october 15, 2010 volume 2 • number 41 - u.s. news ... 15, 2010 volume 2 • number 41 ... think is...

1 U.S.NEWS WEEKLY | OctObEr 15, 2010 | www.usnews.com/subscribe PRINT

October 15, 2010 Volume 2 • Number 41

This Week in Washington 3 democRaTs PRacTIce camPaIgN TRIage

as NovembeR loomsPolitical parties differ on what message the selective campaign spending sends on the eve of midterm elections

3 mum oN healThcaReReform becomes the elephant in the room as Democratic candidates stick to jobs and economy while the GOP taunts

4 The PResIdeNcy | By Kenneth T. WalshObama and his party down to a strategy of rallying Democrats through fear, alarm

5 INjuNcTIoN IN u.s. dIsTRIcT couRT uPs aNTeoN gays IN mIlITaRyJudge trumps White House and Defense Department on ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’

6 sPecIal RePoRT: gRudge maTches couldbe The decIdINg facToRControl of the House could hinge on the outcome of 10 rematch elections

commentary and features 1 WashINgToN WhIsPeRs

Red-faced speechwriting; Mark Trail’s politics; Obama’s pricey John Hancock; bourbon good for what ailed healthcare

6 Q&a: Tom daschle

10 QuIz of The Week‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’

11 caPITal NoTIoNs | By Robert SchlesingerIf the Republicans take charge ...

12 WashINgToN book clubOur Patchwork Nation on the different factors that drive Americans to the polls

13 blog buzz

14 leTTeRs To The edIToRPolitical ‘elites’; free speech at funerals

15 edIToR’s NoTe

15 vITal sTaTIsTIcsJoe Miller; Datebook

15 edIToRIal | By Mortimer B. ZuckermanMiddle East peace negotiations are best done away from the media spotlight

Washington WhispersBy Paul Bedard

Red-faced speechwritingLife on the inside as a presidential speechwriter isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be. Michael Gerson, a former U.S. News staffer who was President George W. Bush’s guy, says his nerves were so bad after handing over major speeches that he couldn’t bear to see them delivered. TV’s Chris Matthews, who toiled for Jimmy Carter, says the prez rarely liked anything that was written for him. Bill Clinton, reports speechwriter Michael Waldman, would cross out fancy phrases and mutter, “Words, words, words.”

“You are really the first draft,” says Matthews, who joined the others recently at the Smithsonian Insitution to talk about speechwriting. “It’s not ventriloquist work. It’s anticipation.”

Well, not always. There are awkward moments you just can’t predict, say two of the nation’s most prominent presidential writers, John F. Kennedy’s Ted Sorensen and Landon Parvin, who wrote for Ronald Reagan and both Bushes. Sorensen recalls how, during the 1960 presidential campaign, he had written a speech about the Tennessee Valley Authority that Kennedy flew to Tennessee to give. At the airport, JFK got into one car, and Sorensen into another. Sorensen’s car got delayed, so he suggested the driver turn on the radio. “I hear the president being introduced and think, ‘Uh-oh. I’ve got his speech right here and it’s the only copy.’ My, what that man knew about TVA.”

Parvin’s story was more embarrassing. He recalls being asked by former President George H. W. Bush to help ghostwrite a joke-filled 1998 speech for his son to give at the annual Alfalfa Club dinner, a Washington rite-of-passage event for presidential candidates.

The day of the dinner, Parvin went to a Washington townhouse, where several Bush family members were staying, to help the future president rehearse his punchlines. As he got to the second floor, he came across former first lady Barbara Bush in a towel, before the elder Bush introduced him to Laura, who was in bed in her robe. As he worked with the then-Texas governor, he felt they needed more space. “He couldn’t project. It wasn’t working. It

2 U.S.NEWS WEEKLY | OctObEr 15, 2010 | www.usnews.com/subscribe

was too close,” Parvin recalls. So Bush told him to walk into his bedroom and sit next to Laura, still in bed. As Parvin started to sit, he froze: On the chair were her black panties. “I didn’t know what to do,” he says. Making matters worse, Bush barked: “Landon, sit down. Laura’s not going to bite you.” Fortunately, he says, “as I dithered, Mrs. Bush got up and grabbed them.” Still, he considered holding them and asking Bush, “Pardon me, are these yours?”

Mark Trail dabbles in PoliticsJack Elrod, the cartoonist of the long-running Mark Trail comic strip, doesn’t have it out for politicians, even though they are the evildoers in his current story line about hunting tame deer. “I didn’t even think about it,” he says, when asked why he has a senator and gubernatorial candidate hunting fenced-in animals. Instead he was more focused on his simple message: “It’s not a good idea to adopt wild deer.”

fobs Want hillary as veepLongtime FOBs and Arkies who helped Bill Clinton win in 1992 say that President Obama will need Hillary Clinton on the ticket as vice president to win re-election. They shrug off stories that she is only suited to be secretary of state. “She’s getting tired of traveling,” says one Clinton loyalist. “With her on the ticket, Obama might win Arkansas. He’ll need every state.” Bubba’s pals say the Clintons’ passion for the Democratic Party has the former first couple focused on helping Obama win a second term no matter what their role. Win or lose, of course, it would set up Hillary for a 2016 bid.

Retirement Tip: buy obamaHe might be kryptonite to Democrats, but President Obama is pure gold to autograph collectors. For the first time since taking office, a handwritten Obama letter has come on the market, and Bill Panagopulos, president of Alexander Autographs, thinks it will fetch $15,000. In the letter to a family, Obama expresses confidence that the nation’s economy will improve. Why so much? “With the advent of the autopen machine, authentically signed presidential letters and documents have become incredible rarities,” says Panagopulos.

Raise a Toast to healthcareIn these days of Facebook and Twitter campaigning, some old-school traditions still live on in the halls of Congress. Take the healthcare vote. Kentucky Democratic Rep. John Yarmuth, the cofounder of the Congressional Bourbon Caucus, reveals that his state’s signature spirits played a role in passing controversial legislation. The Bourbon Caucus held an emergency meeting right after the contentious House vote, and it extended into the early morning. “We consumed an awful lot of the Kentucky product that night,” he says. lWith Suzi Parker and Jessica Rettig

Report card: cPresident Obama, Week 91“Obama’s attack on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was a good call since the public is angry with corporate moguls. But he’s still playing it safe in blue states and not connecting with voters.”

–National pollster John Zogby for Washington Whispers

The Whispers PollIn election years, political masks are often popular on Halloween. Which do you think is the scariest political mask to wear this year?

President Obama 26%

Tea Party activist Sarah Palin 25%

Speaker Nancy Pelosi 24%

Former President Bush 13%

Fox commentator Glenn Beck 12%Source: The Synovate eNation Internet poll was conducted October 8-12 among 1,000 nationally representative households by global market research firm Synovate.


This Week in Washingtondemocrats Practicing campaign Triage Party appears to brace for a GOP wave in NovemberBy Alex M. Parker

With Election Day less than a month away, the Democratic Party is pulling back campaign money from candidates apparently no longer in competitive races, signaling, some experts say, that it is bracing for a GOP tsunami in November.

The money is in the form of independent expenditures, unlimited campaign spending that parties and other groups can use in local or national races, so long as they don’t coordinate it with a particular candidate. To secure the best rates, the parties reserve ad time months in advance before deciding which races are worth the precious cash.

