As usual, the press and the blogs missed the point of Hillary Clinton’s bizarre debate performance–it wasn’t about issues but about principles. Much of the analysis of the debate has focused on the outward aspects of her performance such as her celebrated complaint about always being asked the first question. The real key to understanding not only the Ohio debate but also why Clinton’s campaign has imploded lies in the transcript. If you take the time to review the text it reveals the moral failure of Clinton and her campaign.

The one moment the press did focus on came in response to Tim Russert’s question about what would happen if after withdrawing our troops from Iraq we found ourselves facing a situation in which al Qaeda exploited the vacuum by taking control of part of the country to use as a base to mount another 9/11 attack? Although I am not a fan of Russert, this question is one that John McCain has raised and is sure to be raised in the coming campaign. Just to make the scenario more interesting, Russert posited that what passed for the Iraqi government had told us they did not want us to intervene.

MR. RUSSERT: I want to ask both of you this question, then. If we — if this scenario plays out and the Americans get out in total and al Qaeda resurges and Iraq goes to hell, do you hold the right, in your mind as American president, to re-invade, to go back into Iraq to stabilize it?

The heart of the question, which the press seemed to miss, lay in its masterful focus on the heart of leadership, for it is in a crisis that we find out a leader’s true values. People need to see values translated into actions, especially during a crisis in which all a leader has to fall back upon is who they are and what they stand for. Curiously, in some ways these critical decisions evidence even more the qualities of authenticity and values that lie at the heart of transformational leadership, for these qualities may be all a leader has for guidance in those moments. As CNN’s Campbell Brown stated during the Texas Democratic Presidential Debate, “A leader’s judgment is most tested in a time of crisis.”

Clinton’s answer said everything about why she is losing this election and why she will not make a good President. First, she tries to dodge the question by saying she won’t deal with hypothetical situations. That may be a reasonable response to some off-the-wall impossibility, but the scenario Russert proposed has been on the table for some time as a real possibility following an American withdrawal.

SEN. CLINTON: You know, Tim, you ask a lot of hypotheticals. And I believe that what’s –

MR. RUSSERT: But this is reality.

SEN. CLINTON: No — well, it isn’t reality. You’re — you’re — you’re making lots of different hypothetical assessments.

Clinton’s attempt to shrug off Russert’s probing represented a moral and intellectual failure. It was plain from her attempt to avoid answering the question that neither she nor her staff had thought about this possibility or rehearsed an answer. We all know that is exactly why Iraq has turned into a mess: because George W. Bush and Dick Cheney never considered alternative scenarios when they brazenly invaded the country. In their hearts they knew they were right, so they never believed the country would fall into the sectarian chaos it has become.

The moral failure in Clinton’s dodging the question also was one of cowardice. She lacked a prepared answer, so she reused to give one. Unfortunately leaders and Presidents do not have that luxury. Whether it is an organization or the White House, you want someone in charge who WILL think about alternatives and who is not afraid to answer difficult questions.

Russert’s pit-bull personality can sometimes be grating, but in this case it proved an asset, because he would not let Clinton dodge the question. It was the rambling answer she finally gave that truly revealed her moral failure. You could almost see her triangulating as she spoke like a fifth-grader wondering about a trick question. Her triangulating told her the trick was an attempt to bring up the issue that has dogged her throughout this campaign–her vote in favor of the Iraq War. Clinton’s answer is worth repeating at length for what it reveals about her character:

I believe that it is in America’s interests and in the interests of the Iraqis for us to have an orderly withdrawal. I’ve been saying for many months that the administration has to do more to plan, and I’ve been pushing them to actually do it. I’ve also said that I would begin to withdraw within 60 days based on a plan that I asked begun to be put together as soon as I became president.

And I think we can take out one to two brigades a month. I’ve also been a leader in trying to prevent President Bush from getting us committed to staying in Iraq regardless for as long as Senator McCain and others have said it might be, 50 to a hundred years.

So, when you talk about what we need to do in Iraq, we have to make judgments about what is in the best interest of America. And I believe this is in the best interest.

But I also have heard Senator Obama refer continually to Afghanistan, and he references being on the Foreign Relations Committee. He chairs the Subcommittee on Europe. It has jurisdiction over NATO. NATO is critical to our mission in Afghanistan. He’s held not one substantive hearing to do oversight, to figure out what we can do to actually have a stronger presence with NATO in Afghanistan.

You have to look at the entire situation to try to figure out how we can stabilize Afghanistan and begin to put more in there to try to get some kind of success out of it, and you have to work with the Iraqi government so that they take responsibility for their own future.

I wanted to include the entire answer in order to show that Clinton never answered what may be one of the most crucial foreign policy questions we face. Notice how we start in Iraq and end up in Afghanistan with a dig at Obama for not holding hearings about Afghanistan.

Something more disconcerting is also going on here which should worry anyone about a Hillary Clinton presidency. In this question she has no points to triangulate between and seems totally lost. But what if the Republicans were to press her with a “soft on terrorism” argument, how would she respond? Would she give in as she did on the original Iraq vote? That even after Tim Russert’s probing we don’t have an answer is troubling.

In sharp contrast to Clinton, Barack Obama had no trouble dealing with hypothetical scenarios. If his answer showed that he also had not totally thought this issue through, it did show that in a crisis he could call on core values without waiting for the pollsters.

Now, I always reserve the right for the president — as commander in chief, I will always reserve the right to make sure that we are looking out for American interests. And if al Qaeda is forming a base in Iraq, then we will have to act in a way that secures the American homeland and our interests abroad. So that is true, I think, not just in Iraq, but that’s true in other places. That’s part of my argument with respect to Pakistan.

