Mike Gravel is feisty for a man pushing 80. While I am
normally skittish about allowing bottom-tier candidates who have no
shot at winning take up space in debates, Gravel’s performance in
the first Democratic presidential face-off convinced me
otherwise.
With all of the other candidates saying all the predictable
things, Gravel stole the show with a style that combined the ideas
of Noam Chomsky with the temperament of Jake LaMotta. “After
standing up with them, some of these people frighten me,” the
former U.S. Senator from Alaksa said about his Democratic rivals at
the debate held at South Carolina State University in Orangeburg.
“They frighten me. When you have mainline candidates that turn
around and say that there’s nothing off the table with respect to
Iran. That’s code for using nukes.”
Asked by moderator Brian Williams to clarify who exactly he had
in mind, Gravel said the “top-tier” candidates. He then fingered
Sen. Joe Biden specifically. “You have a certain arrogance,” he
said to the Delaware lawmaker. “You want to tell the Iraqis how to
run their country. I gotta tell you, we should just plain get
out.”
While Republicans often accuse Democrats of not having a plan
for Iraq, the same charge can’t be leveled toward Iron Mike. “How
do you get out?” he asked. “You pass a law. Not a resolution, a law
making it a felony to stay there.” Not bad for a lawmaker who has
been out of power since January 1981, and whose poll numbers are
statistically at zero.
When he wasn’t serving as a punching bag for Gravel, Biden
provided some comic relief of his own.
Noting his reputation as a verbose “gaffe machine,” Williams
asked Biden: “Can you reassure voters in this country that you
would have the discipline you would need on the world stage,
Senator?” Displaying a quick wit worthy of Calvin Coolidge, Biden
simply responded, “Yes.” He then remained silent as laughter grew
in the audience.
George W. Bush was mocked when he identified Jesus as his
favorite philosopher in a Republican presidential primary debate,
but many analysts called the answer brilliant in hindsight. What
will future political historians say of John Edwards? Asked to
identify his “moral leader” the North Carolinian paused for nine
seconds, before he answered, “I don’t think I could identify one
person that I consider to be my moral leader.” He went on to
mention his Lord, his wife, and his father. I bet if he had it to
do all over again he would have immediately answered Elizabeth.
Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, is happy that Republicans demonize
her. “I take it as a perverse form of flattery actually,” she said.
“If they weren’t worried, they wouldn’t be so vitriolic in their
criticism of me.” Given the anger she’s elicited from liberals over
her failure to apologize for voting for the Iraq War, it’s becoming
a strategy of hers to convince them that she’s worth voting for
because she’d rankle Republicans more than any other Democrat. When
asked to respond to Rudy Giuliani’s recent statements that America
would be safer with a Republican as the next president, Clinton
attacked President Bush. Always a safe bet.
In response to a question about the Virginia Tech shooting,
Hillary showed another one
of her strategies — invoking the first Clinton presidency. “I
remember very well when I accompanied Bill to Columbine after that
massacre…and feeling that we had to do more to keep guns out of
the hands of the criminals and the mentally unstable,” she
said.
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, meanwhile, was forced to defend
his strong support for gun rights. As a former U.N. Ambassador and
cabinet secretary, Richardson has the most impressive resume of the
eight candidates on hand, but he delivered a disappointing
performance. At times, he seemed to be struggling for words, and he
failed to exploit his experience as an international diplomat to
come across as more worldly than his rivals. But his biggest flub
was identifying Byron “Whizzer” White as his favorite Supreme Court
Justice, which has already drawn flak on the left side of the blogosphere
because White dissented in Roe v. Wade.
Barack Obama, meanwhile, was able to hold his own, and used
Gravel and Rep. Dennis Kucinich as foils to make himself seem more
statesmanlike. “There is no contradiction between us intelligently
using our military and in some cases lethal force to take out
terrorists and at the same time building the sort of alliances and
trust around the world that has been lacking over the past six
years,” Obama said.
But Kucinich argued that Obama’s foreign policy would lead to
preemptive war against Iran.
“I think it would be a profound mistake to initiate a war with
Iran, but have no doubt, Iran possessing nuclear weapons will be a
major threat to us and to the region,” Obama said, imploring
Kucinich, “Let me finish” when the Ohio Congressman tried to
interject.
Gravel, meanwhile, said that the U.S. has actually been the
world’s biggest violator of nuclear non-proliferation. “We’re
expanding our nukes,” Gravel thundered. “Who the hell are we gonna
nuke? Tell me Barack, who do you want to nuke?”
“I’m not planning to nuke anybody right now, Mike,” a grinning
Obama said. “I promise.”
But while Obama may have gotten the better of the
Kucinich-Gravel tag team, Brian Williams got the better of him.
Williams asked the young Senator from Illinois to name America’s
three most important allies. Obama started out with the European
Union, mentioned Afghanistan, talked about Japan and our relations
with an emerging China. That was the end of his answer until
Williams pointed out a glaring omission. There is already
considerable skepticism about Obama in pro-Israel circles, and his
failure to take advantage of an easy opportunity to show his
solidarity with our friends in Jerusalem is sure to raise some
eyebrows. When prompted, Obama expressed support for Israel, but
the fact that he didn’t do so when asked an open-ended question
suggests the issue isn’t very close to his heart.
Philip Klein is a reporter for The American
Spectator.