According to Republican sources, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has scaled back or completely cut television advertising for such embattled incumbents as Reps. Suzanne Kosmas of Florida, Kathy Dahlkemper of Pennsylvania, Harry Mitchell of Arizona, and Steve Kagen of Wisconsin. The DCCC would not comment on its expenditures, although it did confirm that it had pulled its advertising out of Ohio’s 1st District, where freshman Rep. Steve Driehaus appears to be in a losing re-election battle against former Rep. Steve Chabot (Special Report on rematches, Page 11). In a video posted on YouTube, Driehaus blasted the decision, urging voters to “stand up to the DCCC” by supporting his campaign. “Cutting loose incumbents three weeks before the election is not a great place to be in,” says Isaac Wood of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. “I think it indicates a wave, if we didn’t already know it was.”

Both parties carefully monitor each other’s spending in a complex game of chess that has become even more complicated this go-around, as the political parties vie with independent groups that also have deep coffers to dip into for the midterm elections. Due to the recent Supreme Court ruling removing limits on corporate spending, these groups have greater power to try to influence campaigns. Groups such as American Crossroads and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are spending money mostly, although not exclusively, to support Republican candidates.

In some cases, the cutbacks reveal good news for Democrats. According to the Washington Post, the DCCC has cut back from Ohio’s 13th District and New Orleans’s 2nd, having decided that Democratic victories there are all but assured.On the Senate side, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has denied reports that it has scaled back on advertising in Missouri, where Robin Carnahan faces Republican Sen. Roy Blunt. Kansas City television station KCTV confirmed that the party had pulled back its television advertising—although the party eventually bought some of it back. The DSCC also strongly denied reports that it is trimming advertising in Kentucky—reports that now appear to be incorrect, as Federal Election Commission filings show that the committee has spent more than $300,000 on the race in the past week. This signals that the party is still fighting in traditionally conservative states, Democratic officials say.

Sometimes, the majority of spending comes from outside groups, not the parties. For instance, neither party has spent anything over the past week in the California Senate race, where former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina is challenging longtime Democratic incumbent Barbara Boxer. But outside groups—from the Planned Parenthood Action Fund to the National Rifle Association American Victory Fund—are continuing to pour money into the race.

Independent expenditures on television ads have to be reported to the FEC only after they are spent, making it difficult to determine the parties’ exact plans. And like good football coaches, party officials are careful not to reveal their playbooks.

Observers also relate the money game to a hand of poker in which one side hopes to try to force the other to guess where it will be spending its resources as time winds down. Democrats have been holding their cards close to the vest, waiting on many ad buys until they can have the most effect. “They’ve been doing a different strategy than Republicans,” Wood says. “Republicans have been spending money fairly early. On the other hand, Democrats have been trying to keep their powder dry. They’ve been playing this game of chicken so they can make sure they’re only spending in important races.” l

for dems, healthcare becomes the elephant in the RoomIn late March, President Obama hailed the new healthcare reform legislation as an answer to “the call of history,” and headlines tied the word “historic” to its passage. Little more than half a year later, it seems that for most Democratic candidates, talk of healthcare reform is almost, well, history.

With voters ranking jobs and the economy as their top concerns, only a handful out of the hundreds of


Democratic House candidates have gone on the offensive using healthcare reform. Only one senator has used it as a major campaign plank. Republican attacks on the measure have been common, however, as the GOP frames its opponents’ support of healthcare reform as yet another vote with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and big government. Democrats see a problem with the party’s message rather than the legislation itself. “We made a mistake by spending a year talking about healthcare instead of jobs,” says a congressional Democrat who asked not to be identified further. “Had we focused on job creation, and then healthcare, the environment would be different.”

The White House has attempted in recent weeks to point out the bill’s economic benefits, including measures implemented on the six-month anniversary of its passage, such as guaranteed coverage for preventive services. And the administration has spent roughly $3 million in television ads promoting the law, Politico reported Friday. “Anybody who’s out there who’s concerned about the deficit, the single biggest driver of our deficit is the ever-escalating cost of healthcare,” Obama said last month. “So we said we had to take this on.”

But with more than half of likely voters siding with Republicans in support of the law’s repeal, as indicated by a Rasmussen poll conducted last week, most Democrats are wary of bringing it up with constituents. According to top national campaign strategists, Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold and Reps. Steve Israel and Scott Murphy of New York, Dina Titus of Nevada, and Earl Pomeroy of North Dakota are the only Democratic incumbents running ads focused on their support of healthcare reform.

Israel, who has a safe race in New York’s Second District, says he doesn’t understand why more members of his party aren’t spending more time discussing health reforms. “Democrats ought to be proud of the fact that we are providing consumer protections and siding with our constituents instead of insurance profits,” he says. “The Republicans have been lying, and I’m calling them out.” – Jessica Rettig

The PresidencyBy Kenneth T. Walsh

obama’s last election gamblePresident Obama and Democratic strategists have tried a variety of techniques to stop the apparent Republican surge in this fall’s campaigns. They attempted to make House Minority Leader John Boehner the scary symbol of obstructionism as the next speaker of the House if the GOP takes control. But few voters paid attention. Obama warned that the GOP has no new ideas for solving the nation’s problems. But voters tuned him out. For a while, Tea Party conservatives were the target as examples of right-wing extremism. But these attacks failed to slow GOP momentum. Polls indicate that the Democrats are on the verge of losing their majority in the House and possibly in the Senate in the midterm elections November 2.

As a result, Obama and the Democratic National Committee have turned to the only strategy they have left—trying to rev up the party’s base and get as many Democrats to the polls as possible through tactics of attack and alarm.

One target is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a nemesis of the left that is spending vast amounts of money to push the Democrats from power. The battle with the chamber heated up this week as Obama and his allies questioned whether the business group was using foreign money to wage war on the Democrats. White House officials offered no proof, and chamber spokesmen said the allegation was false. Chamber leaders went on to defend their political campaign as a legitimate effort to represent business in public debate. Other targets are Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie, prominent GOP strategists who were senior White House advisers to President George W. Bush. Many Democrats see them as behind-the-scenes manipulators trying to hurt Obama and his party with their own fund-raising efforts.

But Gillespie told me that Obama won’t get traction with such attacks. “Most people in America don’t think of the Chamber of Commerce as a place on H Street in Washington but as a place on Main Street in their hometown,” he says. He adds that he and Rove may stir up the left but that what’s bothering most Americans, including independent swing voters who could decide many races, is the economy, especially unemployment. And it’s very possible that the Democratic attacks on the left’s bugaboos will have little resonance with everyday people who are worried about their financial future and who oppose the status quo.

But Obama and the Democrats are forging ahead with their campaign to generate turnout in the Democratic base. The president is campaigning as much as possible among young people, African-Americans, and urban voters, all of whom gave him strong support in 2008. He appeared this week before an enthusiastic audience at George Washington University, and he has scheduled a number of rallies, including one in Las Vegas on October 22. The DNC is planning a special effort to turn out black voters and has increased its budget for that purpose from $2 million to $3 million, mostly for ads on radio, online, in print, and on television.

