O'Hanlon Primary Update

I finally took the opportunity to watch Chris Wallace's Fox News Sunday interview with Kenneth Pollack and Michael O'Hanlon and it includes this intriguing dialogue:

WALLACE: Now, am I right that both of you are supporting Senator Clinton's campaign for president? Is that correct?

O'HANLON: It's correct in my case.

POLLACK: I think that we...

WALLACE: You don't have to announce right now if you don't want to, Ken. But go ahead.

POLLACK: I was just going to say, we both work at the Brookings Institution. It's a non-partisan organization. We make our calls based on what we see.

If you watch the video clip, Pollack appears to be stifling an affirmative answer, but I'm not sure. My main focus, however, is on O'Hanlon due to the previously declared Michael O'Hanlon Primary. Obviously, O'Hanlon endorsing Clinton isn't the same as Clinton promising to give O'Hanlon a high-level position, but it's not all that different either.

Comments

Gawd, you're going to hate the next five years. (I'm not overly excited by it either.)

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | August 10, 2007 11:22 AM

Mayor Quimby: I'm sick of you people; you're just a bunch of fickle mushheads.

Woman in Crowd: He's right!

Man in Crowd: Give us hell, Quimby!

Posted by norbizness | August 10, 2007 11:24 AM

O'Hanlon might be angling for a job, but that's not the same as getting one.

I think O'Hanlon's screwed for any kind of job in a Hillary administration. The op-ed undercut the Democratic position in a serious way and I don't think Hillary or the Democratic Congressional leadership is going to forget.

In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to hear that O'Hanlon's next move was going to work for Joe Lieberman or the American Enterprise Institute.

Posted by Ric Caric | August 10, 2007 11:50 AM

If Obama and Edwards don't take advantage of this, they are nuts. Why would either of them support HRC unless they already have possible jobs lined up?

Posted by Joe Klein's conscience | August 10, 2007 11:57 AM

I'm sorry. I don't buy the "they said it because they want a job" argument. I don't mean to say that no analyst has ever doen such a thing or that you should not criticize O'Hanlon and Pollack for what they said if you disagree, but the idea that they wrote this particular piece or have taken the general positions on Iraq that they have due to a desire for a spot in an upcoming Democratic Administration seems implausible.

First, their views are generally consistent with their entire lifetime of work. Second, the views are not particularly welcome to any of the candidates. Third, they were well-positioned to get jobs in an upcoming adminsitration if they so desired without the op-ed. Fourth, for well-established analysts, jobs at places like Brookings are often more desirable (and almost always better paid) than anything other than very high-ranking positions within an administration.

(Disclosure: I very casually know O'Hanlon through a mutual friend at Brookings.)

Posted by Greg | August 10, 2007 12:41 PM

I'm sorry. I don't buy the "they said it because they want a job" argument. I don't mean to say that no analyst has ever doen such a thing or that you should not criticize O'Hanlon and Pollack for what they said if you disagree, but the idea that they wrote this particular piece or have taken the general positions on Iraq that they have due to a desire for a spot in an upcoming Democratic Administration seems implausible.

First, their views are generally consistent with their entire lifetime of work. Second, the views are not particularly welcome to any of the candidates. Third, they were well-positioned to get jobs in an upcoming adminsitration if they so desired without the op-ed. Fourth, for well-established analysts, jobs at places like Brookings are often more desirable (and almost always better paid) than anything other than very high-ranking positions within an administration.

(Disclosure: I very casually know O'Hanlon through a mutual friend at Brookings.)

Posted by Greg | August 10, 2007 12:42 PM

I don't buy the "they said it because they want a job" argument.

Ric Caric made this argument, MY didn't. I think the implication of what Yglesias wrote is that HRC is the candidate most friendly to an O'Hanlack view of current foreign policy, with specific consideration given to Iraq.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | August 10, 2007 12:45 PM

If Obama and Edwards don't take advantage of this, they are nuts. Why would either of them support HRC unless they already have possible jobs lined up?

Well, perhaps simply because they correctly perceive that Clinton is the most hawkish of the Democratic candidates, and the one most in line with their own hawkish views.

However, if they are actually working for the Clinton campaign right now, that raises some interesting possibilities. Perhaps the point of their editorial was to lay down a marker defining a "pro-surge Democrat" position on the party's right extreme, so that any future surge reservations articulated by Clinton will then place her to the left of some Democrats, even if she remains to the right of all of the other candidates.

Posted by Dan Kervick | August 10, 2007 12:46 PM

"Obviously, O'Hanlon endorsing Clinton isn't the same as Clinton promising to give O'Hanlon a high-level position, but it's not all that different either."

I took this line (perhaps mistakenly) as a reference to the background argument I've seen several places that the analysts are saying what they said to set themselves up for a job down the line.

On the substance, if you watched Fox News Sunday, I don't see O'Hanlon's position as particularly radical for a Dem. Virtually everyone says that there appears to be some potentially good developments on the military side. He says give it a few more months to see if this can actually lead to political progress (which he admits is wholly absent) and concedes that it is perfectly defensible to come to the opposite conclusion.

Now perhaps you can argue that although this is a defensible position substantively, we should not give an inch to Bush because he will use the concession to (i) extend the surge/presence in Iraq well beyond what the O'Hanlon argument would justify, and (ii) distort, exploit and abuse the Dems. Fair enough, but (i) does anyone believe that Bush will do anything other than ride this to the end of his term no matter what anyone writes in an Op-Ed, and (ii) that does not seem to be the main thrust of the criticism.

Posted by Greg | August 10, 2007 2:04 PM

"Obviously, O'Hanlon endorsing Clinton isn't the same as Clinton promising to give O'Hanlon a high-level position, but it's not all that different either."

Yes, it is. She controls who she promises jobs to; she doesn't control who supports her. What, she's supposed to reject his vote?

Posted by rea | August 10, 2007 2:32 PM

Matt, you should lay off Mike. At least he says what he thinks. There are a large number of scholars on the left who come in for praise on the blogs but refused to oppose the Iraq war at the outset or to support it (they're easy to identify- anybody senior who did not sign the letter of academics opposing the war). I disagree with Mike but respect him and admire his willingness to take a stance. Instead of criticizing those you disagree with you should be taking issue with "experts" who now agree with you but did not do so early on when they probably knew better.

Posted by realistprof | August 10, 2007 2:53 PM

On the substance, if you watched Fox News Sunday, I don't see O'Hanlon's position as particularly radical for a Dem.

If I watched Fox News Sunday, I'd probably have a highly caricatured picture of Dems, and you'd have a reasonable basis for believing that I was yet another inbred Red. I don't think Yglesias is depending on the FNS interview for his characterization of O'Hallock FP views, but only for further evidence that HRC is most friendly to the O'Hallock perspective.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | August 10, 2007 3:44 PM