Tommy Sowers is vying for a seat in a conservative district in Missouri. (Tommy Sowers for Congress)

Born and raised in Missouri’s conservative, rural eighth district, Tommy Sowers served in the Army as a Ranger and a Green Beret, and then as a professor at West Point. Now the unorthodox Democrat — a critic of the bank bailouts and President Obama’s troop surge in Afghanistan — is running for Congress against a Republican incumbent.

[Congress1] This year looks likely to be the worst year for the Democratic Party since 1994, at least. But Sowers remains undeterred. Since he started running, he has shaken enough hands and raised enough money to get noticed by the brass in Washington. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) named him to their exclusive “Red to Blue” program, making him just one of 29 upstarts the party figured might have a shot at turning a red district blue this year.

Besides conferring a degree of legitimacy, however, the program is mainly symbolic. With limited resources to spend and seemingly more and more Democratic seats once considered safe now becoming competitive, the DCCC has decided to mainly play defense, indicating it will spend nearly all its money to shore up embattled incumbents this cycle. But the consensus on that logic is far from clear: If you’re convinced Democrats are doomed, it makes sense to put your money on the natural advantages — name recognition, institutional support, sheer inertia — that incumbents enjoy. But if you believe that the anti-Washington pitch is so great that it’s incumbents, not Dems, who are truly in trouble, then backing credible challengers like Sowers might not be so bad a bet.

So far, however, Sowers is anything but a sure thing. A recent poll — taken by a GOP polling agency in early September – shows him trailing his opponent, Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (R-Mo.) by more than thirty points. But it’s better than his numbers from April, in which he barely registered in voters’ consciousness, and it’s enough, apparently, to make Emerson sound a worried appeal last month for more cash, cautioning supporters in D.C., “I have seen candidates who celebrated in September and wept in November.”

So what’s a lonely Dem fighting an uphill battle in Missouri to do? Sowers spoke with TWI the other week when he swung though D.C., and the interview is lightly edited for clarity and length:

TWI: Democrats have been putting what limited resources they have into defending incumbents because that’s the conventional wisdom. How do you respond to that logic and what makes you think your campaign might be any different?

Sowers: Two millennia of warfare teaches you that you get your ass kicked on defense. You only win on offense. It’s a principle of war. And so I recognize and understand why incumbents get first crack on this but this is an anti-incumbent year, it truly is. Our plan all along was to win the race and do it on our own. I didn’t want to be one of those candidates, and I’ve met plenty, that say, “Oh, if only the state or national or some outside group had come in or gotten involved, we’d have won the race.” For us we’re focused entirely on the climate and the resources need to fight and win in the eighth district.

TWI: Running in a conservative state in a conservative district, you’ve taken some, well, conservative positions, most notably your opposition to [the Troubled Asset Relief Program]. Does it feel strange to be advocating a position that I more often hear coming from tea party candidates?

Sowers: I’m seeking to represent the eighth congressional district and they don’t see the fairness in a bailout where they don’t feel they had a cause in it, so it’s a position that both reflects the values of the district and also something that I believe.

TWI: So you personally believe the country would have been better off without TARP?

Sowers: Well, I think it’s much more than TARP. It’s the twelve pieces of legislation that led up to it. We’re talking about the repeal of Glass-Steagall and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, so basically that process of creating a system that leads to a bailout is one thing that I’m going to fix.

TWI: In attacking your competitor for supporting the bailout, your race mirrors the heated Senate battle in your state between Secretary of State Robin Carnahan (D-Mo.) and Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.). Is that a fair comparison?

Sowers: We’ve got a different race and a different opponent. What I’ve really seen out there is an anti-incumbent and really anti-establishment mood, and you don’t get more “D.C. establishment” than Jo Ann Emerson. She’s the daughter of the RNC chairman, she’s lived [in D.C.] almost her entire life, and she’s one of the five former lobbyists — there’s lots of future lobbyists in Congress — but she’s one of the five former ones. And what we see in this campaign is just the arrogance of establishment. She spent over $6,000 of her campaign election funds at Tiffany’s jewelry store over the last few years while purporting to represent the eighth-poorest district in America.

She’s also spent money at Neiman Marcus and W Hotels and Ritz Carltons and expensive tie shops in Italy. This was not a one-off event that she can blame on some staffer. What you can blame this on is the arrogance of being an established power, but this is a year where being as established power is more of a liability than an asset.

TWI: You also voted for Missouri’s Proposition C, which attempts to invalidate the personal mandate to purchase health insurance, a central component of Obama’s health insurance reform bill.

Sowers: I was one of the few rural Democrats out there to come out and support health insurance reform, but that doesn’t mean I’m for every provision of it. Proposition C was tightly constructed and it dealt with the individual mandate — and when you look out across the party, there’s a lot of folks out there that don’t believe in the mandate.

