Awkward Stances

On the Emperor's Magnificent New Clothes

2009-02-25T09:29:00.002-05:00

I haven't been blogging much recently. There are perhaps several reasons for this, but I attribute it mainly to the fact that Obama's actions thus far seem utterly divorced from any recognizable objectives. During the election, all the candidates were working toward the same goals: win the nomination; win the general election. Every development could be assessed according to whether it would help or hurt a candidate in reaching those goals. In sporting terms, the process was akin to watching a group of Olympic swimmers competing in a freestyle event.

Now that Obama is president, it seems he's the only one in the pool. And instead of swimming from one end of the pool to the other, he is darting about in random directions, with no apparent purpose other than to keep moving. Of course, that's only my impression. In fact, there is probably some point to the exercise; it's just not apparent to me. Nevertheless, it quickly becomes a boring thing to watch and I find my attention drawn elsewhere.

In real-life terms, the country is mired in a deep rescession that threatens to become a depression. The expected response to such a crisis would be a combination of measures to stimulate growth and productivity while providing some relief for those hardest hit. Obama's approach, however, is primarily to create massive amounts of government debt through spending that will do virtually nothing to stimulate the economy in the short term. Clearly, some people will benefit from the so-called "stimulus" package and Obama's other spending measures -- ACORN comes to mind -- but it is difficult to see how his programs will improve the economy as a whole. In order to put money into the economy, the government first has to take the money out of the economy, either by borrowing private capital or through higher taxes. Of course, if the feds can quickly use the money to place orders for some new government cars, for example, the effect will be to "create" some jobs. However, this will not permanently increase the level of demand for new cars. In fact, it may hurt future demand, as taxpayers will eventually be forced to foot the bill for the new government vehicles. As in the swimming analogy, I fail to see the point of the exercise.

The dubious premise of the "stimulus" package and, it seems, the entire theme of Obama's speech before Congress last night was that, if allowed to do what it wants, the federal government can solve any and all of the problems facing Americans in this economy. From what I heard of the speech, it was a rehash of his campaign promises: "We will give you health care. We will give you a college education. We will help you pay your mortgage. We will create a job for you. And it won't cost you a thing." This is, of course, utter nonsense. Beyond that, it is not what Americans need to hear. The truth is, we need less government control over the economy if the economy is to really improve. We need to restore the notion that wealth comes, not from the government, but from hard work, investment, and innovation. I didn't expect Barack Obama to be Ronald Reagan, but does he have to be Evita Peron?

The notion that the government can fix what's wrong with America through various sorts of handouts and bailouts is a pipe dream. What is worse, it is absolutely terrifying to the entrepreneurs, investors, and business leaders (a/k/a "the rich") who would like to go trying to expand the economy but whom Obama evidently perceives as human pinatas. It is no coincidence that stock prices have plummeted since Obama took office.

The one bit of solace to take from the events of the last month is in the realization that not everyone is falling for Obama's snake oil pitch. There are rumblings, here and there, among average Americans who see where this is heading and don't want to go along for the ride. Unfortunately, it will take a lot more than distant rumblings to divert the Obama juggernaut off its present course. The conservative opposition both in Congress and in the media are still in quasi-honeymoon mode, evidently choosing to hold their fire until such time as forthright criticism of Obama at least surpasses incest on the scale of socially acceptable conduct. Hopefully, it won't be such a long wait.

Obama's inauspicious beginning

2009-01-29T14:08:00.002-05:00

So far, it appears my decision to give the new president the benefit of the doubt is going to be repaid with nothing but heartache and disappointment. Well, perhaps that's an overstatement. Still, it's hard to find any encouraging in the following:

First, the Dems are in the process of enacting a "stimulus" bill that appears to have almost nothing to do with stimulating the economy. Rather, it's nothing more than a spending bill designed to reward every liberal constituency imaginable for their support of Obama and the Democrat-controlled Congress. How else to explain doling out over $4 billion to groups like ACORN? Where's the "stimulus" in that?

During the campaign, Obama told the American people over and over again that he would pay for his new programs by cutting spending in other areas. Now we are looking at new spending of something like a trillion dollars a year, so we have not only that to pay for, but also no foreseeable way to pay for Obama's other new spending promises.

The recession is clearly just an excuse for this spending rampage, not the reason for it. Only a small fraction of the spending is truly stimulative, and most of it won't take place soon enough to do the economy any immediate good.

The hypocrisy of this is truly astounding. For years, Democrats complained about how the Iraq war was bankrupting the government and driving the economy down the drain. Now, barely a week into the new administration, the Dems are already adding in new spending an amount equivalent to twice what the war in Iraq has cost since its inception. And for what? What does the average American get in exchange for trillion dollar deficits?

The only good news in this is that House Republicans managed to stick together and unanimously oppose the so-called stimulus package. That should help them in the 2010 midterm elections.

In other depressing news, Obama gave an interview to an Arab-language TV network in which he bent over backward to validate claims that U.S. policy toward the Muslim world over the last thirty years has been disrespectful and arrogant. The American media seemed in awe of Obama for "reaching out" to Muslims in such a clever way, ignoring the fact that, in so doing, the president essentially tossed away whatever credibility and moral standing the U.S. had built up in that part of the world under previous Democratic and Republic administrations alike.

Hopefully, the day will arrive -- and soon -- when people's perception of Obama matches the reality. That's all I ask.

Caroline, No

2009-01-22T15:59:00.002-05:00

This post isn't about Brian Wilson's song, but rather another exercise in 1960's nostalgia: the failed attempt by Caroline Kennedy to succeed Hillary Clinton as New York's junior senator.

The Democrats should all send Gov. Patterson a thank you note for not giving into the pressure to name Ms. Kennedy to the seat. Republicans took a hit a couple years back by a nasty string of scandals that created the impression of a "culture of corruption." Something similar could happen to Democrats if they appear to be treating high public office as a mere reward to be conferred on celebrities and other lightweights.

The Democrats have already added Al Franken and Roland Burris to their Senate caucus. Appointing Ms. Kennedy to the seat ahead of innumerable candidates who were better qualified would have appeared frivolous at best, and highly cynical at worst.

Even without Kennedy, Senate Democrats are becoming an increasingly unimpressive lot. Clinton's seat was formerly held by the estimable Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Nobody of his stature remains. The Lion of the Senate, Caroline's Uncle Ted, is in the closing chapter of his Senate career. Robert Byrd, who was once admired as a great defender of the institution, rules, and traditions of the Senate, has been similarly ravaged by age and poor health. The thoughtful and admired Joe Lieberman is a pariah among Democrats. The talented Christopher Dodd has been (justly) tainted on account of preferential treatment he received from a mortgage company. Up-and-comers Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have moved onward and upward.

Unfortunately, the crew left behind in the wake by these stalwarts is decidedly lacking in stature. Majority Leader Harry Reid evokes anything but true leadership. Men like Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin have become the visible face of the Senate Democrats. The only good news is the buffoonish Joe Biden's ascension to the vice presidency, which seems to qualify as addition by subtraction.

In fairness, the talent level of Senate Republicans has probably fallen off as well over the last few years. What's troubling in the case of the Democrats, however, is that there's no strong core of leadership among the senators of Barack Obama's own party to guide him through the difficult times ahead. The Senate was meant to serve not merely as a check on executive power, but as a source of advice and counsel for the president. It would be nice to believe the Senate was stocked with sufficient human capital to serve that function for a young and untested president.

Inauguration Day

2009-01-21T14:07:00.002-05:00

President Obama's inaugural address received good (albeit not glowing) reviews from most of the commentators I've heard or read in the last 24 hours. Listening to the speech on the radio, however, I found it quite lacking. About ten minutes into the speech, I found myself still struggling to discern any kind of theme or structure to it. Admittedly, it got somewhat better during the last five minutes or so. Moreover, by the end, Obama had strung together enough discrete ideas to provide a general impression of his vision for the next four years. But I don't believe Obama's vaunted rhetorical skills did much to elevate the particular thoughts he set out to convey.

Boiled down to its very essence, the point of the speech seemed to be: "These are tough times but we can work through these problems just as we have in the past." He indicated that solving the country's problems would require some new approaches but that we'll need to rely on our longstanding values and traditions to help us muddle through. So, in a sense, it was both forward-looking and backward-looking at the same time.

If that's what Obama was trying to say, one would think that finding inspiring words in which to say it shouldn't have been enormously difficult. Instead, the speech seemed weirdly disjointed to me, like something he might have cobbled together the night before from the texts of earlier addresses.

Not that it really matters. Practically the only thing people remember from the entire corpus of presidential inaugural addresses "Ask not what your country can do for you . . ." and "The only thing we have to fear . . . ." Had Obama been able to come up with just one line like these, he could have spent the remaining twenty minutes of his speech reading from the D.C. telephone directory. In fifty years, nobody would know the difference.

Speaking of history, the stupidest thing I heard all day was from the several news commentators who declared that this inauguration represented the 44th time America has witnessed a "peaceful transfer of power" from one president to another. Oh really? I wouldn't call the transfer of power from Abraham Lincoln to Andrew Johnson "peaceful." Ditto for the transfers of power that took place in 1881, 1901, and 1963. If the transfer of power from Kennedy to LBJ was "peaceful," I'd hate to see what a violent transfer of power would look like.

Not that I really expect this level of precision from TV newsreaders, but it seems to me the relevant number is 35. That's the number of times a sitting president voluntarily relinquished the powers of the presidency to his elected (34 times) or unelected (Gerald Ford) successor.

I do think it's a good thing to see people at both ends of the political spectrum celebrating this marvelous civic tradition. I wish those on the left (and the media, for that matter) had felt a similar sense of wonder during the corresponding events four and eight years ago. As I recall from Inauguration Day 2001 and 2005, a great deal of the focus was on the number of protesters who were planning to show up and make trouble. Democrats seemed to feel that these inaugurals somehow symbolized a perversion of our electoral process rather than its fulfillment. Funny what a difference a few years can make.

Worst president ever?

2009-01-16T10:07:00.005-05:00

Liberals apparently made up their minds several years ago that Bush would go down in history as the worst president in U.S. history -- or, in any event, that it would be a good idea to try to tag him with that label. It has become such a commonplace on the left that nobody ever bothers to explain what Bush has done to earn this uncoveted distinction.

It should be obvious that a ranking of the "greatest" or "worst" presidents requires a lot more work than compiling a list of, say, history's greatest golfers or baseball players. For one thing, all golfers and baseball players are trying to accomplish the same thing: winning championships. Moreover, an athlete's success or failure is determined objectively; they either hoist the trophy or they don't. Presidents come to office with an assortment of plans and goals, and the "playing field" changes dramatically from one era to the next. This makes it exceedingly hard to compare one president to another.

Despite this, it is still possible to craft a set of loose criteria for evaluating presidents that I think most people would find generally acceptable. I would propose something along the lines of the following:

First, did the president accomplish things, or was he largely unable to make progress on his agenda?

Second, were the president's achievements consequential and of lasting duration, or were they insignificant and/or short-lived?

Third, were the president's policies generally beneficial to the country or were they harmful?

Fourth, did the president exercise effective leadership on the major problems of the day, or did he fail to perceive or confront such issues?

Finally, did the president's tenure in office enhance the dignity and stature of the office, or did the president leave the office in a worse condition than he found it?

Based on these five measures, which I think are fair and completely neutral, it should be clear that Bush fares reasonably well against other presidents.

To take the easy part first, Bush clearly scores well on three of the five criteria: the first, fourth, and fifth. His major accomplishments include NCLB, Medicare prescription drugs, reorganizing the government in the wake of 9/11, combating disease and poverty in Africa, tax cuts, and fighting two wars. He also has a number of important but lower-profile accomplishments, such as bankruptcy reform, class action reform, and the deployment of a ballistic missile defense system. Bush's record of accomplishments compares favorably to that of his immediate predecessor, Bill Clinton. Clinton's signature accomplishment was welfare reform, and he had a signature non-achievement in HillaryCare. By comparison, Bush failed to get anything done on immigration and Social Security privatization. Even so, Bush clearly took on more and got more done.

Bush also scores well on the fourth criteria: taking on the major problems of the day. Bush directed most of his attention and energies to the struggle against Islamic extremism, which is without question one of the biggest problems the country faced during his time in office (if not the biggest). Bush never played small-ball and was perhaps the antithesis of the caretaker-style presidents America had during much of the 19th Century. Not to pick on Bill Clinton, but so much of his presidency was spent on impeachment and various scandals, squabbling with Newt Gingrich, the failed health care program, and small-ball programs like midnight basketball, it seems those are the things he is most remembered for. Whether you appreciate him or not, Bush will be remembered for his handling of major substantive issues such as 9/11 and Iraq.

A third area in which Bush scores particularly well is on the question of enhancing the stature and dignity of the office. Bush was a strong president who was willing to make unpopular decisions. His critics complained of an "imperial presidency" and accused him of expanding presidential powers beyond the limits of the Constitution. Fair to say, presidents who have been accused of acting like a dictator, e.g., Jackson, Lincoln, FDR, have fared better in the judgment of history than presidents who were regarded as weak, e.g., Buchanan, Taft, Carter, Bush 41. George W. Bush has never been accused of being a "weak" president.

In addition to being a "strong" president, Bush deserves credit for avoiding any personal scandal and for never, to my memory, engaging in petty, personal politics. He treated his opponents with respect and class, despite rarely being repaid in kind.

Thus it appears that on at least three of the five stated criteria, Bush scores fairly high. The remaining two, however, present a great deal more difficulty.

The first of these remaining criteria asks whether the president's achievements were consequential and lasting, or whether they will prove to be of minor or only temporary significance. The obvious answer is that it's too early to tell. However, Bush may indeed have left a lasting mark in a number of ways. First, he redefined Islamofascist terrorism as a serious national security threat, rather than a mere law enforcement concern. Bush took a lot of grief for labeling the struggle a "War on Terror." Some critics thought that formulation portended the sort of bureaucratic dog-and-pony show we've seen in the War on Drugs and the War on Poverty. But Bush ran the War on Terror like a real war, not a p.r. campaign. He mobilized the government, gathered intelligence, and sent troops overseas to kill bad guys. It was a deadly serious business and it accomplished real results. Because of this, it's hard to imagine Obama or his successors closing down the operation anytime soon.

Part of Bush's vision for combating international terrorism included a new Grand Strategy for the U.S.: the spreading of democracy and liberty around the world as a means of neutralizing or marginalizing would-be terrorists. Bush actively pursued this strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan, an experiment Obama is unlikely to repeat anywhere else. But the fact that Obama won't, for example, send troops to "liberate" Iran doesn't necessary signal an abandonment of this aspect of the Bush Doctrine. Although the Left is fond of caricaturing Bush as an egotistical loose cannon recklessly demanding other countries become "just like us," the fact remains that freedom and democracy may be the best medicine the civilized world has against violent extremism. Future presidents will likely recognize this and conduct their foreign policies accordingly, whether or not they credit Bush for the inspiration.

Finally, we come to the most controversial part of the analysis: whether the president's policies were ultimately good or bad for the country. The answer to this question obviously depends on the answerer's own ideology and policy preferences. There are serious people even today who consider Lincoln a terrible president for answering the movement of southern states toward secession with violence. With the possible exception of Gerald Ford, one has to go back at least as far as Truman to find a president largely admired across the ideological spectrum (although Harry's growing popularity with conservatives is perhaps at the expense of his popularity with liberals).

Because of the ideological component, it seems silly to expect consensus on the question of whether a president's policies were good or bad for the country. Moreover, there is the problem of not knowing how events would have played out had the president chosen a different course from what he did. One way to get around this problem is to consider whether future presidents (or generations) ultimately decided to reaffirm or to reject the president's policies, and if so, with what results. An example of reaffirmation might be the Republicans' refusal to try to dismantle New Deal programs during the post-war era. An example of rejection might be Reagan's refusal to go along with the Cold War policies of detente and arms reductions, but instead take a hard line against the Soviets.

In Bush's case, it seems unlikely Mr. Obama or future leaders will seek to undo many of the things he has done as president, except perhaps symbolically. Obama will eventually close Guantanamo, but that should be of little real consequence. He will remove troops from Iraq, but that would have happened under Bush anyway. He will put more troops into Afghanistan, thus essentially reaffirming Bush's decision to go to war there. The FISA controversy has already been addressed legislatively; Bush signed the bill and Obama supported it. Obama will probably try to mollify his supporters on the "torture" issue by rejecting Bush's "harsh interrogation" policy. However, much of that will be symbolic as detainees are no longer being waterboarded anyway. Obama's clearly not going to undo the sweeping reorganization of government to address the terror threat. It seems doubtful he would take down the missile shield. He won't slash aid to Africa. Perhaps he will repeal NCLB, but I would question whether that makes sense politically. He won't kill the Medicare prescription drug benefit unless it is done in order to make way for a more sweeping health care program that would include prescription medications. He may not let the Bush tax cuts expire until after the economy is moving again.

Don't get me wrong. There will be a lot of changes throughout the government marking the handover of power from a Republican to a Democratic administration. My point is simply that there is unlikely to be a wholesale effort to dismantle the substantive legacy of the Bush administration. In particular, it seems absurd to suggest Obama will seek a restoration of the pre-9/11 approach to counterterrorism and homeland security. More likely, Obama will look for ways to make symbolic breaks from Bush -- closing Gitmo, for example -- while leaving much of his actual accomplishments intact.

My proposed criteria for evaluating presidents does not particular notice of economic conditions during a president's administration, which I'm sure some people would argue let's Bush off the hook for the current economic crisis we are facing. Generally speaking, however, presidents don't have enough influence over the health of the economy to justify evaluating them on economic conditions. Bush inherited a recession from Clinton and is leaving one for Obama. While I believe Bush's tax cuts helped revive the economy in the wake of the bursting of the dot.com bubble, I don't think he deserves a great deal of the credit or blame for economic conditions over the last six or seven years. I don't believe Bush should be blamed for the credit crisis that emerged last October, and I would note that the people claiming Bush is the worst president ever started making this claim well before the economy started falling apart.

Overall, it seems to me that Bush was far from the worst president we've ever had. In fact, he was at least an average president, probably better. He was very much a mixed bag in that he was a good executive decision-maker but an inept communicator. He infuriated people on both ends of the political spectrum, yet still managed to build a fairly impressive record of accomplishments. He clearly left a mark on America's foreign policy and national security infrastructure, and plainly succeeded in confronting his biggest challenge: the threat of terrorism in the U.S. I'll miss him, and I wouldn't be surprised if the country starts to miss him before too long.

Happy New Year!

2009-01-13T09:34:00.003-05:00

I haven't blogged for a while, opting to focus on hot stove baseball and only occasionally ceding attention to the news of the world. I think I've been awaiting the moment when seemingly random and disconnected pieces of news, like notes tapped on a distant piano, form a recognizable pattern -- a melody -- and the randomness of it all suddenly disappears.

The music analogy is not entirely on point. What I'm talking about, and what I was hoping to discern from the cascade of events surrounding the Obama transition, is better described as a narrative. History is happening right now, but we are only privy to a small part of it. We learn about certain events or happenings through the distorted lens of the media, and we do our best to extrapolate from those data points the larger story that is unfolding. Or at least I do.

For those of us who crave a narrative (and who therefore assume history, in fact, is supposed to make sense), life becomes somewhat easier during presidential election years. For that is the time when the candidates and their followers make their narratives most explicit. For example, Democratic opinion-makers generally portrayed Bush as a reckless imbecile who was responsible for destroying America's moral standing in the world. This offered people a convenient framework for understanding the events of the last eight years, which they could supplement with their own observations and suppositions.

It's worth pointing out that, the more one knows, the more complicated the task of finding and adhering to a satisfactory narrative becomes. A person who knows next to nothing about current events could choose to believe either that Bush is a reckless imbecile or that he's been a great defender of freedom. For a person lacking a reasonable grasp of the facts, there would be no occasion for information to come up tending to dispel the chosen narrative. They can literally believe whatever they want. For people who are very well informed, on the other hand, it takes a lot more care and thinking in order to formulate a narrative, because they will be constantly forced to deal with facts and opinions that don't seem to fit. Ultimately, dealing with such inconsistencies is likely to involve accepting that the truth is not as clear or as simple as initially imagined. A person who sets out believing FDR was a near god-like leader is going to have to reconsider that appraisal once confronted with the reality of Court-packing or the internment of Japanese-Americans, for example. Ultimately, such a person is likely to qualify their praise for Roosevelt or even change his or her mind completely.

Getting back to more recent events, I am forced to revisit my pre-election assessment of Barack Obama. As various previous blogposts will attest, I came to see Barack Obama as something of a crypto-socialist who was using America's hunger for inspiration as a means to obscure his true leftist agenda. In my view, there was plenty of evidence for both strands of this narrative, i.e., that Obama was indeed a man of the Left, and that his popular support was mainly a product of emotionalism and symbolism.

Happily, I can now say nothing has happened since the election to sustain the impression that Obama is a radical leftist. In fact, if he is a crypto-anything, it seems most likely he's a crypto-centrist. There is simply no way to interpret his actions during the transition in a manner consistent with those of a true leftist.

Start with his appointments. He retained Bush's Defense Secretary, tapped Hillary for State, and assembled an economic team Wall Street wizards can appreciate. His chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, is a solid liberal but also a strong supporter of Israel.

Beyond these personnel decisions, Obama has expressed sympathy for Israel's attack against Hamas and seems completely uninterested in pursuing legal actions against Bush Administration officials involved in the "torture" controversy. He has expressly downgraded the prospects for implementing major portions of the sweeping domestic agenda he outlined during the campaign due to the exigencies of the present economic crisis (which he apparently thinks will be of long duration). He has nominally included a host of tax cuts in his stimulus plan (although there is reason to question the characterization of those measures as tax cuts). On top of all that, his attitude toward Bush and the outgoing administration appears to be one of at least token respect. He has done nothing to fan the attitude of contempt toward Bush that liberals have stoked over the last eight years. No wonder various quarters of the left seem dazed and confused.

I am by no means ready to climb out on a limb and declare that the conventional, centrist Obama I've perceived over the last eight weeks or so is the real Obama. (Hell, he's not even president yet!) But the narrative to which I previously adhered no longer fits. For now at least, what seems to make the most sense goes something like this:

Obama doesn't have a clear political ideology. He is a thoughtful, introspective guy who became fixated on issues of race and personal identity due to his unconventional background and upbringing. In his lifelong search for a way to fit in, he has gravitated toward people with strong leftist views, but has never internalized leftist doctrine as a practical or effective governing philosophy. He is comfortable in leftist circles, but he doesn't really buy into the program. In this sense, he is not unlike professed Catholics who go to Mass and appreciate the company of other Catholics, but who don't truly believe in the Resurrection of Christ.

Obama's sentimental attachment to leftism made it easy for him to attract the support of both inner-city blacks and upper class whites in Chicago. His looks and oratorical skills made him a phenomenon. Finally, sheer luck placed him in a position to enter the national stage at a time when the country was practically begging for the chance to elect someone who had opposed the war in Iraq.

Even with all he had going for him, it still took a brilliant campaign, a flawed Republican opponent, and a major financial crisis to put Obama into the White House. Looking back, however, Obama was never required to really reveal his true ideological colors, whatever they were. Liberals were encouraged to believe he was one of them. Moderates and conservatives were given assurances that they had nothing to fear.