I think we should always cooperate with our allies and sovereign nations in making sure that we are rooting out terrorist organizations, but if they are planning attacks on Americans, like what happened in 9/11, it is my job — it will be my job as president to make sure that we are hunting them down.

Obama’s answer left me a bit uneasy, because it had a hawkish tone that had me wondering if he would fall into the same trap John Kennedy did with the Bay of Pigs, trying to show his strength as a young President. Yet I was also reassured by the reference to cooperating with our allies instead of the unilateral approach of the Bush-Cheney chickenhawks. McCain will press him on this one wanting to know where our consulting with allies ends.

At that point MSNBC moved to take a commercial break, but Clinton knew she had been bested and kept interrupting to try to recover her sinking ship.

SEN. CLINTON: Well, but I have — I just have to add –

MR. WILLIAMS: I’m sorry, Senator, I’ve got to –

SEN. CLINTON: Now wait a minute, I have to add –

MR. WILLIAMS: I’ve got to get us to a break because television doesn’t stop.

SEN. CLINTON: — because the question — the question was about invading — invading — Iraq.

MR. WILLIAMS: Can you hold that thought until we come back from a break?

The moral failure of Clinton’s campaign came through in other answers she would give that evening. She reminded me of my son’s college basketball coach a year ago, who seeded first in the conference tournament and playing on his home court, with the ticket to the Big Dance all but punched, ran into an offense that his game plan had not anticipated. Instead of changing his game plan, our coach kept trying to force through his “plan” until we were down twenty points and he literally walked away from his team.

The game plan Mark Penn and others have prepared for Hillary Clinton revolved around the now tattered issues of health care and experience. During the Ohio debate it sometimes seemed as though she turned every question into an opportunity to point out the differences between her health care plan and Obama’s. At one point I was ready to kick in the TV screen if she brought it up again.

When she wasn’t talking about health care she was trying to paint Obama as all talk and no action. Not content to end up with raw egg on their faces after the crack about all hat and no cattle in Texas, the Clinton team had another equally tasteless soundbite ready for this one. This was the now-infamous Saturday Night Live Crack:

If anybody saw “Saturday Night Live,” you know, maybe we should ask Barack if he’s comfortable and needs another pillow.

This and the Texas line have Mark Penn’s fingerprints all over them. You get the impression Penn would welcome becoming the Democratic Karl Rove, except Rove was better.

What became increasingly clear as the debate moved on was the moral hollowness of Hillary Rodham Clinton–at least as she had been prepped by Penn. Again and again Clinton’s refusal to evoke principles and her scripted answers contrasted with those of Obama. Here are the two candidates on NAFTA, another exchange in which Russert’s probing had Clinton wobbling like a drunk trying to stay in the middle of the road:

SEN. CLINTON: But let’s talk about what we’re going to do. It is not enough just to criticize NAFTA, which I have, and for some years now. I have put forward a very specific plan about what I would do, and it does include telling Canada and Mexico that we will opt out unless we renegotiate the core labor and environmental standards.

SEN. OBAMA: But what I did say, in that same quote, if you look at it, was that the problem is we’ve been negotiating just looking at corporate profits and what’s good for multinationals, and we haven’t been looking at what’s good for communities here in Ohio, in my home state of Illinois, and across the country. And as president, what I want to be is an advocate on behalf of workers.

By the end of the evening it was clear to me that Hillary Clinton would make a great manager, but a questionable President. It is not because she lacks experience or ideas, but because she is a transactional leader. Bernard Bass and Paul Steidlmeier might have been writing about the differences between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama when they described how transactional and transformational leaders respond to the issue of faction Madison raised in Federalist #10:

[For transactional leaders] rival and opposing interests are best controlled if purpose and power are separated and transactional negotiations, trade-offs and exchanges produce compromises acceptable to all concerned. This is in contrast to the emphasis of transformational leadership on the sharing in a common vision and a common purpose.

The excitement Barack Obama generates is because American has not seen a transformational candidate since Ronald Reagan and a transformational Democratic candidate since Robert Kennedy. The body language in the picture at the top of this essay says it all. Note their head position and eyes. Clinton is literally looking down her nose at that audience while Obama is looking the audience in the eye with his head lowered to meet them. Clinton’s hand lacks only a piece of chalk to resemble an old-time schoolmarm giving a lecture. Obama’s level hand does not point at us, but seems to invite discussion.

The Clinton campaign is imploding like a pricked balloon because there is nothing in there. Any college student can draw up a health care plan, especially if they can crib it from John Edwards, but America is tired of position papers and plans. They want to know what their leaders stand for. Memo to Mark Penn and Hillary Clinton, “It’s about principles, stupid!”

Tagged with: 9/11 • Afghanistan • Al-Qaeda • America • audience • authenticity • Bernard Bass • Bill Clinton • blog • chaos • character • Cheney • clinton campaign • cnn • contrast • cowardice • debate • Dick_Cheney • DLC • Edwards • Europe • faction • Federalist_Ten • health • health care • health care plan • Hillary Clinton • Hillary Rodham Clinton • House • Illinois • Iraqis • issue • job • john edwards • Karl Rove • leadership • Mark Penn • NAFTA • Nato • Ohio • organization • Pakistan • personality • plan • plans • pollsters • president • President Bush • Presidential • principle • principles • Robert Kennedy • Russert • Saturday Night Live • Senator McCain • Senator Obama • soundbite • Texas • Tim_Russert • transactional_leadership • transformational_leadership • triangulation • values • worker

Image: The Brookings Institution with help from Charlie Chaplin

A black woman lounges in an open window, framed by the glow of a street light penetrating the darkness. With the look of someone who knows the roots of the blues, she sings, “Remember my forgotten man.” It is 1933, but it could just as well be the day before tomorrow.

Remember my forgotten man,
You had him cultivate the land;
He walked behind the plow,
The sweat fell from his brow,
But look at him right now!

