He stuck his foot in his mouth a couple of times in the final days, but on Tuesday millionaire Mormon Mitt Romney cantered past the winning post in the New Hampshire primary with 39% of the votes cast. Libertarian Ron Paul ran second with 23%. Another millionaire Mormon, Jon Huntsman, got 17%. Floundering abjectly in the mire of defeat were Newt Gingrich (10%) and the headline snatcher in Iowa a week ago, Rick Santorum (9%.)
It was a big win for Romney who showed he could break 25%. He wiped out the opposition and took a big stride towards the nomination. All the same, as New Hampshire primaries go, it was a very dull affair, at least for those of us who remember such excitements as the trickle of Ed Muskie’s tears — or was it merely snow? — turning his 1972 front-runner campaign into a mighty river of defeat.
The much touted grudge debates last weekend between Romney and Gingrich were pallid. Sheldon Adelson, a billionaire Las Vegas casino mogul and fanatic supporter of Benjamin Netanyahu, poneyed up $5 million for a Friends-of-Newt operation, which did produce a brilliant campaign ad against Romney, the Job-Slayer. No traction for Gingrich came of it, though maybe further outpourings from Adelson and friends could pump life back into his campaign down south.
Romney’s big foot-in-mouth moment came when he remarked in a campaign trail speech that “I like firing people.” He was actually talking about the freedom to fire your health insurance company, a luxury supposedly enjoyed by Americans until Obama passed his health bill, but he’ll be whacked over the head with the line for a while.
Now Romney heads down south to a likely victory in South Carolina and probably in Florida. Such triumphs, should they come to pass, will plunge the election industry into profound crisis. At this stage in the game, precisely one week after the presidential year opened with the Iowa caucuses on January 3, no one — except perhaps the candidate himself — wants to have the race locked up. The news business, led by the TV networks, wants cliffhangers. Campaign managers, dirty tricksters, and kindred consultants want volley after volley of campaign ads rolling dollars into their pockets. There are armies of “strategists” to be fed their campaign stipends.
At this stage in the game back in 1992, Bill Clinton was fighting for his life after his affair with Gennifer Flowers gradually seeped into public consciousness. In 2008, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton slugged it out, round after round and well into the summer.
Will scandal breathe life into the campaign? Does the limber Romney have any dark personal secret still panting in the closet? Could he emulate the shameful John Edwards and be faithless while his wife Ann endures MS, just as Edwards’s wife Elizabeth fought cancer even as John carried on his romance with Rielle Hunter? It seems very unlikely, and even if some affair from Romney’s pre-marriage days doing his two-year stint as a Mormon missionary in Paris surfaces it probably wouldn’t do him any harm.
The same problem of being the locked-in nominee confronted John McCain in 2008. He won New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida and then the super-Tuesday primaries, just as Romney is likely to do. Desperate to give his campaign a lift, McCain used the opportunity of the Republican convention to pluck Sarah Palin from her grizzly-skin rug in the governor’s mansion in Alaska. Last week, Tea Party queen Michele Bachmann, perhaps hoping for the Palin role, was notably restrained in her comments on Romney.
Ron Paul will fight on, and give the campaign season at least the semblance of life. In New Hampshire he won strong support from low-income Republicans and the young. It’s conceivable he could bolt onto the Libertarian third party ticket. It would certainly juice up the political year. High-level Republicans are reportedly threatening Paul that if he does bolt, they’ll make sure that his son Rand is not re-elected Senator in Kentucky in 2016.
Meanwhile Obama is running the sort of campaign incumbent presidents usually wage, seeking to display mastery on the international stage, preferably by waging war or threatening to do so. With this in mind, Obama has been steadily driving Iran into a corner with boycotts and sanctions. It seems likely that what Obama is maneuvering towards is for a desperate Tehran, its back to the wall with a collapsing currency, to make the first bellicose move.
It’s nothing new. President Roosevelt pushed a desperate Japan into war with his embargoes and economic sanctions. For the attack on Pearl Harbor, substitute the Iranians mining the straits of Hormuz.
War on Iran: It’s Not A Matter of “If”
The world’s press is choc-a-bloc with “if” questions about Iran and war. Will Israel attack? Is Obama, coerced by domestic politics in an election year, being dragged into war by the Israel lobby? Will he launch the bombers? Is the strategy to force Iran into a corner, methodically demolishing its economy by embargoes and sanctions so that in the end a desperate Iran strikes back?
As with sanctions and covert military onslaughts on Iraq in the run up to 2003, the first point to underline is that the US is waging war on Iran. But well aware of the US public’s aversion to yet another war in the Middle East, the onslaught is an undeclared one.
The analogy here is the run up to Pearl Harbor. Let me quote from a useful timeline. On October 7, 1940, a US Navy IQ analyst, Arthur McCollum, wrote an eight-point memo on how to force Japan into war with US. Beginning the next day FDR began to put them into effect and all eight were eventually accomplished.