Now that Obama has been elected, it appears to be the lefties who are holding the short straw. The new president is not a taller version of Dennis Kucinich. He may be nothing more than a less roguish version of Bill Clinton. In fact, one cannot rule out the possibility that he's a younger and hipper version of George H.W. Bush.

An Obama who is not innately driven to pursue a particular ideological agenda is more likely to be motivated by a fear of spectacular failure in office rather than a hunger for spectacular success. I don't think I have ever heard anyone make this point, but if Obama is really invested in the idea of being the first black president, he may well feel a lot of internal pressure not to ruin the prospects for future black candidates by making a total botch of it. The same notion arguably applies to his youth and inexperience: perhaps he feels the need simply to prove he can handle the job, whatever that means in terms of taking the country in a particular direction. In short, it is easy to imagine that Obama's top priority is simply to not screw up royally.

Obama's actions to date, as discussed above, would seem consistent with that objective. For one thing, they appear calculated to neutralize his opponents. Republicans have lowered their daggers completely. Apart from their stiffening resistance to bailouts -- a position that started to take hold before the election -- the GOP is more focused on charting a new strategy for attracting voters than in giving Obama a hard time. And as for potential critics within his party, Obama could scarcely have done more since the election to woo fans of the Clintons than if he had invited Bill and Hillary to move back into the White House with him.

If my hypothesis is correct, and Obama is really underneath it all a conventional Washington moderate who is more interested in keeping the wheels on the country than in delivering radical change, it does not mean he will consistently disappoint the liberals who so passionately supported him over Hillary Clinton and John McCain. Obama is going to need to make good on at least some of his promises to them. His impending presidential order to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay is a timely example, and may demonstrate the limits of Obama's ability to abandon commitments made to his liberal base during the campaign. Those kinds of discrete actions, however, will seem like thin gruel to frustrated lefties who are aching for a truly transformative epoch in American politics.

As I said, this is not a final verdict on Obama's political identity, but merely a new working theory. As events unfold, they will tend to either confirm or cast doubt on this hypothesis. Hopefully, they will confirm it, because the Barack Obama I am describing today is not nearly as scary as the one I thought existed a few months ago.

Obama finds lump of coal in his Fitzmas stocking

2008-12-09T10:56:00.002-05:00

Barack Obama can't be too pleased with U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation and arrest of Governor Rod Blagojevich and an aide on corruption charges.

A quick read of the U.S. Attorney's press release discloses allegations of corruption that are almost mind-blowing in their depth and scope. According to investigators, Blagojevich was conducting a veritable auction of the president-elect's former U.S. Senate seat, which he resigned last month and which Illinois law empowers the sitting governor to fill pending the next election. (Remind me why Obama decided to resign so quickly?) The governor was evidently basing his decision on whom to appoint according to which candidate could deliver up the most attractive combination of goodies for himself and his wife. Blagojevich made it clear that he wanted money for himself and his campaign coffers and a job that would keep him politically viable. He was also worried about the ongoing criminal investigation and for some reason thought appointing himself to the Senate seat might prove useful in expanding his future legal defense options.

The feds' takedown of Blagojevich hits a little too close to home for Obama. First, it's a reminder of the swamp of corruption from which Obama's hope-and-changey movement paradoxically arose. Second, and more immediately, it appears that Blagojevich sought to include the incoming administration in the wheeling and dealing over the vacant Senate seat. The press release outlines a three-way scheme whereby the governor would appoint a candidate favored by the president-elect, a union would create a high-paying position for Blagojevich, and the new administration would pay back the union at some later date. While it's not alleged that Obama knew about, let alone would have gone along with, such a deal, the fact that it was even being discussed suggests that Obama may not be regarded as Mr. Clean within Illinois political circles.

Obama connections aside, it's just not a very pretty picture. For example, Blagojevich was allegedly trying to get the editorial staff of the Tribune fired as a condition for securing state assistance in helping the cash-strapped newspaper's parent company in selling the Cubs. Evidently, "pay for play" was pretty much SOP in Blagojevich's administration.

This is a serious mess for Illinois and the kind of trouble back home Obama doesn't need. It will be interesting to see how well Obama can distance himself from it and whether, indeed, Blagojevich will let him.

Who's really in charge? Hillary Clinton vs. Susan Rice

2008-12-09T09:48:00.002-05:00

Hillary Clinton's appointment to the office of Secretary of State has received a lot of attention for two reasons. First, Obama' selection of Hillary supposedly evoked the "team of rivals" strategy that Lincoln took in assembling his cabinet (although Lincoln's machinations in this regard have been completely over-hyped, a subject we need not revisit here). Second, the appointment of the relatively hawkish Hillary has been cited as further evidence of Obama's screwing over of the lefties who helped get him elected.

Another aspect of the appointment that deserves comment is the prospective role of Dr. Susan Rice in implementing the new administration's foreign policy. The president-elect has designated Rice to serve as U.N. Ambassador and has elevated that position to cabinet-level rank.

I'm frankly surprised that Hillary went along with the move to elevate the U.N. Ambassador to cabinet-level rank. What that move essentially means is that, while Hillary will be the nation's chief diplomat, and thus the putative architect of U.S. foreign policy, she will not be in charge of our diplomatic mission to the U.N. Where's the logic in that beyond Obama's apparent desire to toss a face-saving bone to Dr. Rice?

From a management standpoint, the idea of having the U.N. Ambassador report directly to the POTUS rather than the Secretary of State seems badly misguided. The only mitigating factors I see are the fact that there is precedent for the move from as recently as the Clinton Administration and the fact that Secretary of State is considered the highest-ranking post in the cabinet (although this is only formally true for purposes of presidential succession and protocol). Perhaps Hillary figured her status as Secretary of State would speak for itself, notwithstanding Obama's efforts to placate Dr. Rice and her supporters.

It may be of little practical consequence, but something about this decision just doesn't sit well with me. It strikes me as the personnel equivalent of voting "present." If Obama wanted Hillary in charge of foreign policy, he should have given her the whole thing, and not carved out a piece of it for the person many people thought he should have picked instead of Hillary. Let's hope he's not being too clever for his own good.

You've got to be kidding me

2008-12-08T08:41:00.004-05:00

This sounds like parody, but isn't. It's a serious proposal to revive FDR's Federal Writers Project as a means of tossing an economic lifeline to print journalists who are unemployed or facing layoffs. You read that correctly. It's a bailout for journalists.

What makes this proposal especially galling is the acknowledgement by the writer, Mark Pinsky, that the problems facing the print media have more to do with technological innovation -- the rise of the internet -- than with general economic conditions. Indeed, he flatly states that "ink-on-paper periodicals are never coming back." If that's so (and I don't dispute it), then why shouldn't these former newspapermen and -women be looking for a new line of work as every other displaced worker is required to do?

For Mr. Pinsky, the answer to that question relates to the invaluable contribution an army of federally-subsidized writers could make in documenting the socioeconomic trends that have somehow escaped the notice of free-enterprise journalism. Apparently nostalgic for the left-wing output of the depression-era Federal Writers Project, he writes:

This time, the FWP could begin by documenting the ground-level impact of
the Great Recession; chronicling the transition to a green economy; or capturing
the experiences of the thousands of immigrants who are changing the American
complexion. Like the original FWP, the new version would focus in particular on
those segments of society largely ignored by commercial and even public media.

Reading between the lines, Mr. Pinsky seems to believe laid-off reporters should be able to earn a federal paycheck by writing stories that are too far left even for NPR. Terrific.

Unfortunately, the $700 billion TARP bailout and the proposed bailout of the Big Three automakers make it difficult to reject proposals like this out of hand. While I'm confident a bailout of journalists would never gain political traction, the current atmosphere in Washington practically invites troubled industries or groups to plead for federal funds, regardless of the implications for the taxpayer or for the economy as a whole.

The era of hyper-partisanship

2008-12-02T09:43:00.003-05:00

American politics has been gripped by hyper-partisanship for about the last 14 years. I would trace the beginning of this trend to 1994, when Newt Gingrich led a GOP takeover of the House of Representatives and promptly sought to wrest control of the ship of state from the actual chief executive, Bill Clinton. Had Gingrich merely fallen short in trying to set himself up as a rival to Clinton, things might have been different. Unfortunately, the conflict escalated in a way that neither man likely intended at the time. Clinton saw Gingrich and the conservatives as a useful foil he could use to maintain his popularity with both liberals and moderates without having to engage in the kind of heavy lifting one normally associates with presidential greatness. Clinton didn't need to fight a war overseas to secure his legacy; he was fighting -- and winning -- a war at home. It was Clinton versus the conservatives.

Oddly, the conflict had very little to do with ideology. Indeed, that was the beauty of it. While Clinton was portraying himself as defending America against the dark forces of conservatism, nobody seemed to notice that he was governing the country somewhat conservatively himself. Following the defeat of HillaryCare, he abandoned any effort toward wholesale liberal reform. In fact, his signature legislative accomplishment proved to be welfare reform. Even his small-ball initiatives often had a conservative bent, such as the program to put 100,000 new cops on the street.

In the end, Clinton did at least four things that helped create a perfect storm for hyper-partisanship over the ensuing decade: First, he engaged in a trumped up war against conservatives in order to elevate his standing with liberals and moderates. Second, other than waging war against the right, he starved liberals of any meaningful accomplishments on their behalf. Third, he handed conservatives a bludgeon by engaging in a reckless relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Finally, he survived the Republicans' bludgeon attack.

The net result of all this was to render the left deeply embittered against both Clinton and conservatives. After Al Gore's electoral defeat -- itself a source a hard feelings on all sides -- they demanded and secured a liberal takeover of the Democratic Party.

On the conservative side, the Clinton years left the right feeling frustrated over their inability to undermine Clinton's popularity and the fact that policy debates -- which the GOP should have dominated -- had been overshadowed by personality.

While the Clinton years spawned the ugly rancor between the left and the right, the rise of the internet has only fueled the trend. The problem isn't that the internet allows those of all political stripes to express their own opinions. The problem is that it allows everyone to have their own facts. People increasingly rely on the internet for their information, but most of the political news they receive comes from (or through the filter of) highly partisan sources. These outlets --bloggers, mostly -- steadfastly refuse to "cover" stories that don't advance their own political agenda. Take the "torture" issue, for example. To a reader of liberal blogs, it is a given that the Bush supports the use of torture in the War on Terror and that this policy renders the Administration the legal and moral equivalent of an international criminal enterprise. To find a conservative rebuttal of that point of view is not impossible, but it takes a certain amount of effort. The reason? Right-wing bloggers simply haven't given the issue nearly the same amount of attention. The proverbial "other side of the story," once a required element of a standard piece of objective journalism, barely gets through at all. If you take a look at Memeorandum on a regular basis you see this pattern repeat itself day in and day out. Stories that one side finds utterly fascinating are virtually ignored by the other side. One can only conclude that those who frequent liberal sites are getting a decidedly different version of the "news" from those on the right.

"Cocooning" has made it possible to believe whatever you want. If you want to believe that Bush lied about Iraq, there are plenty of sites that will confirm that belief. If you want to believe Obama is a practicing Muslim, you can find that too. What's increasingly hard to find is any news source that is trusted by both sides to cover issues like these in a fair and balanced fashion.
The absence of such outlets don't exist makes it difficult to feel optimistic about the prospects for improving the tone of the political debate.

Bush should resign???

2008-11-24T09:39:00.002-05:00

The New York Times' Gail Collins wrote a column this past weekend arguing that President Bush should resign immediately in order to allow Barack Obama to deal with the financial crisis immediately rather than wait until January 20. Specifically, her proposal calls for both Bush and Vice President Cheney to resign, which would make House Speaker Nancy Pelosi president until January 20. Collins assumes that Pelosi would serve basically as a puppet for Barack Obama between now and Inauguration Day.

I considered blogging about this idea several weeks ago when a similar proposal was advanced before the election by a pair of op-ed writers in the Boston Globe. If memory serves, I didn't think it deserved the attention at that time. It's still a bad idea, but the attention Collins' piece has drawn to it makes it worth discussing.

Collins' column evinces not the slightest appreciation for the radical nature of her proposal. It is radical in three ways. First, it would set a precedent for making presidential terms of office contingent on outside events. Presidents would be urged to resign whenever it appeared (or was argued) they could no longer be effective during their remaining days in office. This would introduce an element of unpredictability to our system of government that we have wisely avoided up to this point.

Second, Collins' proposal would introduce a new feature into our constitutional scheme: the "caretaker president." According to Collins, Nancy Pelosi would assume the White House for the sole purpose of governing in accordance with the wishes of Barack Obama. This innovation would be truly obnoxious to the concept of an independent executive as enshrined in Article II of the Constitution.

Third, if adopted, Collins' proposal would invite future leaders to use the Constitution's rules regarding presidential succession -- which were intended only to provide continuity of government in cases of unexpected vacancies -- to install virtually anyone they wanted as president. Let's say the powers that be in Washington wished to make Ryan Seacrest president without bothering to have an election. All it would take is for the current vice president to resign and for the president to appoint Seacrest to fill that vacancy. Pursuant to the 25th Amendment, Congress would have to confirm the appointment by a simple majority vote of both houses. Once confirmed, the president would resign, making Ryan Seacrest president. The only thing truly far-fetched in this scenario is using Ryan Seacrest as the hypothetical subject. One could substitute Barack Obama's name for Seacrest's and suddenly it's no more crazy that what Gail Collins is proposing. Arguably, it's a more conservative scheme than that which Collins is advocating, since it completely avoids the "caretaker president" problem. Either way it would be a decision by a relative handful of people in Washington to install a new president without bothering with an election or waiting for the current presidential term to expire.

One would think that a proponent of such a radical proposal would attempt to make a fairly compelling case for its necessity. In the case of Gail Collins, such an expectation would be sorely misplaced. Her main "argument" (if it can be called that) is that Bush should resign in order to avoid being regarded as the worst president in U.S. history (behind James Buchanan), rather than merely one of the worst. In other words, she thinks Bush should resign because resigning would be a good thing for him to do. If it sounds circular, it's because it is.

Collins' other rationale for a Bush resignation -- or perhaps it's the same rationale stated in different words -- is her assertion that the economic crisis requires it. How it requires it is not really clear. Collins seems to believe there are things that Barack Obama could do to help rescue the economy between now and January 20 that can't be done unless Nancy Pelosi is president. Of course, Speaker Pelosi can't become president uner Collins' scenario unless President Bush resigns, which almost certainly won't happen unless he agrees that the policies Obama would seek to implement would in fact be good for the country. In that case, however, he could just begin to implement those policies himself rather than turn over his $400,000-per-year job to Nancy Pelosi for two months. All of this might seem less silly if there were any specifics under discussion as to the "immediate" steps the Obama/Pelosi cabal had in mind for saving the economy. Collins fails to explain what those specific steps are, leading me to wonder if her proposal has any serious purpose other than to provide her with something to write about.

In Collins' defense, there is actually some historical precedent for the idea of a sitting president resigning in order to allow the incoming president to take office prior to Inauguration Day. FDR evidently considered trying to somehow ease Hoover out of office following the 1932 election. Perhaps more significantly, Woodrow Wilson secretly intended to resign in order to allow his opponent, Charles Evans Hughes, to assume the White House if Wilson had lost the 1916 election. I believe Wilson's plan was to appoint Hughes secretary of state, which at that time would have made him third in line for the presidency. Of course, the fact that Wilson considered such a move in 1916 doesn't mean it was a good idea then, let alone that it would be a good idea now. At least in 1916, however, the idea had the backing of the sitting president, and therefore had a chance to be put into practice. In the present instance, all the proposal has going for it is Gail Collins' snarky assertion that Bush needs to resign in order to lock up the number two spot on the list of all-time worst presidents. Presumably, Bush would need to hear a much stronger case for his resignation than Collins has been able to marshal.

Is picking Hillary a hedge strategy?

2008-11-21T16:30:00.003-05:00

It looks like Hillary is definitely coming on board as Obama's Secretary of State. I think it's a dumb move on his part, although I'm not personally disappointed because I regard Hillary as somewhat hawkish at least in comparison to other Democrats.

It occurs to me that Hillary could represent something of a hedge strategy for Obama if, as some speculate, he is truly worried about a challenge from her in 2012. Obama may figure that if disaster strikes during his first term, it will be on account of a foreign policy crisis. If so, then putting Hillary in charge of Foggy Bottom would at least ensure that she couldn't capitalize on such a misfortune.

Gay marriage moving at the speed of light

2008-11-20T12:46:00.002-05:00

Mort Kondracke: "In recent years, Republicans have let right-wing talk show hosts whip the GOP base into frenzies -- over immigration, brain-damage victim Terry Schiavo and same-sex marriage -- that have branded the party as troglodyte."

This is amazing. Ten years ago, same-sex marriage was unthinkable. Now, to oppose it makes you a troglodyte. Does public opinion really move that fast?

The politics of bailouts

2008-11-20T10:26:00.004-05:00

The proposed bailout of the (formerly-)Big Three appears to be in trouble. The simple reason for that is that nobody can keep a straight face while saying the words, "This money will make Detroit competitive again." At most, the bailout would stave off a collapse for several months while not addressing the structural problems that are causing Ford, GM, and Chrysler to lose money on every car they sell.

From a partisan political standpoint, it's hard to see how this issue doesn't end up hurting Democrats. Although those with a direct stake in the health of the auto industry would likely disagree, the public as a whole is clearly skeptical about the wisdom of bailouts in general and of a bailout of Detroit in particular. Importantly, part of the reason for that skepticism is that the Democrats have spent much of the last two years bemoaning all the money we have spent in Iraq and the overall precarious state of the economy. Now that the Dems are on the brink of controlling both political branches of government, they find themselves in the position of backing another huge commitment of funds toward a project that seemingly offers no long-term prospects for success. Moreover, whether or not the bailout occurs, the Dems are still expected to solve the larger financial mess. Thus, it seems to be a no-win situation for Obama, Pelosi, and Reid. They must either support an unpopular measure that's not likely to work, or not do it and be perceived as having no answers.

Of course, this is really just a function of the overall challenge facing the Democrats: Although they're being asked to fix the economy, it's unlikely there's any "fix" that does not entail a painful and protracted recession. Blaming Bush simply won't make that challenge go away. Declaring that there's nothing to be done won't work either, not after an election in which the American were told they needed the Democrats in power in order to clean up the country's economic mess. The country was promised results and the Democrats need to deliver.

Another problem the bailout presents for the Democrats is that it undermines one of their core political principles: the notion that Washington should stop using fiscal policy to pad the coffers of Big Business. Barack Obama used this theme against McCain when he accused his rival of supporting billions of dollars in tax breaks to corporations. But if you think it's bad to give corporations a tax break, how can you justify giving corporations a direct subsidy in the form of a bailout? Suddenly the whole world is upside down: the Democrats are the party of Big Business and the Republicans are telling the corporations to stuff it!

Hopefully the economy will rebound sooner rather than later, whether because of or in spite of the Democrats' actions. I'd much rather see the country get back on its feet economically than see the Democrats suffer because it didn't.

Campaign flashback: "Palling around with terrorists"

2008-11-14T23:48:00.003-05:00

Associated Press "News Analysis", Oct. 5, headlined "Palin's words carry a racial tinge":

"Her reference to Obama's relationship with William Ayers, a member of the Vietnam-era Weather Underground, was exaggerated at best if not outright false. No evidence shows they were 'pals' or even close when they worked on community boards years ago and Ayers hosted a political event for Obama early in his career." (Emphasis added.)

Bill Ayers, discussing his relationship with Obama in a forward to his book:

"[W]e had served together on the board of a foundation, knew one another as neighbors and family friends, held an initial fund-raiser at my house, where I'd made a small donation to his earliest political campaign." (Emphasis added.)

So apparently they weren't "pals," just "friends." The distinction certainly warrants the AP's calling Sarah Palin a racist liar.

Obama's "Team of Rivals"?

2008-11-14T20:22:00.003-05:00

Apparently some people are treating Obama's reported interest in Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State as an act of political genius similar to Lincoln's deft assembly of a "Team of Rivals" to comprise his cabinet. I think this meme gives much too much credit to both Lincoln and Obama.

Lincoln didn't exactly invent the idea of naming strong leaders from a president's own party to cabinet positions. And few if any members of Lincoln's cabinet needed his close supervision to deter them from conspiring to unseat him. Seward was disappointed at losing the nomination in 1860 but had no difficulty accepting Lincoln as his party's leader. Stanton may have been a Lincoln skeptic, but he was wasn't even a candidate in '60, let alone a political force Lincoln needed to worry about. Edward Bates clearly lacked the ambition to intrigue against Lincoln. If memory serves, he could barely be troubled to move to Washington to join the cabinet. In fact, the only cabinet official deserving of a short leash was Salmon Chase, and it's far from clear that Lincoln spared himself any heartache by putting him at Treasury.

As for Obama and Hillary, for reasons discussed in my previous post, appointing her as Secretary of State does virtually nothing to neutralize her as a potential rival. Obama's energies should be focused on performing well as president, not worrying about what Hillary does.

Hillary for Secretary of State?

2008-11-14T17:20:00.007-05:00

I'm not sure how seriously to take this, but the name Hillary Rodham Clinton is being floated as a possible Secretary of State in the Obama Administration.

I don't think Hillary would necessarily be a disaster in this role, but it's not a pick that would inspire confidence.

First, her singular focus in the public arena has been on domestic policy. Assuming it would take a top-level cabinet post to entice her to leave the Senate, she would be best suited for Attorney General.

Apart from her lack of expertise in foreign policy, Hillary seems ill fit for Foggy Bottom for reasons of personality and temperament. If the last 16 years have taught us anything about Hillary, it's that she's a fighter, rather than a diplomat, a hard-nosed tactician rather than a grand strategist. It's hard to imagine her thriving in the genteel, nuanced world of international diplomacy.

So if this pick isn't motivated by the desire to find the best person to lead America's diplomatic corps, what is it about?

From Obama's perspective, there may be a couple of reasons why picking Hillary for State reasons may seem like a good idea. For one, it advances his goal of assembling an "all star" cabinet. As I've written before, however, I think a cabinet of "all-stars" needlessly raises expectations he will be hard-pressed to fulfill.

Another motive for Obama to pick Hillary may be to neutralize her as a potential rival in 2012. If that's his rational, however, it is incredibly craven. Surely, if Obama could outwit Hillary for the nomination when he was just an untested freshman senator, he would have no difficulty staving off an intra-party challenge from her as the incumbent president. If Obama is that worried about Hillary in 2012, he should do whatever he can to have a successful first term, including getting the best Secretary of State he can find.

Possibly, Obama's real worry in regard to Hillary is not that she will try to unseat him in 2012, but that she'll undermine his administration in other ways. In that case, he might imagine that involving Hillary in the arcane machinations of foreign affairs will prevent her from engaging in acts of domestic political sabotage. But of course it wouldn't. If anything, the State Department would provide Hillary with plausible cover to engage in whatever nefarious intrigues she could devise.

Truthfully, I can't think of any good reason Obama would want Hillary as Secretary of State.

From Hillary's perspective, it's possible she would envision a stint as Secretary of State as something that would enhance her future presidential prospects. Undoubtedly, it would, assuming she didn't make a botch of it. As a practical matter, however, she probably doesn't need to punch up her resume in order to get back into presidential contention.