By March 13, workers at Ford will have to decide whether to accept a “buyout” that runs from $100,000 for first year workers (although, surprise, surprise, they lose their health benefits) to $140,000 for skilled workers over 55 and ten years seniority. Call it the dirty oil parachute. Any idiot can do the math. First, a chunk of that “buyout” will go to Uncle Sam, so it won’t be $100,000 or $140,000 but a bit less depending on the worker’s tax bracket. Then there’s the dollar amount itself–an insult to people who have worked their entire lives for Ford.

In Michigan, in this economy, a buyout means you’re done. You walk away from twenty years on the line with enough money to get you through a few years, and then where are you? The whole idea is–dare I say it–Un-American. We are actually going to pay people not to work. Why? so we can replace them with cheaper workers. Let’s get to the bottom line, for every buyout, Ford can hire in another worker at considerably less and make back that buyout in a year or two. The New York Times reports Ford needs to:

Pave the way for new hires at wages of $14 an hour — roughly half of current pay scales.

This story has not received the attention it deserves because it signals an ominous trend in American society: the well-paid, skilled worker is becoming extinct. These are the people who built the American Century one bolt at a time, who made the phrase “Made in America” a synonym for excellence. Through years of struggle, some of which cost people their lives, they made it possible for someone who worked hard and stayed loyal to make a decent living and grab a piece of the American Dream.

Now Detroit is saying they don’t want these people any more. It is showing them the door and giving them a good kick in the rear end to make sure they get the message. Like it or not, there is a widespread movement underway in America’s factories and workplaces to essentially lower the salaries of those who work for a living. When Ford and other companies in trouble complete their “buyouts,” it will mean that no one ever again will earn what those people earned.

As usual the workers get the shaft for bad decisions by management. It wasn’t the workers who got Ford into this mess; it was the 20th highest paid person in America, according to Fortune, Ford CEO Alan Mulally, whose 2006 compensation was $40.5 million. Meanwhile Ford has the gall to pitch the buyouts as “Be Your Own Boss.” If the buyouts made what Mulally raked in, they might just take the offer. Figuring a 40-hour work week with two weeks’ vacation, Mulally’s salary amounts to a tidy $20,250 an hour, or $810,000 per week.

Now suppose Mr. Mulally was told to take a week or two off without pay, as mine workers near where my parents are buried used to have to do, and suppose that money were used to offset those “buyouts?” In fact given Ford’s dismal performance let’s give Mr. Mulally a ten percent pay cut or even twenty percent. Then lets take that money and invest it in Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway at ten-year return on investment of 5.7% where it could be used to help workers rather that screw them.

Here is what the “Mulally Foundation” would yield. The 10% pay cut would grow to close to $13.5 million in three years and  almost $24 million in five. The 20% pay cut, which would reduce poor Mr. Mulally’s weekly earnings from $810,000 to a measly $648,000, would yield almost $27 million in three years and $47 million in five. Think what the “buyouts” could do with that.

Curiously, at the same time Ford and the other automakers are shutting the door on high-paid, skilled workers, another less-noticed development is shutting the door on their children. Julia B. Isaacs, Isabel V. Sawhill and Ron Haskins of the Brookings Institution recently published, “Getting Ahead or Losing Ground: Economic Mobility In America,” yet another study showing that while Mr. Mulally and his colleagues are doing quite well, the rest of us are in big trouble.

Funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, “Getting Ahead or Losing Ground” observes:

The American Dream is alive if somewhat frayed.

What the study found is that just as the door is being slammed shut on skilled workers by the likes of Mr. Mullaly, so the rest of the rich are slamming it on Americans. We are in danger of becoming the wealthy aristocracy that the American Revolution sought to eliminate.

For example, 42 percent of children born to parents in the bottom fifth of the income distribution remain in the bottom, while 39 percent born to parents in the top fifth remain at the top.

Even more troubling, a child growing up in Canada, Norway, Finland, Denmark, France, Germany, or Sweden stands a better chance of getting ahead than an American child. The country of the Horatio Alger myth has come to resemble a Dickens’ novel.

The study adds yet another voice to the growing chorus of studies that shows this country is becoming less equal as the have’s grab more than their fair share leaving the have nots believing their last, best hope is buyouts. The mantra that has been sung for at least a generation in this country is that as the need for skilled industrial workers diminished due to technology and production efficiencies, their children, who once hoped to join their fathers and mothers at the factory, could aspire to a better education as a way of coping with the loss of these skilled jobs.

If you’ve ever been on unemployment, you remember how the gospel preached by zombie-like government “counselors” was to improve your education. Since as far back as Thomas Jefferson, people viewed education as the foundation of our democracy and the main meal ticket to reaching the American Dream. While that is still true, what is not so well known is how the doors to a meaningful education are rapidly closing, making an ominous sound that echoes like the iron slam of a prison gate.

“Getting Ahead or Losing Ground,” points out:

An examination of preschool, -12, and undergraduate and graduate education in the United States reveals that the average effect of education at all levels is to reinforce rather than compensate for the differences associated with family background and the many home-based advantages and disadvantages that children and adolescents bring with them into the classroom.

Buried on page 95 of the study (yes, I read these, which is why you find things here you will find nowhere else) is perhaps the most startling sentence I have read this year:

In fact, if it were not for the nation’s education system, it might be more difficult for wealthy parents to pass along their income advantage to their children.

I had to read that sentence over several times, it so unnerved me. What it is saying is that our education system has become the equivalent of the priggish British prep schools that we Americans love to stick up our noses at (think Chariots of Fire or even Hogwarts Academy). As Harry Potter and his friends kept finding out, it’s the Malfoys of the world who are running things.

The report only gets more depressing.

