Republican men in suits

The big surprise of the Fox network's Republican Debate in South Carolina was the confronting nature of the questions directed at the ten presidential candidates. Of course, there could be an agenda there. Clearly, at debate's end, very clearly, there was disappointment that the phone votes favourite had been Ron Paul and not Mitt Romney. The Fox anchor team made no secret of their preference for Romney and sniped that Paul's team must have been the quickest on the speed-dial to get those votes in. So saying, they made a mockery of their very own voting system. If it is a competition of candidates' teams phoning in, well, it is all pretty meaningless and there is really no point in the viewers thinking they are having a say. On the other hand, it could just be that the people out there preferred the old-school Libertarian Republican who has an uncompromising stance on almost everything. The veteran congressman from Texas is what his supporters call "the real maverick" of the Republicans - the right-wing version of Dennis Kucinich - and he really stirred up the debate.


Ron Paul stands alone against the war on Iraq, claiming that the Republican party has "lost its way". It had a long history as an anti-war party which once believed in making friends, talking, negotiatiating and trading with the world. He tried to explain that the 9/11 attack was not, as the Bush administrations keeps asserting, because Islam hates American values but, rather, because "we are over there" interfering in their countries, bombing and provoking hostility. He added "we're now building an embassy in Iraq that is bigger than the Vatican". Hmm. I didn't know that.

Giuliani, who has "owned" 9/11 as a political issue since handling the crisis as NY Mayor, leapt on Paul's statement, his face contorting as he sought to control his rage - mouth a thin line of fury, eyes slits of burning coal. He could not and would not hear Paul's rationale, interpreting it as a simple "we brought it on ourselves". He called it the most "absurd" explanation he had heard and asked for Paul to retract. Paul did not retract. He reiterated, explaining the concept of "blow-back", using history's examples and concluding "they do it because we are over there".

Paul is a tough old cookie and his views, generally, belong to a bygone era of Republican sentiment. He is also an obstetrician, a pro-lifer and, while he is drawing a lot of attention or, as the Fox reporters put it, "ink", in the media, he is not a viable presidential contender because the mainstream Republicans just don't get him.

So who did come out on top of the Fox debate which, by the way, seemed fraught with some technical colour and definition shortcomings.

Well, it was not Duncan Hunter from who is still obsessed by the border fence but did get in a good rant about the 1.8 million US jobs lost to China saying "the arsenal of democracy is leaving these shores and we need to bring it back".

It was not Virginian Jim Gilmore who bragged "I've been a consistent conservative my entire life" and plugged his website and blog. Yawn.
When asked why it was the line-up of candidates was so like the membership of a country club, devoid of woman or minorities, he could only, again, brag about himself, citing his "reach out" to Hispanic and African-Americans.
Of course it was an excellent question. The candidates are all Christian white men in suits.


It was not Tom Tancredo from Colorado who claimed to have been getting "conversions" about immigration and gun control but "I'd trust them on the road to Damascus and not the road to Des Moines". He also claimed that there was still scientific doubt about global warming but "if it's true..." I find Tancredo just a bit creepy.

It was not Tommy Thompson. He is a particularly rigid man, barely moves more than his mouth when talking. His claim to fame was: "I'm the only candidate up here that has over 1,900 vetoes". A positive record of the negative?

It was not Sam Brownback from Kansas who, asked if abortion could be an option for a rape victim, replied: "I don't think so, and I think we can explain it when we look at it for what it is, a beautiful child of a loving God that we ought to protect in all circumstances." He should try being a rape victim some time.

It was not front-runner Rudy Giuliani who gave one a very scary insight into the Republican aggression by generating resounding applause when he said he would, in the case of another attack on the US, "tell them to use any method they could think of" to extract information from detainees.

This was in response to a hypothetical which had produced much endorsement of a thing called "enhanced interrogation".
It would seem to be euphemistic newspeak for "torture".

John McCain was the only one adamantly opposed to torture. He spoke eloquently about the way in which it diminishes a nation, the way in which it sets an example for treatment of one's own prisoners in enemy hands... He was statesmanlike in this context - but it was not what the audience wanted to hear. McCain is as much a dead man for not following the popular line as is Giuliani for his stand on a woman's right to choose. This time round, however, Giuliani expressed it thus: “You want to keep government out of people’s lives, or government out of people’s lives from the point of view of coercion, you have to respect that.”