TWI: But it’s not as if you can take one piece out of health care reform and expect it to work as well. Without a mandate, you can’t reasonably demand that health insurance companies stop denying coverage for people with preexisting conditions. So how would you take this one piece out without letting the whole structure crumble?

Sowers: I don’t think [the personal mandate] should have been in there in the first place. You’re talking about the federal government mandating the purchase of a private product. The parts of health reform that I do like are the parts about creating competition. That’s one of the ways that you drive down costs, by setting up state-based exchanges. I think its one of your most effective ways to do that. And the credits to small businesses – I’m from a district with a lot of companies with less than fifty employees and there’s a lot of businesses that are going to benefit from those.

TWI: But is the Prop C measure even constitutional? Do you believe it can it nullify a portion of federal law?

Sowers: I’m not a legal scholar on this, but when it comes to the federal government mandating the purchase of a private product, this is something that doesn’t sit well in the eigth congressional district and lots of parts of America. So I think it’s going to be debated in the courts but ultimately it needs to be fixed in Congress.

TWI: The subject you tend to talk about most, however, is Afghanistan. It doesn’t seem to be the main issue that the electorate, at least nationally, is citing in the current cycle so I’m wondering why you’re bringing it up so much and what your position is.

Sowers: I’m not bringing up the issue. The people I’m seeking to represent are. I did 28 town halls over 28 straight days in July and I got asked about Afghanistan in every single town hall, and there’s a reason behind it. Even though you’re only talking about one percent of the population – or really less than that – that’s currently serving, it’s a much higher percentage in my district. There’s 70,000 veterans in my district and when I enter a room and I ask people how many of you are veterans or related to people who are serving, almost the entire room raises their hand. So this is an issue that has personal salience for the people in my home because it matters. It’s personal.

But more than that, it is tied to issues in 2010. Folks at home, they ask me all the time, “Why are we spending money overseas when we should be spending it here or we shouldn’t be adding more to the debt?” When we talk about where can we cut in terms of discretionary spending, right now we’re spending $400 a gallon – the taxpayer is – for every gallon of gas in Kabul, so it’s an area where there can actually be cost savings. And any soldier that is deployed – they’ve seen the waste, fraud, and abuse that occurs on military operations. So the stance on Afghanistan is very simply, we need to end fighting a conventional war because we’re fighting an unconventional conflict. […]

TWI: If Obama wanted to come and campaign for you in Missouri, what would be your reaction to that?

Sowers: There’s been no offer, and for me, we’re really running a campaign that’s focused on local issues. People in my district aren’t getting swept up in this whole national debate. They just want somebody that can come in and fix it. People say it’s a bad year, or potentially a bad year, for Democrats. Well it’s a bad year for a lot of people out there and it’s because of the economy. It’s because our jobs have been shipped overseas and it’s because we’ve bailed out places like Wall Street, and they understand that causal link. So they’re looking far more for a guy that’s actually from there, working his tail off in a campaign, who will work his tail off in Congress.

TWI: The only poll I’ve seen recently is something from Missouri State University that had you down 64 to 17 percent. Is that the latest?

Sowers: No we’ve got updated numbers and it’s looking good. We’re closing the gap – our name ID, which is what we’re tracking very closely, is much higher than we expected it to be. So this is a race that will ultimately break later, and we know that, but right now we’re reaping the benefits of, just frankly, working our tail off. We have a great field program in place, I’m out on the ground quite a bit, and now voters are meeting me for the second and third time, so I like where we’re at.

TWI: You did something where you ran through part or all of the district earlier this year?

Sowers: I marched 100 miles over Memorial Day weekend through 100 miles of yard sales, and when you walk up to a voter and say, “I just walked 80 miles to meet you,” which was a true statement, they’ve never seen anything like that before. I’m not trying to run this campaign, frankly, as an old guy. I’m running it as I am, which is as a 34-year-old, tobacco-using Green Beret straight out of the military who’s not the most finely polished stone out there, but who is sincere in his desire to fight for his home.

John Kerry was one of the first party leaders to endorse Barack Obama. (wdcpix)

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), the Democratic nominee for president in 2004, has emerged as a leading candidate for secretary of state — should Sen. Barack Obama win the presidency Nov. 4.

Obama campaign advisers declined to comment on the record for this story. Nor would many Democratic foreign-policy experts who might join an Obama administration. But off the record, Obama aides made clear that Kerry’s name is on a very short list of contenders to become the country’s top diplomat. Another person talked up by the great mentioner is Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), a Vietnam War veteran whose foreign-policy views align surprisingly well with Obama’s.

