exact literal interpretations of their remarks. They often engage in self-aggrandizing exaggerations and short-hand ways of making a point, particularly when speaking extemporaneously. It would not be difficult to infer that there are some foreign leaders who prefer Kerry to President Bush. Surely, French President Jacques Chirac would, and despite German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s public denial of a Kerry endorsement, Schroeder’s preferences are obvious from his previous positions. On the other hand, Tony Blair’s political fortunes are tied to Bush so in his heart-of-hearts, Blair would probably prefer a Bush victory. Certainly, current free Iraqi leaders would prefer Bush. They are probably more convinced of a Bush commitment to Iraq’s long term stability than any Kerry commitment based on Kerry’s vote against authorizing $87 billion to support US troops and Iraqi reconstruction.

Since Kerry has brought up the issue of endorsements by foreign leaders, it seems fair to explore them. Although the opinions of allies are, in general, valuable, they are by no means dispositive. It has been said that nations have no permanent allies, only permanent interests. Hence, endorsement by foreign powers of American political candidates is a double edged sword.

Can we extend our analysis of approval by allies to disapproval of candidates by foreign enemies? David Broeder of the Washington Post did a little research and found that Democratic Senator Samuel Jackson of Indiana, who chaired the 1944 Democratic National Convention, had no problem using the wishes of our enemies as a political stick with which to pound Republicans over the head. Jackson said of a Republican victory, “How many battleships would a Democratic defeat be worth to Tojo? How many Nazi legions would it be worth to Hitler? … We must not let the American ballot box to be made Hitler’s secret weapon.”

Given his current predicament, it is a safe bet that Saddam Hussein would have preferred that Bush were not president last year. European papers report that North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il expressed a preference for Kerry.

Let us affirm absolutely, that Kerry is no friend to our enemies and would embrace the capture of Osma bin Laden or the containment of Korea’s nuclear program with as much relish as anyone in the current Administration. However, he presumably has a different approach for the War on Terror and foreign policy. If Kerry boasts of foreign endorsements, is it fair to ask the question, who would Osma bin Laden prefer to win? Andres Mckenna Polling and Research asked a sample of 800 registered voters who would “the terrorists prefer.” By a substantial margin, 60 to 25 percent, voters assumed that terrorist would prefer Kerry. Perhaps both the public and the terrorists are wrong and Kerry would prove to more formidable than Bush, but are we allowed to ask the question? Would Bush or Kerry be more adept at executing the War on Terror?

In the movie Amadeus, composer Antonio Salieri was profoundly jealous of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s innate musical gifts. Not only was Mozart a vastly more talented composer, but his compositions flowed from his pen with apparent ease, as if he were merely transcribing the notes from angels. Mozart could carouse and give himself to debauchery, yet still easily produce heavenly compositions. While Salieri led a pious, contemplative life and diligently labored at his craft, he produced far more pedestrian pieces of music. God’s apparent injustice gnawed at Salieri and ultimately destroyed him. Salieri could never accept that it is often too much to expect justice in this world. Nonetheless, there are precious occasions when we may enjoy the prospect that someone or some group receives their proper comeuppance. Campaign finance reform may yet represent this proper reward for Democrats.

The problem fundamentally lies with the mythology of Democrats, that they are the party of the little guy while vile Republicans represent the upper class interests. This mythology causes them to pursue policies even against their own best interests. The only way Democrats can reconcile the success of Republicans at the polls is to argue that Republicans buy elections with resources provided by moneyed interests. The inevitable logic of this tenet of their faith is that if campaign contributions are limited or even eliminated, electoral success for Democrats would follow.

The first efforts at campaign finance reform could only be made to jive with that pesky First Amendment if it could be argued that campaign finance laws help avoid the appearance of corruption. Hence, money donated directly to a candidate’s campaign could be regulated, but people and institutions would retain the freedom to advocate their positions, independent of the campaigns. Money could only be donated to campaigns in modest increments of $1,000 per donor per election. However, independent organizations could raise amounts from people, corporations, unions, or other interest groups in any amount. Money raised directly for a candidate is called “hard money.” Money contributed to other interest groups has come to be called “soft money.”

Unfortunately for Democrats, Republicans turned out to be much more proficient at raising lots of money from modestly affluent donors, particularly small business people, in increments of $1,000. Democrats, however, had to rely on limousine liberals willing to donate money in far larger chunks. Democrats extricated themselves from this dilemma by campaign finance alchemy, in effect, turning soft money into hard money.

