Bredesen: Just say no to nepotism

Although i'm ambivalent about hillary's probable candidacy, and would welcome a female president, i think bredesen's point is correct. The country doesn't need a Clinton-Bush deathmatch in 2008. my current preferred Repulbilcan slate? Giulani/Rice, or Rice/Steele.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1552437,00.html
--
Southern revolt on the ascent of Hillary
Tony Allen-Mills, Nashville

THE first signs of a Democratic revolt against Senator Hillary Clinton’s much-anticipated march on the White House are emerging in the American South, where one of the party’s most successful state governors called last week for Democrats to consider other candidates.

In a calculated snub of Clinton’s accelerating bandwagon, Governor Philip Bredesen of Tennessee warned that voters were “kind of dissatisfied” with the Democrats’ current presidential contenders and that Clinton would face an “uphill road” to win the White House.

Bredesen also expressed dismay that speculation about the 2008 race was already focused on the wife of former president Bill Clinton and on Jeb, the brother of President George W Bush and governor of Florida. “Surely in the United States we can go further than having to have a single family dominate one side and a single family dominate the other,” he said.

Bredesen, 61, was giving his first interview to a foreign newspaper since his emergence earlier this year as a potential dark horse in the presidential race. It appeared to reflect an attempt to raise his international profile amid increasing speculation in Washington that he may become the next southern governor to come from obscurity to take the White House.

Like Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton before him, Bredesen has established a formidable Democratic power base in the conservative south. Clinton came from Hope, Arkansas; Bredesen jokes that when he briefly worked in England in the 1970s, he lived in Hope Cottage, Oxfordshire. His careful stewardship of Tennessee’s economic growth has made him one of the most popular governors in the state’s history.

Bredesen is a soft-spoken, ruddy-faced figure who makes no effort to dodge potentially embarrassing questions. Asked about Clinton, most Democrats gush about how wonderfully she has performed as senator for New York.

Bredesen instead replied: “People love her or they hate her and I don’t know in the end how all that plays out. But I sure hope there are other people who would step forward.”

Who should those others be? “It may well be someone that nobody has thought of . . . the sense I get is that people are really hunting around and looking for something different.”

Bredesen, a former mayor of Nashville, believes his party has “somehow gotten itself divorced” from the blue-collar constituency it has always relied on for presidential success: “I’ve always felt the Democratic party was a kind of alliance between the academics and intellectuals and working-class men and women. I think what happened is that in my lifetime, the academics won.”

As a result, the governor said, the party had lost its broad appeal. He mocked other Democratic candidates who think connecting with middle America means quoting a few verses from the Bible or being photographed with guns.

Bredesen is a lifelong clay pigeon crackshot, and everyone in Tennessee knows that his attachment to guns is real.

He added: “I think a lot of the time the answer they are looking for is ‘Oh, if you just quote Matthew, Mark, Luke or John once in your speech’ that somehow everyone will think you’re one of them.”

Many Democrats have asked him about his “secret” in Tennessee, where voters gave Bush a 14-point victory over Senator John Kerry. Bredesen’s approval ratings are above

60% and he is a shoo-in for re-election next year.

His supporters attribute his success to his modest manner, small-town roots, personal integrity and the quiet competence that helped him transform Nashville from a backwater into a thriving cultural hub.

The Democrats’ problem, Bredesen believes, has little to do with bullets or the Bible. “The point I’m trying to make is that you’ve got to stand up for some clear things,” he said. He is tired of listening to members of his party attempting to appeal to both pro-gun and anti-gun voters: “When you do that, you’re left with nothing.”

In a recent speech to southern Democrats in Atlanta, Bredesen summed up the Republican party platform as follows: “A traditional view of family, no abortion, no gay marriage, a central role for faith, gun over the mantel, low taxes, an assertive and combative view of American interests abroad.”

He then challenged his colleagues to sum up the Democratic party in less than 30 words. Nobody could oblige. Asked what his 30 words would be, he replied: “I don’t have any yet. I’d be delighted to tell you if I did.” He may be waiting until after his re-election to unveil his national vision.

If the party finds a new world view, he added, “I think the other stuff happens. The organisation happens. The excitement happens. We just haven’t had that person yet.” Hillary Clinton seems sure to disagree.

 

here's an article from the WSJ about Bredesen.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110006286

--

The Next Bubba?
Tennessee's Gov. Phil Bredesen may be presidential material--unless fellow Democrats stop him.

BY GLENN HARLAN REYNOLDS
Sunday, February 13, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST

KNOXVILLE, Tenn.--The Democrats have noticed that senators and Northeasterners don't do especially well in presidential elections. That has led to some talk of running a governor from the South in 2008, but Southern Democratic governors are in short supply.

Of those who remain, my governor, Phil Bredesen, is starting to get some attention. A while back, The Economist called him a governor with a CEO approach. And The New Republic recently made him the subject of a cover story focusing on his ability to win over the opposition. But should he decide to run for president in 2008, his biggest problems may come from his fellow Democrats.

Right now he's well-liked, having replaced an unpopular Republican governor who made repeated efforts to pass a state income tax. Those efforts provoked near-riots as antitax protestors mobbed the Capitol (one man brought a bucket of tar and a bag of feathers), and the income tax died a painful death. That, however, left Tennessee with serious financial problems. Education--especially higher education--was underfunded, and the TennCare health insurance program, a sort of HillaryCare-lite, was devouring the state budget.