"Flip-flop Mitt" did not acquit himself particularly well in this debate, I thought. He was back-footed on his abortion flip-flop, was all for "enhanced interrogation techniques" , had an illogical solution for the legalising of America's 12 million illegal immigrants and was just to bit too keen on sniping at other candidates. There was quite a lot of sniping in this debate.
Interestingly, in his post-debate interview, the Mormon made a very telling Freudian slip: "The missionary, er military..."


This, surprisingly, leaves Mike Huckabee, governor of Arkansas. He scored the one laugh of the night saying “we’ve had a Congress that’s spent money like John Edwards at a beauty shop.”
He said a few sage things: "It takes more money to do it over than it does to do it right." We're now seeing that in the United States. We're doing a lot of things over. Maybe we should have just done it right."
He presented very well, calm, articulate and quite good looking. He is, however, a Baptist minister.

At debate's end, it was clear that, well, they're all fierce Republicans who want tax cuts. They were still white Christian men in suits, all of them wanting to be the most powerful man in the world. The back runners are due to fall by the wayside very soon, especially if rumour comes true and Newt Gingrich throws his hat into the ring.

Bill Richardson's six-day plan

First things first. The increasingly controversial date for the New Hampshire Primary was the subject of Bill Richardson's introductory remarks. He'd just heard that it was going to be on January 8 - in response to the impertinent move forward of Florida from March to the last Tuesday in January.
"You should be the first Primary," declared Richardson, adding that this sudden scrunch of Primary dates put great pressure on the campaigners.
New Hampshire house parties are very informal and interactive - and immediately someone pointed out that NH is first "by law". Assorted very early dates were jovially suggested.

Then the New Mexico Governor launched into his address, prefacing it with some of the ways in which he believed he was the most outstandingly qualified of all candidates for the presidency. These were not only his administrative experience as a state governor, but his extensive CV as a Congressman and the country's Secretary of Energy - not to mention his time as a UN diplomat wherein he had liaised with leaders in world trouble spots such as Iraq, North Korea, Cuba and Sudan.

From these experiences he had learned the essence of making peace with enemies and turning them into friends and, indeed, the most pressing thing he'd do as new President would be to bring people together in a bi-partisan thrust to terminate the "nightmare" of the Iraq War.

As a succinct format, he cited his policies in the form of "six issues and what I would do with my first six days in the White House".
Day 1 would be Iraq. He would not only withdraw the forces but he would install diplomacy and an all-Muslim peacekeeping force and apply some of the $400 billion war into "the domestic needs" of Iraq.


Day 2, Richardson would dedicate to Energy Independence, liberating the country from the 60 per cent oil import statistic and the "stranglehold" that "unfriendly" countries have over the USA. He would call on private and public investment in a blitz of auto greening with all cars at 50mpg. "I don't care what Detroit says," he challenged. He added a list of energy alteratives including green buildings, solar roofs on schools...
"You gotta sacrifice. It's a sense of community because energy efficiency is for the common good. We generate 25 per cent of the world's pollution," he said.
Interestingly, his state, New Mexico, is the only US state which abides by the Kyoto Protocol. This man has a track record.
He gave fulsome credit to Al Gore for his service in informing the country about the urgency of environmental reform, adding: "Al, stay out of the running."


Day 3, said Richardson, would be for education. Here he absolutely soared in recognition of what the US really needs to bring itself back to the future - science and math! India and Korea have left the US, and the rest of the world, behind in these vital subjects. Australia needs to pick up its socks, too. Richardson is on the ball in knowing that this is the foundation of a knowledge economy. He also spoke of languages and, particularly, the arts - to engage "and stimulate the mind". Yes!

Day 4 he allocated to his National Health Care plan to which he gave scant outline, since, he explained, the complexities and funding thereof requires lengthy extrapolation.