It turned out, the money given to political parties could be considered soft, if it were used for general party building and issue advocacy and not “expressed advocacy” for the election or defeat of any particular candidate. The limit of any contribution to a political party was $20,000 per year. Under President Bill Clinton, Democrats masterfully exploited this loophole and Republicans soon followed. Using soft money, one could argue that Candidate A’s position on public policy was wise and prudent, but one could not expressly advocate for the election of Candidate A with words to the effect, “Vote for A.” However, the cumulative effect of such ads are much the same as expressed advocacy ads.

In addition, issue ads which were not directly tied to a candidate and funded by an organization independent of a political party or candidate could not be regulated. Pro-life and pro-choice groups, for example, could run ads critical of certain positions without limit. The expenditures of closely allied groups could help a campaign as long as there was no provable collusion between a campaign and independent groups. However, for many independent interest groups it is pretty easy to divine the campaign themes of their favorite candidates and run political ads accordingly.

Both political parties used soft money funneled both through political parties and other groups as a means to fund campaigns. As long as political ads did not expressly advocate the election or defeat of a candidate, there was no violation of the law.

Again responding to the mythology that further limiting free speech exercised through the medium of campaign financing would create pristine politics, Congress passed the McCain-Feingold bill. Despite Senator John McCain’s (R) joint sponsorship of the bill, it was largely a Democratic bill. This new law prevented the political parties from acting as conduits for soft money in the same way as before. Political parties could still help out with generic “Vote Democratic” or “Vote Republican” ads, but the money for these activities must come from contributions that are limited to $5,000 increments. Larger donations for general party activities were capped at $25,000. Moreover, within the last 60 days before an election, issue ads (ads that do not expressly advocate the election or rejection of a candidate) are limited. To the benefit of Republicans, the individual contribution limit to candidates was doubled from $1,000 per donor per election to $2,000.

Some of McCain-Feingold, particularly the one limiting independent expenditures in the last 60 days before the election, were challenged in court. In yet another erosion of the First Amendment, the US Supreme Court ruled that the restrictions on third-party expenditures within 60 days of an election were constitutional. Indeed, the ruling was so broad that it blurred the distinction between the actions and contributions permitted of political parties and those permitted of independent groups.

What are Democrats to do now? They appear to be at a permanent disadvantage in raising hard money. They do, however, have extremely wealthy allies like George Soros who donates money in units of wheelbarrows and who has publicly stated that he will spare no expense to defeat President Bush in the November election. The solution Democrats and the Left have conjured up is to create independent organizations that will advocate Democratic themes on state and local levels. By careful coordination these themes will benefit Democratic candidates at the federal level and contribute to organizational efforts and get-out-the-vote activities that will benefit federal Democratic candidates as well. The idea was so good that Soros immediately pledged $10,000,000 to America Coming Together (ACT), one of the umbrella independent organizations set up by the Left.

The Republicans responded by establishing Americans for a Better Country (ABC). The goal of ABC was a clever and cynical attempt to derail the entire Democratic soft money effort. The crucial point to recognize is that the activities that these independent organizations are performing are close to the activities of traditional political parties. They can, in effect, become shadow political parties. Should these independent organizations not be limited to raising money in small increments like political parties?

ABC claims they intend to engage in activities similar to ACT. They then asked the Federal Election Commission for a pre-emptory advisory ruling about any fund-raising restrictions. On February 17, the Federal Election Commission ruled that:

• If you support or attack any candidate, even if there is no expressed call for election or defeat, the funds for such ads can only come from hard money funds.
• Generic pro- or anti-Republican and Democratic ads must be funded at least in half by accounts subject to hard money limits.
• Get out the vote campaigns must also come from hard money accounts.
• The money for any federal election activities must come from hard money accounts.

In other words, a large fraction of the money donated by Soros and other well-healed Lefties cannot be used to go after Bush, even in indirect ways.

Democrats have gotten what they wanted. They have limited speech through campaign finance reform and it has come back to hit them in the tail. Usually the Democrats could count on the fact that the FEC is usually slow to act against wayward activities. However, in this case the FEC has already issued a ruling. So the Left will have to resort to the old tactic of simply righteously ignoring the law. As reported by USA Today, Carl Pope, the Executive Director of the Sierra Club, has “suggested the Sierra Club would even consider ignoring any new FEC restrictions and proceeding with its activities as planned, letting the chips fall where they may.”

