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Saturday, September 13, 2008
Culture, Politics & Palin
Posted by on 9.13.08 @ 2:40PM
Lee Siegel goes for the Big Picture in the Wall Street Journal:
In this climate, what might seem to be Gov. Palin's blatant struggles with inadequacy serve as proof of her potential to lead. She wins the vicarious sweepstakes hands down. Every revelation of a seeming deficiency in her temperament, judgment or character offers a new avenue of access into her life. Then, too, the Republicans have, with Gov. Palin, made their acceptance of her shortcomings proof of their commitment to caring. All the abstract talk in the world about compassionate change cannot match an example of forgiveness in action. As for Obama the abstract talker, his autobiographical tales of triumph over ordinary human imperfection stick him with the appearance of being insufficiently imperfect to lead.I don't know that I agree with that, but it's a different angle, at least.
Palin Qualifications?
Posted by on 9.13.08 @ 1:12PM
I've been musing over some history, with William Buckley's jape in mind that he would gladly be governed by the first 1000 names in the Manhattan phone book.
In terms of plain, unadorned experience, Palin compares favorably with Theodore Roosevelt (who, of course, was a genius), Ulysses S. Grant, and Woodrow Wilson. The Obama people have from time to time compared their man to Lincoln, conveniently forgetting Lincoln's scholarly discussion of the main issues of the day in the Cooper Union speeches and the Lincon-Douglas debates.
Chances are, given her record of rapid mastery and achievement, Palin will probably pull her talents together with the proper information in a big hurry, and she'll probably do well. I watched three of the Gibson broadcasts, and was mainly impressed with the obtrusiveness -- the really obvious obtrusiveness -- of the editing. I think anybody could see it.
The Bush Doctrine Means Whatever I Say It Means
Posted by on 9.13.08 @ 11:53AM
This is a fascinating discussion of the Bush Doctrine by Charles Krauthammer, but it doesn't change the fact that Palin seemed utterly unfamiliar with the term. I'm not sure saying the Bush Doctrine is unknowable is the best defense.
Disoriented Democrats
Posted by on 9.13.08 @ 11:53AM
I'll leave it to others to fret over Sarah Palin's unpreparedness, and instead point out how unprepared Democrats were for Palin. The most revealing fact is that, when Team Obama listed nine GOP vice-presidential possibilities as "The Next Cheney," Palin's name wasn't on the list. The reason Democrats' initial attacks were so wildly off-target was that the Obama campaign hadn't prepared a full oppo-research file on Palin.
Michael Barone discusses the Palin impact in terms of "the OODA loop," aerial strategist John Boyd's acronym for Observe, Orient, Decide, Act:
The Palin selection -- and her performance at the convention and on the stump -- seems to be having that effect. Obama chief strategist David Axelrod admitted of the Palin pick: "I can honestly say we weren't prepared for that. I mean, her name wasn't on anybody's list."
The choice of Palin threw Team Obama off-balance for two weeks, at a key point in the campaign cycle. It deprived them of their accustomed place in the media spotlight and, by putting them behind in the polls, contradicted their narrative of the inevitable triumph of Hope. Instead of the front-runner soaring to new heights of popularity, Obama now looks like a fading star -- and perhaps even a victim of what a friend of mine calls a "Mondalean-Dukakoid meltdown."
How bad is it for Obama? There is now talk that he's out of the running in Florida.
UPDATE: Jennifer Rubin surveys the brightened GOP prospects and cautions:
Republicans should be under no illusion that this is in the bag. Democrats made that mistake and look where it got them.Exactly.
Re: A Gangsta Who Won't Initiate Force
Posted by on 9.13.08 @ 11:46AM
Barr's own disastrous reaction the Paul press conference has also hurt his campaign.
ABC News' Careful Editing of the Interview
Posted by on 9.13.08 @ 11:39AM
Mark Levin has posted (I believe it's just the first
night; I've only seen clips) a transcript of the interview between
Charles Gibson and Gov. Palin that includes the parts that were
edited out, and as my John Locke Foundation colleague Jon Ham
notes:
...When you compare his interview with Barack Obama, and especially his interview with a truly unqualified John Edwards in 2004, in which the toughest question was whether he thought the Republicans were being too tough on him, you see the depth of Gibson's bias.
But radio host Mark Levin has posted the clincher on his Web site: the transcript of the Gibson-Palin interview with the parts that were edited out marked in bold. It's quite illuminating. If Palin had an expanded explanation that seemed thoughtful, it was cut. Read especially her answer on Russia. This was edited in a way to make it seem she wanted to start World War III.
He's right -- you've gotta read the version Levin posted. When
are we going to stop calling them the "mainstream media?" They are
dead.
A Gangsta Who Won't Initiate Force
Posted by on 9.13.08 @ 7:25AM
In the Guardian, W. James Antle III has a new article about how the surprise pick of Sarah Palin as McCain's running mate and Ron Paul's political ineptness worked like a one-two punch on the Bob Barr campaign. Best comment so far: "Ron Paul is so gangsta."
Friday, September 12, 2008
Yikes....Gibson is Winning
Posted by on 9.12.08 @ 10:41PM
I'm watching Charlie Gibson grill Sarah Palin on 20/20. She is.... uh... spunky. Very sure of herself. Gibson is being very tough on her, though. And he is quite factual. McCain fans can only hope that her style comes through better than his substance.....
Liberals Now Believe Hate Is A Family Value
Posted by on 9.12.08 @ 7:51PM
In my column for the main site this week, I mentioned how censorious and judgmental liberals have become about sex when they have a socially conservative Republican in their crosshairs. Here are some family-values pleasantries from Paul Hackett on Daily Kos:
Sarah Palin? Can't keep her solemn oath of devotion to her husband and had sex with his employee. Sarah Palin? Accidentally got pregnant at age 43 and the tax payers of Alaska have to pay for the care of her disabled child. Sarah Palin? Unable to teach her 16 year old daughter right from wrong and now another teenager is pregnant. Sarah Palin? Can you trust Sarah Palin and her values with America's future?
The former Democratic congressional candidate's analysis of Obama's problems in Ohio is less unhinged.
Palin and Gibson, Part II
Posted by on 9.12.08 @ 7:07PM
Just watched the next segment, which focused on domestic issues, and Palin was much stronger. On the difference between McCain's economic policies and Bush's, she waffled, and on earmarks, she was forced to explain how Alaska was still accepting earmarks (and reply to her initial support of the "Bridge to Nowhere.") She wasn't at her best.
But when it came to guns and abortion, she really soared. You could tell both were close to her heart and she was comfortable talking about the subjects. She flat out said she though Roe v. Wade should be overturned and that she opposes a ban on assualt weapons. But what was great was that she was so candid about her differences with McCain (as she was with ANWR yesterday). She said, unlike McCain, she only supports allowing abortion if the mother's life is in danger (as opposed to McCain, who supports allowing it in cases of rape and incest). And there was a wonderful moment in which Gibson asked about how she differed with McCain on stem cell research and she said, regardless of what the policy of the administration would be, as somebody running for high office people have the right to know her personal beliefs, and she opposed it. It's very rare for a VP candidate to be so open about her differences with the top of the ticket. That really came across as authentic, and something that you wouldn't hear from a typical politician.
What's pretty clear, seeing more of her, is when she's talking about issues that she's comfortable with, and when she's just being herself, she really shines. When she is just spouting out programed answers, it can get pretty ugly.
MY Authority??
Posted by on 9.12.08 @ 6:05PM
Wlady, you misread me. I did indeed say that looking four or
eight years down the road was an essential consideration. But I
didn't say it was the ONLY consideration. In my long series on who
should be Veep, I insisted that the FIRST qualification was
readiness to be president at a moment's notice. In fact, in my
first
column on the subject, on Feb. 14, after a few paragraphs
saying what conventional wisdom considerations should NOT affect
his choice, I then opened the meat of the column by listing the
essential qualifications for the job. Here are the very first words
in that discussion: SO WHAT
QUALITIES are important? The most essential quality is a patently
obvious ability to handle the job of president. Not to be morbid,
but McCain is a 71-year-old man who has survived torture and
several bouts of cancer. Voters will want assurance that the Veep
could step in at a moment's notice.
I
could not have been more insistent. That's why neither Palin nor
Jindal even made my eventual list of the 15 best choices. Indeed,
both of them made my original list of 35 only by way of
illustrating the talent pool, but from the start I grouped them
among those of whom I was "utterly convinced they would not be at all the strongest
choices."
Maybe my little mind has hobgoblins, but at least I'm consistent!! ;)
Re: Well, It Worries ME...
Posted by on 9.12.08 @ 5:38PM
Quin: I have it on the authority of none other than you in your wonderful memoir of the 1980 Republican Convention's veep drama that an overriding concern regarding a veep choice is picking someone who will succeed the president not in two days but in four or eight years. If we're arguing about Palin's unpreparedness, it should be in such terms. And if McCain is in such dire physical condition as you worry, should he even be on the ticket?
Re: Palin Wins
Posted by on 9.12.08 @ 5:07PM
I didn't think the Palin interview was nearly as bad as the South Carolinan Miss Teen USA candidate -- the domestic policy stuff was solid, but the foreign policy substance just wasn't there at all. Maybe she's one of those U.S. Americans who doesn't have maps, like of Africa or the Iraq.
Well, it Worries ME, Wlady
Posted by on 9.12.08 @ 4:54PM
Wlady, the whole point of a vice president is to be ready if something bad happens to the president. Not to be morbid, but something bad is far more likely to happen to a 72-year-old double-cancer survivor and 5 1/2-year torture survivor than it is to most other people. His body has already taken a terrible beating. And it could happen just as easily on Jan. 22, 2009 as it could on, say, July of 2012. It worries me slam to death. If the veep isn't ready, in this dangerous world, we're scr**ed. Then again, if the president isn't ready on Jan. 20, we're even more scr**ed, which is one reason why the thought of Obama as commander in chief is even scarier than any scenario on the GOP side....
Re: Obama ad stinks, too
Posted by on 9.12.08 @ 4:18PM
Quin, about your P.S. in the above, frankly I don't worry that something might happen to John McCain two days after his inauguration. There are certain things we can't control. What if something happens to me before I complete this entry and it never sees light of day? It won't be a national tragedy, but that's not my point.
How many times will we see and hear humanity-loving Democrats and pundits attacking McCain over his age or the fact that he is a "cancer survivor"? Way I see it, he survived the Hanoi Hilton. Everything after that is a cakewalk.
