Decision ‘08

Not EVERYONE Is A Condi Fan

If you visit this blog even semi-regularly, you’ve probably gathered I like Condeleezza Rice. A lot. A whole, whole lot…but I try to be open to opposing viewpoints, and John Hawkins of Right Wing News, it’s fair to say, doesn’t share my enthusiasm. In fact, he has the Top 8 Reasons Not To Support Condi Rice right here…perhaps this weekend I’ll put together a counterpoint (suggestions, as always, are welcome)…

21 Responses to “Not EVERYONE Is A Condi Fan”

1 Jojo Says:
August 26th, 2005 at 12:27 am
I think Rice is already out, so it’s much ado about nothing.
2 fatman Says:
August 26th, 2005 at 3:53 am
I think so too. And if she isn’t, she should be.
3 Clint Says:
August 26th, 2005 at 10:25 am
Concisely and correctly nailed. That’s why she’s a “fantasy candidate”.
4 Dennis Says:
August 26th, 2005 at 10:39 am
Since I went on record by being a little puzzled by the Condi love, I’ll take a whack at those points.

1) The fact that she is unmarried and has no children is admittedly a real wild card. However, I think the novelty of that would be overwhelmed by the novelty of a black, female president.

2) I agree that I don’t see her pulling in tons of black votes. That said, in a nation as closely divided as this one, stripping off a few percentage points of the black vote could be the difference between another squeaker and a comfortable win. After all, the Democrats have pretty much maxed out their support from black voters.

3) The fact that she’s never run for office before makes me worry about how good a candidate she’d be. I think she’s very good at what she does, but that’s not the same as crisscrossing the country, giving stemwinder speeches. (I don’t think it makes a lick of difference on how good a president she’d be.)

4) As for her warmth and charisma, I’m concerned about too, for the same reason as above. She seems nice enough in interviews, but that’s not the same as exhibiting the same kind of “Follow me!” leadership you want in a president. I don’t think she’s cold, but I just don’t see her as someone the masses are drawn naturally to.

5) The left-wing base will be motivated to win no matter who is the GOP nominee. It’s no longer about making governing choices, it’s about validating their worldview.

6 and 7) I don’t think it’s fair to label her bluntly as pro-abortion and pro-affirmative action. She seems to be muddled in the middle. That may not be enough for the hardliners on either side, but it’s probably where the majority of Americans find themselves. I’m not saying that’s bad or good, but it’s reality.

I think he’s right that we pretty much don’t know her domestic views. I’m more moderate on that than I am on foreign policy, so as long as she’s not a wild-eyed liberal, I’d be inclined to vote for her. But I really have no clue, other than knowing she seems pretty strong on the Second Amendment, which I think is a good thing.
5 AcademicElephant Says:
August 26th, 2005 at 10:51 am
I have already made my wishes known–and I become more convinced with each passing day that this is the best course. I want a one term Rumsfeld candidacy with Rice as a VP and designated successor. This scenario offsets most of the current “cons” as it gives her campaign experience and four years honing domestic policy–and this way Mark, I get my four years and then you get your eight years. What we all get is a net of 20 years–which will be long enough to truly rout the scourge of terrorism once and for all.

That said, one reason Condi gets my vote is that she gets up every day and strikes a blow for the cause of female PhDs looking good on the job. I am considering making this my single issue, in which case she becomes my only option.
6 utron Says:
August 26th, 2005 at 11:05 am
Let’s see. Taking John’s points one by one…

1) She’s a single, unmarried woman over 50 years old. That means the press will be able to successfully portray her as aeither a lesbian, a weirdo, or a lesbian weirdo.

Some in the press will try it, and they will deserve to get slapped down, hard. I regard sleazy gossip about Hillary’s sexuality as, well, sleazy gossip. It certainly doesn’t advance the Republican cause, and innuendo about Condi won’t help the Democrats.

2) She’s had no success in bringing the black vote to the Bush administration so far, so why does anyone think she’ll be able to do it if she runs?

Of course she can’t “deliver the black vote;” neither can any other Republican. I’m not crazy about identity politics, which I prefer to leave to the Democrats. However, a run for President—particulary a successful one—would go far to undercut that whole paradigm, which in the longer run would benefit everybody.

