Inside Politics

Exit strategy

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton could win the West Virginia primary by a hoot and a holler today.

“A landslide victory there will remind people of Obama’s weakness with working-class whites and remind the doomsayers that Clinton is still kicking,” noted Christopher Beam of Slate yesterday.

But woe is Hillary.

“The question is no longer who has won the Democratic nomination. It’s how the loser chooses to exit. As cops like to say, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. Depending on which way Clinton wants to go, West Virginia could mean one of two things. Either Clinton seizes on it as an excuse to stay in the race and compete with Obama in Kentucky and Oregon and Montana and Puerto Rico until she has to be euthanized on the track. Or she goes out on a high note. The latter option is looking more and more attractive as it becomes clear that the longer she bruises Obama, the more she’ll have to atone for it.”

The geezer factor

While his rivals duke it out, some advise Sen. John McCain to mull over campaign strategies. This is No. 5 of seven tactics recommended by Time magazine yesterday:

“Use A Vice President to Temper The Age Issue: McCain’s campaign is resigned to the fact that late-night comics are foaming at the prospect of six more months worth of old man McCain jokes. And polls show that the Republican’s age — he will be 72 by Election Day — could have an impact at the ballot box. But both McCain and his advisers have been pointing to a prospect they hope will neutralize the issue: a relatively youthful vice president, who might lesson the fear of, gulp, McCain’s death in office. … Campaign adviser Charlie Black elaborated on the assumed power of a solid vice presidential candidate. Back in 1980, Black recounted, Ronald Reagan was running for president as an older man at 69. ’The day he picked George Bush to be vice president, the age issue pretty much went away,’ Black recalled.’ ”

President Einstein

White House hopefuls had better bone up on their whiz-kid facts. A new Harris poll shows that 85 percent of Americans say the presidential candidates should stage a debate on how science can solve America’s problems, with almost no differences in opinion among Republicans and Democrats.

Overall, more than three-fourths of the respondents rated health care the most serious concern, followed by alternative-energy sources (69 percent), education (67 percent) and national security (61 percent) — with climate change in last place at 53 percent.

That brought out the partisan split, though, with 66 percent of Democrats ranking global-warming issues among the most serious problems, compared with 33 percent of Republicans.

“This topic has been virtually ignored by the candidates. We’ve heard a lot about lapel pins and preachers. But tackling the big science challenges is critical,” said Shawn Lawrence Otto, chairman of Science Debate 2008, an initiative among scientists who want the presidential debate to include some science and technology.

The survey of 1,003 adults was taken May 2-5, with a margin of error of three percentage points.

Novak’s no facts?

Syndicated columnist Bob Novak showcased Mike Huckabee yesterday, noting that “U.S. Christians are not reconciled to [Sen. John] McCain’s candidacy but instead regard the prospective presidency of Barack Obama in the nature of a biblical plague visited upon a sinful people. These militants look at former Baptist preacher Huckabee as ’God’s candidate’ for president in 2012.”

Mr. Huckabee, in turn, “embraced the concept that an Obama presidency might be what the American people deserve,” according to the Novak column.

Not so, says ABC’s Jake Tapper, who e-mailed the former Arkansas governor for a comment.

“It’s total and absolute nonsense,” he replied. “I told Bob this last week in a phone call. He went with the story with his ’unnamed source.’ Should have been listed as an ’unbrained source.’ ”

Woof, woof

“The single most important piece of national security legislation — legislation that if ignored will put American lives at great risk — languishes in the House because ’Blue Dog’ Democrats have apparently decided to abandon their campaign promises to be strong on national security and kowtow to Nancy Pelosi,” noted Human Events yesterday.

“On Jan. 28, twenty-one Blue Dogs signed a letter urging Speaker Pelosi to move forward with bipartisan FISA legislation in the House in the same form that had passed the Senate in October. ’The Rockefeller-Bond FISA legislation contains satisfactory language addressing all these issues, and we would fully support that measure should it reach the House floor without substantial change,’ they wrote.

“The Blue Dogs even highlighted that FISA legislation should include targeted immunity for carriers that participate in anti-terrorism surveillance programs, a provision that is contested among their Democrat colleagues. It is also ’critical that we update the FISA laws in a timely matter … the consequences of not passing such a measure could place our national security at risk.’

“Pelosi ignored the Blue Dogs’ letter and refused to bring the Senate bill to the House floor despite the obvious fact that it would have passed by a simple majority vote. She continues to keep the bill buried even after an urgent request from [Attorney General] Michael Mukasey and director of national intelligence J.M. McConnell.”

Cinderella-gate

What’s the next big Capitol Hill scandal? According to Lisa Hoffman of Scripps Howard News Service, it’ll be the illegal use of congressional staffers.

“The Justice Department apparently is investigating allegations that lawmakers illegally have used their staffs for campaign purposes or to handle such personal chores as cleaning legislators’ homes and fetching their dry-cleaning,” Mrs. Hoffman writes in her “Washington Calling” column.

She goes on to write that the investigation, which has been kept well-secret, could become as broad and deep as “Rubbergate,” where scores of lawmakers overdrew their House checking accounts in the early 1990s.

• Contact Jennifer Harper at jharper@washingtontimes .com or 202/636-3085.