“It’s going to be all hands on deck, seven days a week,” right through Election Day, says DNC spokesman Brad


Woodhouse. The goal is to convince Democrats that Obama needs as much Democratic support in Congress as he can get, and that Republican gains would set the country back. “This election is important to the president and his success,” Woodhouse says.

Obama has been blunt in making his appeal. Before a mostly black audience in Philadelphia on October 10, he said: “I’m back here two years later because our job is not yet done and the success of our mission is at stake right now. On November 2nd, I need you as fired up as you were in 2008, because we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us. . . . Of course people are frustrated. Of course people are impatient with the pace of change. And believe me, so am I. . . . No matter how angry you get, no matter how frustrated you are, the other side has decided to ride that frustration and anger without offering any solutions.”

The White House apparently is gambling that the November elections will be a battle of the bases—hard-core conservatives versus hard-core liberals—with most other Americans sitting on the sidelines. If that’s the case, going with the current strategy of trying to energize Democrats makes sense. But there is a danger. If the attacks on the chamber and other Democratic villains seem like inside-Washington game-playing that is irrelevant to most people’s concerns, such as unemployment, then Obama might seem out of touch and the Democrats will probably suffer big losses across the country. l

Injunction ups ante on gays in military Judge trumps Obama, Defense Department on ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’By Alex Kingsbury

The judiciary tossed the politically hot potato of gay rights in the military back to the executive branch this week after a federal judge in California issued an injunction stopping enforcement of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. The prohibition on openly gay men and women serving in the military has been Pentagon policy for 17 years, though events over the past few months have led many to believe that the end is nigh for “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

The Department of Justice quickly requested a stay of the ruling until it can be appealed. President Obama has said that Congress, rather than the courts, is his preferred venue for ending a policy he has long opposed. Public opinion polls show wide support for ending “don’t ask, don’t tell,” and the conventional wisdom in Washington is that the policy has only a few months of life left. Last month, in a separate case, a judge in Tacoma, Wash., ruled that a decorated flight nurse discharged for being a lesbian should be reinstated.

It is a messy endgame for what has been a controversial method of dealing with homosexuals in uniform. For the military’s part, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have both spoken publicly about the need to end the policy, though not before the impact of doing so can be closely studied by the military. Gates ordered a services-wide study, including a survey of soldiers, Marines, and their families, the results of which are due on his desk December 1. This week, in the wake of the ruling, he reiterated his call to wait for that review.

While Obama may prefer that Congress legislate the regulation out of existence, the policy’s record on Capitol Hill has been tortured. Earlier this year, the House passed legislation that would immediately and automatically end “don’t ask, don’t tell” once the Pentagon had certified the Gates review.

Then, last month, opponents of the policy lost a critical battle when Senate Republicans held up passage of the entire defense budget because a clause in the bill would also have ended the policy. With the GOP poised to make substantial congressional gains in the coming midterm elections, prospects for Obama’s preferred solution are looking increasingly unlikely, gay rights groups note.

The injunction issued this week by U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips comes a month after her verdict in a case first brought by gay Republicans who challenged the constitutionality of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Government lawyers had argued that an immediate injunction would harm the military.

Undermining the government’s case, however, were the commander in chief’s own words, which the judge quoted in her ruling last month. “ ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ doesn’t contribute to our national security . . . preventing patriotic Americans from serving their country weakens our national security,” Obama said last year. More than 13,000 people have been discharged from the armed services under the rule. Many had critical skills, particularly language skills that were in high demand, while the expulsion of others forced the military to relax its recruiting standards to fill the ranks. l


Q&A: Tom Daschledaschle’s unofficial stand on healthcareBy Alex M. Parker

Like many other longtime Democratic senators, South Dakota’s Tom Daschle dreamed of one day being involved in legislation that finally put into place a system of universal healthcare in the United States. But after a close election in 2004 cost the minority leader his Senate seat—and personal income tax issues derailed his nomination to be President Obama’s health and human services secretary—he wasn’t officially involved in passage of the Affordable Care Act. But as he recounts in his new book Getting It Done, as a friend and informal adviser to Obama, Daschle had a close view of the legislative wrangling and the emotional, partisan debates that ultimately lead to enactment of perhaps the most substantial legislation in a generation and what could become the most important law Congress has ever passed on healthcare. Daschle spoke recently with U.S. News about his role in the bill’s passage and how he hopes the country will progress on the healthcare issue. Excerpts:

Many of the interests in the debate, such as insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry, started reaching out to Barack Obama even before he was elected, regarding what the final bill would be. Why?I think they did it for two reasons. One, they felt that we had to address the challenges we face in health—cost, access, and quality—and we couldn’t avoid this problem any longer. And that if they began developing lines of communication and cooperation early on, it would enhance their leverage as we worked through these very difficult problems, and I think that’s exactly what happened.

From Obama’s point of view, did it improve the final product to work with the industry so early? Well, I think that all along, the president understood that it was important to try to be pragmatic. And he certainly is a student of history, and remembers quite clearly that through seven efforts in the past, it was the stakeholders almost more than anyone else who were responsible for defeating healthcare. So bringing the stakeholders to the table, and making sure that they were engaged and invested, was I think one of the critical reasons why healthcare was successful this time.

When you look at what was finally passed, and all of the legislative maneuvering that it took, what would you say is its strongest point, and its weakest point?I think the strongest point, by far, is the infrastructure that has now been created, or, I should say, the infrastructure that will be created over the course of the next several years. To provide far greater access, through insurance, to healthcare for the vast majority of the American people. Providing both access as well as new confidence in their financial security, as they address their health problems and challenges. That’s the strength. I would say that the big concern I have is whether or not the other two challenges we face in healthcare, cost and quality, will be adequately addressed. I think we’re off to a strong start in those categories as well.

This law has moving parts, to be enacted at different times. And who knows what the political climate is going to be in four years or in 10 years? Are you worried that a different administration or a different Congress might not implement this in the way that its authors are hoping it will be?That is a concern. I think that it’s harder for opponents of health reform to do so as the years unfold, because with each year, additional infrastructure is built, and additional cost support for many of the provisions in this law will continue to grow. But I think that it is a very significant concern as we start out. And I think that in the early years, especially, whether it’s legal challenges as we’ve seen now with two court cases, or legislative challenges that could come if Republicans are to take control, [these] are concerns that are going to continue to have to be part of the landscape.

What do you say to someone who says, “Look, this is a free country. The government has no business telling me that I have to buy or purchase anything”?Well, they may feel that way about taxes, they may feel that way about other citizen responsibilities. But people ask me all the time whether healthcare is a right. And my answer is that it’s a moral right. It’s not a legal one. But if it is a moral right, I also think there is a fundamental personal responsibility that comes with that right. Just like there is a responsibility for citizenship in so many other ways—the responsibility to vote; the responsibility to pay your taxes; if you have a car, the responsibility to have car insurance. We’ve mandated car insurance if you drive a car. No one’s challenged that. So it seems to me that there are certain requirements for personal responsibility that come with American citizenship. And this is one of them.


You talk about that in your book, not just the responsibility to purchase healthcare insurance but the responsibility to be more involved in the decisions, to be more skeptical of new procedures. You feel that that’s something that’s really important to making sure that this initiative works.Absolutely. We have to become better consumers. And we have to become better advocates for our own well-being. We can’t just wait until we get sick to be concerned about health. We have to be concerned about health in a very pro-active way, putting greater emphasis on prevention, greater emphasis on wellness, greater emphasis on our own physical well-being.