3) She has never run for office before.

Neither had Eisenhower. She has, however, been at W’s side through two grueling presidential campaigns, which gives her more experience at that level than any candidate in either party, with the exceptions of Cheney, McCain, and Hillary. I doubt that any of those three are John’s preference.

4) She’s not particularly warm or charismatic.

This one’s a little subjective. Personally, I like Condi’s style a lot. We had eight years with Bill to note that warmth and charisma weren’t necessarily positive. In any case, Condi would likely be running against Hillary, who isn’t exactly a caucasian Oprah Winfrey.

5) She is so closely tied to Bush that the left-wing base would be energized by her in the same way that the GOP base would be energized by a Hillary candidacy.

The left-wing base seems to be pretty self-energizing. Any viable Republican candidate will have them frothing at the mouth—most especially one who holds the views that John appears to favor on abortion and other issues.

6) She’s pro-abortion

That’s ridiculous. Nobody is pro-abortion. Condi is on record as being “reluctantly pro-choice,” which describes the view held by most citizens who don’t support either NARAL or Operation Rescue. Agree or disagree, but don’t mis-represent her views.

7) She’s pro-Affirmative Action.

I’ll wait and see on this one. Her comments on the matter don’t necessarily reflect the stance she would take as a presidential candidate. I would hope that she would oppose affirmative action, but if she doesn’t it’s not a make-or-break issue for me.

Most of her other domestic views are completely unknown. For example, what does Condi think about illegal immigration, the Teri Schiavo case, reparations, or a Balanced Budget Amendment?

There’s some merit.here, although the fact that she’s worked for Bush for more than five years suggests that she’s no Arlen Specter. In any case, let’s wait and find out, shall we? Unknown views are just that—unknown. They’re neither a positive nor a negative. And I don’t ever again want to hear what anyone thinks about Teri Schiavo.
7 utron Says:
August 26th, 2005 at 1:25 pm
A brief correction to an overly long comment:

On point 7, affirmative action, I meant to say, “Her comments on the matter when she was provost at Stanford don’t necessarily reflect the stance she would take as a presidential candidate.” Otherwise, it sounds a little incoherent. A little more incoherent, anyway.
8 Mark Says:
August 26th, 2005 at 1:29 pm
utron, I second most of what you say here, particularly your distaste for identity politics. I still dream, although with increasing futility, of a Condi-Clinton match…though Rudy G.-Hillary would be pretty sweet, too…
9 fatman Says:
August 26th, 2005 at 1:54 pm
utron:

Doing the short version because I’m pressed for time:

1) True.

2) Also true.

3) True again, but while Eisenhower had never campaigned before, he HAD held one of the most high pressure jobs in the world, and was used to being the final arbiter on life or death decisions on a daily basis. Condi has never done that. Of course neither had Bush, precisely, but being governor of a state is a lot closer to being President than being an appointed advisor or Cabinet-level administrator.

4) Hadn’t really noticed.

5) Probably true.

6) The difference between being “reluctantly pro-choice” and being pro-abortion is, in IMHO, non-existent. The result’s the same. And if you truly think most people are reluctantly pro-choice, try asking them if they support abortion as birth control and see how they answer.

7) If she’s made comments supporting affirmative action, then she’ll probably support it. But like you, it’s not make or break for me.

Saying she’s not another Arlen Specter is damning with faint praise. If not for abortion I wouldn’t dismiss her out of hand, but I wouldn’t be jumping up and down with joy over her candidacy either. Besides, Colin Powell worked for Bush for four years and he’s no Orrin Hatch.

The thing is, Republicans are obsessed with breaking the Democrat’s stranglehold on the black vote. I’m not sure if it’s worth the effort. What the Republicans should be concentrating on is the Hispanic vote, since abortion has kept blacks, as a percentage of the population, stagnating while Hispanics are have become the second largest minority in the country. I’m not saying ignore blacks or their needs altogether; but stop obsessing over trying to get them to vote Republican. At least until the IRS works up enough nerve to audit Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.
10 utron Says:
August 26th, 2005 at 2:35 pm
Fatman, I mostly agree with you, particularly since you mostly agree with me I’ll just make a couple of additional comments:

As to experience, I think Condi’s background as Stanford provost and SecState is a good substitute for the administrative aspect of an office like governor, and her experience visiting other nations as a representative of the US has taught her a lot about the importance of not shooting from the hip in front of the media. Ross Perot never did learn that, and three decades in the Senate haven’t helped Joe Biden to master the skill. Basically, I think her lack of previous elected office isn’t a serious gap in her resume.