Gov. Bredesen met the problems head-on, with 9% across-the-board spending cuts and a novel approach: He said what he was going to do, and then he did it. His first fiscal year ended with the state in surplus, and the "rainy day fund" is at its highest level in history.

Gov. Bredesen had beaten a popular Republican, former Rep. Van Hilleary, who was regarded as a near shoo-in at the beginning of the campaign. That might have inspired bitterness among the defeated. But it didn't, and the Bredesen style has a lot to do with that.

Phil Bredesen is a Northerner, and conventional wisdom says that they don't do well in the South. But Southerners have a tradition of accepting smart Yankees into the fold, so long as they're respectful and not condescending. That, along with a willingness to learn from his mistakes, is Gov. Bredesen's secret.

In his first run for governor, Mr. Bredesen campaigned as an almost Dukakis-like technocrat, stressing his business experience and managerial skills. He lost. But by the time he ran again, he had learned how to present a less chilly image. As The New Republic points out, he traveled the state, meeting with opponents and listening respectfully, and without an ounce of the condescension that marked John Kerry's efforts to reach out to the good-old-boy crowd. Instead of TV commercials, he attended chili suppers and town meetings. He listened to people, and they responded to his demonstrations of respect.

It really did play out this way. The result was that the standard move against a candidate like Phil Bredesen, painting him as an out-of-touch outsider, didn't work, because it wasn't true. He also wasn't afraid to step away from scripts and onto what's usually regarded as enemy turf. One of the things that's struck me most is how well Gov. Bredesen does on conservative talk radio. He answers questions rather than ducking them or retreating into slogans and sound bites, and as a result the hosts (and listeners) respect him even when they disagree. That's an important skill: If you can imagine a Democratic presidential nominee who will hold his own on Rush Limbaugh's or Hugh Hewitt's show, you're imagining a Democrat who could win the general election.

Gov. Bredesen's success at reaching out to the opposition is undeniable. He's probably the most popular governor in Tennessee history, and there are even people around the state who call themselves "Republicans for Bredesen" and plan on backing him, across party lines, if he runs for president in 2008. His biggest problems, though, may come from within his own party.

The state income tax has long been a holy grail for the urban part of Tennessee's Democratic Party; Gov. Bredesen isn't pushing it. Meanwhile, his TennCare reforms are angering people who don't want to see benefits cut, and he is waging all-out war against the public-interest lawyers who have turned to the courts, over and over again, to block efforts to shrink TennCare rolls or lower benefits. This led Gov. Bredesen to comment, in his Jan. 31 State of the State Address, that "there are many people who claim to represent the public interest in this, but not a one of them has ever stood before the voters." This attitude has ruffled some feathers among the state's public-interest community, and the journalists who tend to sympathize with its views and goals.

Gov. Bredesen also alienated trial lawyers with a workers' compensation reform plan that they regard as antilawyer and antiworker. Knoxville trial lawyer and lifelong Democrat Douglas C. Weinstein comments, "I liked the guy when he ran, and I don't think much of him now. He relied on the support of lawyers like me, and he sold us down the river."

For other Democrats, Gov. Bredesen's ability to win praise from Republicans is more worrisome than his policies. Tennessee Democratic blogger South Knox Bubba criticizes Gov. Bredesen for his TennCare efforts and for the workers' comp reform, but his strongest criticism comes here: "I hate to accuse Bredesen of being a sellout. But when heartless right-wing 'Christian' conservatives and rabid neo-conservatives bent on world domination start singing his praises, you know there's something wrong."

When you're a minority party, as the Democrats are, reaching out to the opposition would seem to be essential. But whatever his other skills, if Gov. Bredesen's fellow Democrats can't appreciate that, he's going to have problems.

Mr. Reynolds, publisher of InstaPundit.com, is a law professor at the University of Tennessee.

 

i have my doubts about her as a politician. at heart, i'm am, or was, an atlanticist and i like her foreign policy chops. she has little domestic experience, but ample experiece inside governent. i also think it's high time this country elected a woman, and she's probably the most politically attractive woman on the republican side. however, i don't think we should elect a woman just for the sake of doing so. if i had my druthers, i'd vote for giuliani- he comes closest to my own views.

 

i've always been much less of an issue voter than many. compromise is inherent in the office, and campaign promises are so easily broken that they're almost useless. character is much more important to me. although the differences in this regard between them perhaps wasn't so obvious during the 2000 campaign, during the debacle that followed in florida i thought that W's character really showed through (your mileage may vary ), and really came to the fore after 9/11.

Giuliani and Rice both strike me as persons of high character; hillary less so. bredesen? don't know enough about him, but i'm intrigued.

 

the issue is really whether having a woman, or a minority, given this country's checkered history with providing equal rights to both, as president represents a good in and of itself. i'd answer in the affirmative. a country that professes equal opportunity for all, yet refuses to consider all for the highest office in the land, is a country that continues to fail to live up to its highest aspirations for itself. as i implied earlier, i wouldn't vote for a black woman just to fullfill that ideal, but when a well qualified one presents herself? you betcha.

You're outing yourself as a pro-choice republican?