On February 11, 1941 FDR proposed sacrificing six cruisers and two carriers at Manila to get into war. Navy Chief Stark objected: “I have previously opposed this and you have concurred as to its unwisdom.
In March 1941 FDR sold arms and convoyed them to belligerents in Europe — both acts of war and both violations of international law — the Lend-Lease Act. On June 23, 1941 Advisor Harold Ickes wrote FDR a memo the day after Germany invaded the Soviet Union, “There might develop from the embargoing of oil to Japan such a situation as would make it not only possible but easy to get into this war in an effective way. FDR was pleased with Admiral Richmond Turner’s report read July 22: “It is generally believed that shutting off the American supply of petroleum will lead promptly to the invasion of Netherland East Indies…it seems certain she would also include military action against the Philippine Islands, which would immediately involve us in a Pacific war.”
The next day FDR froze all Japanese assets in US cutting off their main supply of oil. US. Intelligence information was withheld from Hawaii from this point forward. Against protests from US naval commanders the West Coast fleet was moved to Hawai’i.
John Maynard Keynes once said, “The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.” Ronald Reagan used to attribute this insight to the man he loved to call “Nikolai Lenin,” thundering from podium after podium across America, that Lenin had said, “The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency.”
You want a graphic illustration of what US embargoes are doing in the way of debauching Iran’s currency?
Imagine if the Iranians had done this to the US dollar? Can you imagine any American politician who would have refrained from calling this an act of war?
To further inflame the leadership in Iran we had last week the murder of Iran nuclear scientist Ahmadi Roshan which came on the one-year anniversary of the murder of two other Iranian nuclear scientists by similar methods. As CounterPuncher Peter Lee writes, “It came at a time of heightened tensions (anyway, tensions higher than the usual heightened tensions), inviting the inference that somebody, probably somebody in the region, wants to goad the Iranian government into a response that could start the military action ball rolling.”
As for the embargoes of Iranian oil, Obama is most certainly doing the oil industry a big favor. There have been industry-wide fears of recession-fueled falling demand and collapse of oil prices. That has led to industry-wide enthusiasm (aided by heavy pressure from the majors) for strongly cutting total world oil production (and enjoying the bonuses flowing from the subsequent world price rise), with all the cuts to be taken out of the hide of the Iranians. The Financial Times made clear the need to shrink world production in the following key paragraph in a report last week: “Oil prices have risen above $110 a barrel since Iran threatened to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most important oil chokepoint, accounting for about a third of all seaborne traded oil. Oil fell to a low of $99 in October amid global economic growth worries.”
As Pierre Sprey remarked to me, “Note also that this is one of those rare but dangerous moments in history when Big Oil and the Israelis are pushing the White House in the same direction. The last such moment was quickly followed by Dubya’s invasion of Iraq.”
It’s somewhat immaterial to ask whether Obama really wants war with Iran, thus interfering with the “strategic pivot” to Asia. Presidents are creatures of circumstances and lobbies, and Obama is certainly no exception. We have to hope that the traditional prudence of Iran’s leadership prompts them not to make some desperate retaliatory lunge, such as mining the Straits of Hormuz, or offering some kindred excuse to the US to up the tempo of the undeclared war it is already waging.
To the Tumbrils!
Some readers of my consignment last week of certain words to the tumbrils expressed curiosity about the word. A tumbril was a farm cart. They were used to carry prisoners to the guillotine during the French Revolution.
Some more candidates. Fred Gardner writes: “Add ‘Gamechanger’ to the mis- and over-used words of 2011. For years I’ve winced as lawyers and businessmen and reporters casually used ‘game’ in reference to the legal system, finance, war itself… You sometimes see a bumper sticker on a sports car that says ‘the one with the most toys wins.’ It makes me want to give them a little nudge with the old Volvo…”
Jon Swift: “Also the drug-treatment shibboleth: ‘The user’s always chasing that first high.’ As though they couldn’t possibly enjoy it the 875th time. You never hear ‘Religious worshippers are always chasing that first feeling of being at one with God,’ or ‘Voters are always chasing that first thrill they got on entering the booth at 18’….”
Wat Stearns: “I nominate ‘expensed’ and ‘leveraged’ for the tumbrils as well.”
Let me toss in the odious “project,” initially favored by the left but now in general currency, attached to almost every human endeavor. Also “conversation” — a way of taming all debate and doctrinal struggle into demure prattle. And let us note the meteoric rise of “existential.”
Tumbril time! And if you want a vivid sense of what it was like for French aristos condemned to death to hear the rattle of the tumbril as it arrived to take him to the guillotines, I advise a trip to the Conciergerie in Paris. Very creepy.
Alexander Cockburn can be reached at alexandercockburn@asis.com.
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