Society

Monday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

What the candidates want from Iowa

It is now only 4 days until Iowa Caucuses get the 2008 presidential contest under way. The most precious commodity that Iowa can bestow upon a candidate is momentum; the result in Iowa can set the tone for the rest of the campaign.  So, here is Coffee House’s guide to what the leading candidates want out of Iowa. The Democrats Current polls show John Edwards, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in an effective three way tie.  John Edwards: The Southern populist needs to win Iowa. If he doesn’t, he might as well drop out of the race.  Hillary Clinton: Winning would obviously be nice and there are signs that things

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Son of Fraser

My favourite Ronald Reagan quote is how government is like a baby’s alimentary canal: endless appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other. I now have the chance to study the biological side of this analogy in the form of my (as-yet-unnamed) son, born this weekend. So I’ll be away from Coffee House for a short while, but back soon.

Sunday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

New blog alert!

Hurrah! In addition to her blogging at Hit & Run the estimable Kerry Howley now has a blog of her own too. Which reminds me that I’ve been meaning to suggest you also scurry over to Will Wilkinson’s longer-established place too. Lots of good stuff on immigration an guest workers at both blogs with, I imagine, even more goodies to come…

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Who will get knocked out by the Romney one-two punch?

The Democratic presidential contest is getting the lion’s share of the media coverage because the two main competitors in it are political superstars whose candidacies would be historic and because whoever is the Democratic nominee will start out as the favourite in 2008. But the Republic race is, perhaps, even more fascinating with the very future of the conservative coalition at stake. It is certainly more fluid with four Republicans—Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney—still having plausible paths to the nomination.   Romney (pictured) is the only Republican with a realistic chance of winning both Iowa and New Hampshire, the two crucial early contests. He is second in

Friday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Taxi drivers prepare to flood America. Or, further evidence for Huckabee’s buffoonery.

Via Andrew, here’s Huckabee on Benazir Bhutto’s murder: “We ought to have an immediate, very clear monitoring of our borders and particularly to make sure if there’s any unusual activity of Pakistanis coming into the country. We just need to be very, very thorough in looking at every aspect of our own security internally because, again, we live in a very, very dangerous time,” Huckabee said during a news conference Thursday night in West Des Moines. Over Christmas lunch a friend warned me not to be quite so dismissive of Huckabee. He’s not just a hick I was told. And perhaps he isn’t: this answer cannily ties security (whatever that

Alex Massie Alex Massie

That was the year that was 2007

Most Depressing Political Argument of the Year: Whether the United States should be in the business of torturing people or not. Opera: Washington National Opera’s superb production of Janacek’s Jenufa was the operatic highlight of the year for me. Terrificly dark and pitiless and gloomy: just the sort of emotionally knackering experience you want from a night out. Book of the Year: Well, the 144th edition of Wisden did not disappoint: 1664 pages of cricketing goodness and an annual treat to be cherished. Among other books published this year: John Robb’s Brave New War was a disturbing highlight. Brian Doherty’s history of the American libertarian movement, Radicals for Capitalism, is

Alex Massie Alex Massie

End of year trivia

The King Williams College annual quiz is perhaps the daddy of all such end-of-year brain-wreckers. The 2007 edition is here. Good luck! UPDATE: After a first (and Google-free!) run through the questions I am reasonably confident about the answers to about 25 of the 180 questions and have an idea about a couple of dozen of the others. As I say, it’s not for the faint of heart.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

What will fill the vacuum in Pakistan?

Ahmed Rashid’s Washington Post column on what happens next in Pakistan is an absolute must read. As Rashid puts it, “The assassination of Benazir Bhutto has left a huge political vacuum at the heart of this nuclear-armed state, which appears to be slipping into an abyss of violence and Islamic extremism. The question of what happens next is almost impossible to answer, especially at a moment when Bhutto herself seemed to be the only answer.” The West would also do well to bear in mind Rashid’s warnings about the likelihood that this crisis could break Musharraf’s grip on power: “Musharraf may not survive the fallout of Bhutto’s death. His actions

Thursday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Hugh Massingberd: Hall of Fame Journalist

Sad news. Hugh Massingberd, the man who did more to bring obituaries to life than anyone else, is dead. He qualifies as one of the great journalists of our age. My poor, old (not so old actually) and now dead Uncle David was one of his contributors and I recall answering the phone, aged 12 or so, during one of David’s rather extended stays at my parents’ house, to hear Mr Massingberd asking, politely, how the obituary of this or that not-yet-dead restaurateur*, wine merchant or horse trainer was progressing. “Fitfully” was the answer one learned to give, David being  incommunicado… And now the begetter is gone too. Sic transit

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Can the Musharraf regime keep a lid on the violence in Pakistan?