Day 5 was for his job-generation plan. "The Democrats would be the party of economic growth and science and math," he underlined. "The Democrats have been the party of the poor, which I endorse, but do you what what? We have forgotten the middle class."
He went on to speak of tax incentives for new technology and employment iniatives with an emphasis on renewable energy, technology and aviation. "The future is renewable energy," he reiterated.
When someone interjected a question about nuclear power, he acknowledged that it was non-pollutant but still worried about disposal of its by-products. It was not an energy option of his choice.

Day 6 would be devoted to "restating our commitment to civil rights". Richardson strongly supported "a woman's right to choose". "If you have different sexual orientation, I'll be on your side," he added. He sought "fair immigration laws and not that wall - that's not American".
"We're a nation of immigrants," he emphasised, suggesting that immigration regulations should incorporate speaking English and passing background checks.

The American voting system was also a target. Only 48 per cent of Americans voted in the last election. "One of the problems is that we don't trust the ballot," he said. "I want a shift back to paper."
The New Hampshirites interjected that they had a paper trail here, despite an electronic ballot.

Richardson finished by saying that he knew he was an "underdog" in the Democratic Presidential candidate polls "but I've got nine months to go - and a lot of house parties".

And, just to add levity to his list of credentials, he confided that "I'm holder of the world handshaking record - 13,000 hands in 8 hours. That record used to belong to Teddy Roosevelt".

The party guests were keen to question the New Mexico Governor - and threw some tough ones at him, particularly about tax, Iraq, mental health and health funding. He fielded them all with amiable ease, at home on all issues, it seemed.



And he added some interesting snippets - insight about North Korea which he has visited no less than six times and which he still finds very different in thinking.
He told of talking to President Bush about negotiations with North Korea and the way in which using China as an intermediary was a mistake since the North Koreans hate China.
Bush replied: "Bill, I don't talk to countries that exhibit bad behaviour."
Richardson retorted: "Pretty soon you're only going to be talking to the Vatican."
He half-expected an angry response from the President, he said. But no. George Bush thought it was funny.

The Richardson campaign aides were keen to get him moving along - next stop an interview with CNN. Richardson, however, was reluctant to short-change these voters and his lingering to answer personal questions, shake hands and sign his book was clearly agitating his clock-watching aides, as we slipped quietly out the door ahead of him.

A good man, I'd say, who came across poorly in the Democrats' television debate. Gun supporter or not, he shone as an example of the extremely high quality of candidate being fielded by the American Democrats. If only politics was dominated by such people. If only.

Republican debate good for Dems

Who won the Republican debate?
There were ten men in uniform dark suits. Four wore red ties. Three wore red-striped ties. The anti-cloning brigade were ironically clone-like.

At debate's end, nothing much changed. The three leaders remain the leaders and, if any of them shone more brightly in the artifice of debate context, it was Mitt Romney who was as smooth as a bowl of homogenised cream.

The shock of the debate was the revelation that three men who believe themselves equipped to be President of the United States are men who do not believe in science.
Senator Brownback, Mr. Huckabee and Representative Tancredo raised their hands when asked if anyone in the debate lineup rejected evolution. Creationists! Can one imagine putting people of this regressive mindset out there on the world stage?
Fortunately, these men don't have a chance in hell and should save themselves and everyone else a lot of time and money by pulling out of the race now.

In fact, so should most of them.

Not one of the seven outside runners stimulated any interest or excitement.

Ron Paul was expected to stand out - and in a way he did. He stood up against regulation of the Internet. He urged against going to war against Iraq. He defended "free society" by objecting to a national ID card. Paul is a libertarian, old school. He'd get rid of all taxes. He's also an obstetrician who is against abortion. Fie upon you, Doctor. Fie.

Mike Huckabee said something I liked: "The most important thing a president needs to do is to make it clear that we’re not going to continue to see jobs shipped overseas, jobs that are lost by American workers, many in their 50s who for 20 and 30 years have worked to make a company rich, and then watch as a CEO takes a hundred-million-dollar bonus to jettison those American jobs somewhere else. And the worker not only loses his job, but he loses his pension.

