A relatively new website called PublicSquare.net is up and running, and I am the new Politics Editor there.  It's a site dedicated to promoting intelligent debate and discourse on the issues of the day in such areas as politics, law, religion, and society.  By all means, do check it out.

The conventional wisdom in politics is that the best way to ensure victory in a general election is to avoid a bloody primary.  I'm not sold on this particular bill of goods.

It goes without saying that an incumbent is always weakened by a primary challenge.  However, I believe that is less because they are weakened by the challenge than because their weakness invited the challenge in the first place.  In other words, an incumbent who is vulnerable to an intraparty fight for the nomination is less likely to win re-election to begin with.

In a wide open field of candidates, however, an easy primary fight usually results in the coronation of a candidate whose response mechanisms and perseverance are untested.  The result is typically that the campaign is caught flat-footed when the opposition hits them with the customary mud-slinging that has become the hallmark of political life in America.  A couple of recent examples:

1992:  Then-Governor Bill Clinton had to survive a Democratic Party nominating process that more closely resembled a minefield than a primary election.  He had to come back from the Gennifer Flowers scandal and the alleged 'draft-dodging' scandal just to finish second in New Hampshire.  A strong Super Tuesday showing seemed to wrap up the nomination for Clinton, but surprise victories in the northeast by former California Governor Jerry Brown extended the nominating process well beyond any date that pundits and politicos thought safe for a candidate for President.  But the George H.W. Bush campaign learned that fall just how tough Clinton and his team had become, as they counterpunched their way to electoral victory.

2000:  Vice-President Al Gore got a scare from Senator Bill Bradley, but he recovered in time for the primaries, sweeping to victory without losing a single state.  On the Republican side, Texas Governor George W. Bush fought Senator John McCain tooth-and-nail for the GOP nomination.  Bush won Iowa; McCain won New Hampshire; Bush won South Carolina; McCain won Michigan.  And on it went, until consecutive Super Tuesday contests sealed the victory for Bush, who went on to win the Presidency against the heavily favored Democratic standard-bearer, Al Gore.

2004:  Senator John Kerry's surprise win in Iowa slingshotted him to the nomination, as his momentum propelled him from victory to victory.  Senator John Edwards and General Wesley Clark each won a state, but these were exceptions, not the rule.  Kerry glided to victory after Iowa, only to face a bare-knuckled Bush-Cheney campaign in the fall and to be caught seemingly unawares by the "Swift-Boat Vets for Truth".  His campaign's sluggish response to these attacks resulted in the whittling away of what had been a significant lead in the polls until Bush finally caught him and went into the lead to stay.

Make no mistake:  hard-fought primaries are costly affairs.  However, there is an upside.  Campaigns that face challenges are more likely to sharpen their operations and find their weaknesses sooner rather than later.  They develop a flexibility and agility that is invaluable in the full-contact world of politics.  Given the choice between a coronation and a contest, I'll take the contest every time.

 This opinion is probably a lot easier to hold when you don't live in Israel. (HT:  The Drudge Report)

Not a good time to go wobbly on a nuclear Iran.

My gut level feeling:  President Bush did a very good job delivering this State of the Union address.  He was serious and strong; complimentary of his political rival--and new House Speaker--Nancy Pelosi; and he leveled with America.  He addressed the elephant in the room--the troop "surge" in Iraq--but did not neglect other key issues such as health care, immigration, energy, education, and the federal deficit.

When he speaks to America, Bush is typically well received.  Virtually every time he has taken his arguments on Iraq to the people, he has seen his poll numbers improve.  Why he has not done so regularly since his re-election is beyond me.  Did the country's response to his handling of Katrina sting him enough to force him into a self-sustained bubble?  Did he think that his victory over John Kerry meant that he'd won the argument and no longer needed to keep his constituents in the loop?  Whatever the case, I am convinced that much of the country's fatigue over Iraq is due to a CEO who did not keep his board of directors--the American voters--informed and engaged.  If you do not talk to the people about what you are doing, they will assume you are doing nothing.  When American warriors are dying, that perception is politically lethal.  Mistakes will be forgiven.  However, perceived inertia as the casualty count mounts will not.

President Bush needs to be aggressive.  He needs to win the American public over again.  They are the ones paying the taxes that fund this war.  It is their sons and daughters whose lives are on the line.  And if the polls are correct, the large majority of them do not approve of the President's proposed "troop surge".  The President serves at the pleasure of the people, not the other way around.  If he wants their trust again, he must earn it.  He must fight for it.  The tone of Tuesday night's State of the Union address seems to indicate that he realizes this.  However it is the tone of the next few days that will tell the tale.  Bush and his allies--few though they are these days on Capitol Hill--need to mount a full-court press.

No let-downs.  No turnovers.  It's crunch time.  Pick up the ball and drive it home.