As they now function, the nation’s K-12 school systems provide only a modest boost to poor and minority children’s chances of moving up the economic ladder.

I shudder to think what Thomas Jefferson would think if he were alive to read that sentence. His entire philosophy of education has been turned on its head. We’ve all known that the rich get into Harvard, but for most of us there was always good old state university. Unfortunately, the study says that ideal is becoming extinct:

A recent exhaustive review of the evidence showed that at every step in the process of preparing for, applying to, attending, and graduating from four-year universities, students from poor families are at a substantial disadvantage.

But then none of this is telling us anything we don’t already know. If you have tried to put a child through any college in the last ten or fifteen years you know that after running the exhausting gauntlet of forms that want to know what size socks you wear, your child will march down the aisle at graduation lugging a huge debt. The deck becomes even more stacked at the graduate and professional school level where it is not uncommon for students to emerge after four years with six figure loans to pay off.

Especially troubling are the study’s conclusions about people of color. There is a belief in the AfroSpear (thanks to Francis Holland for this link) that “white liberals” in what Field Negro termed the “whitosphere” don’t care about or want to care about issues concerning people of color. If that is true, “Getting Ahead or Losing Ground” should put that notion to rest, not because the “whitosphere” has changed, but because it better change or this country is headed down a path of no return.

People of color have had to contend with the one step forward, two steps back vacillations of American history before, but not since this nation turned its back on Reconstruction has there loomed the prospect of such a pronounced step backward. The report makes clear that for people of color, the future appears not a dream, but a nightmare.

For people of color employers like Ford and the promise of education have long helped to level the playing field. The exodus of African Americans from the land of strange fruit to the industrial North was fueled by wages and jobs that, while still discriminatory, beat picking cotton as a sharecropper on some plantation. As the American Century matured, people of color could do very well working for companies like Ford. The doors of higher education also opened wider making it possible for Clarence Thomas to oppose affirmative action. Now the study shows that era is in danger of ending.

The black-white gap in male earnings has declined historically, with a large decline from the 1960s to the mid 1970s, but there has been much less improvement over the past three decades.

A startling 45 percent of black children whose parents were solidly middle income end up falling to the bottom income quintile, while only 16percent of white children born to parents in the middle make this descent.

So think again of those Ford workers who must decide whether to take their $70,000. First, do you take the $70 grand at all? It’s a lose/lose proposition. There are broad hints that if you don’t take this half-a-loaf now you could end up with nothing when they lay you off. Then what if you do take the money? You probably have to choose between your children’s education and your retirement, after you pay taxes which Mr. Mullaly probably manages to avoid.

You may remember the old shell game where some quick-handed, fast-talking con man moved an object around under several walnut shells. The idea was for you to guess which shell held the prize. Bob Barker turned it into choosing which door held the prize. The buyouts and Brookings report open that door only to find an empty room and a game rigged against us.

An era has ended, throwing Americans out into the blizzard that characterizes a post-industrial world where winds of change can sweep in with enough force to knock you off your feet, the cold realities of technological change and a global economy numb even those insulated against them, and the shapeless drifts of too many media, corporate and political snow jobs bury those unable to escape.

Etta Moten sings the final lines:

Forgetting him, you see,
Means you’re forgetting me.

Tagged with: affirmative action • African_Americans • Afrospear • America • American_Century • American_dream • American_education • aristocracy • Brookings_Institution • buyout • buyouts • Canada • CEO Alan Mulally • Clarence Thomas • Denmark • Detroit • Dickens • economic mobility • Finland • Ford • Fortune • France • Germany • Harry_Potter • Horatio Alger • inherited wealth • Isabel V. Sawhill • Joan_Blondell • Julia B. Isaacs • Losing • Michigan • money • Norway • people_of_color • Pew_Research_Center • reconstruction • remember_my_forgotten_man • Ron Haskins • shell_game • study • tax • technology • the poor • Thomas_Jefferson • United States • Warren Buffet • whitosphere • worker

The race has narrowed since the first Follow the Money report, but the press is so focused on delegates that no one is asking where are the donors going? It is another example of the mainstream media and mainstream blogdom’s tendency to behave like a herd of spooked sheep, running from one story to another so it doesn’t really matter which paper or blog you pick up they all will be focused on the same thing. Right now “superdelegates” is the new buzzword.

So are there any trends in the donors of the candidates who have dropped out? Are they moving to either Clinton or Obama? Which ones are moving? The January funding reports have just been released, so the entire impact of the candidate withdrawals does not show. However, there are some interesting trends.

The major one has received enough comment that it is redundant to say much other than to note in January Obama raised twice as much money as Clinton–$36 million to $18 million– and by the end of the month had pulled ahead of her in total funds raised–$138 million to $134 million. A plug here that all these data come from Open Secrets.org.

Contrary to several media reports, the data show Obama outspent Clinton, $113 million to $105 million and that at the end of the month Clinton had $5 million more cash in hand. The ominous sign for Clinton is that her campaign had $7 million in debts at the end of last month, while Obama’s debt was only $1 million.

Barack Obama Comparisons

As for the big donors here are the comparisons from December with the new report.

Charts: Center for Responsive Politics

For Obama, the interesting trend is the large jump in contributions from UBS AG, a Swiss company that, according to their web page, is the leading global wealth manager and one of the largest global asset managers. UBS employs over 80,000 people, with 39% in the Americas. The firm has existed for over a hundred years, but until the 1990s, was mainly a Swiss company. Then it went on a global mergers and acquisitions spree, much of it in the United States. Among its biggest acquisitions were Paine Webber and Dillon Read. But the firm’s history notes:

The alliance with the Chicago-based derivatives house, ’Connor & Associates, was a pivotal event in the bank’s
evolution. When it entered into a joint venture with O’Connor n 1989, SBC started a process that would ultimately transform not only the bank but the entire Swiss financial sector.