Powerful Testament For Mission in Iraq
Posted by on 9.12.08 @ 3:59PM
Now this, this, is really powerful stuff. Watch it ALL the way through.
Re: Palin Wins
Posted by on 9.12.08 @ 3:49PM
For some reason, I didn't finish the sentence right. I think she needs to sit down with some journalism school-trained PR professionals so that they can give her the going over she needs to feel confident about this.
The Roki Road to War?
Posted by on 9.12.08 @ 2:50PM
I stopped by the Center for Strategic & International Studies earlier today for a forum with Georgian Chairman of Parliament Davit Bakradze. The most interesting part was Bakradze's detailed account of how the war with Russia began. This BBC article gives some useful background:
The Georgians said they had been forced to retaliate after coming under continuing and sustained attack from the South Ossetian side.According to Bakradze, there will be new evidence of Russian incursions through the Roki tunnel released in the near future. Bakradze characterizes this as the primary reason for the Georgian incursion into South Ossetia (though he gives a whole lot more context than just that; maybe when I have a chance to transcribe my recording I'll share the rest of it). He says the Georgians were genuinely afraid that the Russians would march all the way to Tbilisi, and calculated that if they could hold them off for a day or two the international reaction would deter the Russians from taking over all of Georgia. In fact, Bakradze argues that, had they not sent troops into South Ossetia, Georgia might have been swallowed whole before the rest of the world even noticed.Prime Minister Lado Gurgenidze, speaking on the morning of 8 August, said there had also been reports of an incursion of "so-called volunteer fighters" from North Ossetia coming through the Roki tunnel, which links South Ossetia to Russia.
In a news conference six days later, the prime minister amplified this, referring to "a massive column of 150 units" crossing through the Roki tunnel during the night. It was this, he said, that had triggered the decision to send in the troops.
So far there have been no independent reports about this alleged incursion, although there were reports of Russian military exercises in the area around the Roki tunnel in the days leading up to the fighting. It is just one of many questions about this war which have yet to be answered.
Some of this, no doubt, is after-the-fact spin, but in general I trust Tbilisi a lot more than I trust Moscow (where the rhetoric has become obscene, in more than one sense of the word).
Obama ad stinks, too
Posted by on 9.12.08 @ 2:38PM
Barack Obama's latest ad is almost as bad as McCain's latest. Hitting McCain for not using a computer is juvenile -- and it makes me MORE likely to vote for McCain; I think it makes McCain, who already has joked about his own "oldness," look more endearing. And I know tons of people in their 60s and 70s, the single most likely block of voters, who also are weirded out by computers and will be turned off by the Obama attack. The ad does go on to at least try to discuss a real issue, in this case tax policy, but it does so in such a predictable, boring, familiar, we've-seen-this-same-old-liberal-line way that I think it falls flat. Right now both campaigns are looking like bad versions of efforts to be elected high school class president. Next thing you know, they'll both be promising longer lunch periods -- except that Obama will also charge that McCain is so old that he doesn't even know how to use a microwave.
Is this stuff really worthy of the campaign to be leader of the free world?!?
PSÂ Wlady, re your comment defendinig Palin, it's all well and good if Palin has the talent to learn on the job, but we may not have that option. What if, Lord forbid, something bad happens to McCain on Jan. 22 after two days in office? Will she be ready? (On the other hand, will Obama be ready if he is to take the oath of office on Jan. 20? I think not, and that unreadiness at the top is a truly scary scenario.....)
Re: Palin Wins
Posted by on 9.12.08 @ 2:14PM
J.P.: Sounds like Miss Teen USA from South Carolina and "the Iraq" fame? Whose payroll are you on? Eva Longoria's? Susan Sarandon's? More seriously, it would be swell if Palin could sit down with journalists for some ribbing and getting to know one another -- but that would require a certain amount of good will on the part of the journalists, which at this point I don't see materializing. However out of her league she seemed in the sitdown with Charlie Gibson, what came across more than anything else is that Gibson was snooty and condescending, using fancy words solely to suggest to viewers that she has no idea what they mean. (Do you think Biden ever tosses around words like "hubris" and "existential" -- when he's not out with Charlie Rose, of course?)
In any case, given her relatively brief experience in high office, it's understandable that it'll be a while before she's up to speed on Washington/national/international matters, but there's nothing in her other than lack of experience that she lacks the talent and energy to acquire the requisite knowledge. Whether that will require "tutoring," or whatever else you can call it -- briefing, instruction, cramming -- why should we be surprised? She wasn't running for vice president, but suddenly was asked to serve. So upward and onward. What brought her this far will take her a lot farther.
Awful Ad, Awful Palin
Posted by on 9.12.08 @ 1:56PM
I have to agree with Phil that the McCain ad is just absolutely horrendous -- "pathetic," indeed. If I see one more attempt to play the victimized woman card, I might vomit. It's one thing to rightly fight back against outlandish media treatment, but to go around proactively seeking victimhood status even when the opponents haven't done anything obnoxious is, well, disgusting. And if they keep doing it, they will seriously overplay their hand and the backlash against them will be strong and swift. Over at The Corner Rich Lowy made the point I've been making on radio, which is that now that McCain has gotten a short-term benefit from Palin, he needs to shift his campaign back to real substance, on real issues where he holds a real political advantage over Obama. Right now his campaign is looking horrifically unserious, and that completely destroys McCain's biggest argument in his favor (if the campaign keeps this up).
Meanwhile, I also agree with Phil that from what I saw in the Palin interview with Gibson (and I saw only portions of what has been shown so far), she seemed terribly out of her element. She really did seem like somebody who had crammed for an exam at the last minute and was trying to remember what the "right" answers were instead of really knowing them. And unlike Stacy, I do not think she came across in any way that would be reassuring even to most of her own supporters. She needs to be far more impressive when the debate rolls around, and I don't mind saying that I am rooting for her to be so.
Re: Palin Wins
Posted by on 9.12.08 @ 1:30PM
One should actually be all the more concerned about Jim Antle's use of the word, "tutor." The idea that the potential head of state will be receiving... tutoring? She will be the president of the Senate! Grammatically speaking, this interview reeks of disaster, the consequence, unfortunately, of nervousness. She sounds very similar to the Miss Teen USA from South Carolina. This doesn't mean she's stupid -- it just means that she's fantastically nervous. Wlady just pointed out that she prefers to just take the points from advisers and to work on them on her own. That's a mistake. She needs to spend time with her journalism-school trained journalists and have them ribbing her. She needs to get used to this. There need to be cameras. Lights. Uncomfortable chairs. I agree with Philip's concern about her inexperience on foreign policy, and further her lack of knowledge on national security. If McCain's supposed to be the foreign policy the-world-is-a-dangerous-place candidate, Palin needs to convey a better sense of what's going on, not simply the first principles.
Heavy Briefing
Posted by on 9.12.08 @ 1:13PM
Yesterday, one of the Democratic Party's self-appointed commissars in the media, E.J. Dionne, was mightily dismissive of Sarah Palin based on what he found in a New York Times story:
"Aides traveling with Ms. Palin have reported back to associates that she is a fast study -- asking few questions of her policy briefers but quickly repeating back their main points -- who already has considerable ease and experience before cameras."A former aide in Alaska who had helped prepare Ms. Palin for her campaign debates there said she had a talent for distilling information into digestible sound bites. The aide said she generally prefers light preparatory materials to heavy briefing books, and prefers walking through potential questions and answers with aides to holding mock sessions."
So it doesn't look like Palin will be joining E.J. soon as a distinguished fellow at the Brookings Institution. But apart from reminding one of the frequent ridiculing of Ronald Reagan for his fondness for information distilled onto an index card, one can also see in her "talent for distilling information into digestible sound bites" a political skill -- requirement -- that she is obviously only beginning to hone on a national scale. Had she been a candidate for president and thus a participant in countless debates, she'd have the routine down cold.
Re: Palin Wins
Posted by on 9.12.08 @ 11:50AM
I remember watching the "sigh" debate between Al Gore and George W. Bush in 2000 and thinking that Gore cleaned Bush's clock. On substantive debating points, he surely did beat Bush. But the debate nevertheless was a political disaster for Gore because voters regarded him, rightly, as the less normal human being. The Sarah Palin interview could play the same way, we'll have to see.
Unfortunately, the problems that were evident in Bush's debate responses came back to haunt us when it came to actual governing. In that sense, Palin's performance is not encouraging. Even those of us who think it would be a good thing if more politicians had never heard of the Bush Doctrine have reason to be concerned -- if she doesn't bring any prior knowledge to the table here, she is going to be very influenced by whomever the McCain campaign sends to tutor her.
Kuo vs. Palin, Again
Posted by on 9.12.08 @ 11:37AM
When last we heard from David Kuo, he was describing Sarah Palin as "Dan Quayle with mammaries." Now, he's accusing her of being disingenuous about her religious beliefs:
In the interview she goes on to say, "I would never presume to know God's will…."Kuo doesn't claim to have an inside source telling him what advice Palin is getting, and apparently discounts the possibility that Palin came up with her own responses to Charlie Gibson's questions about her faith.
Really? Truly? Does that mean that Gov. Palin is open to the idea that God's will is for the United States to become a Muslim nation? One under Sharia law? Does Gov. Palin believe it might be God's will for the United States to pass laws outlawing the freedom of speech? Is her faith and theology so insipid, so tepid that she has no idea what God's will is? Or is it that she is simply trying to take the edge off her faith because her new political advisers say it is "too much." I'm guessing it is the latter.
Can Republcians Take Back Congress?
Posted by on 9.12.08 @ 11:34AM
I still say no, and that they're more likely to lose seats than make gains. But this new Gallup poll shows a post convention bounce for the GOP brand itself, with the double digit lead in the generic ballot enjoyed by Democrats all year narrowing to just three points. The poll, according to the release, "casts some doubt on the previously assumed inevitability of the Democrats' maintaining control of Congress." I'd like to see more polls reinforcing this, and look at more district-by-district polling, before I take it too seriously.
One other point is that a few months ago, we hosted a breakfast with House minority leader John Boehner and he argued that the GOP leadership wasn't going to try and nationalize elections, but rather instruct their candidates to do what they needed to within their own district. I wonder whether, given the improving fortunes of Republicans, they will change course and decide to run a national campaign.