That’s criminal. It’s wrong. And if Republicans don’t stop it, we don’t deserve to win in 2008."
However, he also refused to grade the Bush administration's handling of the War on Iraq, saying:
"I think it’s too early to give them the grade. You don’t give a student a grade in the middle of the exam. We’re still in the middle of the exam. Let’s wait and see how it turns out, then we can give the president a grade." Huh? That war is only half over?

Tom Thompson made a complete idiot of himself by saying that 3,000 US lives had been lost in Iraq and "several thousand injured". He was only 356 out in the deaths - but in the injured, I'd never have described over 24,000 as "several". He should have known better. Disgraceful.

Brownback did not impress - until he said: "Life is one of the most important issues of our day". Gee. There was a day when it wasn't?

Hunter recognised global warming and the need to find alternative energy sources was a reat opportunity and challenge for the USA. Now, where have I heard that before? Oh, Rudi!

Gilmore barely made a blip on the radar and Tom Tancredo was obsessed with keeping Mexicans in Mexico. A one issue man.

John McCain came over fairly well. He clearly had learned his lines and he gave a potted version of his stump speech looking directly into the camera. He was still making very aggressive noises re Iran.

Mitt Romney spent a lot of time trying to convince everyone that his religion did not matter and that no one cared which church one went to so long as one went to church and so long as a man of "faith" was in the White House, because America is a country of "faith". Of course he threw in mentions of his uber-happy family. And, significantly, he promised that Osama bin Laden "is going to pay, and he will die". Romney also managed to crack a few jokes, which made him the only one who reminded one of Reagan at all. For some reason, all the candidates seemed to think Reagan had been the greatest President of all time - perhaps because they were debating in the Reagan Library in the shadow of a bloody great indoor aeroplane.


If I was a Republican voter, I'd give the White House to Rudy Giuliani, I think.
He is able to define the differences betwee Shi'ites and Sunnis. He is not a Bible-thumper. He has the integrity to be the one and only pro-choice voice, dissenting among a mob of pro-life God-botherers.
He keeps reminding us how he turned around New York City and, indeed, he did, even if we're sick of hearing him say so. But he also said that the reason for his success in NYC was the excellence of the bi-partisan team he chose - 6 Republicans and 45 Democrats.
Doesn't that speak the great volume? Wouldn't it make sense just to elect the Democrats?

And the debate verdict is...

There they stood behind their oddly tapering lecterns under the kitsch, over-arty red, white and blue MSNBC debate set - Hillary Clinton, the tiny one, Barack Obama, the tall one, and then John Edwards, Bill Richardson, Chris Dodd, Dennis Kucinich, Joe Biden - and who the hell is that other fellow?

I'd never heard of Mike Gravel, the former senator from Alaska.
Well, we all know him now. The man who said he felt like a potplant perched at the edge of the lineup turned out to be the star of the debate. Talk about fresh blood and fresh perspective. He is an old-fashioned sage. A no-bull man! A realist.
Terrorism, he asserted, "has been with civilization from the beginning, and it will be there till the end. We're going to be as successful fighting terrorism as we are fighting drugs with the war. It doesn't work. What you have to do is to begin to change the whole foreign policy."
On Iran and nuclear threats, he noted that the US was the greatest violator of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. "We signed a pledge that we would begin to disarm, and we're not doing it. We're expanding our nukes. Who the hell are we going to nuke?" he blustered.
He also said this:
"We have no important enemies, We've got to deal with the rest of the world as equals. Who are we afraid of? We spend more on defence than any other country...the military controls not only the budget, it also controls our culture." Wow!

Straw polls following the debate have given Gravel a surprising surge.
On Daily Kos, he has zoomed to a 10 per cent vote, ahead of Kucinich, Biden, Richardson and Dodd - but behind Hillary, Obama and Edwards.

I was pleased with Hillary Clinton, however. She was my winner. She has a confident clarity. Her voice has a headmistress timbre, so we pay attention. She is emotionally controlled - calm and rational. She also is comprehensively informed on any topic you throw her. She can think on her feet. She is diplomatic, always knowing what not to say as well as what to say. She has been criticised for this, but, hell, that is what politics is all about.
She also has been endlessly criticised for insufficient mea culpa about voting for the War on Iraq. How many times does she have to regret it? How many times does she have to say that, if she knew then what she knew now, she would never have done so? Anyway, she said it all again - and was criticised all over again by the likes of Edwards and Kucinich.
It was a rather delicious irony to note that she was the most generous-spirited among the candidates, ready to give credit to others.
Oh, yes, she stood right out.