Two interesting skeletons in UBS’ closet have political implications. According to a February 27, 2007 story by World Law Direct (a major online provider of legal services) :

Swiss banking giant UBS has agreed to pay $100 million, one of the largest fines ever against a securities firm, after admitting that some former employees had violated Federal Reserve Board rules by transferring U.S. currency to Cuba, Libya, and Iran.

In other words, Obama’s second largest campaign contributor was illegally funneling money to three of the world’s more notorious dictatorships.

Not long after that, UBS head Peter Wuffli resigned after revelations surfaced about UBS’ involvement in the subprime lending fiasco.

Massachusetts Secretary of State William F. Galvin said Tuesday he had ordered UBS Securities and Bear Stearns to turn over documents concerning their analysts’ recommendations on subprime lenders such as New Century Financial.

Hillary Clinton Comparisons

As for Hillary Clinton, her top four contributors are exactly the same as they were in December, with the world’s largest law firm (and lobbying firm) DLA Piper at the top of the list.

Charts: Center for Responsive Politics

What is notable about Clinton’s contributors is the drop in rank of EMILY’s List, the organization dedicated to electing pro-choice, female candidates. From December to January, EMILY’s List increased its contribution by only $2,000 at a time when Clinton desperately needed their support. Whether EMILY’s List is running short on cash or this represents a shift in donations by members is an interesting question. The shift does seem significant. Yet one of the major stories on the EMILY’s List website trumpets the organization’s stumping for Clinton in Texas:

The 2008 WOMEN VOTE! program, a nationwide voter mobilization and education project of EMILY’s List, will continue its efforts to reach out to women voters and mobilize their support for Senator Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential primary. Similar to the successful program run in New Hampshire, Connecticut, and New Jersey, EMILY’s List will use a targeted radio buy to blanket the state of Texas and reach women voters during the final days leading up to the March 4th Texas primary.

A similar campaign is also underway in Ohio. After Super Tuesday, EMILY’s List announced:

The country saw tonight what EMILY’s List has known for more than two decades - when women vote women win!

Until the recent announcements about Texas and Ohio, EMILY’s List has had little to say about the candidacy of Hillary Clinton. There is a sense that, as so many have commented, these two states will make or break the Clinton campaign.

The Trends

The other notable “Follow the Money” trend has been how the firms that have been contributing to both candidates have shifted their donations. A side-by-side comparison is illuminating.

Charts: Center for Responsive Politics

Goldman Sachs, for example, has switched from Clinton to Obama, donating more in January to Obama than Clinton–a shift of its December funding.

A second interesting trend is that internet rivals Google and Microsoft have each chosen to back different candidates. Google enters Obama’s top donor list for the first time in January, while Microsoft continues to be a major Clinton contributor. It is interesting to Google the two candidates. For Obama the search engine lists his books right after the campaign website, but according to Google you would not know Hillary Clinton had written any books. A MSN search turns up pages for the two candidates that are almost identical.

The third trend is what has happened to the donors for the candidates who dropped out. Chris Dodd’s main backer, Connecticut hedge fund trader Steven Cohen, has not signed on with either Clinton or Obama.

ActBlue, which was a major contributor to both John Edwards and Bill Richardson, does not appear as a top January contributor to either of the remaining candidates, probably because Edwards was still in the race until the end of the month. A journey to Act Blue’s website, however, list Barack Obama as number five on its current “hot candidates list.” A mouse click away is the information that Obama has drawn 2,800 ActBlue donations to Hillary Clinton’s 169. John Edwards may still not have endorsed a candidate, but one major group of supporters has moved to Barack Obama.

So here is another of this site’s predictions: I would not be surprised to see John Edwards endorse Barack Obama at a key moment before the Texas and Ohio contests.

The Contrast in Donors

As has been commented on elsewhere, there is a huge contrast between the two campaigns in terms of donors. Eighty percent of Clinton’s funds come from donations of $2,300 or above, versus only 60% for Obama. Obama is raising twice as much money from $200-499 donors as Clinton, while Clinton is raising three times as much from donors giving over $4,600. What the Democratic Party has on its hands is a grassroots campaign versus a big money campaign. This bodes well for Obama, not merely because it indicates he has broad support, but also because these are people he can depend on to help with the Presidential campaign and who will be there to support him when he gets elected.

What we could be seeing is that the people are about to take back the Democratic Party. The Goldman-Sachs will always be there, but if current trends continue Barack Obama will owe his election to the small donors not the big ones. That is not true for Hillary Clinton.

Meanwhile the financial giants are investing heavily in both campaigns. If you review Bill Clinton’s big donors in 1996, they are a more diverse group than the big donors for either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. Among Bill Clinton’s top twenty donors were AT&T, Sprint, Raytheon, Energy Corp, and Walt Disney. His number one contributor was the accounting firm of Ernst and Young. Of Clinton and Obama’s top five donors; four of them are financial firms. This is not a healthy sign, especially given that the current economic crisis is largely due to these firms. Virtually the same cast of characters also appears on John McCain’s top five list.

Meet Goldman Sachs–Investing in the White House

Between Obama, McCain and Clinton, Goldman Sachs has put a million dollars into this campaign. Why? Goldman was right in the middle of the subprime loan crisis. In 2006 it strung together over $500 billion of these loans into GSAMP Trust. Washington Post financial columnist Allan Sloan has all the gory details which include:

The average equity the second-mortgage borrowers had in their homes was 0.71 percent.

These are people Congress and certain Presidential candidates funded by Goldman now want to bail out!

Goldman then turned around, unloaded GSAMP just as the bubble began to burst and then jumped horses in midstream and bet the market would get worse. In short, they helped to cause the problem, bailed out on it and then made money betting the problem they helped cause would worsen! We should all be so wise.