Reference
Tell, David, Who’s Afraid of George Soros, The Weekly Standard, March 9, 2004, 19-25

It seems that in the last two years and indeed over the last few decades, we have suffered from intelligence shortcomings. Though we suspected Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda were involved in bombings of American Embassies in Africa, the suicide attack on the USS Cole, and perhaps in the 1993 bombings of the World Center, the attacks of September 11, 2001 still surprised us. Key indicators were missed and 19 terrorists hijacked four planes and managed to crash three of them into the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon. There had not been such a deadly intelligence failure since Pearl Harbor.

There have been other miscalculations partially based on incorrect or incomplete intelligence. The US was caught unawares by the Soviet Attack on Afghanistan in 1979. Before the first Gulf War, US intelligence radically underestimated the extent of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons development in Iraq. In 1998, US intelligence failed to foresee India’s test of nuclear weapons. The list is much longer, but the point is made.

It is unfortunate and not entirely fair that it is difficult to weigh successful intelligence efforts against intelligence snafus since successful operations rarely come to light. For example, it was not until decades later that we learned that British intelligence broke the codes produced by the Nazi Enigma Machine or the fact that US submarines had secretly placed listening devices on Soviet underwater communications cables.

After the removal of the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq by Coalition Forces, the expected large stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction were not found. There were facilities designed to ramp up production and illegal development of long range missile, but so far no stockpiles have been found. And the former leader of the effort to find such weapons, David Kay, does not believe that is likely that we will. We need an accounting of where the problems in intelligence were.

Kay has concluded that was Iraq indeed very dangerous to the US but in a different way than anticipated. Kay found a society ruled with ruthlessness, but nonetheless collapsing. Kay now believes that in such chaos the matching of WMD production capability and the terrorist need for such weapons was becoming more likely. Not appreciating this danger also represents an intelligence failure.

Although we should still pursue a thorough look at intelligence gathering, it is hard to believe that intelligence can be fairly faulted. If British, German, and French intelligence services also came to the wrong conclusion, it is seems unlikely that US intelligence agencies exhibited any gross negligence. It is difficult to penetrate any totalitarian regime, especially one that may have even been fooling itself with regard to WMD. If people were deceiving Saddam, if different commanders have said they did not have WMD but they believed other commanders did, it is difficult to imagine a scenario that we, as a foreign intelligence service, could tally military capabilities with better accuracy than Iraqi commanders.

In a different context, “malpractice” is defined as “a dereliction of professional duty or a failure to exercise an accepted degree of professional skill or learning …” If many doctors make a similar diagnosis, it is harder to argue malpractice. In the case before us, the diagnosis of the Iraq, by all major intelligence services was similar, the arguments were over the prescriptions for remedy.

Even in retrospect, David Kay concludes, “if you read the total body of intelligence in the last 12 to 15 years that flowed on Iraq, I quite frankly think it would be hard to come to a conclusion other than Iraq was a gathering, serious threat to the world with regard to WMD.”

Nonetheless, we often learn far more from difficult failures than we do from easy successes. An independent commission should be established to determine what about our Iraq intelligence worked and what did not. One possible positive outcome would be to place error bars on just how good optimum intelligence can be.

Unfortunately, the country is politically polarized and in an election year many Democrats would view such a commission less as an opportunity to improve intelligence gathering and more as a chance to play “gotcha” with the Bush Administration. The natural response of the Bush Administration would be to become defensive rather than open. Indeed, there is a dangerous possibility that the outcome of such a commission would be to place restrictions on the intelligence services that could reduce their effectiveness even more. A careful review may find that the intelligence services were hobbled by restrictions on using unsavory characters as informants and operatives.

Three years ago, the Bush Administration, enunciated a pre-emption doctrine holding that the United States could take military action against threats that were growing but had not yet become imminent. For countries that care little for their people and terrorist organizations willing to engage in suicide, deterrence was no longer adequate. However, anyone will concede that such a policy relies on high-quality and reliable intelligence. It is incumbent on the President and Congress to do what is necessary improve intelligence.

Traditional political wisdom adheres to the Caligula Theory of Presidential Politics, named after the first century Roman Emperor noted for viciousness and ruthless cruelty. The central tenet of the theory is that if either major political party nominated Caligula for president, Caligula would still get a third of the vote as a consequence of party loyalty. The real competition in a presidential campaign is for the relatively independent and moderate middle third. A corollary of this theory is that in the nomination process, candidates move to the Left or Right, depending on party, to secure the nomination from the ideologically motivated partisans. Once nominated, candidates race to the center to grab the moderate votes necessary for victory.