John Edwards lost ground for me in the debate. He says his $400 haircut was "a mistake which has been remedied now". How? He paid the campaign fund back? That is really not a remedy to the primping vanity of $400 haircuts. Edwards went on to defend his "privileged" millionaire lifestyle by claiming not to have forgotten his roots and went into a Southern boy, Down Home childhood tale of how the family left a restaurant when his millworker father realised he could not afford to pay its prices. I think we have had enough of these cornball anecdotes from Edwards. I, for one, have heard them all before. Furthermore, he was the only candidate to suggest that he felt a need to consult his "Lord" .

Dennis Kucinich also lost ground. I had respected his uncompromising leftist views - but in the debate, he showed a bitchy streak I did not like, sniping at his peers, glancing at Hillary and saying "apologies aren't enough". What the hell? Apologies are enough - and forgiveness is all. Kucinich also admitted to being a gun-owner. Hillary was one of the few who indicated never having owned a weapon, at the same time reiterating careful placations to the mighty gun lobby. Everyone seems to do this.

Bill Richardson is known as the darling of the gun lobby. He is a Westerner and he owns guns - but thinks the screening processes for gun purchase are lacking, as evidenced by Cho and the Virginia Tech shooting.
I found Richards a bit bombastic, something of a hothead and too fond of speaking in lists. From this quaint pressure-cooker appearance, I wouldn't put him in the White House.

Joe Biden is charming and he looks the way a president should look. When asked about his greatest mistake, he said it was in "overestimating the competence of this administration" and "stupid enough to believe that I could influence George W Bush's thinking". He brought the house down when, accused of "uncontrolled verbosity" and being a "gaffe machine" and asked if he would have the self-control for the role of president, he said simply "yes" - and not another word. Silence.

Chris Dodd pointed out his considerable qualifications for the job of president but was underwhelming in debate, especially when he spoke on civil unions versus same-sex marriage. He is for the former and against the latter. I liked his idea of diplomacy rather than war, and his quote: "This administration treats diplomacy as if it were a gift to our opponent; a sign of weakness, not a sign of strength".

Barack Obama was my biggest loser. He seemed extremely nervous, which is forgivable. But he also seemed arrogant. He never makes a speech that does not mention his wife and children, which is beginning to grate - and, gratuitously, he mentioned them again. His big mistake in my book was when he went to town on Iran, showing that he has swallowed, hook, line and sinker, the current media campaign to turn Iran into an immediate threat. It is rather reminiscent of the Iraq and "weapons of mass destruction" campaign. Obama said that he believed that Iran was a nuclear threat as well as the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the form of Hezbollah and Hamas and therefore was a threat to the security of the USA.
My conclusion is that Obama is, indeed, the young and inexperienced candidate - and it showed. He is simply not ready for the presidency.

Hillary is.

McCain and his idiot sheet

It was pouring rain. They had given a "rain venue" address in case of such predicted weather but, as we drove past Veterans' Park in Manchester, there was the set-up for McCain's first stump speech as a presidential candidate, a sea of umbrellas and soggily loyal supporters. Why give a rain address and not use it?
Well, it became clear once McCain was up and talking - staring intently in front of him and rarely making eye contact with his dripping audience. There, hooded against the rain, was a giant teleprompter rolling large text! The man was READING his speech. A presidential candidate who did not know his own words! Is this the makings of the Leader of the Free World?



The nickname for teleprompters in Australia is "the idiot sheet". Need I say more?

Well, yes, of course I must.


Clearly, the logistics of moving the chunky great heap of technology which put words in McCain's mouth was the reason they decided to keep the event in the park. Moving it would throw out the whole schedule. As it was, McCain in his "Straight Talking" bus was late and we all stood about shivering and listening to Country music for over half an hour. "Straight talking" was what we got - a man talking straight to a teleprompt.

