The Perfect Benghazi Article

Some of you might be thinking: I'm sure that there's not much to all the conservative fuss about Benghazi, but I'm open to the possibility of some Obama Administration malfeasance...I wish there was some way for me to catch up on what Benghazi is really supposed to be about without having to dive into the crazy.

Well, if that's you, then there's a Politico article now just for you. It's from yesterday afternoon, and titled "Huckabee: Benghazi will drive Obama from office."

It seems that, the Huck says, "as the information and facts begin to come out, it will become so obvious that there was a concerted and very, very deliberate attempt to mislead this country." Also? "[W]hen the facts come out, they will not be able to stand." Indeed, "this goes all the way to the heart of the integrity of the United States government." You think that's scary? Well, "as the facts come out, I think we’re going to see something startling." After all, "When a president lies to the American people and is part of a cover-up, he cannot continue to govern." Don't forget, "as bad as Watergate was, because it broke the trust between the president and the people, no one died. This is more serious because four Americans did in fact die.”

I'm really not leaving anything out; that's what the Huck has to say, or at least that's what's reported in this Politico piece. There's a cover-up, and the facts will come out, and there you go. What's being covered up? Not even a hint. What facts will emerge? No suggestions at all. Apparently it's from his radio show on Monday...maybe he went into extensive detail that Politico didn't think was relevant to the case for why Barack Obama would be driven from office. Maybe he didn't. My sense? It doesn't matter! 

You know, there's some historical precedent for all of this. Tip O'Neill, soon after becoming House Majority Leader, started getting the House ready for impeachment proceedings, well before the avalanche of revelations on Watergate began. Not because he knew or even suspected exactly what would show up when investigations continued, but because he believed that Richard Nixon's White House was up to so many things that if it unraveled impeachment would be the solution. I think that's basically what's happening here, and presumably what happened with Bill Clinton, too: Republicans are just certain that there's a ton of illegal, unethical, and politically toxic material that would be unearthed if only they could put a special prosecutor on the job. 

Now, O'Neill thought that because he listened carefully to what people were talking about. My guess is that Huckabee et al. are listening carefully...to each other, and working themselves over nothing. Or maybe the Huck doesn't believe any of it, but just cares about the ratings for his radio show. At any rate, and pending something new, this Politico piece really is everything you need to know about Benghazi.

Was the Huck Winnowed?

Did Mike Huckabee drop out of the fight for the nomination because he lost? Or did he not enter that fight, because he chose not to?

Why does it matter? Well, for academic research, it matters because if we want to discover how the process works and what causes some candidates to win and others to lose, then it's quite important to correctly assess which candidates ran. For the press, it's important because there's at least a case to be made that reporters should concentrate on covering real candidates, not just speculating about those who aren't in. And I suppose it's important for future candidates for the same reason it's important for academics; they, too, want to know what it takes to win, and that involves knowing how candidates lose.

The problem is that we really don't know, and even worse, it's possible that we can't know. It's possible that Huck himself doesn't know. That's the nature of the current nomination process, in which many important events happen well before formal declarations of candidacy. Huckabee had to choose between running for president and continuing his lucrative TV career, but it seems likely that his assessment of the odds of a presidential run succeeding was part of that decision. If Barack Obama had been at 35% approval rather than around 50%; if various GOP bigshots were clamoring for a Huck run instead of a Daniels or a Christie campaign; if whatever efforts he did make went better than they did....well, maybe he's in today, instead of out. One of the variables here is probably how much the potential candidate wants it, but it's probably better to think of that as a factor, rather than the whole story. That is, if Huck wanted it more maybe he's in -- but also, if he wanted it at his current level but his proto-campaign was going better, maybe he's in.

The thing to remember is that the nomination battle generally lasts for three years or so, and that formal declarations of candidates happen very late in the process thanks to a variety of laws and customs, most notably campaign finance laws. That's why Conor Friedersdorf's complaint that the press shouldn't cover undeclared candidates is really wrong. He's right that some press "in or out" speculation is pretty mindless, but restricting coverage to declared candidates would mean missing big portions of the contest. In fact, in many cycles, including both the Democrats and the Republicans in 2000, almost all of the important stuff happened very early, certainly before the voters got involved beginning in Iowa, and probably before anyone declared their candidacy.

So, Huck? Well, he didn't do much to run for the 2012 nomination, but he did do some things. I think the case that he was in at any point is less clear than it was for, say, Haley Barbour...whether he was winnowed out, perhaps, is more about how one looks at things than an objective, clear, fact. That's a mess for research, and a mess for reporters, but if it's the truth then it's probably better to work with the truth than to ignore it on the grounds of analytic simplicity, no?

Huck Out -- Who Remains?

So Mike Huckabee isn't running for president in 2012.

Not, to be sure, a huge surprise; unlike, say, Haley Barbour or even Sarah Palin, Huck never really acted much like a candidate this time around. But it's a big deal, regardless, since he certainly would have been a serious contender if he got in.

Quick update on the field. Since I first said that I counted only eight plausible GOP nominees (about six weeks ago), two of those have been scratched off the list: Barbour, and Huck.