Re: Palin Wins
Posted by on 9.12.08 @ 11:22AM
Point taken, Phil. I don't know which pundits are actually defending Palin on substance, so I'll let you fight that fight. Any way you look at it, though, Palin scored points by identifying the enemy as "Islamic extremism." So we're not just in a "War Against Terror" -- the enemy as a tactic -- but in a war against a specific ideology whose adherents habitually practice that tactic. Given a choice between the views of Sarah Palin and the views of the typical Mideast specialist at the State Department, I'm with the hockey mom.
Re: Palin
Posted by on 9.12.08 @ 11:03AM
Stacy, maybe you're misunderstanding me. You may be right that her performance will prove good enough for swing voters, especially given that McCain will be at the top of the ticket. But I was criticizing conservatives who are actually defending her on substance. National security is of paramount importance to me, and for nearly eight years I've had to endure a president who is utterly incapable of clearly and intellegently articulating positions that I am inclined to agree with, so it bothers me that it's happening all over again. Palin is a politician who is going to do the best that she can in such interviews to get elected, and party members are going to fall in line to defend her. But conservative commentators actually have the freedom to be honest, if they choose to be, and so it's troubling to me that those who seriously debate and think about foreign policy and national security matters can watch that performance, and actually defend it, not just on whether it is effective enough politically, but on its substance.
Re: Palin Wins
Posted by on 9.12.08 @ 10:45AM
"Are conservatives seriously going to argue that she knows what she's talking about?"
Phil, anybody who cares whether Palin can give an exegesis of the Bush Doctrine is already committed one way or another in this election. We're at the point of the campaign where all that matters is the opinion of undecided swing voters -- whom surveys consistently show to be the least-informed, least-engaged segment of the electorate.
Talk to these people, and you will consistently hear the same phrase repeated in various iterations: "I don't vote for the party, I vote for the man." The independent voter believes himself capable of making a "gut hunch" assessment of a candidate's character and ability. The independent vote is non-ideological and non-partisan, and is prone to bandwagon psychology. The independent voter disdains "politicians," and is a sucker for anti-politicians like Ross Perot, Jesse Ventura and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
To say to the independent voter that Palin is not a foreign-policy expert is in fact to endorse her, since the independent voter hates those snooty know-it-all "experts" and believes that foreign policy (like all policy) should be based on "common sense."
These typical attitudes of independent voters are the "is" reality, not the "ought" ideal, of American politics.
'Take the Gloves Off' Redux
Posted by on 9.12.08 @ 10:28AM
There are few harbingers of Democratic defeat more ominous than when liberals begin demanding that Democrats "take the gloves off." The New York Times:
Mr. McCain's choice of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate and the resulting jolt of energy among Republican voters appear to have caught Mr. Obama and his advisers by surprise and added to concern among some Democrats that the Obama campaign was not pushing back hard enough against Republican attacks in a critical phase of the race.The Associated Press:
The new fighting spirit comes as McCain has been gaining in the polls and some Democrats have been expressing concern the Obama campaign has not been aggressive enough. Obama's campaign says the escalation will involve advertising and pushes made by the candidate, running mate Joe Biden and other surrogates across the country.It is a pet conceit of liberalism that the reason Democrats lose elections is because they are insufficiently aggressive. ABC's Jake Tapper notes this is at least the third time Team Obama has vowed to take the gloves off. The problem is that the types of attacks the Left wants to hear -- that Republicans are war-mongering stooges of Corporate America and enemies of A Woman's Right to Choose, etc. -- don't resonate with the independent swing voters who are the decisive demographic in general elections.
What's With the Walking?
Posted by on 9.12.08 @ 10:19AM
I watched this clip that Philip linked to earlier, and I always wonder: Why do journalists insist on doing the walking around thing? That said, Palin seemed very nervous. But yet she remains fairly graceful. She appears genuinely friendly, if a touch stilted. This is a first interview -- her internal charm is certainly showing.
Re: Palin Wins
Posted by on 9.12.08 @ 10:19AM
I suppose you can say she "won" if winning is defined by skating by without a major embarassing incident that will damage the ticket politically. But if you set the bar higher and ask whether she displayed any real understanding of foreign policy and national security, given the office she's seeking, I would say that she lost pretty handily. I just don't see how anybody watching that could have honestly thought that she's ready to take over as commander in chief at a moment's notice if something were to happen to John McCain. It's one thing for partisan Republicans to defend her performance, but it's disappointing to see so many conservative commentators join in. I was watching Fox last night and Bill Kristol said she was "impressive." Meanwhile, Andy McCarthy has been trying to defend her on the Bush Doctrine question by arguing that it isn't easily defined and is the subject of debate even within the foreign policy community. But that's not the point. When asked about the Bush Doctrine, had Sarah Palin said, "How do you mean that Charlie? Intellegent people disagree on the actual meaning of the term. Some people see it as the idea of using preemtive war as a means to eliminate threats, others see it as the idea that we're not going to distinguish between terrorists and the nations that harbor them, and still others say that promoting democracy is an essential element of it" than yes, it would be clear that she has a grasp of the subject matter.
But here's the actual exchange:
GIBSON: Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?
PALIN: In what respect, Charlie?
GIBSON: The Bush -- well, what do you -- what do you interpret it to be?
PALIN: His world view.
GIBSON: No, the Bush doctrine, enunciated September 2002, before the Iraq war.
PALIN: I believe that what President Bush has attempted to do is rid this world of Islamic extremism, terrorists who are hell bent on destroying our nation. There have been blunders along the way, though. There have been mistakes made. And with new leadership, and that's the beauty of American elections, of course, and democracy, is with new leadership comes opportunity to do things better.
His "world view"? Are conservatives seriously going to argue that she knows what she's talking about?Meanwhile, some other conservatives seem to be contented that her hawkish answers suggest that her heart is in the right place. But that's the same assumption conservatives made about President Bush, and look how that turned out.
Daily Must-Reads
Posted by on 9.12.08 @ 10:14AM
School choice: not quite a public good, but still worthwhile
Washington shares Detroit's shame
Likely Israeli strike on Iran spells trouble for Iraq
The Weekly Standard rallies around Palin on the Bush Doctrine
Another Pathetic McCain Ad
Posted by on 9.12.08 @ 9:32AM
Today brings yet another ad (the third by my count) in which the
McCain campaign plays the victim card on behalf of Sarah Palin. If
they think she's ready, then put her out there and let her fight
for herself. But the way they're playing this bolsters the critics
who believe Palin was chosen in a cynical ploy to win disgruntled
Hillary voters. This just seems like the most patronizing way to go
after women voters, and assumes that women are dumb and easily
manipulated. Talk about disrespectful. This is just an utter
embarrassment.
Elite Rage Against Palin
Posted by on 9.12.08 @ 9:26AM
Cintra Wilson, a San Francisco playwright relocated to New York, perfectly expresses in Salon.com the incoherent rage of the bicoastal elite:
Sarah Palin is a bit comical, like one of those cutthroat Texas cheerleader stage moms. What her Down syndrome baby and pregnant teenage daughter unequivocally prove, however, is that her most beloved child is the antiabortion platform that ensures her own political ambitions with the conservative right. The throat she's so hot to cut is that of all American women. . . .The Sarah Palin of Wilson's imagination, of course, bears no resemblance to the actual Sarah Palin. What is fascinating is Wilson's radical feminist conception of true womanhood -- "I abort, therefore I am" -- that necessarily renders Palin as an unwoman, a "Republican blowup doll" or, as Wilson also calls her, "a Christian Stepford wife."
As a woman who does not believe what Palin believes, the thought of such an opportunistic anti-female in the White House -- in the Cheney chair, no less -- is akin to ideological brain rape. What this Republican blowup doll does with her own insides in accord with her own faith is her business. But, like the worst and most terrifying of religious extremists, she seems very comfortable with the idea of imposing her own views on everyone else.
Palin on the Bush Doctrine
Posted by on 9.12.08 @ 12:27AM
Sarah Palin's understanding of anticipatory self-defense sounds closer to mine than George W. Bush's or John McCain's, though not entirely incompatible with Bush and McCain's. Charlie.
Palin on ANWR
Posted by on 9.12.08 @ 12:06AM
Watching another segment of the interview on "Nightline," in which she was showing off the Alaskan pipeline and talking about global warming and ANWR, she was clearly more comfortable. Smartly, she conceded that she differs with McCain over ANWR, but cunningly said, "I'm working on him."
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Palin Wins
Posted by on 9.11.08 @ 10:25PM
The important thing about the Gibson interview (transcript excerpts here) is to try to look at it through the eyes of the undecided independent voter, who doesn't care if she can describe the Bush Doctrine or not.
(Video from Hot Air.) This election won't be decided by foreign-policy wonks. It will be decided by ordinary people who see a mother concerned about Islamic extremism. Charlie Gibson's "gotchas" won't bother those people, who like Sarah Palin a lot more than they like Charlie Gibson.
I am reminded of Mike Deaver who was asked about TV coverage of Reagan's 1984 re-election campaign and said, we don't care what you say about Reagan, we care about you showing those pictures -- the photo ops the campaign arranged. As long as America saw Reagan on TV, that was good for Reagan, because Reagan was good on TV.
A similar dynamic is in evidence with Palin. America likes her a lot, and she's good on TV. So if ABC wants to show Sarah Palin on TV for 10 minutes, it doesn't really matter what questions they're asking her, and it doesn't matter what the pundits say about her responses.
Politico says she "appears to have held her own," but she did more than that. She won.
National Service Forum
Posted by on 9.11.08 @ 9:51PM
What office do I go to to get an hour and forty minutes of my life back?
More Palin
Posted by on 9.11.08 @ 6:58PM
Just got through watching the first segment of the Palin interview, and I have to say, she did pretty awful. It wasn't a matter of an obvious gaffe you could point to -- though she did draw a complete blank when asked whether she supported the Bush Doctrine as she clearly had no idea what it was, and seemed to endorse strikes within Pakistan if there was actionable intellegence, which Obama was mocked for by conservatives last year. But overall, she looked so rehearsed and scripted, and just kept repeating catch phrases without displaying any depth of understanding about the complexity of the national security issues being discussed. She came off very nervous, like a student who had crammed for an exam and was speaking in generalities becuase she doesn't have an understanding of the specifics.
UPDATE: I thought she came off fine in the second segment of the interview, defending her comments about whether we were doing God's will in Iraq.