The Main Issue

Of the candidates left in the race, it is clear only one is not heavily reliant on funding from big donors and that candidate is Barack Obama. This series began when an Iowa friend said to me last fall, “I would know better who to vote for if I knew who was funding them (she used more colorful language).” We now have a definitive answer to that question. On the basis of this research it is clear only one candidate offers any hope of leveling America’s tilted playing field. That candidate is Barack Obama.

Tagged with: ActBlue • Barack Obama • blogdom • buzzword • Chris_Dodd • clinton campaign • Comparisons • Connecticut • Cuba • December • Edwards • funding • Goldman_Sachs • google • Hillary Clinton • internet • Iran • john edwards • libya • mainstream media • Massachusetts • mergers and acquisitions • microsoft • money report • MSN • New Hampshire • New Jersey • Obama • Ohio • ominous sign • open secrets • outspent • Peter Wuffli • sub prime crisis • subprime • swiss company • Texas • ubs • ubs ag • United States • wealth manager • withdrawals

With another debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on tap, it looks like we will again have to deal with the experience question. It’s the wrong question.

The issue of Barack Obama’s experience punctuated with variations on the old “all talk, and no action,” stereotype makes you glad you live in the age of web pages rather than paper pages, for if we did not we would have one heck of a pile of toilet paper. To Google “Obama and Kennedy” is to turn up several hundred so-called bloggers whose facile comparisons add little to the discussion.

The truth is that anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of American history can dig up examples of Presidential candidates who were ridiculed for their lack of experience. Here are a few choice ones; see if you can pick out who was the candidate:

1. [He is] an inexperienced “young genius” who would lead the nation to “self-destruction” if elected to the Presidency.
2. The candidates are both men of but little political experience, who came into statesmanship out of other highly intellectual callings.
3. It is the opinion of certain of the advocates of Mr. X that Y has had no experience in public affairs.
4. [He is] a boy scout.
5. He is an amiable man who would like very much to be president but has no discoverable qualifications for the office.
6. What a disaster for the country - a failed haberdasher.

The last one should be a dead give-away, since it was a favorite epithet tossed at Harry Truman. The quote comes from Alistair Cooke on his first meeting with the new President. Number one was Dwight Eisenhower’s opinion of John Kennedy. Number two comes from Harvard President Charles Eliot about both candidates in the 1916 election: Woodrow Wilson and Charles Evans Hughes. Number three is a New York Times editorial, with James G. Blaine the Mr. X and Grover Cleveland the Y. The “boy scout” was Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the opinion of literary critic Edmund Wilson. Number five was journalist Walter Lippmann’s assessment of FDR.

The point of this little quiz is that you can pick just about anyone who ever ran for President and find someone who said they did not have enough experience. There are a few exceptions: Herbert Hoover probably had more experience than any President up to his time (we’ll leave out the founders for obvious reasons), the other one was Richard Nixon. So much for experience.

What history does tell us is that the “experience duds”– those Presidents who come into office with a great deal of experience but turned out to be failures–were handicapped by philosophical rigidity and/or personality problems. Herbert Hoover, of course, represents the classic case. Richard Nixon is exhibit A of the personality problem. John Adams and John Quincy Adams are often cited as other examples.

Anyone who would dare predict the shape of an Obama Presidency is an idiot or ignores the one lesson history does teach and that is there is no predicting whether a candidate will become a great President or a mediocre one. Certainly those Republicans who eight years ago asked the nation to take a chance on a Texas governor who hardly had a distinguished leadership record should be careful about basing a campaign on experience.

In fact that former Texas governor has left his successor with the biggest mess since Herbert Hoover left the White House. On top of that both political parties are a mess. The Democrats include 40-plus Blue Dogs who think any bill that isn’t revenue-neutral is a fire hydrant. On the GOP side of the aisle, an equally bizarre group believes God whispers in their ears and tells them it is wrong to kill the “unborn” but right to fry people in the electric chair.

No situation in American history matches the scope of the mess George W. Bush has created. Literally every system in America along with our foreign relations is in deep trouble. To deal with these problems will require a lack of rigidity and a personality that can rally the American people. Contrary to the ridiculous assertion that withdrawing from Iraq will merely require throwing a dart at a calendar, extricating ourselves from this mess will not be easy. To avoid the contemporary equivalent of “who lost China,” a President Obama will have to secure bipartisan support.

The tax cuts and economic mess are issue number two. Here Obama’s own party will be as much a problem as the GOP. The Blue Dogs will have Obama seeing red. If framed as an issue of equity–in hard time everyone must sacrifice–a President Obama could put his eloquence to good use in breaking the “no new taxes” deadlock.

Every new President represents a blank slate on which will be recorded the judgment of history. No one could have foreseen the greatness of Abraham Lincoln nor could they have known that one of the most difficult decisions of the last century–the use of the atomic bomb–would be waiting on the desk of that failed haberdasher, Harry Truman. If electing a President were merely a matter of fortune telling, we could let Las Vegas odds-makers call the shots.

What we do know about choosing Presidents has to do with two issues the media don’t want to talk about. First, as much as we deny it, electing a President is a personality contest. The more people believe in a candidate, the more goodwill and, yes, hope, that candidate brings to the White House. Hope was the key theme of Franklin Roosevelt’s famous “we have no fear” Inaugural. Herbert Hoover had a long resume and a list of remedies, but he did not enjoy the confidence of the American people.

The more critical ignored ingredient is values. People had no idea what Franklin Roosevelt was going to do–and if they had, they might have had more doubts. Had the Hundred Days been one of today’s ubiquitous position papers, it would have been chewed to death before FDR ever walked through the doors of the White House. Instead Roosevelt articulated a clear set of values that would govern his Presidency.