I didn't attempt to take notes in the rain, so I did not record the content of the speech. Since it is all written as a script, I am sure it is online and I am sure all the reporters were given nice, neat copies. Indeed, the only spontaneity of this political event was when McCain was forced to respond to the interjectors, calling and chanting for an end to the War on Iraq. He was not quick. First he absurdly thanked them, then he said this reflected American freedom of speech and, finally, he clued up enough to echo the New Hampshire motto: "Live Free Or Die".


There were lots of protesters dotted about outside the roped area of this event - brave and wet and passionate people. Predominant were the Ron Paul people waving placards asking "Who's the real maverick?" McCain likes to call himself the Republican maverick but, in fact, his track record is deeply conservative. Ron Paul of Texas, however, turns out to be the real Republican rebel, a congressman who voted against the Iraq War, against the Patriot Act and against regulating the Internet. I'd never heard of him. He turns out to be an obsetrician, of all things.



Amid the steely veterans in leather jackets and "Chosen Few" caps, there also were peacenicks holding anti-war placards and one couple with a long banner mocking McCain's appalling gaffe of singing "Bomb-bomb-bomb-bomb-bomb-Iran".

Giuliani's America

There was no grandstanding from those introducing Rudy Giuliani to the business voters of Nashua. Simply these succinct declarations:
"New Hampshire is the time-tested proving ground where presidential candidates test their messages with experienced voters to prepare for the long national campaign."
And:
"Grassroots civic engagement is taken very seriously in New Hampshire."

Rudy echoed this:
"There is no better place to do it than New Hampshire where it is traditional. Tradition is important in politics. The idea that NH is the first in the national primary is one that I endorsed a long time ago and now I am running for president, I endorse it more!"

This gained a satisfied titter from the business crowd.

Like most speakers, the former NY Mayor opened with some frivolity - an indulgence in jubilation about the recent historic four home runs hit by the New York Yankees baseball team.
"My wife says the Yankees affect my moods," he admitted, perhaps unwisely, since I, for one, immediately started envisaging a president with the international grumpies because his team had lost.
Rudy went on to recall that he had suggested to Hillary Clinton when they were competing for the NY senator spot that, instead of a conventional senatorial campaign debate which bored viewers, there should be a Yankees trivia debate. Hmm.

"Baseball statistics are endlessly fascinating - and so are economic statistics," he said, in a very nice segue into campaign patter and his "four policies for growth".

"These are not ideas, they are things I've done, things I've brought about," he bragged. "Don't just listen to what I say but listen to what I've done."

Lowering tax came first - to allow private enterprise to grow and hence, allow the national economy to compete with the rest of the world.
"The Democrats blur that line," he said.
Rudy said he had done it in NYC and "if you can do it in New York, you can do it in Washington, DC".
He went on to expand on how, by lowering hotel occupancy tax in NYC, tax revenue had increased.
"Democrats don't understand. Liberal columnists don't understand but if you lower tax, you collect more because more people are using and therefore there is more revenue."
Hotels consequently employed more people and the assorted services grew accordingly, he explained, adding that his term as Mayor had been described as "the most conservative term of office in America in the last 50 years".
Jobs had grown by 30 per cent and fiscal deficit had turned to a multi-billion dollar surplus.
"The Democrats are working out which taxes to raise and I'm working out which to lower," he said.
He cited Capital Gains tax, lowered to encourage more people to invest, and Death Tax (known among Democrats as Estate Tax) whihc he said was an unfair tax which hurt families.

Next Giuliani wanted to reduce the size of the government and reduce government spending, as he did in his Mayoral role.
"Spending restraint and economic growth has to come from the Mayor or President. Executives have to understand this. It has to be part of your DNA."

He went on to criticise over-regulation which is "the same as taxes", and to call for sound monetary policy.
"You have to run government in an effective way, like it is a business. You have to pretend that it is a business," he declared.
This meant constant measuring of performance levels for which he recommended to ComStat Program (which turns out to be an accountability measuing program which he used on reforming the police in NY).
"Measure every week. Are you achieving this?" he reiterated.
This struck me as a form of performance-based management so ferocious that it would leave its staff in a constant state of neurotic stress. Clearly Rudy Giuliani is a tough boss.