The best reason I can think of Hillary to accept this appointment is ambivalence about Obama's prospects for a successful first term. The Secretary of State tends to operate semi-autonomously and, of course, within an area of responsibility many voters studiously ignore. If Obama stumbles badly in the Oval Office, and particularly if the country is mired in deep economic troubles, a Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would likely avoid any responsibility for the mess. Even as senator her reputation would be at risk, since she would presumably have to support Obama's domestic agenda. The State Department offers Hillary the best of all worlds: a powerful, high-visibility position in the new administration, further enhancement of her presidential qualifications, and insurance against the risk that Obama will fall flat on his face.

For auto industry to move forward, government needs to take its foot off the brakes

2008-11-14T13:30:00.008-05:00

The proposed bailout recipient de jour is the U.S. auto industry. Detroit is going broke and many in Congress think the solution involves pumping 25 billion taxpayer dollars into the coffers of the Big Three. I disagree.

If they really want to see the U.S. automakers get back on their feet, the government should encourage them to file bankruptcy and get out from under the bloated union contracts that make it impossible for the Big Three to turn a profit. Ford actually loses something like $1,400 for every vehicle it sells. Collective bargaining agreements require Ford, GM, and Chrysler to pay workers about $25 per hour more than American autoworkers receive in non-union shops. And that's just part of the story. The Big Three must pay UAW employees these exorbitant wages even when there's no work to do, which is increasingly the case. They're also required to fund pension obligations that are clearly beyond the companies' means.

The proposed bailout appears to be consciously aimed to prevent the automakers from filing bankruptcy and getting out from under the UAW contracts. In essence, therefore, it's a bailout of the unions at the expense of the automakers, rather than a bailout of the automakers themselves.

A serious program to revive the domestic auto industry would go beyond merely reforming union contracts. It would also include doing away with CAFE standards, which restrict Detroit's ability to manufacture the larger, more profitable -- and safer -- vehicles that Americans traditionally covet.

Unfortunately, Congress doesn't seem to understand that businesses need to make money if they are to survive. Left to their own devices, the Big Three would make whatever styles and sizes of cars the public was most eager to buy, thus maximizing their profits. Congress, however, wants U.S. automakers to build smaller cars with higher fuel efficiency, and it uses CAFE standards to achieve that goal. Consequently, Detroit sells far fewer cars, and makes much less money, than it should. As a result, Americans don't get to buy the cars they really want and the entire economy suffers from Detroit's financial travails. It's a lose-lose deal for consumers and taxpayers alike.

A federal bailout would be, at best, a temporary means of averting an industry collapse. It will do nothing to solve the underlying problems, much of which are of Washington's own creation.

We're all socialists now

2008-11-07T09:14:00.005-05:00

Interesting exchange on Hannity & Colmes last night. And by "interesting", I mean insipid. Evidently, when the Joe the Plumber was Joe the Child, his parents went on welfare a couple of times. And you know what that makes him? A hypocrite for opposing redistribution of wealth! At least that's what a bunch of lefty bloggers are saying.

Although this line of attack is unfair for several reasons, let's just focus on the main one. It's the notion that if the government takes one penny of tax money and gives it to the most destitute person in America, that's wealth redistribution; and anyone who calls himself a free-market capitalist must oppose that use of taxpayer funds or accept the label of "hypocrite." Sorry, but real life is a tad more complicated than that.

I don't know anyone who thinks there shouldn't be any taxpayer-subsidized social safety net for the truly needy. Similarly, I doubt anyone is so much of a free-market capitalist that they oppose any government regulation of business. It's always a question of limiting the role of government to that which is necessary, efficient, and avoids undesired consequences.

I would describe the "conservative" position on welfare as follows: (a) it should exist; (b) it should only be available to the truly needy; (c) it should be administered in a way that avoids fraud and waste; and (d) it should be designed so as to not encourage or permit able-bodied people to use it as an alternative to work. I'm not sure about Joe the Child, but I'm confident Joe the Plumber would agree with all of that.

Now let's talk about what Barack Obama's socialist adherents believe. They want to have the government take a significant chunk of the income of high earners and give it to people in the middle and lower classes in order to make incomes less disparate across the board. Obama himself has sought to justify increasing the capital gains tax rate, a policy he acknowledges tends to reduce overall tax revenues, on grounds of "fairness."

It's one thing to tax people in order to pay for necessary government services and operations. It's quite another to tax people simply to make them less wealthy in relation to others. Unfortunately, in the drive to label yet another political opponent a "hypocrite," the left would have us all ignore that distinction.

Obama's first mistake?

2008-11-06T14:04:00.003-05:00

Expectations for Obama's greatness are so high in some quarters that at times it seemed he was leading a cult rather than a political campaign. Obama did nothing to tamp down his supporters' expectations before the election, a decision I assumed he would revisit after.

Then I started to hear a lot of talk yesterday about how the president-elect is trying to assemble an "all-star" cabinet. Putting aside the question of whether a has-been like John Kerry constitutes a "star," is this really the kind of theme Obama ought to be sounding? I would think he would be better served by announcing he's looking for "hard workers who have the patience and stamina to handle the day-to-day work needed to build success over time." Hire John Kerry if you must, but don't raise expectations any higher than they already are.

Remembrances of elections past

2008-11-06T09:51:00.002-05:00

Throughout the 2008 presidential campaign, commentators (myself included) sought to liken the current election to some prior quadrennial contest. The assumption seems to be that we've exhausted our supply of unique elections and are now simply recycling the old ones.

Now that the election of 2008 has passed, we should be able to state with some degree of confidence which previous postwar election it most closely resembles.

Unfortunately for McCain, it wasn't 1948. Although the polls were wildly inconsistent in measuring the extent of Obama's lead, the RCP average of the polls mirrored the final outcome fairly closely. (We should know by now a candidate's in trouble the minute they start talking about 1948.)

We can also toss out the various elections in which a contented public returned an incumbent president to office by an impressive margin. This takes care of Eisenhower's win in '56, LBJ's in '64, Nixon's in '72, Reagan's in '84, and Clinton's in '96. To this list we can add W's reelection in 2004 (although it was close and hotly contested) and his father's defeat of Michael Dukakis in '88 (which was tantamount to a reelection of Ronald Reagan for a third term).

Bush v. Gore also fails to make the first cut. The 2000 election is mainly remembered for "hanging chads" and inaugurating the meme of a "50-50" electorate divided into red and blue states. Apart from the tattered remnants of the red-blue divide, it's hard to see anything in the election of 2008 that's reminiscent of 2000.

That leaves six possible candidates for the election most similar to 2008: Ike v. Stevenson in 1952, Kennedy v. Nixon in 1960, Nixon v. Humphrey and Wallace in 1968, Carter v. Ford in 1976, Reagan v. Carter in 1980, and Clinton v. Bush and Perot in 1992.

Of these, I'm first going to toss out 1960. Although Democrats like to compare Obama to JFK (and, more tellingly, Michelle Obama to Jackie Kennedy), there's no obvious similarity between the actual elections. Americans were reasonably content throughout the Eisenhower years and in 1960 merely had to decide which young Cold Warrior -- the handsome and athletic Kennedy or the pale and lip-sweating Nixon -- ought to succeed him. Shockingly, handsome and athletic won.

We should probably next eliminate 1952. Although that election to succeed an unpopular incumbent pitted an articulate and intellectual politician from Illinois against an aging war hero admired by Republicans and Democrats alike, it ended with a win for the war hero. Sorry, Mac!

The next election to get the boot has to be 1992. Although Clinton, like Obama, was a young newcomer who capitalized on economic worries to defeat the party which had long held the White House, Perot's decisive spoiler role in '92 strains any further comparisons to 2008.

The election of 1968 offers some plausible parallels to 2008, but they don't really hold up under close inspection. These may qualify as troubled times for the U.S., but we're not experiencing assassinations and street riots as was the case 40 years ago. While discontent over the war in Vietnam dominated the election in 1968, the war in Iraq had become virtually a second-tier issue by Election Day 2008. Nixon's perceived role as the tough-minded leader who would restore a sense of order to nation that was falling apart at the seams finds no parallel in Obama's soft-focus hope-a-palooza campaign. Furthermore, Nixon by 1968 was anything but a newcomer on the American political horizon. Finally, any comparisons to 1968 forces us to disregard the third-party candidacy of George Wallace, which garnered 46 electoral votes.

This leaves the two Carter elections, 1976 and 1980. Like others, I've written before about the parallels between this year and 1980. Where I think the comparison falls short is that Reagan was promising not just change, but a very specific kind of change. He sought a mandate to dismantle the big government policies of the past and project strength abroad. Obama's ambitions are far less clear. While there is every reason to suspect he is a man of the left, it's not at all clear that's the reason America is sending him to the White House. To the contrary, his primary appeal derives from his youth and style, and the perceived significance of his racial background. To a large extent, Obama downplayed his liberal philosophical orientation during the general election in order to project an image of moderation and an openness to opposing viewpoints.

The key in all this is the fact that while Reagan represented a political movement, Obama embodies a cultural phenomenon. There is simply no Obama analogue to the terms "Reagan Republican" or "Reagan Democrat." That is not to say Obama name will never be associated with a particular governing philosophy, only that such a philosophy wasn't the focus of his campaign.

That leaves 1976 as my choice for the election most similar to 2008. Both years' campaigns saw the emergence of appealing Democratic candidates who were newcomers to the national stage. Both campaigns featured well-known Republicans who were liked and admired by Americans across the political spectrum. Both of these Republicans, however, were hobbled -- mostly unfairly --by their connections to the grossly unpopular GOP president who had won the previous two elections. Their Democratic nominees, by contrast, were uniquely poised to offer voters the promise of a new era in Washington, free from the taint of the embattled prior incumbent. The promise of change outweighed concerns over the Democratic challenger's relative lack of experience and vaguely-defined political philosophy. The Republican candidates, moreover, were not well-positioned to present an ideological alternative to the Democrats due to their own poorly-defined political philosophies. In the end, despite giving the Democrat an unexpectedly tough run for his money, neither Ford nor McCain was able to stem the tide of change that fate had beckoned.

The parallels between this year and 1976 naturally invite the speculation that Republicans will reclaim the White House in 2012. I hope that happens, but not if it means reliving the Carter years. Good luck, Mr. President.

Did I mention he's black?

2008-11-05T14:53:00.002-05:00

My post earlier didn't list among the silver linings of Obama's election that it signifies a landmark in race relations. The omission wasn't intended to be pointed; I just don't share the astonishment that some people seem to feel about the election of a black president. There are a few reasons for this:

1. I've felt all along - certainly since I've been voting - that America was capable of electing a black president. I realize that many black people doubted this, so for them, this is a big deal. But I've never really thought of the country as being so racist that significant numbers of people wouldn't vote for a black candidate for that reason alone.

2. We've had blacks serve as secretary of state, as senator, and in other high-level leadership positions, and when has their race ever been an issue? Indeed, when is the last time any prominent, serious person objected to a black person holding high office in this country? The Truman Administration? Obviously the election of a black man would have seemed fantastic to everyone 50 years ago. But that was, well, 50 years ago. Now it comes as no shock at all, at least not to me.

3. In Obama's case, it was apparent throughout the campaign that his being black was more of an advantage than a disadvantage in attracting votes. It certainly helped against Hillary. I interpreted the "change" in Obama's slogan "change we can believe in" to refer to his race. Hillary also represented "change" (being a woman), but we couldn't believe in her, I interpreted Obama to be saying, because she's about as ethical as Nixon. In Obama, you were getting both "change" (i.e., a candidate who was not a white male), without the cognitive dissonance of voting for a Clinton out of a sense of civic virtue.

4. I would point out that Obama lost the white vote 55% to 44% according to exit poll data I've seen. Not that I'm proposing to move the goalposts or anything, but perhaps we should save the champagne for the day a black wins the majority of white votes -- or a woman wins a majority of male votes. Or not.

Looking on the bright side

2008-11-05T08:39:00.002-05:00

OK, that happened.

Fortunately, there are some silver linings. Like these:

1. It looks like the Dems will be held to 56 seats in the Senate, and one of those is Lieberman. Assuming the GOP has 44 seats plus Joementum, they should be able to mount a filibuster on the big, important stuff, even allowing for a couple of defections.

2. Along the lines of what I wrote yesterday, Obama will be taking office without a socialist or even a strong liberal mandate. Based on the morning-after reaction throughout the country (at least as portrayed in the media), the main significance of his victory is that we have now elected the first "black" president. (Nevermind that we've also elected our 44th president of white ancestry.) If the decisive factor in Obama's election was his race, and not a program for wholesale liberal reform, then it's not at all clear that the country will support a leftist agenda.

My gut tells me the voters tended to ignore the Jeremiah-Wright-slash-Bill-Ayers-type revelations about Obama because they took him at his word that he was not, in fact, a wild-eyed leftist fanatic. Democratic leaders and the media certainly did their utmost to assure the public that Obama was a "safe," mainstream candidate, who was not even "the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate" as the National Journal had claimed. If that was the figurative deal he made with the American voters to get elected, he's going to have to honor it to some extent once he takes office.

3. I don't relish the thought of the Dems having control of the White House and both houses of Congress. On the other hand, I do sort of relish the thought that they will have all the responsibility.

4. Obama's election makes it highly unlikely Hillary will ever become president.

5. Gay marriage lost out in California and across the country. I'm opposed to gay marriage, but I'm even more opposed to the notion that a state constitution can be amended by judicial fiat. It's a usurpation of our democratic liberties regardless of the cause in whose name it is being done. If the people want to enshrine a right to gay marriage in their state or federal constitutions, let them go through the established amendment process. It's outrageous for judges to claim the right to create new constitutional rights from the bench.

6. Another silver lining, I have to admit, is the fact that John McCain wasn't elected. If he had been, I think it would have been another four years of continuous acrimony and recriminations from the left (so, yes, in that sense at least, "McSame"). This is especially true when you consider that the only way McCain was going to win was in a real squeaker. Therefore, we would have almost certainly had all manner of litigation, accusations of vote fraud, and possibly riots in the street.

It actually is somewhat hard to imagine McCain having a successful presidency under such circumstances. The left would have treated him as a fiend, and McCain would probably have tried to earn their good will by bending over backward to accommodate them. It would not have been an ideal time for the conservative movement.

7. Speaking of conservatives, we now have an opportunity to take a breather of sorts and regroup. The central issue facing the GOP is whether to try to lead the country toward authentically conservative principles or whether to go along with the larger historical trend in favor of ever-increasing government involvement in the economy. Conservatism has been described as a three-legged stool, consisting of (a) strong national defense/foreign policy, (b) social conservatism (including judicial appointments), and (c) economic conservatism as measured by low taxes, smaller government, less regulation, and free trade. The party is actually fairly consistent in regard to the first two legs, despite a number of prominent GOP leaders who are pro-choice. The problem has been in regard to spending, entitlements, and related issues like immigration. There's an inherent problem for Republicans in trying to champion economic conservatism. The Dems and the media tend to demagogue on these issues and portray the GOP as a bunch of fatcats and meanies. We need to find out if there are a sufficient number of Republican leaders willing to make a stand for economic conservatism. Simply advocating lower taxes is not enough. We need to challenge the entire welfare-state mentality that perceives it to be the government's primary responsibility to provide everyone (including illegal aliens!) with a comfortable middle-class lifestyle.

8. Finally, I'm glad to see the Republicans reacting to Obama's win in a calm and generally respectful manner. Conservatives have a lot of work to do to bounce back from where we are. We also have legitimate grievances -- against the media, for example -- and legitimate worries about what the next four years hold in store for the nation. Nevertheless, we can't change any of those things today, and no amount of kicking and screaming is going to help.

Election Day Angst

2008-11-04T13:45:00.002-05:00

Actually, I'm not nearly as anxious about today's election as I was in 2004. Kathryn Jean Lopez has an interesting post on the Corner that helps to explain the difference. Evidently, she wrote in 2004 that the election that year was so important, she would almost be willing to concede the 2008 race to the Democrats in order to win in 2004. I think I felt exactly the same way at the time.

In 2004, I felt the race was essentially a referendum on whether a U.S. president could take aggressive steps, up to and including waging war, in order to combat the Islamic extremism that was threatening to destroy, over time, Western civilization. John Kerry, in my mind, represented capitulation to the Islamofascist threat in its various forms, including the deferring of judgment in the matter to the pinstriped pantywaists that control the U.N.

This year, I don't feel that Americans are voting on the anything as monumental as all that. As a matter of fact, if Obama wins, it's not clear what the American people will have voted "for." I specifically don't think a majority of voters want socialism, even if that's what Obama has up his sleeve. While Obama's election would carry with it a raft of bad consequences for the country, I don't think it would tell us a great deal about the electorate beyond the obvious fact that Americans are very confused about the state of the economy and worried about the future.

Indeed, that's probably the best summary I could give of this election. People are confused, worried, and angry about the sense of crisis that's gripping the country. They don't really know who or what to blame. Obama is superficially a more attractive choice because he advocates "change." McCain is reassuring at some level, but it's never been clear exactly what he stands for. So it really does all boil down to "change" and "hope": roll the dice on "change" and "hope" we still have a country four years from now.

Obama's assist from the media

2008-11-03T09:09:00.003-05:00

Assuming, as expected, Obama wins tomorrow's election, what will that tell us about America in 2008?

Mainly, it tells us that the mainstream media have shifted from being merely biased in its coverage to operating as de facto propaganda ministry for the Democratic Party. What I'll remember above all else from this campaign is the outright refusal of the media to report revelations about Obama that would have been daily, front-page news in any other year. The examples are so many, it would be depressing to recite them all. However, it's no exaggeration to say that the cost of Sarah Palin's wardrobe received more press attention than the fact that Barack Obama belonged to a Socialist fringe party in the 1990s.

When it was not simply ignoring negative stories about Obama, the media sought to defuse legitimate attacks on Obama -- and indeed turn them against McCain and the Republicans --through a highly propagandistic device known as the "fact check." At best, the "fact check" is a vehicle through which a news organization can examine a disputed, controversial issue and render a judgment as to which side (Obama's) was telling the truth and which side (McCain's) was being less than honest. At worst, the fact-checkers performed this function with respect to charges and allegations against Obama that were indisputably true. In that case, the "fact check" tended to conclude with the reporter's blessing of whatever spin the Obama campaign happened to put on the charge.

Here's an illustration of how a "fact check" tended to work in practice:

THE CHARGE: While serving in the Illinois State Senate, Barack Obama kidnapped and murdered dozens of teenage girls. John McCain says he has videotapes to prove it, along with DNA tests and affidavits from a number of victims who managed to escape.
THE FACTS: Obama's plan for kidnapping and murder specifically exempts girls ages 13-16. Furthermore, according to his website, the vast majority of American teenagers would not be kidnapped and murdered if Obama is elected.
THE VERDICT: McCain's effort to play on Americans' fear of kidnapping and murder is misleading at best, and possibly racist. Fact Checker gives him 2 Pinocchios.

What we've seen from the media this year is the kind of change Goebbels could believe in.

Bracing for Obama

2008-10-31T10:10:00.002-04:00

Heading into the final weekend of Election 2008, things are not looking so good for John McCain. Although I don't think Obama is headed for a landslide victory -- indeed, he may not win at all -- I find myself devoting more and more of my mental energies speculating on what his victory would mean rather than whether it will come to pass.

Obama has done such a masterly job during the campaign of presenting an image of an inspiring, unflappable moderate, one can really only guess at what kind of president he will try to be. An optimistic (from my perspective) interpretation of his career would be that while he began his career as a race-obsessed extreme leftist, he mainly took that path out of political opportunism. There are actually several arguments supporting that interpretation. For one, when Obama first entered state politics in Illinois, there is no way he could have imagined ever being in a position to run for president. It seems probable he joined Jeremiah Wright's church as a means of establishing credibility in the black community. His other questionable associations may have been similarly aimed at ingratiating himself into left-wing political circles. Despite these troubling associations, it doesn't appear that Obama has ever personally engaged in extreme left-wing rhetoric. Moreover, in his first book, Dreams From My Father, Obama seems to eschew radicalism in its various forms, sometimes in mocking, dismissive tones.

There is also the matter of Obama's legislative career. While he is clearly a staunch liberal, there is no evidence he has ever tried to pull his party to the far left.

All of this suggests the possibility that Obama is, in fact, more or less a mainstream liberal with a genuinely moderate temperament.

As I indicated, that's the "optimistic" interpretation. At the other extreme, one can argue that Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers, the socialist New Party membership, "spread the wealth," etc., are all genuine red flags signifying a radical mindset that Obama has taken increasing pains to conceal as he's moved up the ladder of political success. If so, it follows that he will only display his true leftist colors after reaching the top rung on January 20.

I think either interpretation is entirely plausible. Unfortunately, the mere possibility that the latter interpretation is correct is more than enough reason to want to keep Obama out of the White House. Yet, if the polls are correct, the voters either don't recognize the risk or are willing to take a chance.

In acknowledging the possibility that Obama is just a mainstream liberal, I don't mean to imply that the country's fortunes wouldn't suffer as a result of his policies. They would, but the damage is likely to be less severe as compared to a program of radical socialist "reform."

There are mitigating factors, however, even if Obama turns out to be a radical in moderate clothing. First, since the country doesn't believe that's who they are electing, Obama won't have popular support if he seeks to govern as a hard-core leftist. In fact, he would lose a lot of Democratic support in Congress.

Another important factor is whether the GOP succeeds in holding onto at least 40 seats in the Senate. If they do, then Obama will be significantly constrained in his legislative agenda due to the requirement of 60 votes to end a filibuster.

Overall, while an Obama presidency would almost certainly be very bad for the country, it would not necessarily be the catastrophe that I have come to fear. Mainly I take solace in the fact that, however well Obama performs on Election Day, he will not have a mandate for radical change, having presented himself to the voters as a liberal-centrist. Provided Obama realizes this, we'll survive.

Obama's control over the media

2008-10-27T09:27:00.002-04:00

Okay, so that's a pretty dire-sounding subject heading. Yet,as I write this, Drudge is headlining a 2001 radio interview in which Obama described it as "tragic" that the Warren Court's failed to interpret the Constitution as imposing an affirmative obligation on the part of government to redistribute wealth.

I'm no journalist, but that strikes me as newsworthy. Perhaps not as newsworthy as the cost of Sarah Palin's wardrobe, but newsworthy nonetheless.

Of course, the mainstream media seems to disagree, at least so far. After all, they have yet to report the fact that Obama belonged to a socialist fringe party in the 1990's.

Seriously, what the hell's going on here? Is this entirely a function of liberal media bias?

I'm not so sure it is. While liberal bias was clearly a big factor in Obama's success to date, I think the media are now gripped by something more powerful than mere ideological conviction.

They're certain he's going to win, and they're afraid he'll cut off their access if they raise embarrassing questions about him in the final days of the campaign.

There's no question that reporters and editors are willing to trade off journalistic integrity to preserve their access to power. A CNN producer even wrote an op-ed following the toppling of Saddam Hussein admitting that the network sugarcoated its portrayal of life under the Iraqi regime in order to keep its Baghdad bureau open. "This is CNN"? No, this is CNN.