The American people are not naive. They know that any specific proposal about health care or the mortgage crisis will inevitably be reshaped by Congress, and perhaps even the courts. What they do want to know is what principles will guide that process.

Barack Obama has clearly captured the hearts of millions of Americans with his winning personality and his optimism. What we all want to hear more about is his principles. Hope and change are not principles. Health care proposals are not principles. If Obama fails to do a better job of articulating his core values he will lose the White House because eventually people will see him only as a personality or conversely as a candidate with a phonebook-thick list of programs ala John Kerry. What Obama needs now is a “Forgotten Man” speech like the one Franklin Roosevelt delivered in 1932 or Harry Truman’s Kiel Auditorium speech.

Right now Obama is an empty vessel into which a lot of Americans have poured their own hopes. Without principles, that vessel becomes a sieve.

Tagged with: Abraham Lincoln • alistair cooke • American history • assessment • Barack Obama • bloggers • Blue_Dogs • boy scout • campaign • candidate • charles eliot • charles evans hughes • Congress • debate • Democrats • dwight eisenhower • edmund wilson • election • eloquence • equity • experience duds • failed haberdasher • FDR • forgotten_man_speech • franklin delano roosevelt • Franklin Roosevelt's First Inaugural • genius • God • google • GOP • grover cleveland • haberdasher • Harry Truman • harvard president • health care • Hillary Clinton • history • Hundred Days • inexperienced • Iraq • James G. Blaine • John Adams • John Kennedy • John Kerry • John Quincy Adams • journalist • Las Vegas • leadership • literary critic • media • New York • no new taes • personality • personality problem • political experience • Presidency • President Obama • Presidential • principle • principles • Republican • Republicans • Richard Nixon • rigidity • rudimentary knowledge • statesmanship • stereotype • taxes • Texas • toilet paper • truth • values • walter lippmann • White_House • who lost China • Woodrow Wilson

I’m going to go way out on a limb and predict a contest long before the polls close. Why? A lot of women I know are angry that the media seem to have crowned the winner of the Democratic Presidential contest before it is over. They also are angry that Party officials are trying to force a premature conclusion.

These women are career women, who like Hillary Clinton, have pushed against the glass ceiling all their lives and they are not happy that the ceiling is being shut yet again. For them this campaign has become personal in a symbolic way.

Hillary Clinton would not have made the decision to campaign in a state that earlier she had written off if these women had not called for help. She also would not have found herself snowed in in Milwaukee if these women had not indicated that with her help, Hillary Clinton could win the state and end Obama’s bid to run the table. Also things have tightened in both Ohio and Texas. Clinton needs Wisconsin.

This race has become ugly and when things get ugly it seems to energize the Clintons. Bill Clinton always seemed his best when his back was against the wall, for then he developed a clarity and urgency that had a way of focusing his outsized ego.

They had a pretty bad storm in Wisconsin over the weekend, throwing a wrench into Clinton’s Sunday campaign plans. Rather than go on to Ohio yesterday, as planned, Clinton embarked on a mini-tour of Wisconsin that ended in Madison where she released “Solutions for America,” her economic plan. Now she could have done that in Ohio or Texas, but the fact she chose Wisconsin is more than symbolic–she thinks she has a chance here to pull an upset.

To truly answer the question of whether she can pull it off, you need to know how much money she plans to spend in the final hours, because in her financially-strapped campaign how much money she spends will be a key to whether her pollsters are showing she can win the state. I have been unable to find any numbers at this point.

What is clear is that her ads have decided to go directly at Obama. If this campaign is seen to have a turning point it could well be in Wisconsin where Clinton decided to go negative. If she wins here expect to see a barrage of negative ads in Ohio and Texas. In Wisconsin the subject is Obama’s refusal to debate her here, an issue that could come back to haunt him. Forget the reasons why; people do not like to be ignored.

The other issue Clinton is pushing strongly is that Obama is all talk and no action. She has added another twist to this accusing Obama of “plagiarism” for employing phrases used by Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts in his 2006 campaign. However, Patrick is an Obama ally and quickly came to his defense. You have to wonder now if Mark Penn is not in the driver’s seat in the Clinton campaign.

What will be more important for Clinton than the negative ads is turning out the base. Clinton sports endorsements from U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., Lt. Gov. Barbara Lawton and Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk. It is also interesting to note that at one time John Edwards had the endorsement of 40 state Democratic leaders including Congressman David Obey and State Democratic chair Joe Wineke. Obey announced a switch to Obama. Wineke is still sitting the fence as are Wisconsin’s big guns–Senators Herb Kohl and Russell Feingold.

As for other factors, this morning’s Wisconsin State Journal stated:

Wisconsin is almost the kind of state Hillary Rodham Clinton would have invented to win a Democratic presidential primary, brimming with whites and working-class voters who usually support her.

Exit polls from this year’s Democratic presidential contests and from Wisconsin’s 2004 Democratic presidential primary sketch a picture of a state whose voters are practically tailor-made to resuscitate Clinton’s campaign.

“It’s a place where she should do better than everybody expects her to do,” said Mark Mellman, another Democratic pollster not affiliated with a presidential campaign.

Early poll reports are full of local character:

9 a.m., Blue Mounds Town Hall, near Little Norway: By this time of day, 53 residents had navigated roads resembling snow tunnels to vote at the town hall. There, the talk was of the town’s successful system of reuniting stray animals with their owners.

Wisconsin is one of three states holding primary elections today and our weather conditions are by far the most challenging. The temperature was 2-below zero with sunny skies and snow-covered streets when the polls opened at 7 a.m.