As someone who was both majority leader and minority leader of the Senate, what is your feeling on the filibuster?I think it’s grossly overused. We were averaging one filibuster a year all through the 20th century, until the 1960s. In the 1960s, we went to three a year, and then in the 1990s we went to about 10 a year. And now we’re averaging two filibusters a week in the Senate in 2010. There’s just been an explosion of use of the filibuster, and it has created a dysfunctionality that is very troubling to me. I think, at the very least, we should test going back to the old process of round-the-clock, 24/7 requirements, physically, to be on the floor when these filibusters occur. And not dual and triple, and run multiple tracks of legislation, that is commonly done today. That is, stay focused on one thing, as long as it takes, to get the bill done. That’s harder to do, but I think it’s something that we ought to take a hard look at.

How regretful are you that the issues that came up during confirmation, the financial and tax issues, prevented you from being more involved in the healthcare process?Well, you have to deal with life’s setbacks philosophically, and understand that sometimes things occur that are major disappointments. I’ve had two major disappointments in the last five years—my re-election effort in 2004, and then this. But I have an adage that I live by, that the windshield is much bigger than the rearview mirror. So I prefer not to look through the rearview mirror and keep looking forward. The good fortune that I’ve had to work with my former colleagues and the White House in an informal capacity gave me tremendous opportunities to stay involved—and writing this book, and speaking as I have around the country. I was just in Chicago yesterday, and today I’m in Missouri speaking about health, and so I’m very fortunate to have that opportunity, to continue to be involved, even though it’s not a role that I had originally anticipated. l

Special Reportgrudge matchesControl of House could hinge on rematches in 10 racesBy Jessica Rettig

Burke, va.—Keith Fimian finds a lot more to smile about in his second run for Congress than he did in his first. Spotting a batch of eligible voters—adults in line to get into a high school football game one recent Friday night—Fimian lunges toward them, right hand outstretched, with a campaign flier ready in his left. “Hi, I’m Keith Fimian. I’m running for the U.S. Congress,” he says. “I’d appreciate your vote on November 2nd.” Returning the handshake, a voter smiles with recognition. “You’ve already got my vote,” he says. “You better beat this guy. I don’t like his mustache.”

Fimian, the GOP House nominee in Virginia’s 11th Congressional District, which stretches west from inside the Washington beltway, chuckles and moves to the next person in line. But he wasn’t laughing two years ago when he lost to Democrat Gerry Connolly. George W. Bush’s toxic poll numbers, a faltering economy, and an unpopular war were dragging down Republicans across the country. Now, Fimian says, “it’s more fun. The feedback is better.” Voters “want to hear what you have to say.”

The Connolly-Fimian rematch is one of 10 such races for competitive House seats, all held by Democrats. Though the candidates are the same, the strategy in many races has flipped. Democrats nationalized the race last time, and the GOP is doing the same now, tying their opponents to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Obama. The outcome of these races could decide who controls the House next year.

Democrats, meanwhile, are hoping that some of the partisan arguments that won previously still have traction with voters. “Washington Republicans plan to take us back to the same failed Bush policies that drove our economy into a ditch, evidenced by the fact they are trying to run so many retreads and reruns,” says Ryan Rudominer, spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

With Obama having won in most of these districts, the extent to which the Democrats can prevail again will be a measure of just how much American politics has shifted in recent years.

Listed below are the House’s 10 competitive grudge-match races, along with the results of the last time the candidates squared off:


Arizona Fifth DistrictRep. Harry Mitchell (D) vs. David Schweikert (R)Mitchell won in 2008, 53-44The 2008 presidential vote went to Arizona favorite son and Republican nominee John McCain, 52 percent to 47 percent, in this district which sits just outside Phoenix and includes Scottsdale. Nevertheless, Democrat Mitchell outspent his opponent and took the House seat. This year, polls show the GOP nominee and former Maricopa County Treasurer Schweikert neck-and-neck with incumbent Mitchell.

A schoolteacher turned mayor and eventually state senator, Mitchell has run on his personal relationships with district voters and on his independence during his two terms on Capitol Hill. Schweikert, who has been endorsed by national conservative organizations like FreedomWorks and Arizona Tea Party groups, has attacked Mitchell for his votes in favor of controversial legislation such as the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP; the economic stimulus; and healthcare reform. Schweikert also has attacked Mitchell on the economy, a particularly pressing issue in a state where the jobless rate has reached 10 percent. A poll conducted in August by a Republican firm gave Schweikert a 6-point lead, while Democratic polls subsequently released have put Mitchell anywhere from 1 to 7 points ahead.Florida 22nd District

Rep. Ron Klein (D) vs. Allen West (R) Klein won in 2008, 55-45In a district that has a large Jewish population and includes the city of Boca Raton, two-term Democratic incumbent Klein is yet again defending his seat against West, an African-American GOPer who is favored by the Tea Party. In 2008, Obama beat McCain by 4 points in the district, as Klein took an even larger margin over West.

Sarah Palin’s endorsement has helped drive West’s fundraising. West also has been outspoken on traditional social values while adopting the Tea Party’s free-market economic stance. Klein’s campaign has painted West, a retired Army lieutenant colonel, as an out-of-touch extremist. Both campaigns have released polls showing that their candidate leads the race.

Maryland First DistrictRep. Frank Kratovil (D) vs. Andy Harris (R)Kratovil won in 2008, 49-48McCain took 58 percent of the 2008 presidential vote in this enclave on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. It had been represented by a Republican for 18 years before Democrat Kratovil beat Republican state Senator Harris by less than 1 percentage point. A poll released in early October by The Hill newspaper has the race in a statistical dead heat, with 15 percent of voters undecided.

Campaigning recently in the small town of Hurlock, Harris echoed the Republicans’ national campaign theme. He gave out “Fire Pelosi” buttons, and played up his patriotism, leading military trucks adorned with American flags down Main Street. He has criticized Kratovil’s voting record, particularly the congressman’s stance on cap-and-trade legislation, which Harris argues will seriously handicap the poultry business, an economic mainstay of the district. “The people I talk to are just more scared” than two years ago, Harris says. “They’re worried about their jobs. And supporting cap-and-trade will kill the private sector jobs here.”

Michigan Seventh DistrictRep. Mark Schauer (D) vs. Tim Walberg (R) Schauer won in 2008, 49-46Democrat Schauer unseated Walberg, a one-term House member in this district on Michigan’s southern border, where Obama beat McCain by 6 points. Seeing an opportunity to target a freshman, the National Republican Congressional Committee has devoted roughly $1 million in independent expenditures to the race. Outside groups, like the American Future Fund, have also made big, mostly negative, ad buys against Schauer. National Democratic groups have countered with their own attack ads. Though the race remains a tossup, Walberg held a small lead in recent polls.

New York 24th DistrictRep. Michael Arcuri (D) vs. Richard Hanna (R)Arcuri won in 2008, 52-48Incumbent Democrat Arcuri beat out contractor Hanna in this upstate New York district, which includes Utica and a large swath of the state west of Albany, outperforming Obama’s slim margin over McCain. While most experts say this year’s rematch is close, a recent Siena Research Institute poll put Arcuri ahead of Hanna by 8 points. Nevertheless, Hanna is counting on his status as an outsider and businessman to pull him through. Hanna is also criticizing Arcuri on his voting for TARP.