Sarah and Charlie
Posted by on 9.11.08 @ 6:55PM
First of all, who does Charlie Gibson think he is peering down on Sarah Palin through half-lenses? All in all, in part one, she did fine, other than in badly answering a rather trick question on the "Bush Doctrine" -- when's the last time that was in the news? It's not as if Charlie and his colleagues have been spending much time these last several years talking about it. For all inents, it's, if not defunct, in deep freeze.
It was telling that in asking her about Russian and Georgia, Charlie for all intents took the pro-Russian view that somehow Russia was "provoked" into attack Georgia. Palin did okay here, particularly in emphasizing that if Georgia, as a hypothetical member of NATO, were attacked, it would be the moral obligation of the other members of the treaty to come to its help.
On a Lighter Note...
Posted by on 9.11.08 @ 2:45PM
Last night, the Funniest Celebrity in Washington contest was held I missed it, but Mike Huckabee won it with this performance joking about his experiences runing for president.
Around the 6:40 mark, he delivers some barbs at his Republican rivals, and (perhaps future rival) Sarah Palin:"We had some interesting people run for president in our party. I mentioned Mitt, who had more positions than an under-aged Chinese gymnast on most every issue. And then there was Fred Thompson. I heard Fred actually ran, I didn't actually see him out there on the campaign trail. Everyday we'd say, you know, Fred gets up at the crack of noon... We had a tough life out there on the campaign trail, and I'm wondering everyday why I'm not still there. I was hurt, I mean, John McCain didn't even vet me. It's okay, he didn't vet Sarah Palin either, so I guess it's alright."
Dave Weigel has some excerpts from Bob Barr's routine, including: "As a Libertarian, I can really picture a world in which there's no war. But George W. Bush would probably invade that, too."
This should be a new regular feature.
Posted by on 9.11.08 @ 2:18PM
The default state of things in the world is for the levers of state to be dominated by the people who already possess social and economic power in order to protect and expand their sphere of privilege.
The contention of progressive political reform is that it's possible to organize, educate, and mobilize sufficient quantities of people to overcome the power of the few and instead implement policies that benefit the many.
...Which is to say that of course effective progressive political leaders need to be - and, historically, have been - good at "playing the game" but they've also been good at cutting through the smokescreen and refocusing attention. That's how Bill Clinton managed to survive and even thrive during impeachment.
Re: Remembering
Posted by on 9.11.08 @ 1:20PM
On a bright, sunny morning seven years ago today, I was sitting in my office in Boston's Copley Square, getting back to work after I'd traveled to Cleveland for a wedding. My immediate concern was figuring out how to return a tuxedo I had rented in Ohio but didn't have time to bring back before catching my flight. Could I FedEx it? What will it look like after I stuff it in a box?
Soon that became my least pressing concern. I glanced at the headlines on the news site I had in my browser -- a plane had crashed into one of the Twin Towers. Terrible, I thought. What a freak accident. Then someone came running in my office shouting that another plane had hit the second tower. Immediately I knew it was no accident. Women were crying. We rolled a TV set out of a closet and turned it on to see the unforgettable, haunting images. Then we learned that the Pentagon was hit. America was under attack. Rumors of cars blowing up outside the State Department began to circulate.
I frantically tried to call colleagues in our New York office to no avail. All circuits were busy. There was talk that a marketing team from our company was doing a pitch not far from the World Trade Center. I started sending e-mails. News came that the flights had originated in Boston. There was, as is often forgotten today, a sense that the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center would not be the last. We evacuated our offices, which included several floors of Prudential Tower, Boston's tallest building. We would evacuate almost daily for the next week as fools called in bomb threats, knowing we would have to take them seriously.
I actually considered staying behind for a while, but decided that the trains back into the suburbs might stop running and I did not want to be stranded in the city. The normally empty early afternoon commuter rail was packed with workers fleeing their offices to head home to their families. I sat next to a coworker. "How will know that this is over?" he asked. "How will we ever know?"
A Vote for McCain Isn't A Vote for McCain
Posted by on 9.11.08 @ 11:51AM
It's no secret that I like Sarah Palin better than John McCain. And as an occasional third-party voter, I roll my eyes at the argument that if I don't vote for the Republican I'm really voting for the Democrat even if I did not in fact pull the lever for the Democrat. But this missive that arrived in my inbox is a bit much to take: "A vote for Sarah is not a vote for McCain!"
Umm, unless you write her in, yes, by definition it is. They don't allow that kind of ticket-splitting.
Remembering
Posted by on 9.11.08 @ 11:23AM
This morning, I've been watching the TV coverage of the service at Ground Zero, McCain's brief remarks in Shanksville, and President Bush dedicating the memorial at the Pentagon and am largely at a loss for words. So much has been written about Sept. 11 -- an event that I have thought about every day in the intervening seven years -- but at the same time, writing about anything else seems cheap and petty.
Daily Must-Reads
Posted by on 9.11.08 @ 11:20AM
Rove to Obama: she's no good for you
Slow-motion crisis on Wall Street
How can you get people to get up and vote if you're 4 years behind on your job?
Not Standing Pat
Posted by on 9.11.08 @ 10:39AM
It's not surprising that Clark Stooksbury would say Pat Buchanan "should be taken with a pillar of salt during leap [i.e., presidential election] years." That he would put those words down on the blog of the American Conservative, however, is rather scandalous, don't you think?
'Overreactionaries'
Posted by on 9.11.08 @ 10:01AM
In a essay on the long, awful fallout of September 11 in the Politico today, I attempt to catapult that term into popular usage. We'll see if it takes.
Barack Oboring Strikes Again
Posted by on 9.11.08 @ 9:59AM
I've said it before. I'll say it again. It's not his inexperience. It's his unfunnyness. Watch this clucking lecture he gives in response to Lipstickgate. He starts out heading toward funny -- and make a swerve into schoolmarmishness.
Terrifyingly Good
Posted by on 9.11.08 @ 8:34AM
If the prospect of Sarah Palin as vice president is enough to "terrify" Matt Damon, that's a very good thing. What America needs is more terrified movie stars. But doesn't it kind of undercut Damon's "Bourne" action-hero credentials, that he's terrified by the prospect of a fundamentalist small-town hockey mom in power? Action heroes shouldn't be so faint-hearted.
Matt Damon's Single Issue: Dinosaurs
Posted by on 9.11.08 @ 1:09AM
Who knew that Matt Damon was a single issue voter? I'm sad that Drudge is highlighting the "Really Bad Disney Movie" line from this video, but the money line is really at 1:19, where we learn what it's all about.
"I need to know whether she thinks that dinosaurs existed 4,000 years ago. That's important. I want to know that. I really do. Because she's going to have the nuclear codes."
To believe that Patton thought he was a reincarnation of Pericles and we still let him command soldiers in World War II.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Enough With the Umbrage
Posted by on 9.10.08 @ 7:36PM
I was on a conference call this afternoon with several McCain surrogates where they were highlighting Carol Folwer's idiocy. Someone on the call (I think it was campaign spokesman Jeff Sadowsky) said that Obama should distance himself from Fowler's remarks.
Keeping what Lindsey Graham aptly called the Democrats' "meltdown" over Sarah Palin in the spotlight is good for the McCain campaign. But the way to handle this sort of thing (and this includes the lipstick kerfuffle) is not to demand apologies and denunciations. A better response would be mockery, of the "look at how crazy they've gone" variety, or perhaps a Reaganite "there you go again." In their current posture Team McCain just sounds whiny.
Not So Swift, Indeed
Posted by on 9.10.08 @ 7:09PM
Ramesh Ponnuru's comments strike me as right: not only is Republican whining about lipstick and pigs cringe-inducingly absurd, but the decision to put the disastrous Jane Swift out in front of this is contrary to everything Sarah Palin is supposed to represent:
It's not just that she was an incompetent and unpopular governor of Massachusetts, although she was, and had nothing like Palin's credentials as a reformer. Her administration was a failure in significant part because of her inability to walk the line between public and private, work and family. She was the last female governor before Palin to be prominent for being pregnant in office, and she made a hash of things, using state aides as babysitters. Couldn't the campaign have found someone who wasn't such a counter-example to Palin?
In fact, the use of Swift is off-message and inappropriate in every way. Massachusetts Republicans had to call in Mitt Romney to save the governorship. Palin, by contrast, has provided a boost to McCain beyond anything Romney could ever have dreamed.
Bill Gates Right-Wing Conspiracy Update
Posted by on 9.10.08 @ 6:02PM
The version of Microsoft Word on my old laptop is less racist than the iteration on my new one: instead of changing "Obama" to "Osama," it prompts me to change "Obama" to "Omaha," where Obama would like to pick up one of Nebraska's electoral votes.
Polling Roundup
Posted by on 9.10.08 @ 6:00PM
A few state polls have come out this afternoon that are worth noting.
Rasmussen shows McCain up by 2 in New Mexico -- which is an improvement over last month, when he trailed Obama by 4 points. This is a state that went for Gore by a whisker in 2000 and the flipped to Bush. If Obama can't win Virginia, Ohio, or Florida, NM will become essential to his electoral math.
CNN/Time has released polls showing Obama up 4 in Michigan and 6 in New Hampshire, McCain up 5 in Missouri, and 4 in Virginia . All of these results are more or less consistent with other polls, although the gaps are a bit wider in this batch.
The bottom line is that after a few days of state polling following the conventions, the electoral map keeps looking more and more like it did in 2004.
Rangel Shouldn't Have to Step Down, Rangel Says
Posted by on 9.10.08 @ 5:45PM
This is funny:
WASHINGTON -- Representative Charles B. Rangel said on Wednesday that "cultural and language barriers" prevented him from understanding the finances of his Dominican Republic beachfront house, and vowed to repay several thousand dollars in federal taxes he owes after failing to report $75,000 in rental income from the villa...
But the 78-year-old congressman, a Democrat from Harlem who has been in Congress since 1971, brushed aside calls that he step down as chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, which writes the federal tax code, and accused Republicans who have called for him to do so of politicizing his financial issues.
"I really don't believe making mistakes means you have to give up your career," Mr. Rangel said.
No Abortions Only Qualification Says SC Dem
Posted by on 9.10.08 @ 4:01PM
If you want a real nasty attack on Sarah Palin to get indignant about, try this bit from the charming Carol Fowler of the South Carolina Democratic Party. She said that Palin's "primary qualification seems to be that she hasn't had an abortion." No amount of lipstick can make this pig look prettier.
Racism?