He spoke also of US Ambassadors and the State Department with its "overriding purpose to expose America to the world and, secondly to expose the rest of the world to America."

He concluded by saying that people had said it was impossible to reduce crime in New York and that he had done it.
"I'm good at doing impossible things. I like to do impossible things," he triumphed.

The breakfast business crowd, the mass of men in dark suits and ties, might have been devoted Republicans - but they also were New Hampshirites. They had questions and their questions were confronting.

Dependence on foreign oil came first.
Rudy did the old political sidestep by saying "let me give you a slightly different perspective" - and then tackled the issue by suggesting that as Chinese and Indian populations emerged from poverty to middle class, the idea was to sell them things - such as potential energy technology, an American "growth industry". Of course, one needed "to put the emphasis on the private sector" with incentives from the Federal Government to develop this. But this was a "tremendous opportuniy" for the USA.
"I'm a glass half full person," he declared.
He was also in favour of more nuclear power for the US. There has not been a new nuclear power station in 30 years "because some special interests are frightened".
"Nobody has died as a result of nuclear power," he said, adding that wind, solar and carbon sequestration were also worthy of attention. And that OPEC was something of an obstacle as "a cartel that fixes prices". "If it operateed in the US, it would be illegal," he snarled.

Asked about Federal Government entitlement and pharmaceutical subsidies, he returned to the free market theme - "competitive and profit-driven"
"If the goverment takes over, the costs go up," he said.
He envisaged tax incentives for people to buy health insurance, to make a market of individual consumers, suggesting a $15,000 deduction would encourage people to choose $9,000 insurance policies and pocket the rest of the money. My eyebrows shot up.
He mentioned health vouchers, too, and different health products.
"Let's create a vast consumer market," he trumpeted.
"We'll have socialised medicine if we do what the Democrats want."

A black Marine Corps veteran asked about what was to be done for disabled and fallen comrades.
Rudy was passionate about the obligation to give them more support, telling of how he would always visit injuired NY police or firemen in hospital "not only out of respect but to ensure they got high quality care". And they did.
"Whenever the Mayor showed up, the head of the hospital turned up," he laughed.
"What I wanted of these men was that they take heroic risks, so what I owed them was to take care of them. We owe this to veterans, too. We must fulfil our basic humanitarian obligation - which will encourage people to serve. We're going to be a volunteer country."

One last question - and it was Iraq.
The former Mayor saw Iraq as part of the War on Terror and was strongly against the Democrat move to put a date on withdrawal of troops, believing that this simply informed the enemy. He saw an almost limitless terrorist threat from within Iraq and from Iran and Syria and Afghanistan. He thought it was time to get Bin Laden, to ensure Iran did not have nuclear power, and to pursue terrorists "on offence, not defence".
He defended the Patriot Act's incursions into privacy and as "uncomfortable but essential" as yet more of the "offensive against terrorism".
"We are not a warlike country. We are at war because they want to come here and kill us," he concluded.
At which one could only hear, loud a clear, a perpetuation of Bush Administration policy. The only difference was that Giuliani had not mentioned God.

Obama style and substance

The hype surrounding Barak Obama's run for Democrat presidential nomination has worried me a bit. It is highly youth-driven and youth-oriented in a way that reminds of the Howard Dean campaign wherein, when the voting crunch came, those droves of youthful enthusiasts had dissolved into the woodwork and did not seem to be reflected in the ballot numbers.
But Barak is young. He is new. He is fresh and vivid. He is sensationally bright. He is unsullied by the shadows of a long political history and, what's more, he is an open book with a fierce sense of ethics. Hence, he is what one might dare to pun "a Barak-away" candidate.
He told us: "I'm not just interested in winning an election. I'm interested in transforming the country".
He said he sought "a commonsense, practical, non-ideological agenda for change."
He cites his background as a community organiser as a unique qualification for the rallying of people.
"What I have is a really good talent for bringing people together to solve problems," he declared.

