411 Politics Fact or Fiction: Week 115 - Giuliani Next Governor of NY, Caroline Kennedy as NY Senator, More

Posted by Brandon Crow on 01.05.2009

Will Giuliani be the next Governor of NY? Is Caroline Kennedy as unqualified for NY Senator as Sarah Palin was for VP? Has Obama picked his cabinet well? Will Obama continue Bush's foreign policy?

Ho, Ho, Ho and Aud Lang Syne…and all them other clichéd wishes! Crow is back after a few weeks off for the holidays (and finals grading…uggh!). Let me start by giving a big thanks to the good Mr. Tobolowsky for standing in while I was away for Weeks 113 and 114. And to thank him properly, I've given him a spot on this week's panel.

Welcome to Week 115 of Politics Fact or Fiction, the first of 2009! This week, we have Andrew, of course, and Mr. Paul Amore, who is making his fourth (I believe) appearance with us. Let's get this new year off to a rockin' start!

Ding! Ding

1. It has been reported that Rudy Giuliani is seriously mulling a run for Governor of New York. He should run because he would win.

Andrew Tobolowsky: FACT. He probably would win. There's a very fine line, I believe, in people's minds between "disappointment" and "embarrassment." I don't see the people of New York saying, "we THOUGHT he was competent and really good at his job but NOW after his disastrous primary run we've changed our minds." What he plans to do with that governorship, I'm not sure, since it's unlikely he'll be able to use it as a springboard for more power (anymore), and it's hard to see him having much love for running the parts of the state that aren't NYC--Albany's not exactly high-profile. But I think if he ran, he'd win.

Paul Amore: FICTION. Let's consider who Rudy is. He's a near-dictatorial reformer who's massively tough on crime. He was perfect for New York City post-David Dinkins, and I would have voted for him for POTUS also. But New York State, at this point, does not need that. What it needs is freedom from corruption and economic forward thinking. I also think the Democratic electorate wants to actually see a candidate it votes in serve out a term. And as another point against him, New York has other powerful people who could run. From what I've heard, Andrew Cuomo has his eye on the seat, and that's a name that carries weight in this state.

0 for 1. Ooo…his hat's not even officially in the ring yet and Giuliani already got dinged by a New Yorker!

2. Much ballyhoo has been made about Caroline Kennedy possibly becoming the next Senator from New York. The discontent is deserved because Kennedy is about as qualified for a Senate seat as Sarah Palin was for VP.

Andrew Tobolowsky: FICTION. The word "qualified" was thrown around a lot when Sarah Palin was running, true. Fact of the matter is, if "qualified" means "having done work with relevant experience" before, Palin has MORE experience than Kennedy by a fair amount, unless you count growing up with the Kennedys as work experience.

But the thing about Sarah Palin that turned people off, the thing that made people say she was "unqualified," were personal qualities. McCain complained a lot about how Obama's use of speech was so good it obscured certain ugly facts, but to all intents and purposes, Sarah Palin's rally speeches obscured the fact that, not only did she not know what she was talking about, she had no interest in knowing--that she didn't even CARE about policy or political inquiry. That all she knew how to do was say rousing things to make people who also didn't want to think hard about the world love her.

Sarah Palin was unqualified because she would have been awful at the job because of who she is, not what she has or hasn't done. Sarah Palin was unqualified because she was an absolutely ludicrous proposition for any high office of any kind. Kennedy is no great speaker, but seems an intelligent lady. She's no politician, but she seems willing to think about the world's problems. More than that, she's running for senator, not VP--we've done much worse for senators, and will again.

Paul Amore: FICTION. For essentially the opposite reason as Andrew. Let's talk about Sarah Palin in hopes of putting it all to bed. I was one of the many people who voted for the "Palin-McCain ticket," not liking McCain but liking her.

Everything Mr. Tobolowsky said about her is true; she is, in a word, naive. But naivete is the same quality that lets one point out naked emperors while others feign seeing the clothes. I, and I believe many others, think that the major problem in US government isn't the Democrats, and it isn't the Republicans, it's the Democrats AND the Republicans. We desperately want an outsider to hold a major position so that she might ask questions like, "Isn't 2 trillion way too much for the federal budget?" and "Gee, Vladimir Putin isn't a very nice guy, is he?" Hollywood knows what we want; they made movies like "Dave" and "Man of the Year" and "Swing Vote." Sarah Palin was the first ray of hope for that mentality. What she was, was not good, but what she wasn't was all we could hope for.

Caroline Kennedy is the reverse. She's a member of a political family who grew up with the system, shooting for a placeholder role in a legislative position. With due respect to all the other states, New York Senator is not a position for dilettantes. It's a position that spearheads committees and spurs legislation. Lest we forget, before Hillary, this was Daniel Patrick Moynihan's seat, and he was one of the best Senators this country has seen. On this occasion, we need a political heavyweight. Why isn't Bill Clinton shooting for it? There's a tradition of spousal appointment, and he certainly has political chops (and for trivia buffs like me, it would make the list of impeached presidents identical to that of those who served in the Senate after the presidency).

1 or 2. Two things for Paul: Didn't we just try the "naïve outsider" experiment with Bush? Also, excellent thoughts on Kennedy and Clinton.

Switch!