Full disclosure time.  I was a McCainiac in 2000.  That is until the week he compared Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and their followers to the "forces of darkness."  That pretty well sealed his campaign's doom for me and many of my ilk.  For we all understood that no matter how much we might disagree with the methods of certain elements of the Christian right, the Republican nominee would need every one of their votes in order to prevail against Vice President Al Gore in the fall.  The good Senator had just alienated a huge number of them.  So as he melted down, my vote changed, and the following Tuesday, I and many of my friends and family--McCainiacs all--marched dutifully to the polls and registered our approval of George W. Bush.

Fast forward six years, and John McCain is one of the frontrunners for the nomination once again.  His main competitor, if the polls are to be believed, is former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a social liberal, thrice married, bearing little resemblance to the conservative base of the modern GOP.  Following closely behind the two leaders is Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, a relative neophyte to elective office having only served four years, and a Mormon, which could present a serious hurdle in attempts to rally evangelical voters to his cause.  Yet McCain--a pro-life, pro-military conservative who was a foot soldier of the Reagan Revolution in the 1980's--is far from being the Republican Party's presumptive nominee.  Instead, he continues to struggle to make inroads with the conservative activists who will make up much of the primary electorate one year from now.  Why is this?  What does the right have against John McCain?

As near as I can tell, it boils down to one word:  trust.  They do not trust him to put the principles of the Republican Party ahead of his own ambition.  Mavericks are well-liked in general election campaigns, but they face uphill battles when it comes to winning their own party's nominations.  That is because by definition party activists demand party loyalty come election time.  Over the last six years GOP stalwarts have watched McCain go against the base on campaign finance reform, judges (remember the Gang of 14), and immigration.  This post by conservative radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt analyzing a new Vanity Fair piece on the Senator crystalizes the point.  John McCain, Hewitt insists, just "doesn't get it".

Senator McCain faces a number of potential obstacles.  If elected, he would be the oldest man to take the Presidential oath of office at 73.  He has twice fought melanoma (and won), and bears the scars of that and his five years of captivity in a North Vietnamese POW camp.  But these potential challenges do not, I believe, represent any serious threat to his candidacy.  The real danger lies in the lack of faith many of the rank and file seem to have in his party credentials.

No matter how attractive a candidate is to the general public, he or she must first pass muster with the party faithful.  For McCain to succeed he must focus his energies during the next 12 months on capturing the hearts and minds of the voters who will choose the GOP's Presidential nominee in 2008.  He may well be a favorite among voters of all stripes, but before he can dance with them, he must first dance with the ones "that brung him". 

The criticism that is always leveled at military planners is their insistence on preparing for the last war, not the next one.  In other words, rather than developing strategies for a new battlefield, they are locked into the strategies that were useful on the old one.  The same danger lurks in the shadows for political strategists.  A good politician is looking forward and preparing for the next campaign, not the last one.  This story in the Boston Globe indicates that Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is trying to avoid this pitfall by preparing his campaign for battle in the blogosphere (HT: Political Wire and Hugh Hewitt).

Romney's a force to be reckoned with.  His campaign is already moving fast and carving out a niche.  Missteps by the Giuliani or McCain campaigns--assuming, of course, that Giuliani and McCain officially run--will likely be capitalized on immediately by the Romney camp.  If he counterpunches as effectively as he strategizes, the favorites are in for a long road to the convention.  And these political instincts may be just what the GOP needs to head off a Democratic Party energized by their victories in 2006.

It has become downright predictable.  Every time a poll is published showing former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani leading the field of GOP candidates for 2008, the response from pundits is the same:  Voters don't know him yet.  They don't know he's pro-choice, pro-gay rights, pro-gun control.  Since when was America's Mayor cloaked in anonymity?

Rudy Giuliani has been in the public eye since his much publicized war with the New York crime bosses in the 1980's.  During his two terms at the helm of America's largest city, he was one of the nation's best known political figures, and hardly a news story could be done on him without mention of the presumed contradiction of his liberal social views with his membership in the Republican Party. 

Voters don't know his positions yet?  Are you kidding me?  The media spent eight years wondering aloud how such a socially liberal politician could be a member of the Republican Party.  They're the one's who've made his opinions so universally known!

Rudy Giuliani's social views put him at odds with many Republican primary voters.  That much is certain.  What is also certain is that the global war on terror is a fight for our very survival and is a war that will outlast the current President, and likely a few more Presidents to come.  In Giuliani we have a man who was at ground zero of the opening volley in this war.  It was he who managed the city of New York's response to the 9/11 attacks and it was he who gave back a charitable contribution to the Saudis when their representative blamed the attack on America's support for Israel.  His resolve and his mettle have already been tested, and if public opinion polls are any indication, Americans like what they have seen.

The War on Terror has only just begun.  If national security remains the top issue in 2008 as it was in 2004, a Giuliani candidacy is to be underestimated only at his opponents' political peril.