This year some political analysts are wondering out loud whether this theory is no longer valid. What if the electorate has been thoroughly polarized so that we are a 50-50 country? The winner may not be the one who appeals to the center, but the one who energizes his partisans the most and generates the greatest turnout. Forget the center and just pump up your partisans until they explode all over the polls.

This latter theory was dealt a blow last week with the unexpectedly poor showing of Howard Dean in Iowa after he led in the polls for so long. There is little doubt, that Dean has still captured the angry anti-Bush vote. However, one consequence is that Dean has developed a reputation for meanness and rashness. Giving voice to an unsubstantiated theory that President George Bush had advance knowledge of the 9/11 attacks, is reckless and indecent. When Iowa Democrats began to seriously consider Dean they were chafed by his abrasiveness. They began to doubt whether they wanted Dean to be periodically visiting their living rooms for at least the next four years through the medium of television.

We should add a note of caution here. Perhaps the new conventional wisdom is wrong about Dean. If the rest of the country does not share the uncomfortable feeling of Iowans, perhaps Dean could now be immunized from future criticism of intemperance. Much like the Clinton campaign dismissed womanizing issues as old news after the 1992 New Hampshire primary, a Dean campaign could say that the issue of rashness has already been dealt with.

Conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer was lamenting this week that the democratic process had succeeded in weeding out the most unelectable candidate. He was “hoping against hope that he [Dean] could just hang on — project sanity — long enough to win Iowa and New Hampshire and wrap up the nomination before the Democrats could come to their senses.” There may still be hope for Krauthammer.

From a tactical standpoint, Republicans would have the most difficulty running against Joe Lieberman. Lieberman voted for the resolution granting President George Bush the authority to attack Iraq and has had the intellectual consistency to not flee from the vote. This makes Senators John Kerry and John Edwards appear mercurial and politically expedient. Kerry and Edwards voted for the war when it appeared to be the politically wise strategy and distanced themselves from the vote when political calculations changed. Lieberman could make the argument that he, like Bush, takes national security seriously and believes the world is better off without another Islamofascist dictator. Lieberman argues that he would exercise greater expertise in execution of foreign policy. Lieberman is at least as affable as Bush and Americans know Lieberman and are comfortable with him. His primary downside is that he is close enough to Bush on the key issue of Iraq that the electorate might simply decide, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, “it was not best to swap horses in mid-stream.” However, this speculation is entirely academic. The Democratic electorate is too angry this year to nominate such a decent and comfortable candidate.

Though John Kerry can run as a legitimate war hero, he cannot run away from his long legislative record. It is hard for any legislator to run for the presidency because legislative process is murky. It is easy to find votes that are now embarrassing and Kerry has had 19 years of votes to comb through. Moreover, Kerry is a laconic northeasterner that may be able to win the Liberal northeast that will vote for any Democratic candidate, but who will find it difficult to develop a rapport with Southerners.

At the current time, General Wesley Clark’s star seems to be rapidly setting. He appears a slave to ambition and a little too opportunistic in his party affiliation. Calling the president “unpatriotic” may draw cheers and howls among Democratic partisans, but will appear rash and unfair to moderates. It appears that the Clinton Administration fired Wesley Clark for character-related issues. If Clark is nominated, expect to hear former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Hugh Shelton explain what happened. It will likely not be flattering to Clark.

While it remains to be seen whether he can appeal sufficiently well to New Hampshire voters to keep his candidacy viable, Senator John Edwards represents the most serious threat to Bush. His relative inexperience could be a negative, but voters have been willing to elect others with modest experience. An embarrassingly successful personal injury trial lawyer, Edwards has a smooth easy Southern charm that was apparently very effective at swaying juries. Those who have heard him deliver stump speeches testify to his effectiveness. James Carville has been quoted as saying that Edwards gives the best stump speech he has ever heard. At times Edwards can seem a little smarmy, but as long as he remains disciplined he is amazing effective at retail politics.

The fact that Edwards’s campaign enjoys the generous support of trial lawyers eager to prevent tort reform could prove to be an embarrassing negative. Of all the candidates he has been the least forth-coming in his campaign finances and has more contributors who have made the maximum $2000 contribution. Nonetheless, if he can appeal sufficiently to Southerners he might loosen Republican dominance in the South and pose as serious threat to Bush’s re-election prospects. If he manages to become the front-runner after the Southern primaries, it will be interesting to see how well he stands up to the media scrutiny that is sure to follow. While it is never wise to under-estimate any candidate, at this point, Republicans have more to fear from Edwards than Kerry.