With the broadcast networks and especially newspapers struggling to hold viewers and readers, they have a strong business incentive to remain on the Obama camp's good side as The Messiah prepares to assume the reins of power. They don't want to be deprived of one-on-one interviews with the new president and first lady. Moreover, they don't want to be demonized in the lefty blogosphere for trying to rain on the Democrats' big parade.

If editors and reporters for major media outlets have any qualms about failing to report on Obama's socialist-leaning past, they can console themselves with the knowledge that McCain appears headed for defeat regardless. That, along with their ideological affinity for Obama, makes it a no-brainer for them to look the other way for another week as yet further revelations surface over Obama's radical mindset.

On misleading rhetorical devices

2008-10-24T10:29:00.004-04:00

Political campaigns provide astute citizens with an opportunity to reflect on the ways rhetorical devices are used in support of or against the various candidates. I wanted to point out a few such devices that are commonly employed in what I would consider a misleading manner. I'll post more of these if and when I think of them.

"GUILT BY ASSOCIATION" - McCain's attacks on Obama's association with the likes of William Ayers has been dismissed in some quarters as "guilt by association." That's incorrect; nobody is accusing Obama of being a terrorist simply because of his association with a terrorist. What Obama is being criticized for is the association itself. It shows bad judgment and an apparent tolerance for the repugnant things Ayers represents. Although it is a fallacy to treat a candidate as a criminal simply because of his association with a criminal, that doesn't mean the candidate's association with a criminal is irrelevant in evaluating the candidate himself.

QUOTING SOMEONE "OUT OF CONTEXT" - This argument is overused for the simple reason that ALL quotes are taken out of context. If there is any unfairness involved, it's not that the person's words were taken out of their original context, but that this in some way altered the words' meaning. Unfortunately, asserting that a quote was "taken out of context" has become sort of an automatic response whenever a candidate's own words come back to haunt him. Rarely does a candidate ever explain how restoring the words to their original context would obviate the embarrassing quality of excerpted version. Even when they purport to go to that next step, they typically invent "context" that doesn't exist, such as the notion that they were only speaking "hypothetically," or in the past tense, etc.

USING "FEAR TACTICS" - The charge that a candidate is engaging in fear tactics assumes that there's never anything to fear from the policies our political leaders may choose to pursue. That assumption is, of course, nonsense. People rightly fear war, poverty, and the loss of freedom, among many other things. To the extent that a candidate's policies pose a significant threat of bringing about such consequences, it is only appropriate that people should fear the candidate and/or his policies. Obviously, the fear may not be justified in all cases, but that's not the point. The point is that there's nothing intrinsically wrong with using fear tactics. Depending on the circumstances, appealing to the voters' fears may be entirely appropriate.

10/27/2008 update:
"NEEDING A REASON TO VOTE FOR THE OTHER CANDIDATE" - This comes up in the context of negative campaigning. The idea is that a candidate can't rely solely on negative campaigning but must also give voters an affirmative reason to vote for him. It's a clever-sounding concept, but it doesn't really make sense in a two-candidate race. Voters are often presented with a choice between two deeply flawed candidates. Assuming a voter is going to pull the lever for one candidate or the other (as opposed to not voting at all or writing in the name of his pet hamster), then demonstrating that Candidate A is completely unacceptable does give that voter an affirmative reason to vote for Candidate B. Moreover, even if the negative attack only succeeds in driving up the write-votes in favor of domesticated hamsters, that still benefits Candidate B enormously. If Candidate B can flip a potential vote from Candidate A to "Fred the Hamster," that's a marginal gain of one vote for Candidate B. Sure, it would be better to flip the vote from Candidate A to Candidate B -- net gain of two votes -- but that doesn't diminish the value of eroding Candidate A's vote totals.

A Bachelor's Degree "Overrated"

2008-10-23T10:55:00.002-04:00

Here's an interesting read on a topic I find increasingly depressing: "America's Most Overrated Product: A Bachelor's Degree".

Part of the problem seems to be our habit of measuring higher education success by the number of kids getting into college. We would be better off with fewer people going into traditional four-year degree programs and the rest going into direct career-training programs that are appropriate to their interests and abilities. Instead, colleges are taking in more students than they can reasonably hope to educate, the students getting in are less likely to succeed, tuition rates are running rampant, families are being swamped with debt that will take years to erase, and the federal government is facing increasing demands to pay for it all.

Conventional wisdom is generally unwise

2008-10-16T09:45:00.002-04:00

I just saw this headline from Joan Vennochi of the Boston Globe: "That's_It_For_McCain." As one can surmise, she is referring to the fact that John McCain has emerged from the final debate still trailing Barack Obama.

This sort of conventional "wisdom" drives me nuts. It assumes that, in the absence of further debates, it is impossible for a candidate who is trailing in the polls to overcome a single-digit deficit in the polls with only three weeks left in the campaign. It's a ludicrous proposition.

This race isn't going to be over until Election Day. That's not a prediction of any massive movement toward McCain, it is simply an observation of fact.

The only value of Vennochi's column is that it helps to illustrate what has become the media narrative for the final stages of this race. The narrative now holds that Obama has safely emerged from the Republican Smear Machine gauntlet and is coasting to a landslide victory. Conservativism is now a discredited ideology and its remaining adherents have been exposed as bloodthirsty thugs screaming racist threats from the rafters of Sarah Palin events, which are now oddly reminiscent of the Nuremberg Rallies.

It's important to keep in mind that the narrative shapes the news, and not vice-versa. Anything that tends to support the narrative goes on the evening news. Anything that cuts against it is ignored.

Obama's "questionable" associations

2008-10-15T09:25:00.002-04:00

Obama's associations with the likes of Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Tony Rezko, and Frank Marshall Davis doesn't seem to be hurting him much politically, but they do tell us something about how he would approach the problems he would (will?) face as president.

If there's a theme to Obama's "questionable" associations, it's that he always seems to perceive quite a bit of good in certain characters most Americans would instantly perceive as evil. In fact, this tendency of Obama's has reached comic proportions. The line "That's not the [insert name] I know" has become familiar joke during this campaign.

If there's any truth at all to the "post-partisan" label Obama has hung on himself, it's that he envisions himself as something of a mediator between parties in conflict. As a general rule, mediation assumes that there is some merit in both sides of a conflict. Thus, in his speech decrying certain extreme pronouncements by Rev. Wright, Obama went out of his way to contextualize those diatribes as a manifestation of the racial animosities that all Americans supposedly harbor. Rather than condemn Wright's hateful sermons and let it go at that, Obama had to use the moment to try to explain that Wright was merely expressing the same kind of racial fears that white people experience when they encounter a young black man in a darkened alley. Nobody is right, nobody is wrong; we all just need to understand one another.

Unfortunately, the American presidency is not an appropriate job for someone who basically craves compromise and reconciliation. First, a president is expected to provide leadership, not reconcile opposing viewpoints. While there's nothing wrong with showing respect for the opposition's position -- John McCain does this all the time -- the president's job is to make the ultimate decision and to persuade Congress and the American people why it is the right one.

Second, and more important still, it is essential to the role of the president that he never appear to be a disinterested party when it comes to America's relations with other countries. In the realm of foreign policy, the president should be an unapologetic advocate for America's interests and values. Unfortunately, there is reason to question whether Obama accepts that vision of the presidency. Obama wants to meet with the leaders of Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela, without any sort of preconditions. In the absence of preconditions, such meetings would necessarily imply that there is some merit to the anti-American (and anti-Israeli) ravings of such lunatics. Clearly, Obama wouldn't hold summit talks with, for example, Hugo Chavez, merely to tell him, "We're right and you're wrong." The mere fact of a face-to-face meeting would implied an acknowledgment that there is some common ground to be found between the two countries. Even if Obama made it clear he had no intention of altering U.S. foreign policy toward Venezuela, he would be forced to dignify Chavez's predictable railings by sitting and listening to what the Venezuelan nutjob had to say. It's frankly ludicrous to think that Chavez wouldn't come out ahead in the exchange. And yet that would be, from the American point of view, the best case scenario. In the worst case, Obama would, in fact, liberalize U.S. policy toward Venezuela in some way, thus signaling weakness and implicitly suggesting that Chavez was somehow right all along.

Any student of American history knows that, in order to be successful, a president must be decisive, strong, and fundamentally unapologetic about the course they are steering on the nation's behalf. Lincoln, both Roosevelts, Truman, and Reagan all capitalized on these qualities. Even George W. Bush, whose persuasive skills proved a perpetual liability, had a successful first term as a result of confident leadership in the War on Terror and various domestic reforms. Some of our worst presidents, notably Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Grant, and Carter, failed because of their apparent lack of strength or resolve in dealing with the key issues facing their administrations. Whether it was Buchanan's refusal to deal with the succession crisis, Johnson's inability to gain control over the Radical Republicans in Congress and in his own cabinet, Grant's unwillingness to confront the apparent epidemic of corruption within his administration, or Carter's weakness in responding to foreign and economic turmoils, all of these presidents suffered due to a failure of leadership.

In Obama's case, it is not even clear he aspires to lead the country. Although the country would undoubtedly move to the left under his administration, it seems more likely than not that Congress will be the moving force and Obama merely a reliable rubber stamp. If and when real presidential leadership is required, such as during a foreign policy crisis, it is highly unlikely Obama will take an assertive position. He will find reasons not to impose or even threaten the use of military force because he will want to be perceived as a peacemaker who can lead the parties to a peaceful resolution. He will resist taking firm positions on America's behalf because he won't want to tarnish his image as a "citizen of the world." He will seek to elevate the role of international organizations and disparage the notion of American exceptionalism. He sees America in much the same way the world sees America, or he at least sees some merit in that point of view.

Obama may be a talented man, but he can't be trusted to stand up for American interests and values on the world stage. He is simply too tolerant of those who hold anti-American views and too enamored by his own perceived ability to rise above the fray and reconcile parties who are locked in conflict. America needs a president who sees the world as it is, not one who will try to reconcile Americans to a lesser vision of themselves.

A how-to guide to socialism

2008-10-10T09:16:00.002-04:00

Here's a great way to introduce socialism to America.

First, take a major sector of the economy, be it health care, automobile manufacturing, or banking, and find some way to destroy it.

For banking, you could, say, make banks give mortgages to people who can't repay them.

For automakers, impose CAFE standards that will make it impossible for them to sell cars profitably.

For health care, force insurers to provide coverage to people with preexisting conditions.

Then, when these industries go belly-up, use trillions of taxpayer dollars to buy them out.

Just like that, the federal government ends up owning the economy!

One last thing: When the government starts jumping in to take over industries, be sure to call it a "rescue." That way, Washington comes off sounding like the good guy!

Ayers and Keating

2008-10-06T14:10:00.002-04:00

The Obama camp is attempting to proclaim a sort of moral equivalency between Barack's association with William Ayers and John McCain's association with Charles Keating. Although this tactic will probably work to blunt the Ayers attack, the two situations are clearly quite distinguishable.

The issue with Ayers is Obama's decision to be associated with him in the first place. By the time Obama first met Ayers, the latter was already a notorious ex-fugitive with a well-known terrorist past. To this day, he has never repudiated that past. I've heard him described in the mainstream media as a "former radical." It would be more accurate to call him a "retired terrorist." This is not the case of someone who realized the errors of his ways and atoned. This is someone who was wanted by the feds and eventually got tired of living his life on the lam. Since extricating himself from legal jeopardy, he may have forsaken his violent criminal behavior, but he hasn't apologized to his victims or otherwise shown remorse for his crimes.

Obama's defense in regard to Ayers has two main components. First, he has downplayed the nature and extent of the relationship. Second, he points to the fact that, around Chicago, it's not regarded as socially unacceptable to be associated with Ayers.

As for the first part of Obama's defense, it seems rather beside the point. Obama may not have been close friends with Ayers, but so what? Ayers was someone Obama openly associated himself with on a number of high-visibility projects, including Obama's own campaign for the Illinois State Senate. The fact that he allowed Ayers to host a campaign event in his honor and served with Ayers on various boards and panels implies a degree of respect and approval for what Ayers represents. It doesn't matter if it was one campaign event or twenty, or if it was a dozen boards and panels or a hundred. It's the fact that Obama was willing to attach his own good name to Ayers that is so telling.

As for the second part of Obama's defense -- the notion that Ayers is considered a respectable public figure in Chicago political circles -- this sounds more like a confession than a defense. If Ayers is considered respectable in Chicago it is precisely because people like Barack Obama , who should know better, are willing to offer him mainstream legitimacy. At best, it sounds like Obama deferred to the judgment of others in his assessment of Ayers rather than forming an independent judgment.

No matter how you slice it, Obama's voluntary, public embrace of Ayers reflects poorly on his own character. Either Obama doesn't find any repulsive about Ayers and his wife and partner-in-crime Bernadette Dohrn, or he does, but has been too craven to say so.

Now let's look at John McCain's association with Charles Keating. Keating owned an S&L. He had no criminal or violent past as far as know. What he did have was a bank, Lincoln Savings, that was in precarious financial shape due in part to investments that were both bad and, at least in part, illegal. The regulator for Lincoln Savings, FHLBB, was investigating Lincoln with an eye toward a possible federal takeover. In the meantime, Keating sought the assistance of five U.S. senators, both Democrats and Republicans, in an effort to head off that move. For his part, McCain attended a meeting with FHLBB board members and wrote a letter, but didn't pressure the board to take any action one way or the other in regard to Keating. Rather, he wanted the FHLBB to make a decision one way or the other as soon as possible so as to avoid further delay in resolving the matter.

The "Keating 5" scandal was fully investigated at the time -- this was about twenty years ago -- and McCain was exonerated from any charges of improper conduct. That's not end of the story however.

The Keating 5 scandal represents an important chapter in John McCain's political biography, not because of what he did at the time, but because of how it affected the future course of his public service. Despite his being cleared of any formal charges in the matter, observers have cited the episode as a being instrumental in focusing McCain on issues of public corruption and the corrosive influence of campaign donations on the political process. He clearly felt that campaign donations had influenced the senators to take actions on behalf of a constituent that they would not otherwise have taken, with a resulting undermining of the public's confidence in their government officials. McCain resolved to make "cleaning up Washington" a part of his political agenda ever since.

Whatever one thinks about McCain and the Keating 5, the situation bears no resemblance to Obama's association with William Ayers. If anything, McCain's response to the scandal demonstrates an acceptance of responsibility and a willingness to make amends. Nothing similar can be said about Obama and Ayers. Obama has characterized his involvement with Ayers in a misleading fashion in order to avoid be tainted by it in this election. He has never expressed regret for helping to legitimize Ayers in public circles. Both the Ayers connection and the Keating 5 are revealing episodes in the careers of these candidates. However, what the Ayers matter reveals about Obama is far more disturbing than what the Keating matter reveals about McCain.

The role of trust in an era of transparency

2008-10-06T09:02:00.002-04:00

It occurred to me that Barack Obama may be the beneficiary of two historical trends in the relationship between the president and the people.

In the early days of the republic, citizens had no effective means of monitoring the activities of the president. Although there were newspapers, the press had no regular access to the president. Moreover, because the papers tended to be openly and stridently partisan, editors were more interested in sparring with their opponents than in engaging in what we would recognize as journalism. Finally, because news couldn't travel any faster than a horse could canter down a country road, folks in distant towns and villages wouldn't learn of events in the capital until weeks after the fact.

Since those early days, Washington has been steadily transformed into an open book. There is now something called a "White House press corps" with permanent offices in the West Wing. Armies of journalists can spread news across the country at light speed. Moreover, the Washington media now operates without any of the deference or restraint that defined previous eras of reporting.

And it's not just the press that has changed. The exponential expansion of the government's payroll makes it nearly impossible for the White House to keep information under wraps even when state secrets are involved. In fact, secrecy is rarely the goal. Hordes of press officers and hundreds of government websites exist for the sole purpose of advertising the administration's activities and plans.

I would argue that the trend toward increased transparency in government has made trust a much less valued commodity when it comes to choosing a president. In the old days, the people had to trust the president to do the right thing, because they couldn't tell what was really happening in Washington. Today, with the goings on within the administration being broadcast in excruciating detail, there is comparatively little fear of a president taking surreptitious actions to the country's detriment. Presidents can still take or support controversial moves, but the controversy will be aired in public.

Our modern media leave much to be desired, but there is no question we live in an age of remarkable governmental transparency. That transparency creates at least the threat of holding presidents publicly accountable for their official actions. We no longer have to simply trust that our presidents are doing right. Today, it's "trust but verify."

A would-be president like Barack Obama could be a major beneficiary of this trend. A majority of Americans seem prepared to hand him the keys to the White House despite evidence of an extremely left-wing mindset. Since America is anything but a left-wing country, it is perhaps surprising to find Obama doing so well. Perhaps voters realize that Obama could never get away with a truly radical transformation of the country's political, economic, and social institutions. Thus, while they don't necessarily trust Obama not to try to take the country down the wrong road, they do trust the ability of the Republicans, the media, and popular opinion to stop him.

In order to test the validity of this argument, let's conduct this simple mind experiment. Imagine that instead of electing a president next month, America were electing a dictator. I submit that, if we were electing a dictator, John McCain would be out-polling Obama by a significant margin. The difference in Obama's electoral prospects under the two scenarios, I would argue, relates to trust. In an election for dictator, voters would necessarily place a great deal more importance on whether they could trust the candidate, and Obama would come up short in comparison to McCain. However, so long as the issue is "merely" who is chosen as president in the present-day atmosphere of extreme transparency, Americans feel than can afford to choose Obama.

I made reference to a second historical trend that seemingly favors Obama. I have long believed that politics has become a form of entertainment for many Americans. It's sort of a cross between a professional sporting event and a character drama. It has more to do with the personalities of the people involved than it does with the health and welfare of the country. People identify with certain politicians or parties and they want them to succeed. Or, they dislike the other side and want to see them fail. How the outcome of these dramas affect the country is of secondary concern. Indeed, many people are convinced it makes no difference in the real world which side comes out on top.

To whatever extent Americans regard politics as a form of entertainment, Obama holds that as an advantage over McCain. There's no question he's newer, trendier, and more interesting to watch than the 70-something Washington veteran. As McCain has already pointed out in this election, Obama makes for a pretty good celebrity.

What I find interesting is that the two concurrent trends -- increased transparency and increased focus on politics as a form of entertainment -- are really two sides of the same coin. Both are the product of the fact that the president now operates under a media spotlight. The spotlight allows an attractive candidate like Obama to appeal to people in the same way a movie star appeals to people. But the spotlight also arguably constrains him from taking radical,transformative moves for which there would be a lack of widespread popular support.

Obama as Reagan, Part II

2008-10-03T08:45:00.002-04:00

I recently blogged about the apparent similarities between this election and the election of 1980. That post focused on Reagan's success in demonstrating, primarily through the debates against Jimmy Carter, that he was not the wild-eyed extremist Carter and the media had portrayed him as. I thought a similar phenomenon might be working in Barack Obama's favor this year. Despite all the troubling aspects of his candidacy, he has crafted a public persona that seems both moderate and assuring.

There's another point to be made about Ronald Reagan that is perhaps even more relevant to understanding the 2008 campaign. Reagan is the only president since JFK to really inspire his party's base. Among other things, that means the Democrats have not really had an inspiring candidate reach the White House in over 45 years. Since then, the closest they've come to experiencing the spirit of Camelot was in 1968. That dream, however, was ended by an assassin's bullet in a Los Angeles hotel. The election of 1972 was a fiasco for the Democrats. Carter won in '76, but he hardly made the party faithful swoon. The '84 and '88 elections both featured boring candidates who lost in landslides.

The Clinton presidency failed to ignite liberal passions for a number of reasons. First, Bill Clinton was widely regarded as a scoundrel and a rogue, words we don't generally associate with inspiring heroes. Second, he ran and governed as something of a centrist, and tended to play small-ball in crafting a domestic agenda. Midnight basketball programs are hardly the stuff of Mount Rushmore. Finally, while the Democratic faithful at times truly appreciated Clinton, they knew he would never be measure up to Reagan in the eyes of the nation as a whole.

That brings me to the main point of this walk down memory lane, which is this:

Democrats are deeply envious of the fact that the Republicans produced a star like Ronald Reagan in their recent history. They want one, too. And they've been waiting a long time.

In Obama, the Democrats have found someone who they think has the potential to become another JFK: a president who is young, sophisticated, smooth, glamorous, and smart. With those qualities, they don't see how he can fail.

Importantly, Obama is the ultimate "no compromises" candidate for the Democrats. He's as liberal as the party's base could ever hope for, and he's not from the South. He's the ideal candidate for liberals longing for a return to the days of the Kennedys.

All of this helps explain the outpouring of Democratic hatred for Sarah Palin. Not only does she represent an immediate threat to Obama's electoral prospects, she seems to hold the potential to become another Reagan! If Obama were to lose this election, and Palin's dazzling star power were to land her in the White House in her own right in four or eight years, that would represent such as cruel fate for Democratic faithful, they would never get over it.

Unfortunately, it's looking increasingly likely they won't have to.

Supreme Court decisions I disagree with

2008-10-02T11:40:00.002-04:00

Evidently Katie Couric asked Sarah Palin to name some Supreme Court decisions she disagreed with. I'm not sure what the legitimate point of such a question would be. Is it really necessary to state one's disagreement with the Dred Scott decision?

Just for fun, I'll pretend that question was asked of me in a television interview setting. I would name Dred Scott, Plessy v. Ferguson, and the Japanese-American internment decision (Koramutsu, I think?). I'd probably not mention Brown v. Board of Education since my disagreement would be with the rationale of the decision, not the result. I'd probably not mention Miranda or Gideon only because I wouldn't trust the interviewer to allow me to explain my disagreement with those kinds of cases. I would mention Roe v. Wade. I would mention Kelo (the fairly recent eminent domain case).

Given a lot more time to think about it, I might come up with a few more bad decisions that I could actually name (as opposed to describe). However, as the list stands, I could only come up with five that I would definitely have mentioned, and two of those (Dred Scott and Roe) are pretty obvious.

Five decisions.

It's worth mentioning at this point that I have studied Constitutional law.

The gotchafication of presidential campaigns

2008-10-02T10:59:00.002-04:00

I was feeling alright this morning until I heard a pre-debate "analysis" from Larry Sabato. He opined that tonight's clash between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin would be important because "Biden is a gaffe machine" and "Palin has demonstrated that she doesn't know much about foreign policy or domestic policy." (These are as close to direct quotes as my memory will allow.)

What the hell has happened to this country? Apparently, we have reached the point where the only thing that matters in elections is which candidate makes the fewest glaringly stupid statements.

Gaffes have always mattered in campaigns, but never before have they been the central focus of an election.

Charles Gibson and Katie Couric spent hours upon hours interviewing Gov. Palin. They aired a fraction of that footage, and then the media at large endlessly replayed a total of perhaps 60 seconds of tape in which she appears ignorant or off-balance. Thus it works out that the worst, most unflattering minute out of probably 20 hours of videotape gets all of the attention.

The emphasis is all wrong. What really distinguishes the two presidential tickets is not their personalities, their styles, the manner of speech, or how they look. It's where they plan to take the country. That's the debate we should be having. Instead, the media approach debates as if they were auditioning actors for an ad campaign. The economy is teetering on the brink of collapse and all anyone can talk about is John McCain's failure to make eye contact.

We desperately need a serious press in this country.