Ohio First DistrictRep. Steve Driehaus (D) vs. Steve Chabot (R) Driehaus won in 2008, 52-47Chabot represented Ohio’s southeastern district for 14 years before he lost in 2008 to Driehaus. Representing a heavily Catholic area that includes Cincinnati, Driehaus was one of a small group of antiabortion Democrats who demanded stricter provisions in the healthcare reform law. But because the bill didn’t have the restrictive language on abortion that activist groups wanted, his vote is costing him significant support. Chabot has since led in the public polls, with the most recent SurveyUSA poll giving him a 12-point advantage. The House Democrats’ campaign committee had committed funds to the race, but with Chabot polling ahead, the party group canceled planned campaign ads this week in order to put money into other, tighter, matches.

Ohio 15th DistrictRep. Mary Jo Kilroy (D) vs. Steve Stivers (R)Kilroy won in 2008, 46-45Only three-quarters of a percentage point stood between Kilroy and her GOP opponent, former Ohio state Senator Stivers, when she won the district’s open House race two years ago. Benefiting from Obama’s 9-point margin over McCain in the district, Kilroy became the first Democrat to hold the seat since the 1960s. The historically red 15th District includes most of Columbus, its suburbs, and Ohio State University.

Kilroy has charged that Stivers is a flip-flopper on issues like cap-and-trade and has blasted him for his experience as a “bank lobbyist.” Stivers’s campaign is tapping voter anger toward the national Democratic establishment. In his advertising and debates, he has charged that Kilroy voted with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi 98.4 percent of the time. The most recent Hill/ANGA poll from September put Stivers ahead by 9 points, and political analysts have the race leaning in his direction.

Pennsylvania 8th DistrictRep. Patrick Murphy (D) vs. Mike Fitzpatrick (R)Murphy won in 2006, 50-50Fitzpatrick appears poised to take back the seat he lost in 2006 to Murphy, representing Pennsylvania’s most affluent congressional district, situated outside of Philadelphia. Fitzpatrick sat out the 2008 race because of colon cancer, leaving an easy win for Murphy. Now Fitzpatrick has made a full recovery, and his campaign says the political atmosphere has taken a 180-degree turn since he last ran.

In 2006, Murphy successfully tied Fitzpatrick to the Iraq war. This time, however, the Republican has the upper hand on economic issues, which according to a recent Franklin & Marshall College poll are the top concern for district voters. Among likely voters in the same poll, Fitzpatrick had a large advantage over Murphy, 49 percent to 35 percent, and most political experts see the race going in Fitzpatrick’s favor.

Pennsylvania 11th DistrictRep. Paul Kanjorski (D) vs. Lou Barletta (R)Kanjorski won in 2008, 52-48This will be the third race between Kanjorski and Barletta, the mayor of Hazleton. Barletta lost to Kanjorski in 2002 and again in 2008, when Obama had a 15-point win over McCain in the district. Kanjorski, who since 1985 has represented the 11th District, which includes Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, is known as a moderate Democrat. He opposes gun control, for example, which has earned him the backing of the National Rifle Association. Since his bid in 2002, Barletta gained popularity for his hard stand against illegal immigration. This year, however, he has kept his campaign message focused on his economic achievements as mayor for the last 10 years. The race remains a tossup.

Virginia 11th DistrictRep. Gerry Connolly (D) vs. Keith Fimian (R)Connolly won in 2008, 55-43Incumbent Connolly beat Republican Fimian by a large margin in 2008, as Obama took the district with 57 percent of the vote. This time around, most experts favor the incumbent, but the race is still competitive.

In this suburb of the nation’s capital, many voters work for or with the federal government, so the district is less economically distressed than in other parts of the nation. The unemployment rate, for example, hovers between 5 and 6 percent, much lower than the national average of 9.6 percent. But the district’s proximity to Washington means that television advertising is expensive, so this rematch will be won or lost on the ground. “The energy is tremendous this year. We have five times the number of volunteers involved [as] we did two years ago,” Fimian says. “People are concerned about the direction of the country, and they want to help change it.”l


Quiz of the WeekBy Debra Bell

‘don’t ask, don’t Tell’? do Tell ...1. What year were homosexuals officially banned from serving in the military?

A. 1888

B. 1916

C. 1943

D. 1982

2. During WWII, service members believed to be gay were often given what type of undesirable military discharge?

A. “Blue”

B. “Green”

C. “Pink”

D. “Purple”

3. What year did “don’t ask, don’t tell” become law?

A. 1991

B. 1993

C. 1995

D. 1997

4. In 2009, how many service members were discharged for violating the ban?

A. 73

B. 428

C. 996

D. 1,854

5. True or false: Bill Clinton has expressed regret for initiating the policy.

6. Which Democrat sponsored the House-approved amendment in May to repeal the ban?

A. Joseph Crowley (N.Y.)

B. Rick Larsen (Wash.)

C. Zoe Lofgren (Calif.)

D. Patrick Murphy (Pa.)

7. This September, which of the following senators voted in favor of repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell”?

A. Susan Collins (Maine)

B. Joseph Lieberman (Conn.)

C. Blanche Lincoln (Ark.)

D. Mark Pryor (Ark.)

8. A federal judge in what state this month ruled the ban unconstitutional?

A. California

B. Massachusetts

C. New York

D. Oregon


9. Who among the following has not expressed support for “don’t ask, don’t tell” to be repealed?

A. Robert Gates

B. David Petraeus

C. Colin Powell

D. Donald Rumsfeld

Answers on page 17

Capital NotionsBy Robert Schlesinger

If the Republicans Take charge …The 2010 congressional contests may well be remembered as whiplash elections, and not only for the ideologically jarring experience of electing Barack Obama and large Democratic majorities in Congress in 2008 and then perhaps electing conservative majorities in Congress two years later.

On a smaller scale, this political season has been filled with twists and surprises. Just this month we’ve had one major party senatorial candidate, Delaware’s Christine O’Donnell, run a campaign commercial aimed at dispelling the notion that she is a witch. And a touted GOP House candidate, Rich Iott of Ohio, had to explain that he’s not a Nazi, though he does enjoy dressing up as one and running around the woods with similarly garbed pals.

So while everyone agrees that Republicans are poised for a big night on November 2, this election cycle has been too inscrutable to assert that Republicans are going to retake the House of Representatives, let alone the Senate, which is a much tougher goal. But if the GOP does recapture one or both chambers, there is a nascent conventional wisdom that this would not be an altogether bad thing for the Obama presidency. With majority comes responsibility. Republicans would have skin in the governing game, meaning they could no longer be the “party of no.” As President Obama tells the New York Times Magazine in a forthcoming interview, if the GOP wins, “the American people are going to be looking to them to offer serious proposals and work with me in a serious way.”

But to paraphrase the axiom about military plans, conventional wisdom rarely survives first contact with reality. Here are five factors that could complicate or even poison the ability of Obama and a GOP congressional majority to work together.