I had heard that he was less interested in listening to the sound of his own voice than in that of others - and it proved to be so in Nashua. His preamble speech was relatively brief. After commenting on the public loss of confidence in the political process, he explained his belief in the way "we are connected as a people".
"If a child in Nashua cannot read, we must care, even if it is not our child. If there is someone foraging in a dumpster, it diminishes us as a nation."
While hearing such sentiments of social justice from a politician pleases me no end, it was not what the Nashua people wanted to know.
They revved up when he noted that an economy that was good for Wall Street still left the real people living from paycheck to paycheck.
But when he said that the country was involved in "a war that should never have been authorised", they erupted into a storm of applause.
The Iraq War has become profoundly unpopular among these people.
I have noted that where, only a year ago, cars en masse were smothered with "Support the War", "Support Our Troops" stickers, they are now few and far between.

Obama, of course, has been an opponent of the Iraq War from the outset. One of the few to have dared to speak out when the country had been methodically post 9/11 brainwashed. He has articulated a precise policy for bringing the combat troops home by March 31, 2008 - which, he says, gives Iraq plenty of time to get internally re-adjusted.
Since Obama's style is to listen to and interact with the people, he gave over most of the meeting time to questions wherein people could articulate their concerns.
Naturally, Iraq came up again, a woman saying: "I've just learned that my nephew is being sent to Iraq and I can't breathe. When can I breathe again?"
Obama expressed his sorrow for her and said that everywhere he went he was encountering agonised people who had offspring either going to, in, home wounded or dead from the War in Iraq. He had already expressed fury at President Bush's intention to veto the Bill calling for troop withdrawal. Bush was "obstinate", he said, lamenting the senators who would not allow Congress to override the veto. Two NH senators are among those who stand in the way.

Of course there were questions about health insurance, one man saying that, diagnosed with prostate cancer, his uninsured brother-in-law faced only two options - "bankrupt the family or die". Obama expounded on his principles for universal health care, the two trillion dollars spent in the USA on health "more than any other country in the world" which, absurdly yielded such inequity and suggested that the USA needed to "adopt a system similar to other countries".
An Obama administration would have the government negotiate for the best prices for prescription drugs, too, and not allow the pharmaceutical companies to keep making 17 per cent profit margins, he promised.
Questions from veterans opened the can of worms of the tragedy of Iraq, of the mass of undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder in the returned troops, many of whom ended up homeless and on the streets. There was a question about redundancies to which he said that new bankruptcy laws were needed to prevent companies from going under to save paying out staff pension obligations and then reforming as another company. There were questions about pensions and, extraordinarily, one about gun control.
This is the question the politicians are avoiding post the Virginia Tech massacre.
Obama trod lightly.
He wondered if there was anything that may have guaranteed that violence would not be seen that day at Virginia Tech, or could have lessened it. The issues he saw were that "they are still selling handguns to crazy people".
"There is supposed to be a system to screen backgrounds. The system failed,'' he said.
Citing the use of a semi-automatic weapon with a clip allowing 19 shots, he said:
"I don't hunt. I respect hunters and sportsmen. No one is infringing on their rights. But I don't know any self-respecting hunter who needs 19 rounds. No one shoots 19 rounds at a deer." Ignoring or not hearing interjections that no one hunts deer with handguns, he concluded that there was a need for "sensible laws in place".
That is as good as one is going to get on the election trail. No one, except perhaps fearless minority leftist Dennis Kucinich, would stick out their necks as targets of the gun lobby.

Obama returned to safer ground with other questions, responding on issues such as disease prevention, closing tax breaks for companies who moved their operations offshore to elude tax and more on the Iraq war.
"We have dug ourselves such a deep hole. Ending Iraq is 100 billion dollars saved but we haven't paid for it. We borrowed it," he exclaimed.

When he reached time for the last question, there were hands waving all over the hall. Oddly, Obama chose to give the question to the one and only child present - "a chance for the next generation".
"I don't know much," said the little boy. "I just want to know what do you have that Hillary Clinton and John Edwards don't have?"
The crowd dissolved into laughter. Obama with it. "Are you sure he's not a midget?" he asked. "Is he a plant?"
When mirth abated, he tackled the question.
"I try not to compare the other candidates," he said. "We are on the same team. Hillary Clinton gets things done and does great work. John Edwards has great ideas. I like them both and I think they'd make great presidents...but we are on the same team. We're all trying out for quarterback."