Prediction

2008-10-02T10:41:00.002-04:00

Sometime after the election, media types will gather at various symposia to conduct a searing self-examination of their coverage of the presidential campaign. They will conclude that their coverage of Barack Obama was both excessive and insufficiently critical in relation to that of his main presidential rivals, John McCain and Hillary Clinton. They will attribute the bias in coverage to "the overwhelming historical significance of electing the nation's first African-American president" which, they will say, "at times superseded the application of ordinary journalistic judgment."

Having thus sanctified themselves at the altar of fairness, they will then put on their tuxedos and proceed to Obama's Inauguration.

A history lesson

2008-09-30T07:42:00.002-04:00

. . . from the great Thomas Sowell.

If we had a serious press in this country, average citizens would already know this stuff.

I blame Pelosi . . .

2008-09-29T16:04:00.002-04:00

for the failure of the mortgage bailout bill to pass the House. Since the crisis began, Republican leaders outside the House -- the President, Secretary Paulson, and John McCain -- went to considerable lengths to avoid partisan finger-pointing. Their emphasis was on the need to work quickly and in a bipartisan fashion to rescue a financial system teetering on disaster. Even House Republicans, who largely opposed the Paulson plan, generally focused their criticisms on whether the plan was really the best option and not on the role of the Democratic leaders in creating the crisis.

The same cannot be said of Nancy Pelosi. Just before the House vote, she took the floor to blast the Bush administration and "Republican policies" for creating the financial crisis. And that would have been fine -- disgraceful, but fine -- except for one thing: Pelosi was counting on Republican votes to get the bill passed. In fact, she reportedly has been angling for 100 Republican votes since the negotiations have been underway. Her own caucus split about 60-40% in favor of the bill. Accordingly, she needed the support of about 40% of the Republicans in order to pass it. Evidently, it failed to occur to her that blaming the Republicans for the crisis would make them less inclined to support it.

Perhaps, she wanted to try to have it both ways. If the bailout worked, she and the Dems would have taken the credit for averting disaster. If it didn't work, or if the cost of the bailout proved too onerous, she would already be on record as pawning the entire problem off on the Republicans. In other words, as far as she was concerned, there wasn't going to be anything bipartisan about it. She wanted the Republican votes, but wasn't going to share any of the credit if it worked out or assume any of the blame if it didn't.

I'm not much for bumper-sticker political cliches, but this really is an example of how "Washington is broken."

Is Obama Reagan?

2008-09-29T12:03:00.003-04:00

Things aren't exactly looking up for John McCain right now. He seems to be trailing Barack Obama by somewhere in the 5-10 percentage points range. More disturbing than just the numbers, the mainstream media has succeeded in painting Obama as the winner of Friday's debate, a conclusion I, as an actual viewer of the debate, find difficult to accept, but which non-viewers may find significant.

If I had to guess what's behind the Obama's strengthening numbers, I would say it's his success in presenting an image of himself that is cool-headed, moderate, and completely non-threatening. If it's true that many voters are only now starting to really focus on the candidates, then what those voters are currently seeing in Obama is nothing like the tax-raising, terrorist-befriending, infanticide-supporting, enemy-appeasing extremist they were expecting to see based on the campaign to date.

The situation reminds me of 1980. The conventional wisdom that year held that Ronald Reagan was a dangerous extremist who would set off WWIII and set back domestic social progress a hundred years. To the mainstream media, it was utterly unimaginable Reagan could actually become president of the United States.

What happened, of course, is that Reagan succeeded -- especially in the debates -- in presenting himself to the American people as a credible, non-threatening candidate, practically the opposite of the what the media and Jimmy Carter had been portraying. Once the "true" Reagan image began to take hold, moreover, there was nothing Carter could do to stop it. The more Carter protested that Reagan would destroy America, the more desperate he sounded, and the more reasonable and level-headed Reagan appeared by comparison.

I hate to say it, but John McCain may be in the same box as Carter was in 1980. If a majority of voters has now reached a comfort level with the prospect of Barack Obama as POTUS, it may be difficult with only 5 weeks to go to re-instill doubts about him in a way that doesn't undermine McCain's own credibility. I'm at a loss to figure out what McCain's strategy should be at this point. Fortunately, McCain is a smart guy with a lot of smart people working for him. Perhaps the path to victory is clearer in their eyes than it is to mine.

Of course, McCain has one thing going for him that Carter didn't. Unlike McCain, Carter should never have been allowed to get within 1,000 miles of the Oval Office. McCain is a credible and deserving choice for president even if you don't think Obama would be a complete disaster. That's not something you could say about Jimmy Carter in 1980.

Another way in which the analogy to 1980 fails is the fact that Reagan never tried to hide the fact that he was a conservative "true believer." To the contrary, he was running explicitly against the twin pillars of 1970s liberalism: (a) the notion that America's economic and social well-being depended on higher taxes and bigger government; and (b) the notion that the world had become too dangerous a place for the U.S. to exhibit a strong military and foreign policy.

Obama, by contrast, is not explicitly running as a liberal true believer. While he would undoubtedly pursue a liberal agenda if elected, it is not on that basis that he is seeking to win votes. Mainly, he's running on the symbolic strength of his youth and racial background. I don't think a lot of his supporters give a damn about his qualifications or positions on issues; they just think it would be cool to have a hip black guy who can give a good speech as president. They like him for the same visceral reasons they hate Bush.

Because Obama isn't running on ideology, I think the Dems may get in trouble if they treat his election as an indication that America has suddenly become much more liberal. Whether anyone in the Democratic party has the judgment and maturity to avoid that pitfall remains to be seen.

My debate scorecard

2008-09-26T22:20:00.002-04:00

It's not quite over yet, but I wanted to render a judgment not influenced by the cable commentariat.

No knockout, but I score it a solid win for McCain on points. He is winning nearly every exchange by outshining Obama on experience and depth of knowledge. He also has done a good job, despite the format, of communicating a theme: Obama's naivete and inability to "understand" certain things.

It's also apparent that Obama came into the debate hoping to provoke some kind of intemperate remark from McCain. He didn't succeed in that, nor in zinging McCain with any tough barbs.

Beyond that, Obama's objective seems to be simply to establish his credibility as a potential commander in chief. I think he's succeeded in appearing presidential, so it was a good night for him in that sense. But I think his supporters are going to wonder why he was unable to lay a glove on McCain.

From a purely debate standpoint, Obama erred in failing to get McCain to explain his initial decision to support the war in Iraq. McCain ducked that issue by pointing out that the next president would have to deal with getting troops out of Iraq, not in. But then later he went back and recited his judgment in dealing with military deployment issues in Beirut, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, and other trouble spots. If McCain can cite his judgment in all those other instances, why shouldn't he have been forced to answer for the 2003 Iraq war vote?

Another example: McCain on several occasions went out of his way to separate himself from the Bush administration. Obama, however, didn't do much to tie McCain to Bush in the first instance.

I also think Jim Lehrer was a winner tonight. There were no "gotcha" questions, no attempts to steal the show. He pretty much teed up subjects and let the candidates talk about them. It's a refreshing and logical approach.

Not Obama's finest hour

2008-09-26T08:17:00.002-04:00

On September 24, Barack Obama joined John McCain in issuing the following high-minded statement concerning the nation's financial crisis:

The American people are facing a moment of economic crisis. No matter how
this began, we all have a responsibility to work through it and restore
confidence in our economy. The jobs, savings, and prosperity of the American
people are at stake.

Now is a time to come together -- Democrats and Republicans -- in a spirit
of cooperation for the sake of the American people.

The plan that has been submitted to Congress by the Bush Administration
is flawed, but the effort to protect the American economy must not fail.

This is a time to rise above politics for the good of the country. We cannot risk an economic catastrophe. Now is our chance to come together to prove that Washington is once again capable of leading this country.

It only took 24 hours for Barack Obama to use John McCain's efforts to "work through it and restore confidence in our economy" as a bludgeon with which to launch a political attack.

It's plain to see that Obama never viewed the effort to rescue the financial markets as anything but a political problem for his campaign. Had the negotiations gone quickly and easily, he would have dismissed McCain's involvement as a "photo op designed to distract from his faltering presidential campaign." Now that the negotiations are proving difficult (if that's possible to say after just one contentious meeting), Obama is blaming McCain for somehow causing an impasse.

The media will largely repeat Obama's talking points on this unless and until events force them to present a different account. Nevertheless, it should be recalled that McCain never said this was going to be easy. To the contrary, the entire premise of his decision to suspend the campaign, delay the debate, and return to Washington was that there was no consensus on the Paulson plan and that there was tough -- and urgent -- work needed in order to resolve the crisis. What part of that didn't Obama understand?

Nothing better illustrates Obama's craven duplicity during this episode than his suggestion after yesterday's White House meeting that it would have been better for the presidential candidates not to have intruded on the ongoing negotiations because "the cameras change things." If that's what he truly believed, then why did he show up in the first place? He should have stayed out on the campaign trail if he thought his presence would only impede progress in finding a solution. But then, of course, he would have risked not being able to share in any of the credit if and when an agreement was reached. Instead, he and his handlers devised a strategy whereby Obama would go along for the ride so long as things appeared to moving in a positive direction, but would be prepared to bail out and turn on John McCain at the first sign of trouble. That's not exactly a profile in courage. Then again, we shouldn't be surprised. This is the same guy who voted "present" 130 times in the Illinois state legislature.

Sadly, Obama could actually win this election. If he does, America will be saddled with a president devoid of even a minimal capacity to lead. Indeed, when has he ever taken a tough stand on something and stuck to it? Being president requires more than simply being black and having the ability to read speeches from a teleprompter. It takes some guts. Obama hasn't exhibited the strength of character to be an effective senator, let alone chief executive and commander in chief in a time of war.

McCain suspends McCampaign

2008-09-24T17:04:00.002-04:00

My first reaction on hearing this news was that it would be dismissed as a political stunt. On second thought, that might be an overly cynical view.

The fact is, it really makes little sense for the whole political establishment, the media, and the public at large to be focusing on a foreign policy debate at a time when serious decisions need to be made regarding the health of the economy. The public interest would be better served by taking the election campaigns off the agenda for a few days while lawmakers decide what to do. Therefore, putting aside the political ramifications, McCain's announcement makes a great deal of sense.

Because the idea of suspending the campaign has obvious civic merit, I don't think it will be all that easy to dismiss the move as a political stunt. That's especially true if Big Mac can actually insinuate himself into the middle of the negotiations and help midwife a deal to resolve the crisis. In that case, it will appear that it was necessary for him to get off the campaign trail in order to attend to more important work in Washington. If he does that, and the resulting plan appears to resolve the immediate crisis, he's going to come out way ahead on this.

Arguably, McCain's fortunes depend entirely on whether he can "reach across the aisle" and help put together a package to defuse the crisis. As I said, if he does that, then suspending the campaign will obviously appear to be a wise move. If he can't -- either because no deal is forthcoming or his involvement in producing it appears superfluous -- then suspending the campaign may look like needless grandstanding.

What I think I know about the mortgage mess

2008-09-24T09:21:00.003-04:00

Actually, everything I think I know about the mortgage mess may turn out to be wrong. But here, for the record, is my take on the alleged crisis and its political impact.

First, there seems to be something approaching consensus-level agreement as to what went wrong. After the tech bubble exploded, the housing market was, by far, the best thing going in the economy. Washington policymakers decided to ride the housing boom as far as it would take them. The Fed encouraged massive mortgage lending by making money so cheap. The Democrats pursued policies that would enable people (minorities in particular) to qualify for mortgages they couldn't really afford, even as Republicans in Congress sought to rein in such dangerous practices. The Bush Administration failed to take aggressive action to stop the mortgage madness, while continuing to claim success for uninterrupted economic growth and increases in the percentage of the population that owned their own homes. Meanwhile, as Wall Street's portfolio of risky loans became ever more bloated, a bursting of the housing bubble threatened to bring down the entire credit industry.

While even this simplified version of events is probably beyond the ken of the average voter, at least there does not appear to be in currency a competing explanation for the current crisis. The average voter, I believe, will appreciate that the root cause of the crisis was too many bad loans.

The average voter will also perceive (correctly) that there is plenty of blame to go around. This was a problem of "greed" on the part of lenders, stupidity on the part of borrowers, and incredible shortsightedness on the part of the government. The Bush Administration will naturally take the lion's share of the blame for the government's role, but voters won't let Congressional Democrats off the hook and won't necessarily tag John McCain for the administration's failures.

As for the proposed solution -- using $700+ billion in taxpayer dollars to take the bad loans off the hands of the banks that now own them -- I don't think voters are going to feel confident one way or the other as to whether this is the right thing to do. On the one hand, the guys at the top (Bernanke and Paulson) seem genuinely convinced that this is the only way to head off a full-scale economic disaster. One the other hand, voters can't help but be skeptical of the forecasting skills of these men, who arguably should have seen this day coming a long time ago. Meanwhile, since the proposed bailout doesn't have any obvious partisan dimension, most members of Congress are at a complete loss in trying to figure out what to do. The best voters can do is pray that Washington guesses right on the bailout.

Although it will take a long time for the dust to settle, I do think Barack Obama has already made a big mistake in all of this. While he essentially supports the massive bailout, he is at the same time insisting that it be expanded in some way to give relief to homeowners facing foreclosure. I think he is badly misreading public sentiment. The vast majority of voters aren't facing foreclosure, and the reservoir of sympathy for those who are is running low. People who got in over their heads are perceived to share a great deal of the blame for this crisis. The average citizen is worried about how much this bailout will cost and whether it will even work to head off a major recession. The last thing they want to hear is how they now need to bail out low- or middle-income borrowers who had no business buying half-million-dollar homes.

The public reluctantly supports the bailout plan because it may be the only hope of saving the economy. There is no comparable necessity for bailing out individual homeowners having trouble paying their mortgages. Voters who understand this will not appreciate Obama's attempt to condition a bailout of Wall Street on a bailout of Main Street. For those doing the bailing, one bailout is quite enough, thank you.

I think Obama's position also undercuts his credibility with voters in at least a couple of ways. First, the average American understands that the people who are at risk of foreclosure are disproportionately black or Hispanic. According to recent polling, Obama needs to connect better with working class whites, some of whom evidently fear that a black president would be biased in favor of policies that favor minorities. Even ignoring Obama's own race, the fact that he built his career as an advocate for low-income blacks lends support for the view that he would favor minority-friendly policies as president. Obama's desire to include a bailout of borrowers now facing foreclosure only reinforces such concerns.

Obama's position also subtly undermines his image as a different kind of politician from the hacks that ordinarily run Washington. In trying to include "Main Street" in the massive bailout, he is implicitly treating the plan as a pork bill rather than the desperate rescue operation its advocates are claiming. Perhaps the plan is just another D.C. boondoggle. But in that case, Obama should oppose it, not simply try to get his own hand in the cookie jar.

Obama was correct, I think, to tie his support of the measure to restrictions on executive compensation. Although Congress needs to figure out a way to deal with that issue more comprehensively, I see no reason not to start to reform the system right now, when taxpayer's dollars are hanging in the balance. The idea that CEOs are being paid market value for their services sounds good, but assumes that executive compensation is really driven by competitive market forces. I think excessive executive compensation is the result of tacit price-fixing in the executive suite. After all, it's the guys in the boardrooms who are actually doling out the money, and they're doling it out to other corporate bigwigs. They all expect to cash in, and so they all have an incentive to keep executive compensation at absurdly high levels, without any real regard for the economic contributions of the people making the dough. It's the classic case of the wolves guarding the sheep, and conservatives would do well to recognize it rather than assume this is just the "invisible hand" at work.

Everyone should pay SOME federal income tax

2008-09-23T09:45:00.002-04:00

Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds has latched onto the idea that everyone, regardless of income, should pay some federal income tax. (Go there and scroll away.). I couldn't agree more. It's not that imposing a minimum tax of, say, $100.00, would raise much revenue. Rather, imposing a minimum tax would promote good civic values.

People are often heard to say, "freedom isn't free." In fact, for a great many Americans, living in a free country, with virtually unconstrained opportunities for personal achievement, is free. They pay no taxes, enjoy extensive public benefits, and would never dream of enlisting in the armed services. While I'm not in favor of the draft and I'm not advocating the dismantling of the social "safety net," I see no reason not to require everyone to pay at least a minimum tax.

Allowing a sizeable portion of the population to avoid paying any income tax creates two classes of citizens: those who help pay for national security and other government services and those who do not. This can only lead to resentment among the former group and a sense of entitlement among the latter.

Joe Biden provoked a mild uproar in recent days arguing that upper-income taxpayers should consider it their patriotic duty to pay more taxes. However, if paying taxes constitutes an expression of patriotism, then the people at the upper end of the income scale must feel like every day is the Fourth of July. They're the ones paying all the taxes. This is, in fact, what bothers me the most about Biden's comments. It's not that he associates paying taxes with civil responsibility, it's that he apparently doesn't think the bottom third of taxpayers share in that responsibility.

Ruminations over the role of race in the '08 presidential campaign

2008-09-19T09:29:00.003-04:00

This column on NPR's website contains a lot of hand-wringing over the possibility that racism will cost Barack Obama the presidency.

The short version is this: The Democratic candidate ought to be way ahead in the polls right now. The fact that he isn't can only be attributed to race. A lot of undecideds harbor racial prejudices even if they don't realize it. There is a good-to-excellent chance McCain or his swiftboating cronies will use subtle appeals to racism against Obama, such as the "Celebrity" ad (which played upon white people's fears of black men preying on white women) and charges that Obama lacks experience (which imply he is an "affirmative action candidate").

While I agree that voters' impressions of Obama are influenced by race, I don't think it's accurate or helpful to apply the term "racism" to the problems Obama is having connecting with certain groups of voters. "Racism" implies a belief that one race is superior to another. I don't think racism is a significant factor in American politics. Bias in favor of people who are similar may be. Obama commands the support of something like 97% of blacks. Catholics turned out in droves for JFK. Southern Evangelicals love GWB. Irish politicians thrive in South Boston.

As a general proposition, nobody seems to think it's a sign of social decay that voters tend to favor politicians who are of the same ethnicity, or for women to want to vote for other women. It's only when this phenomenon works to the disadvantage of a black politician does anyone think to call it racism.

Bailouts

2008-09-17T10:18:00.002-04:00

For those who want to keep abreast of the latest public policy jargon, there is a new term you'll need to know. It's called "moral hazard," and it evidently refers to the idea that large corporate enterprises that become insolvent must be allowed to fail in order to prove to investors that poor management carries real economic consequences. It runs counter to the de facto policy that certain enterprises are "too big to fail" and therefore must be bailed out.

I doubt there are many serious economists who would disagree with the necessity of moral hazard. Why, then, do we continue to witness so many government bailouts?

I think a big reason is the dumbed-down notion that the federal government, and more specifically, the president, somehow controls the fate of the economy. In good times, presidents brag that they "create jobs" and they "grow the economy" (oh, how that use of "grow" rankles!). When the economy falters, the media and the party out of power try to pin it on the administration. It only stands to reason that, as voters are increasingly conditioned to view the government as the reason behind every upturn or downtick in the economy, politicians are going to feel more and more pressure to intervene when particular industries run into trouble.

Clearly, there are many ways in which government policies do affect the health of particular industries as well as the overall performance of the economy. However, it does the public no good when the media and politicians exaggerate the government's role. Promoting such misconceptions are not only bad for our politics, but for our economy as well, as it can only lead to a larger government role in the conduct of private enterprise.

On the lamentable state of modern journalism

2008-09-16T09:52:00.006-04:00

I want to say something superficial about superficiality. We live in an era in which practically anyone can set up shop in the marketplace of ideas. Politics and public affairs are no longer the exclusive province of the so-called mainstream media. The rise of the internet means there are literally tens of thousands of outlets to which an ordinary citizen might turn for news and analysis. Sites like Memeorandum make it possible to follow the most talked-about news not just on a daily basis, but on an hourly or even minute-by-minute basis .

In one sense, the breaking of the MSM's stranglehold on the news and opinion industry is a good thing. It has been a particularly good development for conservatives, whose point of view would be marginalized and ignored if left to the care of the liberal media elite. It is also good from the standpoint of allowing citizens to learn practically everything there is to know on a given subject. Just today, for example, I learned that Sarah Palin had a tanning booth installed at the governor's mansion (at her own expense, thank God).

That last tidbit illustrates what I see as the major downside of the internet age: rampant superficiality. The competition among those who traffic in information is so intense, the media are forced to hawk even the most irrelevant and mundane detail about a candidate as something people should care about. Naturally, this phenomenon is not confined to election coverage, although the presidential race provides plenty of disturbing examples of what I'm talking about.

The hawking of news can take a number of pernicious forms, all of which tend to defeat the reader's presumed objective of gaining an improved understanding of the world. One is to suggest that a piece of information is unusual or unexpected, when it is not. Another is to suggest that the information furnishes evidence of corruption or scandal. Yet another is to suggest that the information denotes a trend that can be expected to continue, often with alarming or uncertain results.

Purveyors of news have a number of tools available to them in order to inflate the perceived significance of the information they are peddling. For example, they can take information out of context. A good example of this occurred yesterday when the MSM ran headlines proclaiming that John McCain thinks the U.S. economy is fundamentally strong. This was labeled a "gaffe," and much of the subsequent coverage was devoted to the Obama campaign's mocking response to McCain's comments. But here is what McCain actually said (per CBS):

Today we are seeing tremendous upheaval on Wall Street. The American economy is in crisis. Unemployment is on the rise and our financial markets are in turmoil. People are concerned about our economic future. But let me say something: this economic crisis is not the fault of the American people. Our workers are the most innovative, the hardest working, the best skilled, most productive, most competitive in the world," McCain's prepared text said. The text went on to say: "My opponents may disagree, but those fundamentals of America are strong. (Emphasis mine.)

It should be noted that the entire news value of this story depends on the premise that McCain has no appreciation for the difficult economic times that America is facing. In other words, it's the idea that his words are completely divorced from the objective reality. However, in order to create that impression, and thus make the story newsworthy, it is necessary to take McCain's words completely out of context, so that it appears he is saying the economy is just fine.

It seems to me the appropriate role of the press would be to report what John McCain said. It is not to distort what he said in order to create the impression that he has no idea what he's talking about. To do the latter is create news, rather than report it.

Taking words out of context is just one method of creating news out of thin air. Another familiar tactic is to conflate unrelated events that, in truth, have no meaningful relationship to one another. Or, to parse statements made by two different candidates, or by the same candidate at different times, in order to create the impression of conflict or self-contradiction.

I wouldn't be so naive as to suggest that the press never engaged in such nefarious journalistic practices prior to the explosion of the internet. I would suggest that the internet, along with 24-hour cable news, has created such an insatiable demand for information that the media apparently can no longer afford to apply discretion and judgment in their evaluation and presentation of newsworthy stories. They need to attract "x" pair of eyes every day to stay in business. To do that, they must supply a constant stream of stories that will amuse, anger, frighten, titillate, amaze, or otherwise interest their viewers or readers. That's a tall order, but it is rendered much easier once you abandon the requirements of truthfulness and materiality.