3. You like the cabinet Obama has assembled.

Paul Amore: FACT. Perhaps "like" is too strong a word, but there's no noteworthy, John Ashcroft-style, "Ah, not him!" members, with the possible exception of Tom Daschle, and he's not in a major position as Ashcroft was. Let's face it; the cabinet is a weird and woolly part of the federal government, as it's not constitutional. The Bush cabinet was, to my view, largely a means of executing policies determined in closed sessions, particularly as relates to the State Department and the attorneys general.

Obama's cabinet seems more in line with the old function of advice, or designed as individual departments that set their own policies--essentially the executive branch equivalent of Congressional subcommittees. I base this on his choices of powerful and charismatic state governors like Janet Napolitano and Bill Richardson.

That said, the four biggest positions, I'm happy with. I wish there were a genius out there who could serve as Treasury Secretary, a 21st-century Alan Greenspan (who was Fed Chairman; the positions seem interchangeable to me). That's the major omission that I can see, but even that isn't so bad as it's better (by my values) to wait until we have a more capitalistic president to firm up long-term economic plans.

And the attorney general will be the type to stay out of the headlines, which is also valuable for the next four years. In particular, I don't want endless investigations into the current administration just to get a pound of flesh for the far left. Let's fix the problems (and maintain the successes, which are not insignificant) rather than worrying about blame.

Holding over the defense secretary is a major surprise, and a good one. I'm of the view that Democrats, whatever their qualifications on foreign policy in general, don't know how to actually get down and dirty in a fight. I highly doubt he'll still be in the position come 2012, but in the meantime it keeps a bullet in the chamber for Obama.

The big one of course is Hillary. And here, too, as a foreign policy aggressor, I'm happy. I've followed her as a Senator from my state for just about eight years now, and the one sure thing is that she's no doormat. I don't think Obama will want to deliver many threats, but when he does, I trust Hillary to make them credible.

Andrew Tobolowsky: FACT. Paul's made some good points; what I'd like to add is this: Unless you're at least a little bit of a political wonk you probably don't know much about Obama's cabinet. Here's what you do know: he's apparently taken people from different walks of life and different sides and has branded himself as someone willing to listen, and make a smart, not political, choice. For a presidency so heavy on message, that's important. And let me just say to those of you out there that thinks "message" means the same thing as "empty promises," I'm offering you a New Years thumbs down. Go ahead, take it, it's delicious.

2 for 3. Obama's cabinet picks has the approval of Andrew and Paul.

4. Condi Rice recently commented that Barack Obama will likely continue Bush's foreign policy stances. You agree.

Paul Amore: FACT. At least, at the root level. George Bush has a black belt in Texas judo. That's where someone characterizes a position in a way that seems outrageous, but it turns out you're OK with it. Example: when Bush was governor, people pointed out that his state executed an awful lot of people, some quite young. To which he gleefully said, "Yup!"

He played this to its extreme in the foreign policy arena. You could throw a litany at him like, "You're willing to put diplomacy second and aggression first! You're not interested in maintaining friendships and alliances when they conflict with your interests! You destabilized the entire Middle East! You were never the leader of the free world; all you cared about was America!" And I bet he would say, "Yeah, I sure did all that! Cool, huh?" And there's no response to that. It turns out to be a perfectly legitimate position.

Barack Obama doesn't use that kind of judo. But he is going to be take an "our interests are primary" foreign policy. Ignore the hope-and-change rhetoric, because that was a campaign slogan. (I don't mean that he doesn't believe it; I mean that he's not tied to it as an ideology.) Obama is a pragmatist. He wants to prevent terrorist attacks and improve America's reputation in the world. He knows that hand wringing and self-deprecation are counterproductive to those goals. He's not going to go to the UN or to NATO or to individual countries and beg indulgences, or admit American wrongdoing, or make major public concessions. He won't give other countries a veto over our foreign policies.

But he will schmooze. If you shouted a litany at him like the one I described above, he'd be more likely to put an arm around your shoulder and say, "Now now, you're not looking at the big picture. Of course diplomacy and stability are important. And we're going to get them. But it's going to take everyone, even the military, which I know will perform whatever tasks I give it."

As personality, Obama is opposite Bush. As actual policies, they're the same.

Andrew Tobolowsky: FICTION. Absolutely fiction! Couldn't disagree more. Yes, we'll stay in Afghanistan, yes we'll pull more slowly out of Iraq than some people want. But you don't think it makes a huge difference to Europe, for example, that we won't be pursuing the "we're the good guys, we need to fight the bad guys JUST because they're the bad guys" simple-minded idiot foreign policy? I lived in Europe last year. Trust me, it matters.

More concretely, we won't be treating--as Bush did, and as McCain would have even more--the ability to talk to America as some great prize everyone on Earth is dying to get, so as to extort other people. Guess what, pretending Iran doesn't exist is actually not a way to halt their nuclear program. They actually don't want to talk to us that badly. To them, it seems like "America isn't going to bother us? Sweet!"

Simply by these two expedients, Obama is going to have many, many more tools in his foreign policy arsenal than Bush had---even if he wants largely the same things. And don't forget Joe Biden, who might have been picked just BECAUSE he has good relationships with foreign leaders. If being lots better at foreign policy isn't a difference, I don't know what is.

2 for 4.

These two split 2 for 4. Good job, guys! Come back next week, y'all, for more F or F.