State-level races: The national House and Senate races will determine who runs Congress for the next two years, but down-ballot contests for governor and control of state legislatures will shape the political landscape for the rest of the decade. Those officeholders are in charge of the redistricting process in 38 states, meaning that substantial GOP state-level gains could position them to draw many congressional districts, allowing them to maximize the number of red districts and squeeze Democratic incumbents. Add to that the fact that population trends mean that historically Democratic states are expected to lose House seats, while traditionally Republican states are expected to gain them. All that translates to as many as 12 to 15 seats shifting to the GOP column in 2012 if the GOP sweeps down-ballot races. Congressional Republican leaders would feel emboldened in their dealings with the White House, knowing that the 2012 congressional map is only likely to broaden their new majority. Conversely, a strong Democratic showing could prompt the White House to hold a hard line against the GOP, betting on the House flipping again in 2012.

How strong is the tea? The chances of the two sides finding common ground on which to compromise are inversely proportional to the number of true-believing Tea Party candidates (you’ll know them by their crazy eyes) elected to the new Congress. In many cases—think Rand Paul and Sharron Angle, for example—these folks would come to Washington seeing themselves not simply as a rebuke to Obama and the Democrats but to the Republican establishment and its leaders. Throw in the fact that they believe they have unique insights into the demands and desires of the American people, and you have a recipe for GOP congressional leaders unable to deal with the White House because of an intractable “faction of no” within their caucus.

The ’12ers: Congress is usually a rich source of (mostly unsuccessful) presidential candidates. But this year the Hill has only a pair of potential GOP contenders, Sen. John Thune of South Dakota and Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana. Fox News Channel, by contrast, has four on its payroll (half-term Gov. Sarah Palin, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, ex-Gov. Mike Huckabee, and former Sen. Rick Santorum). They are members of a conservative commentariat that has a greater vested interest in ratings-driving bomb-throwing—dire warnings about socialism and sharia—than in deal-making. And as presidential contenders in a party dominated by the Tea Party, they have an affirmative incentive to condemn any compromise or deviation from the base’s orthodoxy.


Healthcare’s prognosis: Speaking at a GOP fundraiser in Florida recently, would-be House speaker John Boehner opined that the Republicans’ job is to “do everything we can to keep” the new healthcare law “from being implemented.” It’s good campaign rhetoric. And without doubt, the GOP will hold an early repeal vote. But after the first flush of majority status has passed, does healthcare repeal remain a GOP fixation, or do they focus on governing?

Overdoing oversight: Congressional Republicans issued more than 1,000 subpoenas to the Clinton administration in the 1990s, underscoring that they were as interested in political score-settling as in governing. California Rep. Darrell Issa, who would take over the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in a new GOP majority, has struck a reasonable tone. “Nothing,” he wrote recently on The Hill’s website, “could be more counterproductive and destructive” than “a series of misguided and politically motivated investigations.” Maybe so, but Tea Party Caucus chief Michele Bachmann said over the summer that a GOP majority should “issue subpoenas and have one hearing after another” poking into the Obama administration. Could the GOP avoid a return to 1990s witch hunts? Stay tuned. l

Could Obama and the GOP work together? Should they? Weigh in at [email protected].

The Washington Book Cluba Nation Pieced TogetherBy Caitlin Huey-Burns

The major challenge Democrats seem to face heading into the midterm elections is keeping blue states from turning red. But in Patchwork Nation, journalist Dante Chinni and political geographer James Gimpel say these primary colors don’t accurately capture voters’ thinking and behavior. Instead, the authors divide the nation into 12 community types—from Boom Towns to Industrial Metropolises—to show the very different factors that drive Americans to the polls. Chinni chatted with U.S. News recently about, among other things, communities to watch in this election cycle. Excerpts:

How is the United States a “patchwork nation”?Well, you drive an hour and a half outside of a major metropolitan area and you realize you’re in a pretty different place. Then you drive an hour and a half outside of there, and you’re in a different place again. But when you go and see all these different places—maybe you’re in the middle of nowhere in Minnesota—you start to realize, “You know, this is not really that different from that place I was in New Mexico.”

How did you classify the 3,141 U.S. counties into 12 groups?We use demographic data points, stuff from the Census Bureau. We look at factors like occupation, to race, to income, to religious adherence and religious sects, and we do this by looking at the way those things break down in a community, not just as an individual.

Describe some of these communities.I think some of them will look familiar to people. We have one called the Industrial Metropolis, and that’s kind of the counties containing the nation’s most diverse, most complicated cities. Then there’s something called the Monied ’Burbs, the wealthy areas around those cities. Then there are Service Worker Centers, like small towns outside metropolitan areas.

How permanent are they?The big census data are coming up soon, and when we get that we will look at everything again and rejigger, and some counties may move and that’s part of the dynamic part of the project. We are entering a period where things are going to change a lot. Economically, things are very unstable. And culturally, things are rapidly changing—technology changes leading to a cultural change.

Which are more likely to change?I wouldn’t be surprised if sometime in the next decade that some communities fall out of the Monied ’Burbs. I wouldn’t be shocked if we had to create a new type, like the Super Wealthy. The increasing disparities between rich and poor are going to start to manifest themselves. The Service Worker Centers are in for a hard road ahead. They don’t have a lot of ways to generate income on their own.

What kinds of factors indicate whether groups will vote to the left or to the right? You’re going to see an increase in the vote from the Evangelical Epicenters and that’s going to be more strongly

mailto:[email protected]


Republican. Another group is Boom Towns. They are suffering and they’re going to be looking to take that anger out on somebody.

Where do most Tea Party members live?At the time we did it in the book in March 2010, it was the Boom Towns that had the highest number—in terms of measuring intensity. But the Tea Party really looks like different things in different places. When you go to Immigration Nation, the Tea Party sites there are very angry about immigration. Then when you go to these evangelical communities, there’s definitely a religious tone. It’s like the Glenn Beck idea of the Tea Party.

How do you think the movement will impact the 2010 elections?I do think it will have more impact on Senate races and gubernatorial races where it’s just the state vote, compared to congressional races. In the long run, if the Tea Party really has a good election and gets a lot of its candidates to the Senate, it is going to have huge problems ultimately. I mean, they all tend to agree on smaller government and less taxes, which are traditionally Republican ideas, but their secondary issues are all so big and so different. I think they’ll get to Congress and there’ll be a lot of fights.

What do you think will surprise readers?We do religious adherence, going to church. You’d imagine that would be highest in conservative places like Tractor Country and the Mormon Outposts. That’s true, but also high on the list are the very liberal Industrial Metropolises because there are large African-American communities in these areas, and those communities in the cities go to church. Those inner-city areas are real bastions of Christianity.

Why should congressional or presidential candidates read this book?I think candidates already do this kind of study. It’s really about showing 12 different perspectives of how to view what’s going on in the country, and hopefully it increases the understanding of why places are different instead of us just throwing stones at each other and saying, “Curse you for being different.” l

How can the parties unite such a diverse nation? Weigh in at [email protected].