During much of the 20th century, virtually the entire journalistic establishment was controlled by just a handful of people. For example, Henry Luce published Life, Time, and Fortune magazines, which publications, taken together, practically determined popular opinion in regard to political and economic affairs. Luce was no rabble-rousing muckraker. He, and men like him, routinely huddled and conspired with political leaders to move public opinion in the ways they deemed necessary in the public interest. That is not to say America's political and journalistic elite represented a single, monolithic power. Fundamental differences existed between liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats, and isolationists and internationalists. But the media endeavored to be, and in fact functioned as, a responsible participant in matters of public interest.

Now, it seems, so-called "legitimate" news organizations must engage in hysterical, sensational, and dumbed-down reporting simply to claim a share of an audience that can disappear as fast as you can say "mouseclick." All of the "old media" news organizations are living off reputations they earned decades ago, with diminishing results. In terms of their current output, they are virtually indistinguishable from internet upstarts that have no reputation to preserve.

The net result is that we no longer have a serious press, that is, a press that conceives as its primary mission furnishing the American people with the facts and perspective with which to make informed judgments as citizens. Instead, we have an information industry whose members are struggling to survive by hawking "news" designed to attract momentary attention at the expense of imparting any meaningful understanding of issues.

Being an optimistic conservative, I'm going to assume that the market will eventually correct this deplorable situation. In time, the public will assign so little value to the crap that is currently being passed off as news that no media outlet will be able to survive by continuing to peddle it. Some bright people will realize that people really do place a value on unadorned facts and careful, in-depth analysis, and they'll find a way to sell that for a lot more money than it costs to produce. The best of these information entrepreneurs will recognize that their long-term success depends on building a reputation for integrity and not giving in to the temptation to compromise their journalistic standards.

Until then, I'll continue to suffer and sulk -- and keep my eyes out for the latest "breaking news"!

HIllary as the White Knight

2008-09-15T10:26:00.002-04:00

This article in the Huffington Post explains "Why Replacing Biden With Hillary Makes Perfect Sense for Obama." Unfortunately, the author fails to make mention of the single biggest reason it would never happen: Hillary would never agree to it. And why should she? Obama not only scuttled her plans to become the first woman president, he also declined to give her serious consideration as a running mate despite the fact that nearly everyone on Earth believed she would help the ticket. Even Joe Biden concedes Hillary would have made a better pick.

If HRC were going to come back as a White Knight to rescue this ticket, it would not be as vice president. That ship has already sailed. Of course she would take the top spot, nobody seems to be talking about that possibility.

I don't think Obama is so worried about his chances in November that he would consider changing running mates. However, even if he were that worried, I think he's smart enough to realize that Hilary would never go along with it. There is absolutely nothing in it for her. Best case scenario: the Obama/Hillary wins, and she gets to be vice president to a guy who clearly has no use for her with virtually no chance ever to become president in her own right.

Of course, Hillary's say in the matter is not the only important consideration missing from this article. The notion that a switch from Biden to Clinton would carry no downside for Obama is just silly. In fact, it would be embarrassing for several reasons. First, in the absence of any kind of scandal or other emergency (like an authentic Biden health scare), making the switch would call Obama's judgment and decision-making capabilities into serious question. It would clearly constitute an admission that his initial pick -- arguably his most important executive decision to date -- was a mistake. The move would also demonstrate an unsteadiness that could be attributed to a lack of nerve. People would ask, if three weeks of mediocre poll numbers are enough to get him to hit the panic button as a candidate, how is he going to react to the pressures he's going to face when he's the actual president?

A switch from Biden to Hillary would also enshrine McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as perhaps the greatest single political act in this history of American politics. It would make it appear that McCain's choice of VPs was so manifestly brilliant as to force the Dems to engage in a kind of comical, after-the-fact improvisation in order to try to match it. While I'm sure some people in the media would try to spin such a move as an example of Obama's thinking outside the box, it would really be seen as a desperate effort to copy McCain's outside-the-box thinking.

While it would be fun if this idea were to catch fire in Democratic circles, it's a major pipe dream.

Dems need to update their playbook

2008-09-15T09:08:00.002-04:00

Here's a random observation to start off the new week: Whenever Democratic presidential candidates appear to be underperforming, armchair strategists within the party always offer the same two pieces of advice. First, the candidate needs to attack the Republicans much more forcefully. Second, the candidate and/or party needs to move further to the left.

How is that working out for them? In 1996, Bill Clinton received 54% of the two-party vote against Bob Dole (i.e., 54% of the votes cast for either him or Dole). In 2000, Al Gore broke away from Clinton's centrist, "New Democrat" image in favor of a more liberal "I'm-fighting-for-the-little" guy kind of campaign. He received just over 50% of the two-party vote. In 2004, hard-core lefties essentially took over the Democratic Party. This was the year Howard Dean exploded onto the national stage (literally?) and Michael Moore was accorded the honor of viewing the Democratic National Convention from a seat next to Jimmy Carter. The Kerry/Edwards ticket received less than 49% of the two-party vote.

Although correlation does not equal causation, two pretty obvious trends have taken shape over the span of the last dozen years that may not be entirely coincidental. One is the Democratic Party's rejection of centrist politics and strident move toward the left. The other is a steady erosion of Democratic voting strength over the last three presidential contests.

This year, the Dems have nominated the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate as their standard-bearer. As Obama's campaign appears to be faltering in the polls, campaign officials are openly promising to "take off the gloves" and sharpen its attacks against John McCain. While this will undoubtedly please the party's leftist base, history suggests it's the wrong strategy. This country simply isn't that liberal. In fact, it's rather conservative. In order for a liberal to win the White House, he or she would be well advised to present an optimistic, non-threatening profile to the American people. Obama was at his best when the country perceived him as a thoughtful and inspiring leader who rejected the "politics of the past" and who symbolized America's racial progress. Attacking McCain, a certified national hero, as a disgraceful stooge does more damage to Obama's image than it does to McCain's.

In order to avoid a repeat of the last few elections, the Dems should consider tossing out their old playbook.

Obama's devastating new attack on John McCain

2008-09-12T09:04:00.003-04:00

Did I say "devastating"? I meant "lame."

Following a momentary break in the campaign in recognition of the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Obama is coming out swinging, or so says his campaign manager, David Plouffe: "Today is the first day of the rest of the campaign. . . . We will respond with speed and ferocity to John McCain's attacks and we will take the fight to him, but we will do it on the big issues that matter to the American people."

Evidently, Obama thinks McCain's inability to send email is a big issue to the American people. Who is really out of touch here?

Not that it matters, but it appears McCain is far from alone in his status as a computer illiterate. Something like one in three heads of household have never created a computer document. One in five have never used the internet.

More important, exactly who is that comprise the majority of the computer illiterates? I would suspect that set includes a lot of older women, a lot of blue collar workers, and a lot of rural folk -- precisely the groups with whom Obama is having trouble connecting.

Even people who rely heavily on email and other computer tools in their daily lives are going to be turned off by the rank elitism and ageism implicit in this silly attack.

Is this really what Obama's campaign means when it talks about sharpening its attacks on John McCain?

Unbelievable.

Lipstick, etc.

2008-09-11T08:11:00.002-04:00

The notion has taken hold in liberal circles that John McCain's exploitation of the lipstick-on-a-pig riff and other Obama gaffes denotes some kind of deep character flaw that disqualifies Big Mac from the presidency. Obama's campaign manager went so far as to suggest McCain lacks "honor." I think that's a serious over-reaction. I don't think 55-odd days is enough time to sell America on the idea that McCain's a lying bastard. (Just think of all the nice things the Dems were saying about McCain at their convention!) They shouldn't try to personalize it to McCain. They should instead argue that, despite McCain's image as a maverick, "his campaign is in the grips of the same kind of business-as-usual attack politics that Republicans have become associated with."

As for the lipstick comment itself, however, its clear to me that Obama meant it as a dig against Sarah Palin. Granted, he didn't coin the phrase "like putting lipstick on a pig," but that's not the point. In the continuing afterglow of Palin's acceptance speech, any derisive mention of lipstick by Obama or his people is going to sound like an allusion to her. I can't believe Obama didn't make that connection. Clearly, the audience present at the rally did, judging from their reaction.

The main reason to think this was intentional, however, is Obama's reaction since the controversy erupted. If his reference to lipstick were truly "innocent," then I would expect him to fall all over himself in making his apologies to Palin. I mean, why wouldn't he just say, "Oh jeez, that's not what I meant at all. My bad. My apologies to Gov. Palin for any misunderstanding." Controversy over. The fact he didn't do this, but instead felt the need to defend his use of the expression, suggests to me that these weren't "just words" to Barack Obama. He felt invested in this choice of words. The reason for that, I believe, is that Obama understood the double entendre, he liked it, and he thought he was being so clever in turning the lipstick thing into an attack on Palin, he would get away with it even if it did seem a little naughty. So when people started to react to the line in horror instead of amusement, his impulse was notably defensive. Again, an innocent person realizing that the comment was being misinterpreted would have been mortified by the reaction and done whatever they could to disavow the negative connotation. Not Barack. He has reacted by trying to turn this into an attack against McCain and the media for creating a made-up controversy. I find that very revealing.

Palin's first "gaffe"?

2008-09-08T19:24:00.002-04:00

The liberal blogosphere, via the Huffington Post, is calling Sarah Palin's comments today about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac her first "gaffe." I call this an example of wishful thinking.

I would define a gaffe as a statement by a politician that is either plainly, embarrassingly wrong or a statement by a politician that's true but reveals but revealing in an embarrassing way. An example of the first type would be Gerald Ford's insistence that Poland wasn't under Soviet domination. An example of the second type would be Reagan Budget Director David Stockman's suggestion that the administration fiscal policies were all based on guesswork.

Sarah Palin's alleged gaffe? Stating that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had "gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers." Supposedly, this shows an embarrassing lack of knowledge on her part, because the FNMA and FHLMC do not receive direct taxpayer support. The problem for those who want to turn this into a gaffe, however, is that the statement comes on the same day it was announced that taxpayers will be bailing out the two mortgage giants to the tune of over $100 billion.

Even pre-bailout, Palin's statement seems pretty defensible. The federal government is the ultimate guarantor of Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's solvency. Thus, these entities represent a huge potential liability for taxpayers, a fact which I assume ultimately affects the cost at which the federal government can borrow money to finance deficits.

Palin may have been wrong in some technical sense, but try explaining that to the average voter staring at a massive bailout.

"My Muslim faith"

2008-09-08T15:16:00.003-04:00

Barack Obama has implied that people associated with John McCain's campaign have been trying to advance rumors that Obama is a Muslim. Unfortunately, in the course of conceding to George Stephanopoulos that John McCain himself had not been a party to such a whispering campaign, Obama used the words "my Muslim faith." To make matters somewhat worse, Stephanopoulos interjected "your Christian faith," a correction which Obama immediately accepted, but which made no sense in context. Obama was saying that (in McCain's defense) McCain had not talked about his "Muslim faith." Obama clearly didn't mean say "my Christian faith," as there was no suggestion that McCain had spoken of Obama's Christian faith and, even if he had, it's not something for which McCain needed to be let off the hook. Possibly, Obama meant to say something like, "my alleged Muslim faith." Thus, the supposed correction was just as brain-dead as the original gaffe, impling that neither Obama nor Stephanopoulos were really paying attention to the words coming out of Obama's mouth.

The only reason a gaffe like this hurts Obama is that his, yes, connections to Islam are real and haven't been adequately explained. His attitude toward the issue has been, in effect, "Move along, nothing to see here," which may be true, but is hardly a satisfying answer to those genuinely concerned about the prospect of putting a Muslim or even former Muslim in the White House.

What are the connections? Essentially, they boil down to the fact that his father and stepfather were both Muslims, he lived in a Muslim country and attended what his own book characterizes as a "Muslim school" where he was taught the Koran. He was enrolled in that school, as well as an earlier Catholic school, as a Muslim. According to Obama, neither his father nor stepfather were particularly religious, and he gives the impression of not having been much for religion either as a schoolboy. Then again, at least one classmate remembers "Barry Soetero" as being a devout Muslim and seeming to take a great deal of enjoyment from the religion.

Obama also has Muslim relatives, including a brother whose conversion to Islam was discussed in some depth in his first memoir, "Dreams From My Father."

So what should we make of these "connections"? It seems to me that if his parents enrolled him in both a Catholic school and in a "Muslim school" as a Muslim, then that's how he should be categorized at that point in his life. Obviously, it's impossible to know the degree to which he internalized a Muslim identity, if at all. Nevertheless, Obama's claim that he has never been a Muslim seems to require us to believe that he was completely faking any allegiance to that faith. And why would he? Since it was evidently an option to enroll in the schools as a Christian, it is hard to understand why Obama would matriculate as a Muslim if he had no intention of adopting that faith (especially given Obama's claim that his stepfather was largely uninterested in religion).

I am also mindful of Obama's claim that he became a Christian around 1981, when he was about 20 years old. If that's when he became a Christian, what was he before? The suggestion, again, is that he simply had no religious identity as a child, but we apparently have nothing but Obama's word to indicate this is so. In this instance, it makes sense to be skeptical, since everyone seems to agree an acknowledgement by Obama that he was brought up as a Muslim during a portion of his childhood would be damaging to his political prospects. Clearly, it is in his interests to downplay his Muslim roots as much as possible, so his vague suggestions that he just wasn't that interested in Islam should be taken with a grain of salt.

Of course, there's a big difference between being a Muslim at present and having been raised as a Muslim during a few years of one's childhood. I have no doubt Obama is not a Muslim, emphasis on "is."

On the other hand, I don't think the fact that Obama is not currently a Muslim, or that being a Muslim is non-career enhancing for a modern American politician, automatically render a discussion of Obama's Muslim connections off-limits. People ought to be able to talk about biographical details of presidential candidates without being accused of trying to play on people's fears and prejudices. Even if Obama's religious background is irrelevant to his fitness for the presidency, that's no reason to prevent people from getting the facts.

One final thought: I think there is at least one valid reason for voters to want to consider Obama's religious background. I suspect that many Muslims around the world believe that Obama is of that faith. If so, this could encourage extremists to question the resolve of the U.S. to maintain an aggressive posture in the GWOT. They might assume that Obama would take a softer stance against terrorism. Some might even see his election as foretelling the eventual spread of Islam around the world. Since many on the left seem to think it's important to elect Obama in order to improve America's image in other countries, is it not relevant to consider what impression his election would have on Muslims?

Palin Derangement Syndrome

2008-09-06T08:26:00.002-04:00

It just dawned on me why Palin Derangement Syndrome already seems like a more severe strain of pathology than its related disorder, Bush Derangement Syndrome. In the case of both diseases, those afflicted have an irrational conviction that the Republican in question is a monster. In the case of PDS, however, they also believe that the monstrous nature of Palin will necessarily manifest itself in her personal or family life.

Clearly, this belief is unsupported by history. Nixon was a scoundrel, but you couldn't tell that from his personal life. In fact, I don't think you could tell from Hitler's personal life that he was a monster, at least in 1932. Why do Palin's enemies think that the dangers she supposedly poses to the lives of Americans will necessarily be revealed through a detailed examination of her personal and family life?

The Palin Paradigm

2008-09-04T12:40:00.002-04:00

Sarah Palin as compared to . . .

1. . . . Hillary Clinton. It's true there is "no comparison," as many angry Hillary supporters have been saying. But these people miss the point. It's not that HRC represents a more experienced or accomplished version of Palin, it's that they each represent a different style of (female) politician.

A friend once observed that professional women have only a limited number of archetypes on which to model their images if they want to be successful. In fact, I believe she claimed there were exactly three. One is to play the dumb sex-kitten. The second is to be harsh and humorless (rhymes with "witch"). The third is to be "one of the guys." I would argue that the image Hillary has adopted over the years falls mainly within the second category. In fact, this is pretty much the choice of a majority of female politicians of Hillary's generation: The need to be taken seriously is the paramount stylistic consideration. They come across as lawyerly (or businesslike) and serious. The Hollywood analogue would be Katherine Hepburn.

Palin appears to be the rare breed who falls into the "one of the guys" category. She's doesn't appear to be concerned about whether the male-dominated world will take her seriously. She's just who she is. In Hollywood terms, she's more of an Elaine Benes or Liz Lemon (sans neuroses) type.

(In case you're wondering, there are no "dumb sex-kittens" in American political life. You'd have to go to Italy to find that.)

2. . . . Ronald Reagan. There's something to that comparison, but let's not overdo it. Reagan and Palin share a value political trait: the ability to use humor and charm to repel an opponent's attacks. But Reagan had something else that made him formidable. Reagan had a set of ideas that would help define a major political movement. So far, at least, Palin embodies an approach to governance, but not a philosophy.

3. . . . Spiro Agnew. I bring this up only to make the point that Agnew was notoriously anti-elite-Washington media. Palin sounded the exact same theme last night in her acceptance speech. She said the media regards her as unqualified merely because she is not a part of the permanent Washington establishment. She may be right as far as that goes, but she needs to keep in mind that being outside the Washington establishment is also no automatic qualification for high office.

4. . . . Joe Biden. No contest. Palin makes "Lunchpail Joe" Biden look like stale meatloaf. Joe's bona fides as a regular blue-collar guy seem pathetically contrived as compared to this gun-toting lady and her snowmobiling husband. The good news is, Biden won't need to bring that lunchpail to the debate, because he's going to have his lunch handed to him.

5. . . . Barack Obama. It's an interesting juxtaposition. Obama is the former community organizer ostensibly running on behalf of the little guy. Sarah's naturalistic style and middle-class values, however, make Obama look haughty and pretentious by comparison. At some level, she seems to turn him into John Francois Kerry.

On Presidential Experience

2008-09-03T10:40:00.002-04:00

A couple of days ago, I offered some thoughts on the nature and level of experience needed for the office of Vice President. Continuing on that theme, I wanted to comment on the experience and skills needed for the presidency.

When talking about experience, it's important, I think, to distinguish that part of a person's background that can be characterized as "credentials." In other words, I would propose to look at a candidate's credentials, not as a synonym for experience, but as a separate component of experience. "Experience" would refer to everything the candidate has done in their life that may reflect on their capacity to serve as POTUS. "Credentials" are merely the objective achievements he or she has attained along the way. Barack Obama and Sarah Palin have somewhat similar credentials but, I would suggest, dramatically different kinds of experience. (By "similar credentials," I mean they're both first-term statewide officeholders with several years of prior experience in lower offices.)

Focusing now on the broader question of experience, it is clear that Obama and Palin have each taken a dramatically different route to get to their respective stations in public life. Obama's career has been mainly as an advocate of liberal-left social and economic policies on behalf of lower-income, urban blacks. He lacks any kind of executive experience -- which is to say, he's never actually run anything, except arguably his own campaigns for public office.

Sarah Palin's experience in the public arena has been not as an advocate for any particular group, but as a manager and executive dealing with the nuts and bolts of government. As such, she is bound to have much less of a record of positions on the hot-button issues of the day than Obama, who has spent most of his career in legislative posts where debate and advocacy are the main requirements of the job.

Obama's experience as an advocate would serve him well as president. One of the important aspects of the modern presidency is defining and promoting an agenda for America's security and prosperity. The ability to communicate, persuade, and build majorities for particular programs and policies is obviously key to a president's success in carrying out a legislative agenda. President Bush was successful in his first term because he was able to define and articulate a compelling vision for responding to the myriad of threats posed by international terrorism. On the other hand, he failed to demonstrate anything close to the same skill in marshaling support for initiatives such as immigration and social security form.

Of course, only part of a president's job involves policy advocacy. In many respects, as George Bush famously noted, the president is the "decider." He doesn't always need to obtain the approval of voters or the Congress before taking a particular course of action. This is most often the case in regard to foreign policy and in the administration of the executive branch (especially personnel decisions). By definition, these are instances in which the president is acting as an executive rather than as a de facto legislator.

There a number of skills or traits a presidential candidate should possess in order to be a good executive. For example, an understanding of what the government does and how it works is of paramount importance. The only thing that mitigates the importance of such understanding is the fact that, left to its own institutional devices, the government will continue to operate on a day to day basis whether or not the president pays attention to it. However, to the extent that a president seeks to tinker with the machinery of government in pursuit of some policy objective, it's imperative that he or she know what the hell they are doing.

There are no shortages of examples to use in making this point. To cite just one, a president may decide that, in order to cut government spending, it would be a good idea to reduce the size of the military. However, it's important for the president to realize that such a cut may make it difficult to increase the size of the military at a future date, because while you can recruit more enlisted personnel on fairly short notice, the effect of the intervening cuts will be to reduce the future supply of officers to lead the new troops to be added in the future. Government is a machine with many moving parts, and it is essential for any president who aspires to change the status quo to understand how the pieces all fit together.

Apart from mere knowledge, a president needs sound judgment in it many forms. Most critically, a president needs to be able to decide when it is necessary and appropriate to use military force. Deciding whether and how to respond to a perceived threat to the national interest is the central concern of the Commander-in-Chief.

I see nothing in Obama's background that would suggest that he has particular faith or confidence in the use of American military force for any purpose. He has no personal military background. He doesn't appear to have any significant friends or associates of a military bent. He opposed the war in Iraq. He opposed the surge, predicting it would not work. His expressions of support or concern for military families all seem to focus on the burdens the government has imposed on them, rather than on what they have achieved through the sacrifices they have made. Moreover, judging from his friendships with Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers, Obama appears at least sympathetic to the view that the U.S. military is a source of trouble in the world, rather than a tool for advancing the cause of peace and freedom.

An Obama supporter would likely rebut the foregoing observations by asserting that the use of military force in places like Iraq or Vietnam was a mistake, cost thousands of lives, and consumed billions of taxpayers' dollars that would have been better spent on domestic needs. Those are debatable arguments, but I think they ultimately miss the point. Assuming there are situations where military action is appropriate, a president should have the judgment to recognize those situations and decide on the proper form of military response. Possibly, Barack Obama has the capacity to do those things, but I'm aware of nothing in his experience that would lead to that conclusion. By contrast, John McCain, for example, (a) opposed President Reagan's decision to send U.S. Marines to Beirut, (b) supported the first Gulf War, and (c) advocated for the troop surge in Iraq that helped turn the tide of victory there. Thus, he has a record of sometimes supporting military action, sometimes opposing it, and sometimes supporting a different form of military action than the one being taken.

In fairness to Obama, sound judgment on military matters will sometimes entail opposing military action when others are in support. Thus, Obama would arguably deserve credit on this score for opposing the war in Iraq if we stipulate the war was a mistake (which I'm prepared to do only for the sake of argument). Even with that important stipulation, however, I don't believe Obama's opposition reflects well on his military judgment. First, his anti-war position was completely in keeping with the views of his supporters, and thus required no exercise of political courage. Second, his stated reasons for opposing the war, as set forth an October 2002 speech at an anti-war rally, portrayed the case for war in terms that can only be described as cartoonish. Specifically, Obama charactertured supporters of the war as "arm-chair, weekend warriors . . . [attempting] to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne." Obama's resort to ad hominem attacks dispels any suggestion that his opposition to the war was the product of sound military judgment. Therefore, even if Obama was right about the war (again, debatable), there is no evidence he arrived at his position in a careful, serious fashion.