Posted by on 9.10.08 @ 3:40PM
Now that I have ripped into the McCain folks for charging "sexism," let me try to verbally eviscerate New York Gov. David Paterson for suggesting that it is somehow "racism" to make fun of Barack Justanotherlyingpolitician Obama's background as a "community organizer." That's bunk, and Paterson knows it. The fact is that Obama again and again has publicly tried to make a virtue of his job as a community organizer, and that it is perfectly fair game therefore to note that the job may not have been much to brag about. Just as Willie Horton was not a Republican attack (Al Gore raised it) and not racism (the same guy who did the ads, Floyd Brown, on his own produced the single most effective ad aver against David Duke), but about the real issue of crime, the belittling of Obama's accomplishments (or lack thereof) is a legitimate way to raise a serious issue, which is the lack of his qualifications for the office he seeks.
It would be nice if both campaigns would stop yelling childish accusations about the others' motives (it sounds like the brat whining to mommy that big brother made a mean look at him) and start acting like adults running for the office of leader of the free world in highly dangerous times.
Now, a caveat: It is absolutely true that the job of "community organizer" is not inherently useless or that it inherently merits belittlement. The reason so many conservatives don't know what a community organizer is, is because so many of them have never deliberately set foot in the inner city. Well, bleep them. I know plenty of people who have done jobs with titles similar to "community organizer" who have accomplished a world of good for the communities they serve. What Obama was trying to do was indeed a noble effort -- even if he took a misguided approach to it and (by his own account) didn't accomplish much. If community organizers take a Kemp-like approach, a personal and community empowerment approach, they can truly turn impoverished areas around. If they just try to organize to put more pressure on government for more or different sorts of handouts, they aren't doing much good no matter how nobly motivated. Based on Byron York's reporting in National Review, Obama seemed to take the latter approach -- and, predictably, wasted much of his time. (It is also worth noting that York's subtext seemed to be that what Obama did is the very definition of community organizing; if that is the assumption, it is wrong. One or even many examples do not necessarily constitute the whole.)
Sarah Palin's speech line tweaking Obama for his background was funny, well delivered, and on target. And it most certainly wasn't racist. But if Republicans overplay it, they betray their own ignorance about what is really necessary to lift a community from distress. On the other hand, if Paterson and company continue to yell racism, they harm the body politic as a whole with inflammatory rhetoric. Then again (again), the McCain folks yelling sexism are guilty of the same sort of sin, albeit on a subject a bit less inflammatory.
A pox on both their houses.
Redneck Palin
Posted by on 9.10.08 @ 2:43PM
Today's Splice Today has a piece by yours truly on the tremendous redneck appeal of Sarah Palin.
McCain Incoherence on Fannie and Freddie
Posted by on 9.10.08 @ 2:12PM
One line that stood out at me from McCain's rally."This week, we're looking at a government-led restructuring of our home loan agencies," he said too boos. "We need people in their homes, but we can't turn this into a bailout for Wall Street speculators. The CEOs who got us into this mess are walking away with over $20 million, and we're not going to let that happen."
So somehow, McCain wants to rail against a government-led restructuring that he supports, but he wants to allow people to stay in homes that they cannot afford, and somehow he's going to do this without paying off loans to the banks they own money to (because they represent Wall Street and therefore are bad in McCain's mind), and then the federal government is going to decide how much CEOs can earn. Got it? I know, it's giving me a headache too.
Random Thought
Posted by on 9.10.08 @ 2:12PM
Heart may have done McCain-Palin a favor by objecting to the use of "Barracuda." Wouldn't Team Obama have started riffing off the line "And if the real thing don't do the trick/You better make up something quick" eventually?
Palin Comes to Fairfax (with that other dude)
Posted by on 9.10.08 @ 2:03PM
FAIRFAX, Va. -- All election season I've been saying if you want to find parking, go to a Republican campaign event. That's because ever since Iowa, the crowd sizes at Republican candidate rallies have paled in comparison to what the Democrats draw. But that was in the pre-Palin era. Now everything has changed, and suddenly Obama-like crowds are following Republicans.
Arriving at the rally an hour ahead of time, we had to cricle around for 15 minutes just to find paking a half a mile away from the event, on a residential street. The line to get into the rally, which was held at a local park, extended for several blocks, and by the time I got in I saw thousands of people fanning out all over the park from the stage.
It's amazing how much Palin has become the focus of these McCain events. The most popular chant was "SA-RAH!" "SAR-AH!" "SAR-AH!" I saw one man with a "Sarah! Will you marry me?" sign, another that read "Read my lipstick: Baseball and Soccer Mom for McCain-Palin" and another that read "She's Our Girl."
Fred Thompson made a surprise appearance to warm up the audience, and most of his speech revolved around Palin, defending her record and experience against Democrats and the media.
"Sarah Palin has more experience than Barack Obama," Thompson said, to more chants of "SAR-AH!"
"They are now parachuting in dozens of lawyers, and investigators, and scandal mongers, and representatives of cable networks to look under every rock they can find in Alaska," he said, echoing the theme of a new McCain ad. "I hope they brought their own brei and chablis with them."
Thompson also made what appeared to be a reference to the lipstick-on-a-pig controversy. His words were obscured by applause on my recording, but he said Democrats launched the "most vicious assault" he's seen in a presidential race and are now "pulling out all the stops."
McCain and Palin entered with Cindy and Todd at their side with "Eye of the Tiger" blasting, and they gave what were more or less condensed versions of their convention speeches. This is more of a problem for Palin than it is for McCain. Roughly 40 million people saw her speech. The longer she goes on repeating some of the often-quoted lines (such as the one about how some men use change to promote their careers and others, like John McCain, use their careers to promote change), the more it will reinforce the idea that she has nothing much else to say. At some point, and I think we're getting there pretty soon, she's going to have to mix it up more.But for now, the crowd loves it. The event drew 23,000 people, according to an RNC source citing the fire marshall report, which would make it the biggest event of the entire campaign for McCain. In a 13-electoral vote state that Obama hopes to paint blue for the first time since 1964, it's going to be crucial for McCain to turnout his voters. I can confirm other reports that people did begin to leave after Palin spoke (and while McCain was speaking), though it was far from a mass exodus. Most people stayed to hear McCain, and there were chants of "JOHN MC-CAIN!" And as they exited, volunteers were handing out yard signs and bumper stickers.
AmSpec on Twitter
Posted by on 9.10.08 @ 1:22PM
For you ADHD-addled masses, AmSpec is now available on Twitter! Click here to follow. If you don't use Twitter now, well, we can't say we recommend it. But we don't exactly recommend whiskey in the newsroom, either.
Re: Lipstick
Posted by on 9.10.08 @ 12:46PM
Excuse my indifference to the question of whether LipstickGate is fair. I'm just enjoying the spectacle in a fair, balanced, neutral and objective way.
Overshadowed
Posted by on 9.10.08 @ 12:40PM
Mickey Kaus, yesterday:
Is McCain scared of campaigning without Palin? If they "split off," as candidates usually do, the crowds will go with Palin, no? McCain will be left looking unexciting.Leslie Bradshaw, at a McCain-Palin rally in Fairfax, VA today:
as soon as Palin finished speaking, the crowd left. this kind of concerns me -- you only want to listen to half the ticket?I know Team McCain is flying high right now, but riding the burst of enthusiasm generated by an exciting running mate is not a sustainable strategy. McCain had better come out strong when the debates start in a couple of weeks, lest the Palin bounce be remembered as the Palin bubble.
Anybody But McCain or Obama!
Posted by on 9.10.08 @ 12:39PM
And I do mean anybody. Ron Paul held his press conference at the National Press Club where the Republican congressman said he spurned the McCain campaign's request for an endorsement and urged his supporters to vote third-party -- but didn't specify which party. Instead Paul appeared with an eclectic set of minor candidates who professed to agree with him about Iraq, civil liberties, the national debt, and the Fed: Ralph Nader, Constitution Party nominee Chuck Baldwin, and the loathsome Cynthia McKinney. Bob Barr bailed on the event, for reasons not yet clear but probably at least partially attributable to his desire to stand apart from the other third-party candidates this year.
To the extent that the Paul movement is a transideological, left-right coalition that was never going to unite around a single candidate like Barr or Baldwin, this move makes a certain amount of sense. Most of Paul's supporters probably were going to go third-party anyway and this just helps reassure those who might haave been thinking of McCain or Obama. But it also makes the Paulites less of a coherent political movement -- we're talking about a little over a million people splitting their support between three or four candidates with very different platforms -- and makes Paul, as Dave Weigel puts it, "the patron saint of political outcasts."
Paul's tacit position had previously been that his supporters should vote for either Barr or Baldwin, which makes a little bit more sense since the three are closer on the issues and it splits the Paul vote between fewer candidates. The two men certainly needed some shoring up from Paul, since Sarah Palin is rapidly bringing disaffected conservatives back into the GOP fold.
UPDATE: Weigel has more on Barr's decision to drop out of the event. While I agree with Barr that Paul's "any of the above" approach is a mistake and represents a failure of leadership, it is a huge tactical blunder for Barr to pick a fight with the Paulites. The Libertarian nominee has enough problems with his lack of consistency over the years, he doesn't need this.
Re: Lipstick
Posted by on 9.10.08 @ 12:09PM
John, even if that is all true -- and certainly speechwriters use code words and dogwhistles for their candidate's supporters all the time -- what is to be gained by participating in this kind of PC nitpicking? A momentary advantage to the McCain campaign? Maybe. But if we internalize all the left's rules, then the left still wins.
Putting Lipstick on a Swiftboat?
Posted by on 9.10.08 @ 11:28AM
The candidate himself feels the need to weigh in:
Barack Obama responded Wednesday to the John McCain campaign's call for an apology concerning his "lipstick on a pig" remarks, by calling the controversy "phony and foolish" and defending it as an "innocent remark" that was taken out of context.Innocent remarks taken out of contest. Yeah. Been there. Done that.
Obama said his comment was meant to compare the policies of McCain to those of President Bush, and was in no way a reference to Republican vice presidential Sarah Palin.
Obama accused the McCain campaign of "lies and phony outrage" and "Swift-boat politics." He said the "made-up controversy" was "cat nip for the news media."
Re: Lipstick
Posted by on 9.10.08 @ 11:25AM
Jim, Phil, Quin: I agree that the web ad playing the sexism card is a bit much. But let's not let Obama off the hook that easily.
Here is what he said: "You can put lipstick on a pig. It's still a pig. You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It's still gonna stink." I'm not sure we should be so quick to dismiss the idea that Obama and his speechwriters, knowing full well that "lipstick" has become associated with Palin and "old" has become associated with McCain, picked their cliches intentionally, as coded digs at their opponents.