On abortion, I decline to climb into that particular tarpit. The fact is, you’re never going to see a full-throated Right to Lifer at the head of a Republican national ticket, and I think it’s almost equally unlikely that you’ll see a straightforward abortion-on-demand guy like Dean heading a Democratic ticket. Any firm position on this issue will thrill those who agree and alienate a much larger group. Ideally we would overturn Roe v.Wade and fight this out in the state legislatures, but until that happens nobody in either party is going to make it past the convention without speaking weasel words on the subject.

Your point about Colin Powell is well taken, although I think he felt that he consistently lost out to a cabal made up of Rice, Rumsfeld and Cheney. But I agree, my attraction to Condi will cool real fast if she turns out to be Norm Mineta in drag. I doubt she will, but it’s quite possible that I’m reading too much into too little information at this point. Like I said, we’ll just have to wait and see.
11 fatman Says:
August 26th, 2005 at 7:47 pm
utron:

I think we’re going to have to agree to disagree on this one. While it’s true both parties avoided the abortion issue in 2000 and 2004, there can’t be any doubt that everyone knew Bush was pro-life. Just as there’s no doubt that everyone knew Gore and Kerry were pro-abortion. And with major changes looming on the Supreme Court that could affect Roe v. Wade (particularly after ‘04), Bush won.
12 Clint Says:
August 27th, 2005 at 10:51 am
One tiny thought on abortion—

I’m positive that if you asked Secretary Rice (the “reluctantly pro-choice”) what she thought about how she feels about abortion as birth control, she’d be against it.

Sort of like if you asked a pro-2nd-amendment person what they thought about people who shoot their families and commit suicide.

You can support someone’s rights without being happy or supportive when people abuse those rights.

(For the record, I’m pro-(first-trimester)-choice.) and pro-(third-trimester)-life, with some uncertainty about how to handle the transition, or where to draw a sharp line.)
13 fatman Says:
August 27th, 2005 at 3:39 pm
Clint (and utron):

Just for the record, I don’t support a complete ban on abortions. For example, asking a woman to carry a baby to term when it might cripple her or result in her death is something I can not do. As for rape or a forced incestuous affair, I just don’t know. After all, it isn’t the baby’s fault how it was conceived. But if Condi is squishy on abortion then anyone she appoints to SCOTUS is likely to be equally squishy. And that’s a risk I’m not willing to take.

This may be moot, anyway. I have only rumors to work with, but they all say the same thing: she’s not interested. And probably just as well. The last dream ticket I saw was Kerry-Edwards. And we ALL know how well that one went over.
14 Mark Says:
August 27th, 2005 at 4:21 pm
Kerry-Edwards a dream ticket? Oh, right, nightmares are dreams, too…
15 fatman Says:
August 27th, 2005 at 8:21 pm
If a Democrat dreams it, it’s a nightmare for us, all right.
16 Bob Waters Says:
August 28th, 2005 at 4:26 pm
First of all, great site.

The discussion above fascinates me on a number of levels. I, for one, would not vote for Condi if nominated because I would regard it as morally wrong to support a presidential candidate who would not actively seek to overturn Roe. I say this in spite of my personal admiration for Dr. Rice, my belief that her tenure as National Security Advisor in wartime provided her with exactly the Ike-like daily experience with life and death issues which one commenter claimed she lacked. She has little political experience, but she has considerably more experience which in my view would qualify her for the presidency than did the incumbent prior to his election- or Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, Jack Kennedy, Ike, Harry Truman, FDR, Herbert Hoover, Cal Coolidge… well, you get the idea.

I do not fear, BTW, that a President Rice would not nominate Supreme Court justices who would, in practice, vote to overturn Roe. Her views on judicial philosophy, insofar as she has expressed them, seem to portray her as very much a strict constructionist, and however she might feel about policy on a specific issue, the judicial philosophy of her appointees rather than her own view of specific issues would determine the impact of a Rice presidency on the issue.

