Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Having clinched the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party, Senator Barack Obama will soon have to make one of the important decisions of his campaign. What should he do with the Clintons, who have loomed large over the Democratic Party for nearly a generation?
Obama could either seek reconciliation by choosing Hillary Clinton as his vice-presidential running mate or praise her for being such a worthy opponent and simply ignore her after that. Either course is risky.
When the Democratic Party found itself with two great candidates — a charismatic African American man and a highly capable woman — who promised to rewrite American presidential history, there was much talk about the ‘dream ticket’, of having them run together.
When asked about this early on in the campaign, both Obama and Clinton said they are not ready to accept the second place on the ticket. Forced to confront the reality that she cannot overtake Obama in the delegate count, Clinton has finally signalled her interest in the vice-president’s slot. That does not mean, however, that Obama will accept her automatically.
For Obama, having Clinton on the ticket would help unify the party after the bitter contest of the last few months and direct all energies against the Republicans. If rejected, Clinton might well carry the fight right to the party’s convention floor at Denver in August.
Having won nearly as many popular votes as Obama, Clinton could argue, with ever decreasing conviction, that she is the one the party needs in November. While she might not succeed, Clinton could effectively undermine Obama’s campaign.
If he chooses her as the running mate, Obama might find the shadow of the Clintons rather overbearing. It is not just that Obama will get ‘two for one’ — both Hillary and her husband former President Clinton. Obama’s problem is that Hillary will not be just any other VP happy to retire into political anonymity. She would want a significant say in running the next Democratic Administration, much like Dick Cheney under George W. Bush.
Many Obama supporters argue against having her on the ticket. They fear the message of ‘change’ — so central to Obama’s popular political appeal — might get diluted.
But without the Clintons, Obama may find it hard to mobilise the all-important white working class, the older voters who usually turn up in droves on election day and the Latino minority. All three of them are critical for a winning coalition in November.
McCain attacks
As the Democrats struggle to define the role of the Clintons, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Senator John McCain is stepping up his attacks on Obama’s worldview — especially his statements on engaging the Iranian leadership.
Speaking this week at the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, the most influential representative of the Jewish lobby in the US, McCain said, “it’s hard to see what such a summit with President Ahmadinejad would actually gain, except an earful of anti-Semitic rants and a worldwide audience for a man who denies one Holocaust and talks before frenzied crowds about starting another”.
Although Obama has steadily backtracked from his earlier statements on an unconditional dialogue with the Iranian leadership, McCain is unlikely to let go of the opportunity to paint the Democratic Senator as unreliable on national security. “It’s a very clear choice, and whether it be on Iran, or whether it be on Iraq, or whether it be on other national security issues, Senator Obama does not have the experience and the knowledge and clearly the judgment”, McCain declared.
The AIPAC
No lobbying organisation in the US invokes more political awe than the AIPAC. The PACs — or political action committees — are very much part of the American life. They are entirely legal and are subject to a variety of regulations by the federal and state governments.
PACs are interest groups formed to support candidates for elections as well as for influencing the shape of the legislation at the national and state level. With more than a 100,000 members, the AIPAC, set up in the early 1950s, is now a powerful grassroots movement.
It is feared and respected for its ability to mobilise political and financial support for or against candidates running for any office in the US. The AIPAC has become a model for many other minorities, including our own Indian Americans, to make their views count in American political life.
The writer is professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore iscrmohan@ntu.edu.sg