Here's Jim Lindgren's theory:
Probably, the Democratic speechwriters today were trying to do their own version of Palin's pointed gibes (about community organizing, talking about victory, personal discovery, etc.), but got the tone wrong...Is Lindgren correct? I don't know -- that's where the plausible deniability part comes in. But it's at least a close question.It is not just a case of plausible deniability; the speechwriters were trying to be witty. By referring to McCain and Palin's ideas using colorful language that will cause his audience to think of the actual people Palin and McCain, Obama was almost certainly trying to come right up to the line between acceptable and unacceptable insults without actually crossing it. That Obama's crowd understood the allusion to Palin is suggested by the enthusiastic cheers that started even before he finished the pig sentence. Without seeing the Palin connection, would they have cheered in the middle of him uttering an otherwise completely ordinary cliche?
Did Obama have female speechwriters work on his speech? If not, would he have miscalculated if he did?
Was Obama calling Palin a pig and McCain a stinky old fish? No, it would be too crude to do - and he didn't directly do so.
But when Obama talked about a pig and a fish, was he slyly referring to them personally? Almost certainly. Very likely, this paired comparison was intended to be a Palin-style sharp, but good natured insult. It misfired because the insult was far less sly (and far more crude) than he and his speechwriters thought it was.
Lipstick
Posted by on 9.10.08 @ 11:02AM
I agree entirely with Jim and Phil: There was nothing remotely
offensive about what Obama said, and the McCain campaign is acting
in an utterly puerile fashion by making an issue out of it -- and
even worse by making a commercial out of it. For that matter, all
the caterwauling in general -- both last week and now in this
commercial -- about "sexism" being the root of the attacks against
Palin is just flat out dishonest, plus it combines the victim card
with the identity card in a way worthy only of the worst liberals
in the country. It's beneath contempt. Look, it is perfectly
legitimate to make an issue of media attacks on Palin's family. The
media attacks are themselves beneath contempt, and the media bias
is almost criminal. But the source of the attacks is bias, both
ideological and cultural -- NOT sexism. Indeed, the idea that the
attacks are sexist is laughable.
George Allen tried to run to the left of Webb on identity politics,
and it arguably backfired. McCain should not make the same
mistake.
MoDo Can't Resist That Pig
Posted by on 9.10.08 @ 11:01AM
By my count, this is Maureen Dowd's third attempt to mock Sarah Palin (although maybe I've lost count and confused her with Sally Quinn). MoDo suspiciously manages to echo Obama's lipstick-on-a-pig remark:
Sarah, who is now so renowned that she is known merely by one name and has a name ID of 90 percent, has to be a Kmart mom who appeals to Kmart moms and dads. She's already shown that she can shoot the pig, put lipstick on it, bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan. Now all she has to do is also prove that she can be the leader of the free world on a moment's notice, and field dress Putin as adeptly as she can a moose.When are the elite liberal media going to realize that their obsession with Palin is actually helping the Republicans? There is a figure of speech, derived from the works of Joel Chandler Harris, for a situation where people allow themselves to get stuck in something they can't get out of, but I wouldn't want to risk offending anyone today.
After devilishly mocking Obama -- and successfully getting into his head -- with ads about how he was just a frothy celebrity, like Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, it turns out all the McCain camp wanted was an Obama of its own. Now that they have the electric Palin, they've stopped arguing that celebrity is bad. All they do is worship at her cult of celebrity.
Mark Halperin to Press: Go Get'em.
Posted by on 9.10.08 @ 10:14AM
A nice example of doublespeak from Time's Mark Halperin:
I'm not saying the press should be out to get John McCain and Sarah Palin. But if a core part of their message is something that every journalist -- journalism organization in the country has looked at and says it's demonstrably false, again, we're not doing our jobs if we just treat this as one of many things that's happening.
Re: Lipstick on a Pig
Posted by on 9.10.08 @ 10:06AM
Guys, the point here isn't whether Obama meant to insult Palin with this remark. The point is that some of Palin's supporters believe Obama meant it that way. (Trust me, I've got some experience with giving unintended offense.)
Talk radio is having a field day with this remark already, and Team Maverick's ad is just their way of breathing a bit of oxygen on the sparks. Team Obama's response (via the Politico):
The McCain campaign's attack tonight is a pathetic attempt to play the gender card about the use of a common analogy -- the same analogy that Senator McCain himself used about Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's health care plan just last year. This phony lecture on gender sensitivity is the height of cynicism and lays bare the increasingly dishonorable campaign John McCain has chosen to run.If the lipstick-on-a-pig remark is so transparently inoffensive, why would Obama feel the need to respond? I think Team Obama has been shaken by the poll trend in recent days and they're starting to get jittery.
Re: Lipstick on a Pig
Posted by on 9.10.08 @ 8:47AM
Even worse, the McCain campaign is out with a new web ad on the incident, with a Katie Couric clip on "sexism" in the campaign. It's one thing to let Obama's poor choice of words play out in the media, but for the McCain campaign to embrace this line of attack and play the gender card so explicitly is just pathetic, and may very well come back to haunt McCain should he say anything that could be twisted by the PC police into having racial overtones.
Lipstick on a Pig
Posted by on 9.10.08 @ 1:08AM
I'm sorry, I simply don't think either the video or the context supports the claim that Obama intended to call Sarah Palin a pig, no matter what the audience supposedly thought or what the notoriously thin-skinned and ridiculous Jane Swift says. Yes, Palin wears lipstick and compares herself to a pitbull wearing lipstick but that's the only connection. To quibble about the phrase "putting lipstick on a pig" is to put conservatives in the same category as illiterate PC liberals worried about the word "niggardly."
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Rasmussen: McCain up 11 Points in Montana
Posted by on 9.9.08 @ 5:39PM
In the same poll at the end of July, McCain was up by just one point.
And Palin seems to be helping:
McCain's running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is viewed favorably by 59% of Montana voters, a figure that includes 44% with a Very Favorable opinion of her. This is the sixth Rasmussen Reports state poll released since Palin was selected as McCain's Vice Presidential nominee and in all six her Very Favorable ratings have topped 40%. None of the other candidates on the national ticket have reached that level in any of the states.
Narrowing in the Garden State
Posted by on 9.9.08 @ 5:10PM
The New FDU poll has McCain trailing by just 6 in New Jersey. In their last poll, taken in June, Obama was up 16.
One interesting item:
For the first time since April 2005 a majority of voters (52%) say the U.S. military effort in Iraq is going "fairly well" or "very well." Nearly one-third of Democrats agree, as well as a majority of independents, and four of five Republicans. Opinions of how well the military effort is going have improved despite that a majority of voters (63%) continue to say the war was a mistake and just one in four voters (28%) say it was the right thing to do.
During the 2006 elections Democrats had two arguements they could gain traction with: 1) the Iraq War was a mistake and 2) it's going poorly and there's no end in sight. Right now, they're limited to just the first arguement, and it's backward looking.
Obviously, Obama is likely to pull out New Jersey in the end, but it's worth noting that even in a Democratic state, a majority of voters think things are going well in Iraq.
So Much For Obama Winning North Carolina
Posted by on 9.9.08 @ 4:50PM
The new SurveyUSA poll has McCain up by 20 points in the state. Just a month ago, the same poll had him up by just 4.
UPDATE:
More from the poll:
McCain has gained ground in every demographic group. Among men, McCain led by 9 last month, 27 today. Among women, Obama led by 2 last month, trails by 12 today. McCain holds 9 of 10 Republican voters; Obama holds 3 of 4 Democratic voters; independents, who were split last month, break today crisply for McCain, where, in the blink of an eye, he is up by 25.
This is now starting to look like the same sort of red-ble election that we've seen over the last few cycles, with Obama's hopes of turning deep red states blue looking shakier by the day.
Don't Get Cocky
Posted by on 9.9.08 @ 4:25PM
Good Insta-advice. But there's one thing that makes the nascent Palin cult quite a bit less creepy than the Obama cult: There's a tongue-in-cheek quality to at least some of the Palin fandom. Irony and Obama-love often seem to be like oil and water.
Palin Getting Under Obama's Skin
Posted by on 9.9.08 @ 2:45PM
Dave Weigel argues that because Sarah Palin isn't taking any questions, "it's having the effect of making Barack Obama seem stronger, actually" when he appears without a script, such as on O'Reilly. But I think Palin is having the exact opposite effect on Obama.
Since Palin's selection, Obama has been drawn into a debate over whether his experience is superior to the candidate on the bottom of the opposing ticket, and rather than merely have Joe Biden or his surrogates go after Palin, Obama hasn't been able to resist going after her directly.
The Politico reported the following from a rally in Michigan yesterday:
Obama told the crowd that McCain and Palin spent most of the convention talking about their biographies.
Palin's bio is "compelling," Obama said.
The crowd booed. "No, it's an interesting story." More boos. "No, no, it is. I mean that sincerely. Mother, governor, moose shooter."
The crowd broke out in laughter. "That's cool. That's cool. That's cool stuff," Obama said.
To me, this doesn't make Obama look stronger, it's belittling for a man running for president to be spending time mocking his opponent's number two.
Furthermore, I think this specific line of attack is a poor choice for Obama, and a perfect example of why Democrats have managed to blow so many elections. When Republicans, during their convention, mocked Obama's time as a community organizer, a lot of Americans probably laughed along with them, thinking, "Yeah, what the heck is a community organizer?" But when, at Obama's prodding, a Democratic audience starts laughing at a mother and "moose shooter" (using an odd construction rather than the standard word "hunter"), a lot of Americans probably think, "Hey, he's making fun of me!"
Pseudipedia
Posted by on 9.9.08 @ 1:02PM
New York magazine is maintaining an online "Electopedia," described as "A guide to (almost) everything there is to know about presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama, from the important issues (Best Speech) to the really important issues (Hairstyle)."
So I looked up "Best Speech." Here's how the bit about McCain's best speech ends. Errors in bold. Snark in brackets:
"After the convention, Newsday noted the 'strong, soothing voice of the retired four-star general' and suggested he would make a good alternative to Pat Buchanan [For what?]. In the New York Times, Frank Rich said that the Arizona senator was the exception at a convention where 'nearly every event and personality was pseudo.' McCain didn't win the nomination for vice-president in 1998. But considering how Dole did in the general election [In 1998?], it was probably for the best."