It is hard to find three more personally different individuals that served as president than Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. Nixon was a deeply flawed individual whose sense of inferiority over his humble beginnings fueled not only the healthy ambition of the poor, but paranoia about the conspiracies of political opponents. Whereas Nixon’s humble origins formed a morose and taciturn adult, Clinton’s wrong-side-of-the-tracks childhood gave rise to a gregarious adult perhaps a little too concerned about what others thought of him. Bush was the child of privilege, a frat brother who was not as serious as he should have been as a young adult and apparently had a substance abuse problem. Nonetheless, all of them managed to exercise sufficient self discipline and political astuteness to become president. There are many angry and driven individuals who have not become president. Nixon did. There are many “bubbas” who have not avoided dissipation by their appetites and not risen to the presidency. Clinton did. There are many earnest children with impeccable political pedigrees who have gotten close, but have never become president. Ask Al Gore about whether familial destiny is sufficient?

These three presidents share a political fate that distinguishes them from many others who served in the office. They seem to have incited a deep and visceral animosity on the part of their political adversaries. This hostility is not born of the normal competitiveness of political differences. Jimmy Carter had the same political ideology as Clinton, but even people who opposed Carter politically never seemed to detest him with the fiery intensity devoted to Clinton. Reagan was not only a Conservative, but he was “Mr. Conservative.” No person who is more Conservative could have been elected. The Left opposed him politically, even tried to ridicule him, but few apparently hated him with the visceral distaste associated with Nixon and now Bush.

Indeed, from an objective standpoint this animosity seems oddly misplaced. As flawed as Nixon was and in spite of illegal activities, he was about as Liberal in his policies as his political opponents could have hoped for. He proposed and helped pass environmental legislation like the Clean Air and Water Acts and instituted the Environmental Protection Agency. Nixon bowed to organized labor and helped create the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). He expanded affirmative action into the racial spoils system so many Liberals now embrace. In foreign policy, Nixon, the great anti-communist, began a rapprochement with the Soviet Union with the policy of Detente. Who else could have recognized Communist China and forged a more open relationship with it? Even, or should I say especially, the French appreciated Nixon.

Clinton also was about as Conservative as Republicans could have hoped for from a Democrat. Clinton was a “New Democrat” who quickly realized the futility of national health care legislation, declared the age of big government over, and to the anger of true-believing Liberals, joined with a Republican Congress to pass successful welfare reform.

Bush too is a moderate man by nature who generally seeks to get along. He has allowed Congress to spend like the metaphorical drunken sailor, yielded to Edward Kennedy on education reform, and just passed the largest expansion of Medicare in a generation. He is hardly engaged in a Conservative counter revolution.

Unfortunately for all three, they pressed the wrong political buttons and were forever cast in irrationally ideological terms. Early in his career as a young Congressman on the House Un-American Activities Committee, Nixon investigated the Liberal Alger Hiss. Hiss was ultimately jailed for perjury. Many on the Left believed that Nixon created evidence to help convict Hiss. For this belief, Nixon was never forgiven. The fact that the poised and debonair Hiss was brought down by the uppity Congressman from California added a touch of Left-wing elitism to the anti-Nixon fervor. To cast this in contemporary terms, just imagine the rancor if even years from now Kenneth Starr, the special counsel appointed to investigate the Clintons, runs for political office.

Clinton and Bush, fairly or unfairly, earned animosity by the circumstances of their election. Clinton was elected in a plurality caused by the third party candidacy of Ross Perot who siphoned votes primarily from the incumbent President George Bush (Bush I). For some, Clinton really did not have legitimacy. Similarly, George W. Bush was narrowly elected earning the requisite number of electoral votes while not achieving a popular majority. Add to this the intervention of both the Florida and US Supreme Courts, and the animosity level intensified. Over the last three years, the sore of Bush hatred has festered.

Ironically, the hatred of Nixon, Clinton, and Bush by their political adversaries shield them from criticism within their own political parities, protecting them from their more extreme elements. This allowed Clinton and Nixon to garner the support of moderate voters. Of course, there were grumblings within their own parties about shifts to the center, but these complaints were suppressed by the natural tendency of people to rally around their leader when under assault. The consequence of conspicuous hatred on the part of their political adversaries energized Nixon and Clinton supporters and afforded both Nixon and Clinton comfortable reelection victories. Nothing compels future events to mimic past ones, but it will be interesting to see whether the same scenario plays out next fall for Bush.