But the real philosophical and moral issue where abortion is concerned is the boundaries of the human community. It’s personhood. That an embryo at the moment of conception is alive cannot be doubted. Neither can it be questioned that it is human. I do not believe that once one admits of a distinction between a being which is both human and alive and a live human being, any line one subsequently draws to protect the human dignity of any member of the human community is more than arbitrary.

In response to the distinction made b one commenter between supporting the protection of a right and approving of its exercise, I can only respond that neither morally nor constitutionally is there, in fact, a legitimate right to abortion at all. Rather,
Roe v. Wade was a badly reasoned piece of judicial legislation based on legal thinking so bad that the overwhelmingly pro-choice Supreme Court clerks at the time snickered at it as “Harry’s abortion.” The right to life, on the other hand, has a strong
legal basis at every historical stratum going all the way back to English common law. Nor should it be forgotten that the “constitutional right to privacy” upon which Roe was based is in fact found nowhere in the Constitution.

For the record, it should be noted that cases of bringing a child to term killing or crippling a woman are, in the current state of medical science, rarethat the objections to dismissing the issue as a red herring would be difficult to sustain. Dishonest attempts by pro-abortion forces (and though there are thankfully not many people who are pro-abortion rather than pro-choice, it is disingenuous to suggest that there are none) to effectively gut legislation against partial -birth abortion
by inserting language broad enough to be understood as permitting it to protect a woman’s mental health (an exemption which would be invoked literally any time a woman wanted a partial-birth abortion) illustrates the difficulty in exempting this extremely rare situation. I agree in principle that in such cases, as in cases of rape and incest, exceptions ought to be possible.

Yet I cannot justify that preference logically. Children conceived as the result of rape or incest, or whose birth might (theoretically) endanger their mother’s health, are not therefore less human, or less deserving of protection. But since fewer than two percent of abortions fall into this category, and since exceptions could be made by state law (or even by better-reasoned court decisions), they in no way justify Roe.

My objection to a pro-choice candidate would be intensified if that candidate believed in the humanity of the fetus, by the way; that’s the reason why the Cuomo/
Kerry/Giuliani position is so reprehensible. I can at least respect a person who does not acknowledge the humanity of a fetus, and favors the legality of abortion on that basis.
But to believe that abortion is the wrongful taking of a human life, but to favor its legality anyway, is beneath contempt.

I will never again vote for a person who favors the legality of what he or she acknowledges to be murder.
17 Mark Says:
August 28th, 2005 at 5:09 pm
Bob, thanks for sharing your sentiments so eloquently. I sympathize with your stance, as I find abortion every bit as morally repugnant as you do. The difference between the two of us is that I refuse to grant the issue the primacy that the Democrats do. I believe abortion is an extremely important issue; I also believe that there are more important matters for a President to be concerned with, or more precisely, important matters that a President has a direct impact on.

I respect your view, and I have no doubt there are many, like you, who would refuse to vote for Condi or Rudy G. on these grounds. That is regrettable; since, however, the Democratic opponent would most assuredly be pro-choice as well, I think it would be a shame not to acknowledge the other issues at stake.
18 Clint Says:
September 11th, 2005 at 12:16 pm
The AARP magazine has a nice picture of Condi on its cover this month. The article is subtitled: “How a little black girl from Birmingham rose to become the most powerful woman in the world” — and is extremely favorable.

This magazine is sent free to AARP’s enormous membership of people who consistently vote, and even just having a good-looking picture of her sitting on their coffee table has to be good for her chances in ‘08. (As the VP candidate who brings a nominee Bush’s full and enthusiastic endorsement, if that’s a good thing to have in summer ‘08.)
19 Mark Says:
September 11th, 2005 at 12:25 pm
Clint, thanks for the tip!…
20 Chris S. Says:
September 18th, 2005 at 9:54 am
I would definitely vote for Condi IF she got the nomination, but I don’t think she’ll make it that far.
21 Clint Says:
September 30th, 2005 at 8:47 pm
One more pro-condi post… from tigerhawk on a speech she just gave at the Wilson school (at Princeton).

He called her charismatic.

(Though charismatic in front of an audience of foreign-policy wonks may be a different matter than on the campaign trail.)