Kerry would bring strong credentials to an Obama administration. His Vietnam experience instilled in him a sense of the tragic and a gravity about committing U.S. forces to peripheral conflicts. He has a well-established place in the Senate as a foreign-policy expert, stemming from his seat on the Foreign Relations Committee. His first book, “The New War,” published in 1998, was a prescient look at threats to national security from non-state actors like terrorists and narco-traffickers.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

Furthermore, longtime observers say, Kerry’s political instincts could be an asset. Joseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, a grant-making foundation for non-proliferation studies, said Kerry’s experience in the Senate — and as a presidential nominee — taught him the importance of building domestic support for an administration’s foreign policy. “He combines foreign-policy expertise with political instincts,” Cirincione said. “He understands it’s not enough to have the right policy, but to deliver the policy and build support for that policy.”

Over this year, Kerry has developed a close relationship with Obama. In January, he lent high-profile support to the Illinois senator in the Democratic primary, endorsing him immediately after Obama’s victory in the Iowa caucuses. At a time when many leading party figures were still withholding endorsements, Kerry intended his support to help Obama win the New Hampshire primary and end Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s (D-N.Y.) front-runner bid for the nomination.

While that didn’t happen, Kerry still remained active as an Obama surrogate on the campaign trail. Aides who do not wish to be quoted said that Kerry often implored Obama to draw sharp distinctions with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on foreign policy — a lesson perhaps born of Kerry’s own reluctance in 2004 to renounce the invasion of Iraq.

“John Kerry has consistently pursued liberal internationalist positions in the Senate, which are in accord with expectations about an Obama administration foreign policy,” said Robert Farley, a national-security professor at the University of Kentucky’s Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce, in an email. “Notably, Sen. Kerry spearheaded initiatives to engage with two nations viewed as hostile to the United States. In 1985, Kerry visited Nicaragua and met with President [Daniel] Ortega, then under heavy pressure from the United States and its Contra proxies. In the early 1990s, Kerry (along with Sen. John McCain) worked to lay the ground for normalization of relations with Vietnam, including hearings that put to rest the idea that Vietnam continued to hold U.S. POWs. To the extent that a President Obama would seek engagement with Iran, North Korea or other nations hostile to the United States, Kerry would seem an ideal choice for secretary of state.”

During the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Kerry gave one of the most forceful speeches, directly attacking McCain on his perceived foreign-policy strengths. “When John McCain stood on the deck of an aircraft carrier just three months after 9/11 and proclaimed, ‘Next up, Baghdad!’” Kerry said, “Barack Obama saw, even then, an occupation of ‘undetermined length, undetermined cost, undetermined consequences’ that would ‘only fan the flames of the Middle East.’ Well, guess what? Mission accomplished.”

Kerry, of course, famously offered McCain a place on the 2004 Democratic ticket.

Since losing the presidency in 2004, Kerry’s foreign-policy positions have assumed a bolder cast. He repudiated the Iraq war in 2005; opposed President George W. Bush’s 2007 troop surge with vigor and set to work overturning the media caricature of him as a politician without convictions.

In an off-the-cuff talk in Denver just before his convention speech, Kerry argued for vigorous U.S. re-engagement to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace; an end to the Iraq war that includes a negotiated reconciliation between Sunnis and Shiites; and reframing the war on terrorism as a “global counterinsurgency” requiring a fundamental “rethink” of U.S. strategy. In a July Op-Ed for the Financial Times, the Massachusetts senator argued for making “a nuclear-free world” a central goal of U.S. foreign policy.

“Kerry would be a great secretary of state,” said Cirincione. “One of the best things that ever happened to him was to realize he’s not going to be president. It freed him up, and let Kerry be Kerry. His insights and statements over the last couple of years are some of the best work he’s ever done.”

Bob Mackey, a recently-retired Army officer, agreed. “Given his views on Iraq and the war on terror, [Kerry] would be of substantial benefit to the U.S. image overseas,” Mackey said. “Few, if any, senior leaders in the U.S. would do a better job. Many would do a lot worse.”

Rachel Kleinfeld, executive director of the Truman National Security Project, an organization advising progressive candidates on foreign policy, called Kerry’s foreign-policy instincts “excellent” but pointed out that a successful secretary of state had to be “someone close enough to Sen. Obama to make that department stronger.”

Advisers caution that Kerry isn’t a certainty to be Obama’s pick for Foggy Bottom. For one thing, his skill set as a senator with extensive foreign-policy experience and a perch on the Foreign Relations Committee matches that of Joe Biden, the vice-presidential nominee. For another, Kerry is running for his fifth term in the Senate, and if Biden wins the vice-presidency, the chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will be open.

In addition, other members on the short list for secretary of state offer their own strengths: Hagel, for one, would allow Obama a high-profile gesture to moderate Republicans.

Aides to Kerry did not return requests for comment. Similarly, many Democratic foreign-policy hands were reluctant to comment for publication. “People don’t want to do anything to hurt their chances of getting an appointment,” Cirincione observed. “This is Washington, man, everybody except for maybe four or five people wants to go into the administration. And I’m one of them — so I’m talking to you.”