The political fall-out in Pakistan is likely to centre around a letter that Benazir Bhutto wrote to Pervez Musharraf on her return home, demanding that in the event of her death three senior figures in the security services be investigated. The government has always dismissed the letter as merely Bhutto settling scores with her opponents, but in the aftermath of her death it takes on new importance even though Al Qaeda has reportedly claimed responsibility for her death. Already violence in Karachi has claimed five lives and shops belonging to the family of Mohammedmian Soomro, the current Prime Minister, have been torched in Jacobabad. In these circumstances the parliamentary elections

James Forsyth James Forsyth

What effect will Bhutto’s assassination have on the presidential primaries?

Benazir Bhutto’s tragic death is dominating the news in the United States and could change the mood of the presidential primaries. The improvements on the ground in Iraq and the conclusion of the recent National Intelligence Estimate that Iran has suspended its nuclear weapon programme had made the world seem a much less dangerous place, and the focus of the primaries had shifted to domestic issues. This shift undoubtedly played a role in the rise of Mike Huckabee, the Republican former governor of Arkansas who has no foreign policy experience, and harmed Hillary Clinton, the Democrat with the toughest national security bona fides. The question now is whether Bhutto’s assassination

James Forsyth James Forsyth

What’s next in Pakistan?

The Pakistani government is currently meeting to decide what to do about the Parliamentary elections scheduled for January. It seems almost certain that they will be postponed. The next question is whether Musharraf returns Pakistan to a state of emergency.  Nawaz Sharif, the mild Islamist who is now the leading opposition figure in Pakistan and who has the support of the Saudis, has already told grieving Bhutto supporters, “I will fight your war from now on”. The worry for the West has to be that the only alternatives to Musharraf are now figures that have explicitly backed a more anti-Western approach. Bob Kagan’s warnings about the dangers of supporting Musharraf

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Bhutto assassinated in Pakistan

Benazir Bhutto’s murder vastly reduces the West’s options in Pakistan. Bhutto, while flawed in many ways, at least offered a secular and relatively liberal alternative to Musharraf. Musharraf now knows that the West has no palatable alternative to him—Nawaz Sharif is too Islamist for Washington and London’s comfort—and so will be less concerned about Western demands that this January’s Parliamentary elections go ahead.  The handling of Pakistan has been America’s greatest strategic failure in the war on terror to date. Today, Pakistan is a significant step closer to being a nuclear armed, failed state.

Andrew Neil

What London should learn from New York

New York’s famed zero-tolerance approach to crime continues to work its magic. This year murders are on track to fall below 500 for the first time since reliable records began 44 years ago.   As of Boxing Day, 484 murders had been recorded in the city during 2007, by far the lowest number since 1963, when there were 548. Before zero tolerance was implemented, New York City murders peaked at an incredible 2,245 in 1990. In other words tough and targeted policing has cut the murder rate by almost 80%.   I appreciate you are still more likely to be murdered in New York than London; but New York’s trend

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Dick Cheney’s energy task force is transparent by comparison

Interesting article by Elaine Sciolino in today’s New York Times on the brouhaha over the proposed expansion of Champagne’s AOC, increasing the number of communes legally permitted to grow grapes to be made into champagne. The reason? Increased demand for the bubbles around the world. As I say, it’s a good piece. But I would wager that the guts of the real story lurk in these two paragraphs (emphasis added): For the most part, the 40 proposed communes fill in holes in existing Champagne areas, much of it near the Champagne centers of Reims and Épernay, rather than extending the perimeter. For reasons that have yet to be explained, Germaine

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Just here for the job: Question of the Day

Part of Megan McArdle’s response to Kerry Howley’s excellent guest-worker article: But mostly, I worry about having a large number of people in the country who are, definitionally, not planning to stay here. There’s something corrosive about transience: witness the way college students treat their neighborhoods. (And don’t tell me they’re young; they’re prime guest-worker age.) Civic bonds can withstand culture clash, but I’m not sure they can withstand pockets of people who are just there for the job. To what extent – if any – does life in Washington DC support Megan’s theory? What lessons, if any, might be extrapolated from Washington’s experience with what amounts to a sort-of-kind-of

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Things worth reading

David Brooks, perhaps the most perceptive commentator in America, picked out the year’s best American magazine pieces in The New York Times the other day. They are all well worth taking a look at.

Monday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Whither the American dramatist?

The New York Times’ Ben Brantley says this was a year in which drama reasserted itself on (and off) Broadway. If so then that’s a splendid thing. It’s notable, though, that just two American plays make his list of the top ten* dramas to have played in New York this past year. No fewer than seven are the work of British and Irish playwrights (with only two of the productions Brantley hails being revivals of, respectively, Pinter and Sherriff). I draw no broader point from this than to suggest that if five of the best ten dramas presented in New York this year – according to New York’s most influential

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Christmas Quote of the Year

More from Helmand province where Sergeant Kraig Whalley of the Royal Military Police says: “We were thinking of challenging the Taliban to a game of football on Christmas Day, but I’m not sure they’d get the joke.” [Hat-tip, Ben Brogan]