I must admit I didn't make it to the really important issues.
Ayers Did Too Much
Posted by on 9.9.08 @ 12:51PM
Even though they weren't all terrorists like Ayers, such radicals almost certainly delayed normal people turning against the Vietnam War. The absence of a visible antiwar movement outside the ANSWER fringe is likely one of the reasons public opinion moved against the Iraq war faster than Vietnam.
Still Unrepentant After All These Years
Posted by on 9.9.08 @ 12:03PM
Via ABC, I see that Bill Ayers has released the following statement in comic strip form. The only concession he makes is by saying that "I don't think violent resistence is necessarily the answer."
Obama Campaign Warming Up to Outside Groups
Posted by on 9.9.08 @ 11:40AM
The NY Times reports that the Obama campaign is having trouble meeting its ambitious fundraising goals after its decision not to accept public financing. And Marc Ambinder writes that now Team Obama is quietly embracing outside 527 groups. If you recall, when Obama broke his pledge to accept public financing, his justification was that the system was broken, and that he needed money to fight Republican outside groups that were out to slime him. Now it turns out that he won't take public money and he'll be relying on outside groups.
A new kind of politics, indeed.
McConnell's Bad News, and McCain's Opportunity
Posted by on 9.9.08 @ 11:30AM
My latest at the Examiner reports that Mitch McConnell predicts no more appeals court confirmations this year, and explains what John McCain can do about it.
'Drill, Baby, Drill'
Posted by on 9.9.08 @ 11:21AM
LEBANON, Ohio -- During his speech here, John McCain spotted a sign in the crowd. "Hold up that sign," he said, reading it for the benefit of the crowd: "Drill, Baby, Drill!"
The candidate's mention of offshore drilling prompted some in the crowd to shout, "ANWR! ANWR!" McCain has opposed drilling ANWR, which his Alaskan running mate staunchly supports.
If the enthusiasm of this crowd (officially estimated at 5,500) is any indication, the Obama campaign is wasting its resources trying to flip Ohio from red to blue.
Daily Must-Reads
Posted by on 9.9.08 @ 10:38AM
The Turks continue to bully Orthodox Christians, as EU does nothing
Woodward's portrayal of wartime characters is confusing
The Libertarian case for Obama, pt. 1
Obama aides brief McCain's press corps
Family Plan
Posted by on 9.9.08 @ 10:23AM
LEBANON, Ohio -- Awaiting the arrival of John McCain and Sarah Palin, proud Republican grandmother Mary Schmidt held aloft a hand-lettered sign proclaiming "21 for sure votes from my family." She explained that there are still three undecided votes in her family, "but we're working on them."
What Tax Cuts?
Posted by on 9.9.08 @ 10:23AM
In the Weekly Standard, Newt Gingrich and Peter Ferrara dissect Barack Obama's claim to cut taxes on 95 percent of "working families."
Wet But Happy in Ohio
Posted by on 9.9.08 @ 10:16AM
LEBANON, Ohio -- Thousands are jammed onto Broadway Street in front of the Golden Lamb Hotel, where John McCain and Sarah Palin are scheduled to speak at 11 a.m.
The Golden Lamb is owned by the family of White House budget director (and former Ohio Rep.) Rob Portman. This is staunch GOP territory -- surrounding Warren County voted 72% for President Bush in 2004.
The rain that fell all morning has temporarily stopped, and the huge crowd -- hundreds are still waiting in line to get through the metal detectors -- was warmed up by several local dignitaries, including Anthony Munoz, a Hall of Fame lineman for the Cincinnati Bengals. Munoz, a University of Southern California alumnus, drew boos from the crowd when he said he'd be cheering for USC on Saturday when the Trojans take on Ohio State. "Hey, I'm with you 364 days of the year," he told the crowd.
Among the T-shirts spotted in the crowd: "Drill 'Em, Sarah!" The choice of Palin is extremely popular here and right now the P.A. system is thumping out Heart's "Barracuda."
No Palin Pastels
Posted by on 9.9.08 @ 10:00AM
Pat Buchanan on a key difference between Obama and Palin: "Barack was a Saul Alinsky social worker who rustled up food stamps. Sarah Palin kills her own food."
Monday Night Palin
Posted by on 9.9.08 @ 1:04AM
Someone, it had to be the Dennis Miller-esque Tony Kornheiser, compared the Green Bay Packers' decision to go with Aaron Rodgers as quarterback to John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin. So far, both decisions seem to be working out okay,
Monday, September 8, 2008
Rasmussen Post-Convention Swing State Polls
Posted by on 9.8.08 @ 6:48PM
No major movement, but here's the bottom line:
In Florida, it's tied (McCain was up 2 before the conventions)
In Ohio, McCain is up 7 (he was up 5 before the conventions)
In Pennsylvania, Obama is up 2 (that's the same as before the conventions)
In Virginia, McCain is up 2 (he was up 1 before the conventions)
One thing that would concern me if I were in the McCain camp is that Bush won four out of five of these swing states that Obama is putting in play. And Virginia wasn't even a swing state in 2004 and hasn't gone Democratic since the 1964 LBJ landslide. With that said, these polls show that it continues to anybody's ballgame right now.
'Fellow Cornellian'?
Posted by on 9.8.08 @ 4:18PM
J.P., I'm reminded of a parody of the Cornell alma mater I once heard sung by the Whiffenpoofs:
Far above Cayuga's waters,On the other hand, maybe the smell was Keith Olbermann. When I suggested Olbermann as the MSM's Moe Green, a commenter called that an insult to Moe Green.
There's an awful smell.
Some say it's Cayuga's waters.
Some say it's Cornell.
Bring Back Olbermann
Posted by on 9.8.08 @ 2:38PM
I'm not saying this as a fellow Cornellian. Even if I find his voiceovers taxing, Olbermann should stay an anchor. Why? Because at least he's someone who has come out of the closet as an avowed member of the left. His approach is likely what has made it so repellant for NBC, not his politics. From ticking off grammatical errors to imputing evil to those that disagree with him, Olbermann was bound to leave a bad taste in the mouths of those who wanted interesting coverage.
Poll Finds Palin Popular in Michigan
Posted by on 9.8.08 @ 2:00PM
A new PPP poll taken over the weekend shows Barack Obama clinging to a statistically insignificant 1-point lead over John McCain in Michigan.
The poll finds:
Gallup Credits McCain With 6-point Bounce
Posted by on 9.8.08 @ 1:44PM
That compares with a 4-point bounce for Barack Obama. Today's Gallup daily tracking poll (which is different than the USA Today poll I noted earlier) has McCain up 49 to 45.
The typical bounce coming out of the convention is five points.
And some more context from the folks at Gallup:
But there are also examples where a consistently trailing candidate took the lead after his party's convention, but later relinquished it -- Jimmy Carter in 1980 and Al Gore in 2000.
So basically, your guess is as good as anybody's. But there's one point worth making. All along, it's been assumed that the conventions would favor Obama, because whenever he gets to give a major teleprompter speech to a huge national audience, he has an advantage. His convention speech was supposed to be the most significant moment of his campaign. Yet it turns out that the conventions were acually better for McCain. And now we move on to the season of debates and unscripted moments, which is where McCain tends to shine.Re: McCain's Bump
Posted by on 9.8.08 @ 1:42PM
Jim, are we really sure that Obama has such an enormous spending advantage? Team Maverick just collected $84 million, lump-sum, in federal funds, and the RNC has led the DNC in cash on hand all year long. There is a cost to fundraising, and one must deduct from Obama's totals (admittedly astonishing) a certain percentage for the expenses of doing the fundraising, whereas the federal money for McCain is a no-strings-attached windfall.
Having that $84 million now is lots more valuable to the McCain camapign than the Obama campaign's expected revenues for late October. Yes, Team Obama can borrow against anticipated revenue, but there are expenses involved in borrowing, also.
Finally, I am by no means certain that the Obama campaign's allocation of its funds has been efficient. What was the price tag of that foreign trip, which seems to have had zero value-added for the Democrat? And what were the costs of establishing operations in, inter alia, Alaska?
Response Bias?
Posted by on 9.8.08 @ 1:29PM
If the Palin pick has done nothing else, it's got Obama supporters second-guessing themselves. Here's Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight trying to make sense of the latest poll numbers:
My horse sense is that the numbers are affected to some degree [by] response bias. Republicans, especially evangelical conservatives, are pumped now, after having been indifferent toward John McCain for most of the election cycle. They may be picking up the phone when a pollster calls when they had been screening out the call before, perhaps to the extent that they are biasing the sample. . . .Never mind Silver's guesswork about "response bias" -- he is a 30-year-old baseball statistics buff and an amateur at political analysis --what's noteworthy is how the Palin pick has punctured his heretofore insuperable confidence in his own predictions of an Obama victory in November. The marketers of Hope were always, at some level, dependent on their supporters' notion of inevitable triumph. And the wild-card choice of Palin (and the conservative enthusiasm for her) has seriously undermined that notion.
It seems plausible to me that some segment of conservative Republican voters had effectively been in hiding from the pollsters, either embarrassed by the performance of George W. Bush (and therefore disengaged from politics), or embarrassed to disclose to pollsters that they support him. Suddenly, with the selection of Palin, there has been a jolt of energy within this group, a release of pent-up frustrations, and they are coming out of the woodwork. If this is the case, then perhaps the partisan composition of the electorate had never shifted as much from 2004 as it has appeared to; rather, the conservatives were either reluctant to identify themselves as Republican, or reluctant to take a pollster's calls in the first place. (Emphasis added.)
David Shuster Dust-up on MSNBC
Posted by on 9.8.08 @ 12:38PM
After Friday, I wonder if Shuster will have me on again. Prior to a show, producers try to be as specific as possible about the upcoming topic. In this case (watch the clip here), however, I was just told the segment would be about "Sarah Palin." Well, sure, I can talk about a few things. But while his lead question was broad, his follow-up was a total non-sequitur. "She hasn't taken any questions, never mind from reporters... is she ready?"
Re: McCain's Bump
Posted by on 9.8.08 @ 12:33PM
I've been pretty skeptical of McCain's chances in this election, but if he can maintain anything like this bounce in the face of Obama's spending advantage he will be in a very strong position.
Happy Birthday, Gelatinous Glop!
Posted by on 9.8.08 @ 12:24PM
The Blob is now 50, as old as poor Steve McQueen was when he died. Not long ago, I attended the eccentric birthday party a small Pennsylvania town held for the (retired?) amorphous space alien screen star.