9:35 a.m., Fitchburg Community Center: Voter No. 444 walked into the community center, unfurling the tartan wool scarf from her neck, stomping her rubber-booted feet, content that the most dangerous decision had been made already: whether to start braking the car one block or two blocks from the entrance off icy Lacy Road.

The paper’s election day blog is so overwhelmed it was difficult to get in to, suggesting this race will be tight. I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest Hillary Clinton might just pull off the upset, and if not the race will be very close.

The main reason for going out on a limb is that I am going to predict an unusually large turnout in the middle-aged and older women that have been Hillary Clinton’s biggest supporters. They will more than offset whatever advantage Barama derives from all those Wisconsin college students. Exit poll data from the 2006 Wisconsin Senate race show 53% of the voters were women and 48% of the voters were white women as opposed to 44% for white males. Voters older than 45 outnumbered younger voters by almost 20%. Obama would have to cut into that pretty deeply to offset Clinton’s support among these voters.

So as the clock ticks 4:00 here in the Midwest, I’m going to stick with a Clinton upset. Below zero weather makes you do strange things, plus Wisconsin always has been tough to figure out. Maybe that’s what happens when you wear cheese on your head too long.

6:00 First Polling Data: “A substantial majority of Democratic voters are women, more than usual for a Wisconsin Democratic primary” from ABC. The prediction is looking even better. Interesting the pollsters are telling us right now the percentage of women going for each candidate, but not the percentage voting. As usual they are following the wrong ball.

6:15 First REAL Data: CNN reports women turning out 57% to 43%, yet our friends at Fox News have Obama winning these voters. When Faux News makes a call like that, run in the other direction. Since the polls have yet to close, that kind of reporting is not only irresponsible, but could well further inflame Clinton voters. Let me put it this way, if Clinton cannot win in a primary where women outnumber men by 14% maybe it is time to hang it up.

6:30 More Data: Crossover factor: 15% of Dem voters had never voted before. That’s not a big number. Here’s why these folks are really screwed up. One poll has Clinton 48-45; another Obama 57-41. Still no more data on female voters. Are these people idiots! Income: one bad sign for Clinton: 59% of voters made over $50,000, 41% made under. BTW, those of you tuning in for the first time notice this site is the only one with FOOTNOTES! At least you know where the data is coming from. At this point I am having to rely on secondary sources a bit more than I would like to.

6:45 Some CBS Data: Voters 45 and over an astounding 67%. Again, this looks good for Clinton. Don’t pay attention to the vote for each candidate. Only an idiot would do that this early. CBS joins Faux in the irresponsibility corner. What we do know is that Clinton’s usual base has turned out in higher numbers than expected and Obama’s base–young voters–has not. If Clinton loses with all this in her favor, Wisconsin voters have sent a pretty strong message they want this over. White women 50%; white men 38%. Crossover Part Two: Republicans 9%, Independents 27%.

7:00 Analysis: I’m just about ready to hang it up. Hillary Clinton’s base has turned out in higher numbers than expected. This means she should win. If she does not it will mean her base has deserted her and she will face problems in Texas and Ohio. At this point I think I can say the demographics should favor Clinton as the evening wears on. If Obama wins by more the 5% then it does not look good for Clinton the rest of the way. If Clinton’s base is gone, Wisconsin may be telling us Democrats are ready to commit to Obama.

An interesting question: how much has all the media hype about superdelegates contributed to this? Of course, no poll asked that question. Clinton has been especially strong about pushing for the superdelegates to vote where Obama has said let the people decide. Maybe in Wisconsin they are agreeing with Obama. I’ll bet that’s a bit of analysis you won’t find anywhere else–at least not this early.

I’m off to a meeting, and probably won’t add anything until later this evening. No doubt by then the networks will have called it. You might want to check back for some final thoughts. Otherwise, thanks for tuning in. And as Ed Murrow used to say, Good night and good luck.

Final Thoughts: Clinton loses by 13 percent–a resounding victory for Obama. The numbers were there for Clinton, but as I said earlier in the evening, it appears she no longer has her base. According to CNN exit polls Fifty-eight percent of the voters were women, 63% were above age 45. The only group Clinton won were whites 60 and older. Obama won voters of every education and income level. He also captured voters of all ideologies. He won union members. He won urban, rural and suburban.

One encouraging result of Wisconsin is that voters resoundingly rejected negative campaigning. Hopefully that means Texas and Ohio will be waged on a higher plane and both candidates will turn their attention from each other to John McCain. If a good can be said to come out of a negative campaign, it is that Obama has shown he can cope with whatever is thrown his way.

Some people expressed doubts earlier in the year that Obama could withstand what will be a vicious GOP attack machine, but he will go into his contest with McCain battle-tested, in a way that McCain has not been. McCain has only had to deal with the issue of his right wing credentials, but none of these people have seriously questioned many of his policy decisions. Right now, it appears the Democrats could run a Kerry on McCain, accusing him of being the flip-flopper.

Perhaps the most encouraging exit poll results came in answer to a question about whether voters for Clinton could support an Obama candidacy. Eight percent of Clinton supporters said they would be very dissatisfied if Obama were the nominee and 9% would be somewhat dissatisfied. This contrasts with 31% in both categories if Clinton wins the nomination.

This bodes well for the Democratic Party because it shows people are uniting around a candidate. Clinton obviously deserves a shot at Texas and Ohio, but she would have to win them by huge margins now to have an impact on the delegate totals. So her only way of winning would be to try to broker a deal with the superdelegates. That would tear the party apart and I don’t think Hillary Clinton would do that. Expect to see the superdelegates begin to break ranks in the coming weeks and declare for Obama.

Finally, it looks as though Obama may have more freedom to choose a running mate than I thought.

So tonight marks a historic night in American history, for it signals that a black man will now be running for President. All Democrats should be proud of their party and their candidate.

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