Another crucial area in which a president's judgment is tested is in the evaluation of people. Lincoln was about the least well-credentialed president in U.S. history. He had no formal education to speak of and his prior experience in public office was highlighted by a single term in the House of Representatives during the Polk administration. One thing he did have going for him was an impeccable ability to differentiate between the people he could rely on to do the things he needed to be done and those who needed to be watched carefully, if they were to be utilized at all. People like Generals Grant and Sherman and Secretaries Stanton and Seward operated with pretty much free rein, and deservedly so. On the other hand, Lincoln hovered over General McClellan the way a mother hovers over a toddler learning how to use scissors for the first time. Lincoln realized soon enough that McClellan, for all his obvious talents, was worthless to him as a commander, and moved on.

These days, a president's ability to size up a person's character, abilities, and motivations are unlikely to determine the survival of the Union, but it can still have an enormous effect on the success of an administration. Presidents have been all too often burned by the scandalous behavior of trusted associates. Subordinates with hidden agendas or unwarranted influence within the administration can lead the president down the wrong path or, even if the president is on the right path, undermine policies before they can bear fruit.

I think this aspect of presidential judgment deserves particular attention because, in my view, and that of many others, Barack Obama is an incredibly poor judge of people. Supposedly, he didn't realize until a couple months ago that Jeremiah Wright was a racist anti-American, or that Tony Rezko was a crook. He still doesn't seem to understand that Bill Ayers is an unrepentant terrorist and attempted murderer. If Obama can be friends with these people for years and not see that they are scoundrels, how can he be trusted to sort out the good guys from the bad guys when he's president?

From the standpoint of overall experience, Obama appears to be an extremely risky choice for president. He has no meaningful executive experience. Virtually all of his experience is in the area of advocacy, which is only a relatively small part of what a president does. He has no record of which I'm aware that would suggest that he would exercise sound judgment in the use of military force. He has not been in the Senate long enough to have accrued a depth of understanding as to the intricacies of the government. Finally, he appears to lack basic judgment in regard to people, even those who have played important roles in his personal and professional development.

Obama's experience pales in comparison to that of his opponent. As noted above, McCain has an extremely strong background in matters relating to the military and foreign policy, including executive experience as an officer in the Navy. Right or wrong, he taken a judicious approach to the use of military force, with no obvious bias either in favor or against the use of force. In terms of legislative skills, he has at times been so influential in shaping the national agenda as to seem to be operating a shadow presidency. Just in recent years, McCain has been at the forefront of such diverse issues as campaign finance reform, the fight over judicial nominations, immigration reform, and Iraq. Because of the range of issues he's taken on and his long tenure in Congress, there appear to be few, if any, areas of the federal government in which he lacks significant experience. He's fiercely independent and thus can be counted on to exercise real judgment rather than follow the party line. His POW experience demonstrates that he's a man of principle who values character. I would submit this makes him less likely to succumb to errors of judgment in assessing the makeup of those with whom he comes into contact. A guy who values good character in others is more likely to recognize it, or notice its absence, as compared to someone who assumes there are equal parts of good and bad in most people.

I have many quibbles with McCain from a substantive standpoint. In terms of experience, however, he could not be much better equipped to handle the responsibilities of the presidency. Obama, unfortunately, leaves a great deal to be desired.

On Vice-Presidential Experience

2008-08-30T20:52:00.004-04:00

John McCain has drawn criticism from both ends of the political spectrum for his selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate. Most of the criticism has focused on the question of whether Palin, a first-term Alaska governor, has amassed sufficient "experience" in her career to be vice president. This question has in turn spawned renewed debate over the nature and extent of Barack Obama experience. While the entire debate is clearly steeped in partisan bias, it is nevertheless an interesting topic to consider from a civics perspective. I have a number of thoughts on the subject, starting with the issue of Palin's qualifications for the vice presidency.

First, it should be obvious that the requisite qualifications for the vice presidency are much less stringent than those for the top job. Vice presidents have no Constitutional responsibilities other than presiding over the Senate and occasionally casting a tie-breaking vote there. While recent presidents have sought to enlarge the roles of their vice presidents by putting them in charge of particular projects, there is no assurance this trend will continue.

To put it in purely practical terms, virtually any motivated elected official from the level of state legislator on up to governor or U.S. senator could adequately perform the job of vice president. It simply isn't that demanding. All that's really required is the ability to articulate the views of the administration. Of course, if the vice president can also serve as a capable advisor to the president or take charge of certain legislative, diplomatic, or political initiatives, so much the better. However, it is entirely up to the president to decide whether, and to what extent, the vice president should take on these additional responsibilities.

I would add that, from the standpoint of both good politics and civic responsibility, a vice president should be seen as someone who is "in the loop." Harry Truman was infamously out of the loop when FDR died, although I'm not aware that this actually created any problems beyond his own sense of discomfort.

Of course, as the Truman example reminds us, the reason we have a vice president in the first place is to assume the Oval Office in the event of the death or resignation of the president. Being next in line, however, doesn't imply that the veep needs the same level of experience as the president. There are three reasons for this.

First, the vice president is highly unlikely to succeed to the presidency. We've had eight presidents die in office, four by assassination. The assassinations all occurred long ago, under circumstances in which the security being provided to the president was at best negligent and at worst non-existent. Presidents are much, much safer from assassination today than they were in previous eras. In fact, the last time a president was assassinated was 45 years ago.

Presidents are also at lower risk of dying in office of natural causes than they were in previous times, due to medical advancements and the fact that it would be much harder for a modern-day president to conceal a life-threatening condition than it was in 1945, when FDR became the last president to die in office of natural causes.

I'm not suggesting that presidents are immortal or cloaked with an invisible force field. I'm simply observing that the likelihood of a modern president healthy enough to be elected in the first place dying in office is very small.

The second reason the vice presidency requires less experience is that, in the event of succession, the veep will be inheriting a fully-staffed administration which presumably is already operating in a manner consistent with the new president's desired policies. Since part of the accepted criteria for v.p. selection is ideological compatibility, there should be no pressing need for the vice president, upon assuming the Oval Office, to make wide-scale, dramatic changes in the make-up or direction of the administration. Moreover, since they would be assuming the presidency mid-term, it's entirely possible that the new president's administration will be of short duration.

The third reason the vice presidency demands less experience relates to the circumstances under which succession occurs. Whenever a president dies (or, in the case of Richard Nixon, resigns), the new president invariably enjoys the universal support of Congress and the people, at least during the first few weeks or months of the new administration.

I don't know much about Sarah Palin, but based on her record in Alaska and her obvious poise and intelligence, there is no question in my mind she is capable of serving as vice president and, if necessary, taking over the reins of a McCain administration in the unlikely event of Big Mac's sudden death or resignation.

UPDATE 09/02/2008: There now seems to be a full-fledged feeding frenzy going on in the lefty blogosphere over Sarah Palin's supposed lack of experience, her pregnant daughter, her decision as mayor to accept federal earmarks, her alleged membership in the Alaska Independence Party, and the McCain campaign's alleged failure to vet the Palin pick. One site (TalkLeft) is actually taking action on when Palin will quit the ticket, as if her decision to do so is somehow inevitable.

It occurs to me that, in pounding away at Palin's supposed lack of qualifications, these people are unwittingly helping to demonstrate that she has what it takes. If Palin can survive the deluge of attacks the left is trying to pour on, and perhaps even fight back a little, the country will see what a tough broad she can be. They're doing her a favor!

The Biden pick: No Joementum?

2008-08-23T06:32:00.005-04:00

The selection of Delaware senator Joseph Biden as Barack Obama's running mate seems both underwhelming and a bit anticlimactic. Biden has been around quite a long time and certainly would be qualified to assume the presidency if necessary. In fact, he's clearly a lot more qualified than the guy at the top of the ticket. But what does he offer in terms of political appeal?

The first fact to bear in mind about Joe Biden's electoral strength is that both of his presidential runs -- separated by 20 years -- ended in abject failure. His 2008 candidacy is of course the more relevant of the two, being so recent. Without looking at vote totals or delegate counts, I would estimate that Biden finished fifth, behind Obama, Clinton, Edwards, and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. Arguably, he created less of a splash than Dennis Kucinich. Thus, for all of his credentials and apparent charm, he is anything but a hot political commodity.

The major qualities Biden brings to the ticket are age and experience. Not coincidentally, these are two major qualities lacking in Barack Obama. Obama had a chance to select a running mate who would enhance and accentuate his "change" theme, but he opted to move in the opposite direction. Therefore, I think this pick will ultimately be perceived as one more in a series of recent instances in which Obama has chosen to place his own brand-name identification at risk in order to meet a pressing political exigency. (The other examples that come to mind are his movement to the center on issues such as Iraq and offshore oil drilling and his willingness to use personal attacks on John and Cindy McCain to stem the erosion of his lead in the polls.)

Although Biden was supposed to be a "safe" selection, it is not without its downside for Obama. While Obama managed to keep the pick a secret until late Friday evening, McCain's people were able to launch a Biden attack ad even before the official announcement ceremony on Saturday afternoon. By "Biden attack ad," I mean an ad in which Biden is seen attacking Obama during the debates as being unqualified for the presidency. The Delaware senator is also shown heaping praise on McCain. Especially given the timing, it's quite an impressive piece of political advertising, and one that garnered significant play in its own right during the marathon coverage of the announcement. Biden even made an oblique reference to the ad in his speech at the announcement ceremony, implying that his regard for McCain has diminished as the campaign has progressed. Perhaps that is so, but it doesn't explain his repeated criticisms of Obama as being dangerously unprepared for the presidency. Knowing that these damaging soundbites would inevitably appear in a McCain ad, Obama may already be feeling some buyer's remorse.

How "the devil you know" can survive a "change" election

2008-08-18T09:11:00.006-04:00

The word "change" has held nearly talismanic sway over political commentators throughout this presidential campaign. The conventional wisdom held that 2008 is a "change" election, and that John McCain, as a living embodiment of the Republican status quo, would stand little chance against his young Democratic opponent. As the race has unfolded, however, it becomes increasingly apparent that the voters' thorough familiarity with John McCain, far from being the albatross that will sink him, is actually one of his greatest assets. In fact, for a number of reasons, it is the gift that keeps on giving.

First, the nature of John McCain's career in the public eye is such that he has managed to earn the respect of most Americans for something he has done, while simultaneously pissing off those very same people for something else he has done. He has done so not by changing positions on issues, but by involving himself prominently in a wide range of national issues, staking out clear positions on those issues, and refusing to hew to any particular partisan or ideological agenda. Accordingly, voters have known McCain when he was right and they have known him when he was wrong, but they all know him nevertheless. The advantage this gives him is he doesn't need to spend time or money in defining himself to the American people.

The second advantage for McCain derives from the first: Because he doesn't need to define himself to the voters, he can focus his campaign on defining Barack Obama (or, as he puts it, "drawing contrasts"). He could construct his entire campaign around the basic formulation of "Here is how Barack Obama is different from me," and the "me" half of the ensuing comparison would already be well-understood by the average voter. Being such a known commodity frees McCain's hand to run effective attacks on Obama's lack of experience, liberal voting records, and questionable personal associations.

Finally, because voters feel like they already know who McCain is, he is largely immune to the negative attacks that Obama might otherwise run against him. Negative campaigning works, but mainly it works against candidates who are not already well known. Candidates who lack a well defined image with the public are vulnerable to negative advertising because, at the same time they are trying to introduce themselves to the voters, they must contend with whatever counter-narrative their opponents are presenting. To take just the most recent example, John Kerry had little hope of establishing his self-defined image as a war hero once he was branded as a liberal Washington phony.

Negative attacks work only so long as they are credible. Because McCain is so well-known, certain attacks just aren't credible. The idea that McCain is some kind of Bush progeny out to give the President a third term is just silly. Everyone can recall innumerable instances in which McCain seemed to relish the opportunity to stick his finger in Bush's eye. Even household pets, moreover, would question the suggestion that McCain would adhere to any predictable policy agenda, whether Bush's or anyone else's.

This AP report on Obama's supposed "tearing into McCain" illustrates how difficult it will be for Barack to land a glove on his well-known opponent. In it, Obama is reported as having unleashed the following "attacks" on McCain:

1. "Obama called the U.S. economy a disaster thanks to 'John McCain's president, George W. Bush.'" (Again, this kind of general linkage won't work if Obama can't establish the predicate that McCain is some kind of Bush acolyte.)

2. Obama "prais[ed] the Arizona senator as a 'genuine American patriot.'" (There is no way at this point for Obama to undermine McCain's bona fides as a war hero. He must accept that as a given.)

3. "McCain says 'Here's my plan, I'm going to drill here, drill now which is something he only came up with two months ago when he started looking at polling." (McCain is a poll-driven political opportunist? Nice try, but everyone remembers McCain's wildly unpopular stances on immigration reform and the Iraq war.)

4. Obama noted that "many" of McCain's advisers "had been lobbyists in Washington before McCain asked them to sever all lobbying ties." (Fine, except voters will remember McCain as a vocal supporter of campaign finance reform who has spoken out on the need to reform Washington. Because of his history in this area, most voters seem to regard McCain as far less corrupt than the average member of Congress. Moreover, his basic reputation for integrity and independence would seem to supersede this rather parochial and ill-defined charge of having employed former lobbyists to work in his campaign.)

5. Obama attempted to label McCain as being unfair for questioning Democrats' approach to foreign policy. According to Obama, McCain's people "say this other guy is unpatriotic, or this guy likes French people [emphasis added]. That's what they said about Kerry." "They try to make it out like Democrats aren't tough enough, aren't macho enough. It's the same strategy." (While it's certainly debatable whether Democrats are "tough enough," McCain has hardly revealed himself to be a monster by calling into question the Dems' commitment to a strong foreign policy. This has been one of the defining differences between the two major parties since at least 1972. At worst, the charges to which Obama is alluding are just the usual rough and tumble of presidential politics. For Obama to become whiny and defensive about this kind of stuff -- he's been accused of liking French people? -- provides some insight into how frustrating this campaign is becoming for him. )

I've said before that I think Obama may have already peaked. Part of the reason for that relates to the fact that McCain is such a well-known figure. Americans have witnessed McCain in action for years and a large majority most see him as a credible chief executive and commander in chief. It will difficult for Obama, in the span of a couple months, to dramatically alter that perception.

This matters.

2008-08-13T19:23:00.004-04:00

[Nurse] Stanek says her friend had been told to take this baby and leave him in a soiled utility closet. She offered to take him instead. “I couldn’t let him die alone,” she says.

Stanek was horrified by this experience. This was not an abortion — it was something worse. Could it be legal to take a living and breathing person of any size, already born and outside his mother’s womb, and just leave him to die, without any thought of treatment? . . . .

Stanek’s effort to right this wrong would lead her to testify before various committees. It would lead her to a state senator, Patrick O’Malley, who would propose a bill to stop what was going on at the hospital. Her attempt to change a corrupt medical practice and bring hope to defenseless infants would put her on a collision course with a state senator named Barack Obama.

Read the whole thing.

Georgia on my mind

2008-08-13T09:47:00.002-04:00

It's unfortunate the Russians decided to launch an invasion in an unfamiliar corner of the world during the height of a U.S. presidential campaign. The timing of their move makes it nearly impossible for an ordinary citizen to make heads or tails of what's going on. At the risk of exposing myself as a complete ignoramus, here is what I have been able to gather:

Evidently, Georgia was an independent nation until the early 1920s, when it was swallowed up by the U.S.S.R. (or what became the U.S.S.R.). After the fall of European Communism, Russia never quite reconciled itself to the notion of Georgian sovereignty. The geopolitical situation there has been highly unstable due to the existence of two semi-automonous regions within the borders of Georgia known as Ossetia and Ajaria. Naturally, these areas represent distinct ethnic enclaves (because what's a good international crisis anymore without the scourge of rampant tribalism?). Moscow supports the Ossetian and Ajarias autonomy movements because of Russia's rich tradition of liberty and self-government. Actually, it's because Moscow views Georgia's internal struggles as a source of weakness and vulnerability for the government in Tiblisi.

Given the mess there, you're probably thinking it's a good thing there's no oil in Georgia and no perceived strategic interest at stake for the U.S. Unfortunately, both of those assumptions are wrong. Oil from the Caspian Sea transits Georgia via the Baku-Supsa oil pipeline. And the U.S. has been actively courting Georgia for years as an ally and possible future member of NATO.

Vladimir Putin and his criminal cohorts in the Kremlin evidently decided the opening of the Olympic games would be a good time to send a column of tanks into Georgia in order to bring the former satellite back into the Russian fold. Of course, this was done under the pretext of responding to Georgia's persecution of the Ossetians. Russia's action leaves the West in a bit of a bind. Although the U.S. properly regards the move as an intolerable act of aggression, there doesn't appear to be any practicable military response available to us.

Here in the U.S., Barack Obama initially responded to the outbreak of hostilities with a plea for the parties to work toward restoring peace to the troubled region, fueling speculation that he might appoint Barney the Dinosaur as a special envoy. John McCain's response was, predictably, more bellicose in tone. While not explicitly advocating a military response, McCain has made it clear he would take a tough stand against Russia.

McCain has also used the occasion to make several important points with voters. First, he never bought into the starry-eyed notion that Russia could become a force for peace and justice on the world stage. In other words, he was right about Putin just as he was right about the surge in Iraq. Second, and again as in the case of the surge, McCain saw the unvarnished truth of the matter immediately, without succumbing to the false optimism that infected Bush's perception of the situation. In other words, he's not "McSame" at all, but foreign policy realist with impeccable judgment. Third, he's an experienced hand at foreign policy, who's known Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili well enough to call him "Misha." Barack Obama probably thinks Misha is a sushi bar in Harvard Square.

All of that would seem to make the emergence of this crisis something of an unexpected boon for McCain's candidacy. I'm not sure that's the case, however. While Americans in large numbers would probably agree that McCain is better equipped to deal with a crisis such as this, the country is also quite war-weary. They would welcome a Clintonesque "vacation from history." What people like about vacations, most of all, is taking a break from responsibility. In a sense, Obama's vacuous initial statement on the crisis, issued from the beaches of Hawaii, is exactly what America wants to hear. By the same token, McCain's response is about as welcome as receiving an urgent message from a dutiful assistant back at the office. You say to yourself, "What now?" So the apparent benefit McCain derives from the sudden flare-up of an international crisis is mitigated, I think, by the temptation of American people to avoid having to deal with the issue beyond the level of simply expressing disapproval for the Russians' actions.

In the end, however, I think McCain will come out ahead as a result of all this. I say this because I think the "crisis" part of this episode is going to pass rather quickly. Russia will achieve (if it hasn't already) its military objectives and some semblance of stability will emerge from the ashes. As noted above, there really doesn't seem to be much the U.S. can do about it beyond simply condemning the action in one form or another. Or, put it this way: whatever we do in the immediate aftermath, it won't involve preparing troops to march into battle. McCain can still trumpet his superior judgment in perceiving the Russian threat while tacitly acknowledging that our hands are tied, militarily. In this way, he can still play the role of the responsible statesman without spoiling Americans' hoped-for day at the beach.

John Edwards thinks you're an idiot

2008-08-11T11:07:00.003-04:00

When the National Enquirer broke the story of John Edwards' and Rielle Hunter's midnight rendezvous at the Beverly Hilton, his fans on the left started performing mental gymnastics in a vain attempt to salvage the Silky Pony's dubious standing as a future Democratic standard-bearer. This weekend, Edwards sent out the following message to those fans and defenders: "You are all a bunch of idiots."

On Friday, Edwards copped to the relationship with Hunter, but insisted he wasn't the father of Hunter's baby, Frances Quinn. He also insisted he was unaware of the fact that his close friend and political ally Fred Baron has been providing huge financial support to Hunter. For his part, Baron insists that the money and multi-million-dollar housing he is lavishing on Hunter and Edwards aide Andrew Young are simply his modest way of helping out a couple of friends and "former colleagues" in need. This from the same loyal and generous guy who recently sued his own son to collect on an $800,000 loan used to fund a start-up company the kid was involved in.

It seems highly unlikely Fred Baron has any genuine relationship to either Hunter or Young other than his role as their benefactor. If anyone should be ladling out tens of thousands of dollars to help give those cute kids, Rielle and Andrew, a start in life, it would be Edwards himself, who was much closer to them than Baron was and nearly as wealthy. But of course, that would look bad.

For those inclined to accept the veracity of Edwards' explanations on Friday, Saturday must have been a tough day. For it was then that his purported willingness to take a paternity test was hammered successively from two opposing sides. First, Rielle's younger sister, seemingly speaking on behalf of sane and intelligent people everywhere, demanded that the DNA testing proceed forthwith and predicted it would not turn out the way Edwards would have us all believe. Then, on Saturday evening, it was revealed through an attorney for Rielle that she would not be agreeing to the paternity test, her sister's opinion on the matter notwithstanding. Rielle supposedly ruled out DNA testing out of concern for her privacy. Of course, that's tantamount to an admission that Edwards is the father. If the testing indicated that Edwards was not the father, the story would presumably die and Rielle could immediately go back to being a nobody.

It would be inappropriate to speculate as to whether Ms. Hunter is being paid off in exchange for letting Edwards maintain his claim of non-paternity. It would be inappropriate to speculate because we already know she is being paid off, to the tune of $15,000 a month. The idea that Fred Baron would continue supporting her in this fashion even if she were to blow the cover off Edwards' "I-can't-be-the-father" shtick is simply absurd.

All of this would be funny if it weren't so downright disturbing. The fact is, there's a level of personal corruption here almost too staggering to put into words. It obviously goes well beyond Edwards' mere carrying on of an extramarital relationship. He has used his wealth and connections, and played on the good will of his credulous supporters, to orchestrate a campaign of deception involving not only himself and Ms. Hunter, but also Mrs. Edwards, Andrew Young, and the entire Young family. In order to try to salvage some small part of his meager public reputation, he has pulled who knows how many others down to the gutter with him. And, perhaps worst of all, he has done this in order to be able to say to his own flesh and blood in years to come, "I am not your father." What kind of man does this?

I was never an admirer of John Edwards. Prior to this, however, I merely saw him as a phony and a lightweight. Now, he seems positively evil to me. I hope his supporters come to see him brought down -- all the way down -- so they can realize what fools he made of them.

Paddy Harrington takes a huge step toward golf greatness

2008-08-11T09:36:00.002-04:00

There aren't many golfers who have won two majors in the same calendar year. Their names read like a roll call of the greatest golfers of all time: Nicklaus, Woods, Hogan, Palmer, Player, Watson, Trevino, Faldo, Price, O'Meara. And now Harrington.

Harrington also joined an elite group of players who have won at least three majors in their careers. In an era dominated by a guy with 14 professional major championships, it's easy to lose sight of how few players win even two majors, let alone more than that. Harrington joins only Woods, Phil Mickelson, Ernie Els, and Vijay Singh as an active player with three majors under his belt.

Harrington won the PGA at Oakland Hills yesterday in a manner strikingly similar to his victory last month at Royal Birkdale. In both cases, it appeared that as soon as he caught the glimmer of victory on the horizon, he locked onto it like a fighter pilot locks onto an enemy bandit. Fangs out. He poured in lengthy putts on 16, 17, and 18 to nail down the win. Watching from his sofa, Tiger may have experienced for the first time what a clutch golf performance looks like on live TV.

Edwards comes clean (well, sort of)

2008-08-08T15:09:00.003-04:00

John Edwards clearly had to say something about the brewing scandal, on e way or the other, prior to the Dem convention. Otherwise, he wasn't going to be able to attend it. Conventions are wall-to-wall media, and he wouldn't have been able to go anywhere in Denver without being hounded about it.