Blog BuzzRecent chatter from the Thomas Jefferson Street bloggers, who weigh in on current events at usnews.com

What the chilean miners Tell us about attack PoliticsBy Leslie Marshall

I am embarrassed by the political ads in these final weeks before the election, by the negativity, the mudslinging. I am further embarrassed that they’re effective. But then I see the Chilean rescue efforts on television. These men remind me that it’s no big deal when I can’t find my cellphone. And that it’s my responsibility not only to vote to keep people (like coal miners) safe; it’s my responsibility to be informed on the issues and familiarize myself with the candidates. Oh, so what should you do when those negative political ads come on? Change the channel. Maybe to a story with a happy ending.

administration Is unravelingBy Alvin Felzenberg

The past several months have revealed the unraveling of the Obama presidency. “Don’t be so sure,” his defenders will insist. “Reagan and Clinton saw their parties take a dive in the first off-year election of their presidencies, only to recover and win easy re-elections.” But Obama’s situation is different. Neither Reagan nor Clinton nor any other president in either memory or history began hemorrhaging so many senior advisers so close to an approaching election.

democrats’ dirt on the goPBy Peter Roff

The Democrats are doing all they can to make this upcoming election about the Bush years. It’s a flawed strategy. For their troubles, now they are showing up in television ads suggesting misdeeds are afoot because the Republicans, in a few cases, will not disclose where their money is coming from. What the Democrats really want is for the GOP to hand them the bullets they will use to shoot at them over the remaining weeks of the campaign.



good enough for Nobel, Not for Richard shelbyBy Susan Milligan

As consolation prizes go, it doesn’t get much better than the one awarded to the MIT economist Peter Diamond. Diamond, lauded for his research on the dynamics of the labor market, was given the Nobel Prize in economics. That’s not enough, however, for GOP Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby, who has been holding up Diamond’s nomination to the Federal Reserve Board. What does Shelby want? A majority of American Idol viewers? This isn’t about Diamond’s qualifications at all. It’s about a U.S. Senate that has become so dysfunctional that the minority party is holding up nominations just to prove it can.

More wit and insight from Thomas Jefferson Street are at www.usnews.com/opinion.

[email protected] the ‘elites’ in PoliticsIn addressing supposed “attacks on elites,” Robert Schlesinger, perhaps intentionally, misses the point [“Lay Off the Attacks on Elites,” October 1]. The problem elites are those who don’t understand everyday Americans and have an I-know-what’s-best-for-everyone belief. Note that one conservative “professorial elite” hero was William Buckley Jr. I had to get out my dictionary every time I heard him speak. –Jack James Vilas, N.C.

Only eggheads who really think have any place in politics. –Richard Gibson Naples, Fla.

The term “egghead” should be met with derision—and logic. Honorable, intelligent people should be respected and elected by us to lead intelligently. –Robert Goldish Duluth, Minn.

The limits of free speechWhile we all enjoy the benefit of the First Amendment, it does not give anyone the right to disrupt the private lives of others [Editor’s Note, October 8]. The demonstration by these church members against the military at a private family funeral infringes on their lives and their right to “pursue happiness.” The pursuit of happiness might apply here, as the family and friends of the slain soldier are looking to ease their pain through private prayer. –Steven Riback Monroe Township, N.J.

The grieving family should have a right to privacy. I don’t understand why it would be unconstitutional to enforce this privacy when requested. –Jack Stone Plymouth Meeting, Pa.As awful as it is for protesters to belittle dead soldiers, free speech is free speech. I would think property owners have the right to decide who can or cannot enter their grounds. –Jim Britt, pastor, Norway, Mich.

Freedom of speech does not mean you can incite a riot. Right to bear arms does not mean you can have a nuke in your bedroom. Freedom of religion does not mean you can put “In God We Trust” on our money, when we do not all agree there is only one god (hmm, maybe it does?). To cover all bases, our motto should be: “If There Is a God, In God(s) We Trust—but We Still Want the Largest Military in the World Because God Does Not Always Answer Our Prayers and We Tend to Piss Off a Lot of People.” These freedoms were intended to protect folks from the government, not from other folks. Also, a corporation is not a folk. Corporations only have the rights given to them by the applicable state charter, which should not include any activity in politics. Can IBM run for president? It is over 35 years old and was born in America. –George Dill Escondido, Calif.

I don’t know why those horrible funeral protests don’t fall under the category of hate crimes. There are so many other laws about other kinds of harassment—racial, sexual, gender, handicap access, etc.—that it doesn’t seem like a big leap to include these despicable protests. –Bob Stephan Pebble Beach, Calif.

Freedom of speech is exactly that. But, like the proverbial yelling of “Fire!” in a crowded theater, when and where one’s right to say anything can be restricted. A fair solution would be for the court to find that funeral protests and rallies can take place, but not within sight or sound of the funeral or family members. –Jim Alston New Braunfels, Texas

www.usnews.com/opinion


Editor’s NoteBy Brian KellyPresident Obama and the Democratic Party are on track for an epic political blowout on November 2. The way the momentum is trending, Republicans will gain a House majority, possibly the Senate, and a stronghold on governorships and state legislatures. Can the president do anything to change the outcome? Or blunt it? What, in the last weeks of the campaign, can he do or say to win back the independents and soft Democrats whose 2008 support has evaporated? He’s tried a number of themes—Wall Street bashing, fears of a return to Bush-era policies, alarm about foreign campaign money—but so far nothing has caught on. What does he have left to say? I’d like to hear your take on Obama’s last stand. Drop me a note at [email protected] and we’ll share your thoughts.

Vital StatisticsdatebookA look back at the week in historyOct. 17, 1931 Gangster Al Capone is convicted of tax evasion and sent to prison in Atlanta, then to Alcatraz.Oct. 18, 1867 The United States buys Alaska from Russia for less than 2 cents an acre ($7.2 million).Oct. 19, 1781 Britain’s Lord Cornwallis surrenders to George Washington and his French allies at Yorktown.Oct. 20, 1947 The House Un-American Activities Committee starts hearings on alleged influence or infiltration of Communists in Hollywood.Oct. 22, 1962 President John F. Kennedy announces evidence of Soviet missiles in Cuba.

10 Things you didn’t know about joe miller1. Joseph Miller was born May 10, 1967, in Osborne, Kan., to Rex and Sharry Miller, who ran a bookstore called

Christian Books & Gifts.

2. He graduated with a B.S. in political science from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1989 and earned a Bronze Star for his service in the first Gulf War.

3. Miller was honorably discharged from active duty in 1992, the same year he married Kathleen Tompkins, who is now a member of the Alaska Judicial Council, which screens, nominates, and evaluates judges. The Millers have eight children.

4. He earned his law degree from Yale in 1995.

5. The Millers moved to Alaska so he could work at Condon, Partnow & Sharrock, a law firm in Anchorage.

6. At age 30, Miller was appointed state magistrate in Tok, a rural town northeast of Anchorage, and as Superior Court master for the Fourth Judicial District.

7. In 2002, he was named acting state district court judge. Soon after, he became federal magistrate in Fairbanks, then the youngest in the nation in that role and the only justice serving both at the state and federal levels.

8. Also in 2002, Miller began seven years as a part-time assistant attorney for the Fairbanks North Star Borough. He maintained a private law practice on the side.

9. He graduated with a master’s degree in economics from the University of Alaska in 2009.

10. With support from Sarah Palin and the Tea Party, Miller defeated incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski in the Republican primary in August. Murkowski is staging a write-in campaign.

EditorialBy Mortimer B. Zuckerman

Negotiating Peace should be a Private ProcessWhy did the Palestinians terminate the Arab-Israeli peace talks? The justification cited was the Israeli refusal to extend the moratorium they had put on construction in the settlements. It is a phantom excuse, the product of President Obama’s heavy-handed intervention.