FactCheck.org's Weird Version of "Facts"
Posted by on 9.8.08 @ 12:13PM
I'm looking over their "fact check" of Palin's speech. It's unfortunate they allowed this line to be published, since it's way more sympathetic than it ought to be:
Palin's accusation that Obama hasn't authored "a single major law or even a reform" in the U.S. Senate or the Illinois Senate is simply not a fair assessment. Obama has helped push through major ethics reforms in both bodies, for example."For example"?! Why not name one? For one thing, "pushing" legislation is usually an empty claim. Show me the PR drive Obama led on ethics reform on the federal level, or bills that weren't coopted from other state legislators. For another, Obama *hasn't* authored a single major law or reform. Even if he *had* pushed someone else's bill, saying that Palin's wrong in saying what she said is dishonest.
New Ad: 'Original Mavericks'
Posted by on 9.8.08 @ 11:54AM
"The ad will air on national cable and in key states," the campaign says.
Re: McCain's Bump
Posted by on 9.8.08 @ 11:46AM
Philip, the poll numbers are telling -- Rasmussen also has McCain moving ahead today -- but the anecdotal evidence may be even more convincing in terms of how Palin has galvanized the Republican base.
Two months ago, I could report the "we're doomed" reaction of conservatives and nobody seemed to care that much. Now? Don't dare speak a discouraging word to a conservative about the GOP's chances. It is clear that, at last, the base has rallied. They believe Republicans have a real chance to win, and they view any criticism or negativity as undermining that chance.
Why? Several things come to mind, but the most obvious is that McCain was never dear to the hearts of most conservatives, but there was a love-at-first-sight reaction to Palin, and they're ready to fight for her.
More Good News Monday
Posted by on 9.8.08 @ 11:24AM
I don't know why Brendan Conway left this off his list, but the first dish from Lynn Spears' tell-all book about daughter Britney just hit the Sun: Booze at 13, sex at 14, cocaine and pot at 16.
Reminds me of an old Benny Hill joke: What's the hottest part of the sun? Page Three.
The Kael Effect
Posted by on 9.8.08 @ 11:09AM
Although elections are not decided by television ratings it absolutely shocked me that John McCain drew more viewers for his speech than Barack Obama, even if only a few hundred thousand more. Given all of the hype surrounding the Obama speech before more than 80,000 people in a football stadium and the fact that he's a far more gifted orator than McCain, I would have thought Obama would absolutely bury him in the ratings by several million. But apparently, for all the talk of Obama being a rock star and McCain being an old dude, it turns out that a lot of Americans want to hear from the war hero. Perhaps there's a certain Pauline Kael effect in media reporting that hasn't been fully accounted for.
Monday, Who Needs It?
Posted by on 9.8.08 @ 10:54AM
And by that I mean the first day of political conventions. Given all the reports about the record ratings for the Republican convention, and the bump that McCain received as a result, it seems as though the Republicans lost absolutely nothing by canceling the first day of the convention due to Hurricane Gustav, and if anything, guaranteed a better, more compressed, schedule for the remainder of the convention. From now on, the political parties may take a long, hard, look at convention planning, and consider standardizing the three-day schedule.
McCain's Bump
Posted by on 9.8.08 @ 10:42AM
This USA/Today Gallup, which reflects the three day polling period after the convention, has McCain up 50-46 among registered voters and by 54-44 among likely voters. I think this is pretty significant, not just because it shows an 11-point swing as a result of the Republican convention.
What's also important is that McCain hit the 50 percent mark. The basic trend we've seen during this general election has been that both candidates are tied around the mid-40s, then Obama has a good run, McCain dips to the lower 40s, Obama creeps up, and opens a 4 to 8 point lead. Then McCain knocks Obama around a bit, and they ended up tied in the mid-40s again. I've been wondering the whole time whether McCain would finally hit the 50 percent mark, because it seemed that there was a group of voters that was fluctuating between Obama and undecided, while showing resistance to McCain. Now McCain has broken this cycle.
A few other important notes. On the economy, "Before the GOP convention, Obama was favored by 19 points; now he's favored by 3." It's pretty simple. McCain has an advantage on national security that is pretty stable, so if Obama cannot capitalize off of working class economic anxiety and win those voters that eluded him during the Democratic primaries, he cannot win the election. Obama should be blowing McCain out of the water on the economy, but it seems that the constant hammering during the convention on his plans to raise taxes was effective.
Also, here's the most important aspect of the Palin effect: "Before the convention, Republicans by 47%-39% were less enthusiastic than usual about voting. Now, they are more enthusiastic by 60%-24%, a sweeping change that narrows a key Democratic advantage. Democrats report being more enthusiastic by 67%-19%." This was the biggest GOP worry all year -- what to do about the enthusiasm gap? Would voters turn out for McCain? Would they stuff envelopes, make calls, and knock on doors? It now appears that they're much more likely to, and in a close race that will be a turnout battle, the importance of this development cannot be overstated.
Brady Out?
Posted by on 9.8.08 @ 10:23AM
The NFL Network is reporting that New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady is out for the season after his knee injury in the first quarter of yesterday's season opener against the Kansas City Chiefs. If so, so much for what was supposed to be my diversion from this wonderful presidential campaign. Brett Favre's decision to un-retire is looking better all the time.
The 'Iron My Shirt' Hoax Lives
Posted by on 9.8.08 @ 10:23AM
In Sunday's Washington Post, Anne Kornblut writes:
At first, Clinton seemed as taken aback as the rest of the audience, unsure of what was going on. Then she saw the yellow "Iron My Shirt!" sign one of the young men held, figured out what was being shouted and brushed the interruption aside. "Ah, the remnants of sexism, alive and well," she said, then continued with her remarks. When security officers removed the young men from the audience, I joined several other reporters in following them outside to find out who the hecklers were and what had motivated them to make such a spectacle.
Little did we know that the bizarre incident was a precursor of what was to come -- of the debate over sexism, feminism and the role of women in public life that would emerge as one of the defining aspects of the 2008 campaign. My fellow reporters and I never really did resolve the mystery of the "iron my shirt" episode; the two young men refused to give us their names and offered strangely vague reasons for being there. But we were put on notice that night: Gender politics was going to be a part of this race in ways that no one could foresee.
Daily Must-Reads
Posted by on 9.8.08 @ 10:08AM
Time to think about nuclear Iran
Wayne Allyn Root's $1 million says Obama's grades were worse than his
Ron Paul Republicans for McCain
Posted by on 9.8.08 @ 10:06AM
In my column last week about the Rally for the Republic, I observed that there were serious differences among Ron Paul supporters about what form their political activity should take now that the primaries are over and their man has lost. Nothing illustrates that point better than the behavior of the Ron Paul delegates at the Republican National Convention.
When the roll was called, 15 delegates voted for Paul at the convention. The only other candidate to receive votes besides John McCain was Mitt Romney, who was backed by two Utah delegates. But Paul's finally tally could have been at least twice as large -- in fact, by some estimates, Paul had as many 78 delegates, about the same as Pat Buchanan's 1992 haul -- if many of his supporters didn't end up voting for McCain.
Paul supporters worked hard at state conventions and in district meetings to augment the number of delegates the Texas congressman won in the GOP primaries, often with surprising success against the opposition of party leaders. They staged a semi-successful credentials fight that resulted in four Paul delegates being seated in Nevada.
But those four delegates went for McCain over Paul in the final vote. About a dozen pro-Paul Massachusetts delegates did the same. They cited their delegation leaders' desire to show unified support for McCain (who won neither state). The Las Vegas Sun described them as gracious; Lew Rockwell complained "Ron Paul Republicans drop the prefix."
An argument could probably be made that this is a sign of political maturity as Ron Paul Republicans try to preserve their future viability and work seamlessly within their party like the religious right before them. But it is a bit difficult to understand the point of fighting to nail down these delegate slots, often earning the acrimony of the party establishment in the process, and then end up not voting for Paul.
Third Times the Charm
Posted by on 9.8.08 @ 9:42AM
Brendan Conway wonders, "What is this, good news morning for conservatives?" or "[D]id I die and go to Purgatory?" Here are the headlines that have caused his existential ponderment:
New York Times: MSNBC removes Olbermann, Matthews from anchor seat on account of liberal bias
USA Today: McCain takes 10-point lead over Obama among likely voters
Washington Times: Obama verbal slip, refers to "my Muslim faith"
Daily Telegraph: American Al Qaeda Adam Gadahn rumored killed in Predator strike
Times of London: Kim Jong Il died in 2003, intel expert says
It's hard not to love the last line of the Washington Times story: "Asked to comment on the accidental misstatement...Obama spokesman Bill Burton offered this comment: 'I'm not surprised that the only outlet doing this story is the Washington Times.'"
You'll Never Guess What This Post Is About
Posted by on 9.8.08 @ 4:30AM
Jesse Walker and Jim Henley have been far too even-handed (and here) and unshrill about you-know-who. Didn't they get the memo? While we're stuck on the subject, I have an essay over on the main page about cold, cruel John McCain, and his distant cousin thinks he's found a genuine miracle worker.
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Remember When ...?
Posted by on 9.7.08 @ 3:07PM
Anchorage Daily News, June 26:
Democrat Barack Obama could be coming to Alaska to campaign as part of his effort to win a state that hasn't chosen a Democrat for president since 1964.Anchorage Press poll, Sept. 3: McCain-Palin 54%, Obama-Biden 35%.
"That is the plan -- we are pretty sure he's going to come at the end of the summer," said Kat Pustay, who was named Wednesday as Obama's Alaska director. . . .
"The campaign in Chicago is saying this is a battleground state so we're going to get resources," she said.
Recall that Alaska was one of 18 states that David Plouffe touted as a "battleground" in his famous June Power Point presentation to the Washington press corps that caused Eleanor Clift to gush about the "surgical precision" of Team Obama's strategy.
(Cross-posted at The Other McCain.)
GALLUP: McCAIN 48%, OBAMA 45%
Posted by on 9.7.08 @ 1:31PM
Best-ever showing by the Republican:
McCain's 48% share of the vote ties for his largest since Gallup tracking began in early March. He registered the same level of support in early May. This is also McCain's largest advantage over Obama since early May, when he led by as much as six percentage points. Obama has led McCain for most of the campaign, and for nearly all of the time since clinching the Democratic nomination in early June.Rasmussen today has it tied at 48%, and the latest Zogby poll shows McCain ahead 50-46.