He chose to speak up today because it's a Friday and also Opening Day of the Olympics. For this reason, the story won't make quite the same splash it otherwise would have.

Substantively, he has chosen to "split the baby," as it were. He denies paternity, but based on reasoning that sounds suspiciously weak. He says the affair started in'06 and ended too soon for him to be the father (which presumably means no later than April 2007). However, he admits visiting Ms. Hunter at the Beverly Hilton within the last few weeks (as reported by the National Enquirer), casting doubt on his claim that the affair had ended back in early '07. Moreover, he hasn't taken a paternity test, which would seem like the first thing a person in his position would do if he were so certain of not being the father.

Sounds almost like he's saying he's not the father now just so he can act surprised about it later, when a paternity test is actually conducted. "Oh, human gestation is nine months. I thought it was two months. In that case, sure, I guess I could be the father. Sorry! Didn't mean to lie or anything when I called the story ridiculous."

There are other details seemingly designed to make Edwards appear less heel-like. For example, Elizabeth's cancer was supposedly in remission during his relationship with Hunter (although, again, that wasn't the case when he hooked up with her at the Beverly Hilton last month).

There's a huge opening here for further media attention. Edwards says he hasn't paid any money to Hunter, but left open the possibility that his friends did so without his knowledge. I suppose it's possible Edwards has friends who are so devoted to him, they go out of pocket to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars in order to take care of his enormous personal problems without so much as telling him about it. Color me skeptical, however.

A FURTHER THOUGHT (3:52 PM): Why would his friends be paying this woman if Edwards is not the father? If anything, payments by Edwards would tend to point to paternity, as would any extraordinary efforts to put her or Andrew Young into comfortable digs. If Edwards isn't the father, it makes no sense for his friends to be doing any of these things.

BREAKING: McCain's tastes in pop culture surprisingly un-fogeylike

2008-08-07T15:09:00.003-04:00

The hard-hitting journalists at Entertainment Weekly have gotten John McCain and Barack Obama to open up about their favorite TV shows, movies, and musical performers. Surprisingly, despite the quarter-century age difference, McCain's choices seem somewhat more edgy and cool than his younger rival's. Here's a breakdown, along with some comments from me:

TV shows: McCain mentions Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Wire, and 24. Obama mentions M*A*S*H, The Dick Van Dyke Show, and SpongeBob Squarepants (along with various other Disney and Nickelodeon fare). It appears the old Navy flyer doesn't mind a little violence and strong language on the tube.

Movies: McCain's favorite is the Marlon Brando adventure Viva Zapata!, directed by noted HUAC enabler (and I mean that in a nice way) Elia Kazan. Obama likes The Godfather. Score this one a draw. The Godfather (also a Brando flick, I would note), is a better film, but also a more predictable choice.

Music: One of them likes ABBA, Usher, Linda Ronstadt, and Roy Orbison. The other likes Sinatra, Dylan, Sheryl Crow, and John Coltrane . . . also, Javanese flute music and African dance music. Okay, I gave it away with that last bit. Usher aside (pun intended), Obama comes out ahead here. However, I again can't help but notice that Obama's picks seem a little contrived, like he had Caroline Kennedy and her folks at the Kennedy Center vet his picks. McCain's are obviously for real. Nobody would name "My Eyes Adore You" as a favorite song along unless they truly happened to like it.

Superheroes: Incredibly, they both named Batman, but for different and wonderfully revealing reasons. McCain praises the Caped Crusader for "[doing] justice sometimes against insurmountable odds. And he doesn't make his good works known to a lot of people, so a lot of people think he's just a rich playboy." Obama likes Batman (and Spiderman too) because "they have some inner turmoil. They get knocked around a little bit."

Edwards' mistaken identity defense won't wash

2008-08-07T14:27:00.002-04:00

The National Enquirer's publication of photos of John Edwards and his alleged love child has certainly succeeded in getting more people talking about the story. However, a surprisingly large segment of the blogosphere remain unmoved by the photographic evidence, claiming that the man portrayed in the "spy cam" photo is not, in fact, John Edwards.

Obviously, in the age of photoshop, there is no way for a member of the general public to be certain the photo is legit. That said, it amazes me how willing people are to believe that a successful business enterprise like the NE would be willing to throw away millions of dollars in legal costs, damage awards, and future news stand revenues in order to publish a doctored photograph that would almost certainly be revealed in short order to be a fake.

Frankly, if I were inclined to give Edwards the benefit of the doubt, I would be more focused on the possibility of an innocent explanation, such as the possibility that he was only visiting Rielle Hunter as a friend, and had to do so in the middle of the night, and in such a secretive manner, because he was afraid how it would all look if people saw him hanging out with her. That story may sound far-fetched, but it's unlikely the NE has any evidence on hand to disprove it.

Anyway, as for those who claim the picture doesn't even look like John Edwards, I would offer this photograph from CNN as Exhibit A. Note the shape of Edwards' nose and forehead in partial profile. Note also the distinctive angle of his right ear. It's clearly the same guy.

2008-08-06T09:09:00.002-04:00

When I saw the headline this morning, "Obama Pushes Back on GOP Tire Pressure Attack," I realized it wasn't a dream. Barack Obama really did spend ten minutes of national air time yesterday trying to defend his suggestion that keeping tires properly inflated would be a viable alternative to drilling for more domestic oil.

Here's why you should just let it go, Barack:

First, although keeping everyone's tires properly inflated would save fuel, it can never happen in practice. It's not like setting your thermostat to 68 degrees, where you can do it once and leave it there. People would need to be checking their tires all the time. Realistically, many people aren't going to make the commitment, and there's nothing the government can do to make them. Similarly, not everyone is going to get regular oil changes and tune-ups, which would also improve gas mileage.

To understand why the suggestion of keeping tires properly inflated has no place in a serious discussion of energy policy, consider an analogy to food. If consumers are up in arms over rising food prices, it is no answer to point out how leftovers often end up getting tossed away instead of eaten. Sure, my spoiled leftovers represent a potential savings, but it's really none of your goddammed business, Barack. How 'bout you worry about lowering food prices and I'll deal with with what's in my fridge? We're not electing you nanny, you twit.

Obama's persistence in making the case for proper tire inflation is unbecoming for another reason as well: Even he doesn't seriously place that much importance on the idea. It was something he mentioned in passing as a way of putting into perspective the modest amount of oil that new offshore drilling would supposedly yield. It only became a big deal for Obama after the GOP turned it into a joke at his expense. So now he's acting like a petulant teenager, upset because the grownups are laughing at something he said. Now he's given people a reason to wonder if he's too thin-skinned to handle the presidency. Nice going.

Brooks on fire

2008-08-05T09:23:00.002-04:00

The first thing I read this morning was this fantastic analysis from David Brooks.

When the New York Times hired Brooks to replace William Safire, nobody was very happy about it. The liberals stalwarts saw no reason to hire a successor to the outgoing house conservative, and conservatives perceived Brooks as a kind of milquetoast Republican only a step or two above David Gergen. Despite the poor initial reception he received, he has really done some tremendous work for that paper.

Obama's energy proposals appear to be complete nonsense.

2008-08-04T15:45:00.002-04:00

I'm no expert on energy issues, but Obama's plan to "eliminate the need for oil from the entire Middle East and Venezuela oil" in ten years appears to be nonsense.

I did some quick checking and found that OPEC accounts for roughly 37 billion out of the roughly 86 billion barrels of oil produced annually worldwide. (OPEC includes Venezuela and therefore represents a reasonably proxy for the Middle Eastern and Venezuelan oil Obama has targeted for elimination.) Oil being a fungible commodity, it's not entirely clear what Obama means when he talks about "eliminating the need for oil" from these two sources. A natural reading would be that he intends to cut U.S. consumption by 43%, which would be the same proportion that Middle Eastern and Venezuelan oil bears in relation to total world production.

If that's the case, then we can already say with confidence that his three-part plan for achieving those savings within ten years will be an utter failure.

Part one of the plan calls for massive government handouts and tax credits to encourage the production and sale of plug-in hybrid vehicles, with the goal of putting a million of them on the road in six years. But there are currently 125 million cars on America's highways. How is the addition of a million or so hybrid vehicles going to yield the dramatic reductions in imports he is calling for?

The second part of the plan is to divert tax revenues to promote R&D into solar, wind, and geothermal energy, in order to "require" that these renewables comprise 10% of our energy sources by the end of Obama's first term. (This is up from 5% currently, he states.) However, since none of these renewables can power our automobiles (except for the paltry million new plug-in hybrids he wants to build), it's hard to see how they're going to help reduce oil imports.

The third component of Obama's plan is to "call on businesses, government, and the American people to meet the goal of reducing our demand for electricity 15% by the end of the next decade." This, of course, isn't a plan so much as a statement of a goal. And, it fails to address the larger stated goal of reducing oil imports.

Obviously, the U.S. can generate all the electricity we want through coal, nuclear, and other resources. But increasing electricity production will do nothing to reduce oil imports so long as our cars run on gas. Clearly, the long-term solution is to transition to electric vehicles, and there's already plenty of technological progress being made in that direction. But the suggestion that such a transformation can, or even should, take place within ten years is baloney. Moreover, the switch to electric vehicles will come about not because Barack Obama willed it to be done, but because private enterprise will find a way to produce affordable electric vehicles that are as good or better than the cars we drive today.

Annoying read of the day.

2008-08-04T10:46:00.003-04:00

There are so many annoying aspects of this New Republic editorial, it's hard to know where to begin.

I guess the title is a logical place to start: "The Weird Persistence of John McCain." Because the piece has nothing to do with John McCain's tenacity, it should really be called "The Weird Persistence of the American People." What the editors actually seem to find "weird" is the fact that the American people haven't already unanimously elected Barack Obama to two terms as president -- and it's August already! Evidently, America is weird for relentlessly going through the motions of evaluating the respective merits of two candidates when it's already obvious Obama is the superior choice.

In declaring Obama the obvious choice, the New Republic relies entirely on economic issues. In other words, they ignore national security, future Supreme Court appointments, and the candidates' personal experience and qualifications as factors that may determine how Americans vote come November.

Obama should vanquish McCain on the economy, the editors opine, because "These are the type of painful times when voters invariably turn to Democrats." Oh, really? Tell that to Al Gore, who lost in 2000 as the nation went into a recession. Tell that to Jimmy Carter, who presided over some of the toughest and most uncertain economic times in recent U.S. history, and was promptly whipped by Ronald Reagan in the 1980 election.

The editors of The New Republic apparently believe Americans are automatons who are pre-programmed vote Democrat whenever economic hard times arise, regardless of the causes of the economic troubles or the proposed solutions thereto.

I made the mistake of following The New Republic's advice and visiting Obama's website to review his economic platform. Rather than finding "a slew of terrific policy proposals," I found a grab bag of intellectually bankrupt schemes all seemingly conceived around the idea of taking tax dollars from one group of people to confer benefits on another. That, and increasing the size of government at all levels.

Here's one such gem:
Encourage States to Adopt Paid Leave: As president, Obama will initiate a strategy to encourage all 50 states to adopt paid-leave systems. Obama will provide a $1.5 billion fund to assist states with start-up costs and to help states offset the costs for employees and employers.

In other words, Obama wants to appropriate tax revenues to create a federal bureaucracy to assist states in setting up state bureaucracies to force employers to give certain workers paid leaves of absences. Who benefits? Government, for one. The employees who get to draw a paycheck without actually working, for another. How does the economy benefit? Not in the least.
Like I said, annoying.

Do I still have to buy those light bulbs that look like curly fries?

2008-08-04T10:11:00.002-04:00

The evidence is in, and it proves that global warming is not being caused by carbon emissions. So says a former global warming alarmist who seems to know what he's talking about.

It's the part in the middle I don't understand.

2008-08-01T12:52:00.004-04:00

This seemed like an appropriate first post about golf. Watch the first minute or so.

Reminds me of an old Steven Wright joke. "I'm writing a book. I've got the page numbers done, so now I just have to fill in the rest.

Has Obama already peaked?

2008-08-01T09:48:00.002-04:00

An interesting dynamic in this presidential race is that it pits an older, thoroughly well-known candidate -- a "grizzled veteran" if there ever was one -- against a sleek and charismatic newcomer. Based on that comparison alone, it would not be unreasonable to predict a landslide victory for Obama. Of course, it's not quite that simple. The grizzled veteran in this case is widely admired, beloved by many, and still obviously at the peak of his influence and abilities. Moreover, youth and inexperience are not necessarily a good things when it comes to running for president.

Still, the big advantage Obama appears to have on paper doesn't seem to exist in reality. The latest national polls give Obama a lead of only one or two points. With the polls apparently tightening, Obama could find himself actually trailing McCain a week from now. This raises the question, can Obama regain lost ground or has he already peaked?

I think a strong argument can be made that Obama's best days in this race are already behind him. His main strengths have been (a) the fact that he personifies the idea of change in this so-called "change" election and (b) his skillful use of rhetoric, with an emphasis on amorphous themes like "hope" and "unity," which have enabled him to appeal to voters across the political spectrum. However, while these strengths are well-suited to create a positive first impression with voters, they may not count for much as the race heads into its final three months and voters develop a clearer picture of who Obama really is.

The perception of Obama as an embodiment of change is clearly an important part of his appeal, but it seems incapable of generating any more support for candidacy than is already reflected in the polls. Those who assign significant value to the idea of electing a president "who doesn't look like the guys on the dollar bills" are presumably already in his corner. Obama has never really tried to enlarge this group by, for example, giving speeches explaining why it would be better to elect an African-American than a European-American. Voters either accept that proposition or they don't, but either way, they're unlikely to change their minds about it now.

Obama's other big strength -- his use of rhetoric to appeal to voters across the ideological spectrum -- seems even less likely to serve him going forward. Obama may continue to enthrall crowds with his appeals to "bridge the gaps that divide us," but more and more voters will come to appreciate that he is, in practice, very much a man of the left.

Obama's reliance on the change theme and inspiring rhetoric may in fact prevent him regaining control of the race. Having promoted himself as a new kind of leader that Americans of all persuasion should rally around, he cannot risk overly negative attacks on McCain or overt demagoguery. Such tactics would only help to re-brand him as a typical, old-style politician. Moreover, any major shift of his campaign away from his personal qualities and toward a debate of substantive issues will create more focus on his liberal positions and his lack of substantive accomplishments. He may be like a race car driver who's still in first place but who's running out of gas with no chance to refuel.

A Question to Ponder

2008-07-31T16:15:00.002-04:00

Why is it that whenever people think they see the image of a bearded man or a crying woman on a slice of toast or the side of a rusty dumpster, they immediately think it's Jesus or Mary? I mean, it could be anyone. It doesn't even have to be somebody famous. It could be Jesus' next door neighbor. It could be Mary's stressed-out sister-in-law that's bawling her eyes. Obviously Jesus and Mary didn't leave behind any pictures of themselves, so why does everyone assume that if a water-spot on the wall of a convenience store in Encino happens to look like a man's bearded face, then the man must be Jesus? It could be some hippie from down the street for all we know.

It seems to me Jesus wasn't the slightest bit vain in real life. Therefore, it makes no sense that He would now be plastering His own image on random surfaces all over the place. If Jesus and Mary are in fact behind these occurrences, you can bet it's someone else's mug they're putting out there.

McCain's "Celebrity" Ad, Part II

2008-07-31T10:42:00.003-04:00

Yesterday I noted with approval John McCain's new ad, in which he points out that Obama's status as an international celebrity is no real qualification for president. Evidently the ad has set off a bit of a firestorm. The liberal blogosphere is outraged. Why is that?

I'd say the reason the ad has provoked such a loud response is that it points out an obvious truth that liberal commentators, like the emperor who was wearing no clothes, want to remain unspoken: Obama's success to date has been fueled in large part by media hype, coupled with America's penchant for elevating certain famous people to a level of celebrity that is completely out of proportion to their actual accomplishments. The point of the commercial is not that Obama is no more worthy of being president than Britney Spears. It's that Obama may be the Britney Spears of presidential politics. Britney is deservedly famous for her singing career, but her accomplishments as a singer in no way justify all the publicity she has received over the years. The same goes for Obama. He's a talented politician, but he hasn't accomplished nearly enough in his career to justify all the hype.

Again, I think it's a smart move on McCain's part to make this point. Most people, even those who enjoy following the tabloid adventures of Angelina Jolie, recognize celebrity culture for the superficial diversion it is. Moreover, only the most committed Obama devotee would fail to recognize in his meteoric rise at least an element of mindless celebrity mania. Thus, the ad points out something about Obama most viewers will find both intuitively true and legitimately troubling -- which is why it seems to have struck a nerve.

Ten things not to worry about

2008-07-30T15:36:00.002-04:00

I can't say I was ever worried about these things in the first place, but the list makes for interesting reading.

McCain's "Celebrity" ad

2008-07-30T15:22:00.002-04:00

This new ad from McCain takes a shot at Obama's celebrity status.

Obviously, there are huge differences between these candidates, both in style and substance. Despite the concerns of many Republicans that McCain wouldn't run a tough campaign, McCain seems to have no qualms about using negative ads to draw clear contrasts between himself and Obama.

Can Robert Blake be far behind?

2008-07-30T15:14:00.003-04:00

Obama has won the coveted Phil Spector endorsement.

Drip, drip, drip

2008-07-30T12:12:00.002-04:00

The National Enquirer is upping the ante again with a further installment on their John Edwards "love child" story. This particular update seems calculated to compel some kind of a response from the mother, Rielle Hunter, and the putative father Andrew Young. The article reveals the name of the baby and alleges that a wealthy friend of Edwards has been funneling "hush money" to Hunter at the rate of $15,000 a month in addition to undisclosed amounts to Young.

If Young really is the father, then the Enquirer's reporting to date would seem to represent an outrageous (and undoubtedly actionable) invasion of privacy against him, Hunter and the baby. It's hard to see how anyone could continue to weather the onslaught of such unwarranted publicity without filing suit against the Enquirer or otherwise fighting back in some highly public way. For that reason, I would expect this story to take a dramatic turn, one way or the other, in the near future. Either Edwards will be forced to own up to the relationship or Hunter and Young will start pushing back. The drip, drip, drip can't go on indefinitely.

Getting to the bottom of Obama's canceled visit with wounded troops

2008-07-30T10:06:00.010-04:00

The Washington Post is jumping ugly on the McCain campaign for supposedly misrepresenting the reasons behind Barack Obama's failure to visit a military hospital in Germany at the tail end of his recent European tour. McCain has an ad up claiming Obama canceled the stop when it became clear he couldn't bring cameras or campaign staff along. According to the WaPo's version of events, however, the real reason behind the decision was the Obama camp's fear that the stop would be perceived as political.

While the Post deserves some credit for trying to sort out this mess, their focus on the McCain ad is misplaced. Their own reporting shows that Obama canceled the announced visit with wounded soldiers for what it now appears was no good reason at all. If Obama had made the visit, without media fanfare (as his campaign now claims had been the plan all along), there is simply no way it would have blown up on him politically. While it's hard to imagine McCain attacking Obama for visiting with wounded soldiers, even if he had done so, any such attack most likely would have backfired on McCain.

More important, even if Obama thought the stop would be politically risky, so what? McCain has made a career out of politically risky moves. If Obama canceled the stop for the reasons given by the Post, then it raises a question far more disturbing than whether McCain's ad is accurate: If Obama can be this weak-kneed over the potential political fallout that might come from visiting wounded soldiers, what sort of leadership can he be counted on to deliver when he is faced with a truly momentous decision, such as sending soldiers into combat in the first place?

In uncovering the real reason for the canceled visit to the military hospital, the Post arguably exposed a flaw in McCain's political ad. But the flaw they inadvertantly exposed in Obama is of far greater significance.

Obama Veepstakes

2008-07-26T09:45:00.003-04:00

Politico reports that Obama's VP search committee is floating the name of Ann Veneman as a possible running mate. Like that will happen.

Evidently, the reason Ms. Veneman is a viable selection is that she's a Republican who served as Agriculture Secretary during W's first term. Naturally, the netroots are just clamoring for Obama to pick a Republican with close ties to Bush rather than a loyal Democrat.

Also, nobody has ever heard of her, so she has that going for her.

Yup, this is definitely the year the Dems pick an anonymous, Bush-tainted Republican to put on the ticket.

He ventured forth to bring light to the world

2008-07-25T19:37:00.004-04:00

Highlarious.

The McCain Veepstakes

2008-07-25T10:36:00.002-04:00

Romney would do the most good in terms of helping the ticket. So that's whom McCain will pick, right? Not so fast. I think McCain thinks he's is in good shape and doesn't need the things Romney brings to the table in order to beat Obama. He thinks he has the luxury to pick someone nobody has heard of and who probably can't deliver his own state, but someone who appeals to McCain for other reasons. Someone like . . . Tim Pawlenty.

Obama the Uniter

2008-07-25T09:50:00.002-04:00

David Brooks has an important and insightful column today on the disturbingly anodyne worldview laid out by Obama in Berlin. According to Obama, the solution to the world's problems is (and has always been) to "bring people together" -- something he immodestly claims the ability to do. Brooks points out that, in the real world, conflicts often must be resolved through confrontation if they are to be resolved at all. JFK and Reagan both knew this, as did Harry Truman. As these presidents would testify, the way to bring an end to tyranny is to stand up to the tyrants. It's certainly not to unite with them. Clearly, there will be no "coming together" between the civilized world and radical Islam. If the next U.S. president doesn't understand this, we're in big trouble.

The Title Says It All

2008-07-24T19:08:00.002-04:00

A useful reminder: Media Love of Obama Doesn't Equal Victory

My sense is that voters are far more sophisticated today than in previous generations. They like Obama, and they want to "Believe." But they're not going to vote for him solely on the basis of his oratorical skills. Or because the MSM seem excited by him.

Barack, Sr.: Immigrant or Absentee Father?

2008-07-24T17:41:00.003-04:00

It's no longer a surprise to find Barack Obama flip-flopping on policy matters. But must he flip-flop on his family history as well? In addressing Latino voters, the presumptive Democratic nominee states he grew up without a father, alluding to Barack, Sr.'s decision to attend school on the East Coast (and eventually return to Kenya) and leave his young family behind in Hawaii. But on other occasions, including today's speech in Berlin, the senator characterizes his father as somehow belonging to America's immigrant tradition.

Whatever Obama's feelings toward his father may be -- and it's a subject to which he's obviously given a great deal of thought -- his attempt to portray Barack Sr. as an immigrant flies in the face of reality. Obama's father came to America to get an education. During his short time in Hawaii, he met and impregnated a 17-year-old girl -- Obama's mother -- then left her and returned to Africa. While none of that history reflects badly upon the candidate, nor does it fit within the "immigrant" narrative Obama is trying to craft.

How long can the MSM hold out in refusing to cover the Love Child Story?

2008-07-24T09:59:00.002-04:00

Let's please dispense with the suggestion that John Edwards' relationship with Rielle Hunter isn't "newsworthy." Perhaps the public's sense of propriety has been sufficiently dulled in recent years that a national politician can father a love child while his wife is dying of cancer, arrange for campaign subordinates to take the rap for him, and yet still remain a viable candidate for vice president or attorney general. It doesn't follow that the media should take no notice of the fact.