It is never a good idea to expect parties in conflict to negotiate in the glare of publicity. Attitudes are struck to appease partisans, and they impact negatively on the “private” talks. Why Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas pulled out is itself a piece of grandstanding that does not serve the Palestinians, since in Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu they have a leader who can deliver. Netanyahu has a strong parliamentary coalition and a high degree of public support. He has already made a public commitment to an independent Palestinian state, and he is the first Israeli prime minister to commit to a moratorium on all settlement construction.

Both the Israelis and Palestinians have negotiated for almost 20 years without settlement construction becoming a fundamental impediment. A peace agreement was achieved with Egypt without prohibiting settlements. The Palestinians signed the Oslo accords without a moratorium on settlements and even acknowledged that Israel would be building on the West Bank, not to mention that the Israelis evacuated all the settlements in Gaza. To this day, all of the Israeli construction put together doesn’t even cover 2 percent of the West Bank. And this doesn’t take into account that Netanyahu was clearly prepared to consider maintaining, at least informally, a partial moratorium in the form of limiting building solely to agreed-on blocks that would be retained by Israel in any final peace agreement. This was hardly the first time Israel responded to American calls for a moratorium in the hope of enticing Palestinians to agree to talks. President Carter induced then Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to agree to a three-month settlement freeze during the Camp David negotiations. It made no difference to the Palestinians; they just kept on refusing to negotiate.

So why should the settlements have become the one issue to kill the talks? The key reason is that from the very beginning of his presidency, Obama put the construction in the settlements at the center of his Middle East strategy. It was the original sin that has hamstrung the possibility of successful talks. Public advocacy of the freeze not only put Israel in a bind, but it also put the Palestinians in an even tighter bind, giving both little room to maneuver. When Obama spoke repeatedly for a construction freeze in the West Bank as a public condition for the renewal of talks, it turned the settlement freeze from a dignified wish into a threshold demand that needed to be met in full. It also set a bar that made it impossible for the Palestinians to compromise. Abbas cannot be less Palestinian than the U.S. president.

This wasn’t the only American miscalculation. Having gotten Israel to agree to a 10-month moratorium, why did the United States tolerate Abbas’s spending the first nine months equivocating? Then the president publicly demanded an extension ahead of the 10 months, thereby rewarding the Palestinian Liberation Organization for its delay.

The effect of all this was to put the Israeli prime minister into a box, limiting his choices to a humiliating capitulation or direct confrontation with the United States. If he had continued the freeze without any Palestinian reciprocity, he would have been seen as betraying the settlers and his previous commitment, too. His pledge to limit the moratorium to 10 months would have proved worthless. He would have destroyed the last vestiges of the trust he needed, and still enjoys, with the pro-settlement wing of his party. In Middle East culture, it is critical to stick to one’s word and not be seen as buckling under pressure. For Netanyahu to do otherwise, while the Palestinians were not required to do anything to advance the peace process, is not a workable arrangement in an arena where unilateral concessions are seen as a weakness rather than a constructive contribution.

This was especially sensitive since the Palestinians initially asserted the moratorium was not significant. Indeed, it was part of their rationale for not entering direct talks and then wasting nine of the moratorium’s 10 months. Now something that was originally deemed insignificant is suddenly indispensable.

In other words, the crisis over the moratorium was Obama’s creation. As it is said in the Middle East, both parties were put up in a high tree and left without a ladder to get down. Paradoxically, the whole issue of the settlements is of secondary importance, because it would have been resolved by definition once the parties agreed to boundaries. Settlement construction on the Israeli side of the line would then be permitted, and the other side of the line would be turned over to the Palestinians.

Even the notion of a two-month extension of the moratorium made little sense. Why not a longer extension? Nothing much could have happened in two months except for the fact that it would have carried over past the U.S. congressional elections. Even worse, extending it by two months would have given the Palestinians the power to blackmail Israel indefinitely, as they would have the opportunity to renew their threat to cease negotiations at the end of the two-month period.

The net result was to pressure Netanyahu into an unnecessary concession that he is unable to make politically. Furthermore, the American obsession with the settlement freeze also cornered Abbas. The United States was urging him to go back to the table while making it impossible for him to get there. Even worse, it raised the question among Israelis of whether Abbas was inflating the issue of settlement construction as a way of skirting the need to make the tough decisions in a serious negotiation. Or perhaps his hope was to provoke a crisis in U.S.-Israeli relations, as well as to get the world to blame Israel for the failure to commence a serious dialogue.

Obama’s public focus on the freeze has also frozen his own capacity to be a peacemaker. The Arab leaders


view the freeze as a test of the effectiveness of the Obama administration. They now think that if Obama can’t enforce the freeze on Israel, he’ll be unable or unwilling to force his opinions on the Israelis during the ongoing negotiations. The Israelis also view the freeze as a test of their credibility, for it will dramatically reduce their ability to say no. In turn, this might induce the Palestinians to become even more hard line, tempting the United States to press the Israelis again and again. At risk, then, would be the political support Netanyahu needs to deliver; remember, this is a democracy not a dictatorship. No wonder the Israelis feel they are being punished for the misjudgments of the Obama administration, which failed to distinguish between the crucial and the marginal issues.

What should Obama have done? He should have told the parties it was up to them to work out these differences. The result of meddling is that almost the entire Middle East leadership looks upon American diplomacy as amateurish. What has come out of this administration is an unending number of speeches and press conferences that have placed the Israeli-Palestinian issue under the media spotlight. Progress requires truly private negotiations—far from the cameras, spotlights, microphones, and press conferences. The historic breakthroughs have been achieved through private channels and private diplomacy: consider how Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger achieved the opening to China. The landmark Oslo accords were achieved through private talks and in complete secrecy and should serve as a model for all Middle East negotiations.

It is not surprising that America’s stature in the Middle East continues to deteriorate. Iran is advancing toward nuclear capabilities and scorning Obama as it destabilizes the region. Meanwhile, a Shiite prime minister has been elected in Iraq with the help of Iran’s ally Syria and may very well open Iraq to greater influence from Iran, especially in the Shiite south. Indeed, the Shiite Sunni conflict is becoming ever more extreme. Turkey has become more radicalized and seems to have joined the Iranian-Syrian axis. Hezbollah now threatens to destabilize the government in Lebanon and, along with Hamas, has gained significant political and military strength from their alliance with an expansionist Iran. America is sinking deeper and deeper into the Afghanistan quagmire of an unwinnable war. Worst of all, the United States has not succeeded, nor even truly tried, to build an effective strategic alliance of moderate Arab states.

There is still a little time for this administration to bring fresh thinking to its team managing the Middle East peace process. Otherwise, the period will be marked down as four more years of failure. l

Follow all our columnists at www.usnews.com/opinion.

Answers to the Quiz1. C. 1943

2. A. “Blue” discharge

3. B. 1993

4. B. 428

5. True

6. D. Patrick Murphy

7. B. Joseph Lieberman

8. A. California

9. D. Donald Rumsfeld

Return to the Quiz

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october 15, 2010 volume 2 • number 41 - u.s. news ... 15, 2010 volume 2 • number 41 ... think is...

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