That leaves two plausible nominees who are actively running (Romney and Pawlenty); two who have sort of run, but haven't committed (Daniels and Palin); and two who have stayed completely out and say they're out, but who I believe would still be plausible if they jumped in very late (Perry and Jeb Bush). I think the big question at this point is how long the window remains open for those last four. June 1? August 1? Surely not later than that? Or has it already passed? Note that it's the kind of deadline that depends on the (potential) candidate -- it has to do with how long it would take candidates to raise the resources (money, staff, endorsements, name recognition, the inclination of the press to take them seriously) necessary for winning.

At this point, I'm not going to scratch anyone else off my list, but I'm certainly open to arguments that I'm overrating the chances of Daniels, Palin, Perry, and Bush if they decided now to get in all the way. And, just to be clear: I'm not predicting anything about those four one way or another. As far as I know, Jeb and Perry are out, end of story. All I'm saying is that if they wake up tomorrow and suddenly want to run that they would be alive, while in my view no one else could make that claim.

Oh, and for what it's worth...the six people I consider plausible nominees now have a combined 60% of the Intrade market, down from the 72% (for eight candidates) when I first looked at it back in March. Since I believe those six have at least a 90% chance at the nomination, and perhaps as high as 98%...well, either Intrade junkies are nuts or I am.

What Mattered This Week?

I'm going to need your help here; I have no idea what mattered this week. I know, as Chevy Chase would say, that Osama bin Laden is still dead...I know that the Huck is going to tell us what he's doing later today. Beyond that, I know that I'm a good week behind on everything going on in the world; sometimes, travel and work commitments will just do that to you, I guess. So I'm going to need your help: what do you think mattered this week?

Huck and the Birthers 2

I should note that Mike Huckabee is now saying that he meant to say "Indonesia" and not "Kenya" and therefore is being unfairly slammed by everyone as a birther. Whatever; as I said yesterday, to me Kenyan anti-imperialist stuff does the same work. Not to mention that the Churchill's bust thing that Huck repeated in the interview is yet another invented story (i.e. a lie), as Ben Smith points out (see above link). Regardless, I have three more quick notes.

David Tomlin, in a comment to my item, makes the very useful point that whatever the main US narrative about imperialism may be, some religious communities may think of imperialists as Christians spreading the faith to the masses.

Steve M. thinks that I was wrong to frame the D'Souza discussion as I did, because Republicans "all now sincerely agree that Obama's a left-wing radical who hates America, Israel, and the West, as well as a pure economic redistributionist indistinguishable from any card-carrying communist." I disagree, I guess; I think Conor Friedersdorf has this one right when he says most conservative movement elites don't really believe the junk they say, but that alas not everyone is in on the gag.

Tomlin's comment was substantive and interesting and all, but I really had to quote this gem (also from comments) from Geoff G.:

Huck gives every impression that he has not spent a whole lot of time reading briefing books trying to bone up on the substantive stuff a president needs to know, but he's had time to read D'Souza's hit job. It's kind of like an internist deciding to make a mid-career change to cardiology and the first thing she does is read a book by Michael DeBakey's valet about how rudely DeBakey treated his staff.

Nice.

Huck and the Birthers

Today's birther news is an interview with Mike Huckabee in which he says that he believes that Barack Obama was born American (based on the impeccable logic that if he wasn't, the Hillary Clinton campaign would have pounced on it), but adds:

But then if you think about it, his perspective as growing up in Kenya with a Kenyan father and grandfather, their view of the Mau Mau Revolution in Kenya is very different than ours because he probably grew up hearing that the British were a bunch of imperialists who persecuted his grandfather.

Of course, Barack Obama grew up in Hawaii (with a stop in Indonesia), not Kenya. Dave Weigel declares Huckabee innocent of birtherism, saying that he's just "ill-informed."

I don't buy it. This is where birtherism gets tricky. In its wildest forms, birtherism is about a massive conspiracy to install a conscious, deliberate enemy of the United States in the White House. It's nice that Mike Huckabee doesn't subscribe to that. But in its more plausible, and presumably more popular forms, it's really just a way of saying that Barack Obama isn't a "real" American.

Pushing the entirely phony Kenyan anti-imperialism idea is basically just as nutters and destructive as believing that relatively benign version of birtherism. What matters to most birthers isn't really whether Barack Obama is literally eligible for the presidency; it's the idea that he's somehow anti-America. The whole point of Dinesh D'Souza's nonsense is to allow for the latter without needing the former.

And, it can't be said often enough, being against imperialism is and almost always has been the policy of the United States of America. OK, granted, there's plenty of hypocrisy over the years in the US version of anti-imperialism, but still, that's certainly been the policy with regard to Africa, and it's at least somewhat bizarre for Huck or D'Souza or Newt or anyone to claim that opposing British rule in Kenya is a sign of unAmerican beliefs.

Weigel points out that D'Souza's silly book was "One of the conservative literary hits of 2010, like it or not." That's true -- but is it really going to be a litmus test for GOP presidential candidates in 2012 that they have to parrot back whatever crazed ravings are found in the "literary hits" of movement conservatives?

If so, we're in for a very long two years.