WHAT WE SAY; WHAT RIGHT-WINGERS HEAR
Fred Kaplan in Slate:
Regardless of what happens next, it is worth asking what the Bush people were thinking when they egged on Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia's young, Western-educated president, to apply for NATO membership, send 2,000 of his troops to Iraq as a full-fledged U.S. ally, and receive tactical training and weapons from our military. Did they really think Putin would sit by and see another border state (and former province of the Russian empire) slip away to the West? If they thought that Putin might not, what did they plan to do about it, and how firmly did they warn Saakashvili not to get too brash or provoke an outburst?
Melissa Clouthier responding at Right Wing News:
You know, this analysis deserves an analogy. So, you're a woman married to an abusive jerk. You can't leave. Finally, you have a chance, you divorce. You change your life, but you can't move. You have kids together with the jerk, so you have to stay around. One of the kids, prefers abusive dad. You know what's best, but what can you do? You try to assert yourself. The ex, though, he's no nicer. It pisses him off that you dare defend yourself. He brings his gun over and he shoots you. Attempts to kill you, for having the nerve to defy him. And oh, by the way, he will show the others around where it's at, too. He's above the law, because he's crazy and everyone is afraid of him.
Most friends are outraged at this jerk's actions. He's wrong. He's abusive. He's vicious. But some people go after the woman for daring to believe she could be independent and assert herself. She should have known better. She should never have provoked him. Stupid woman. She deserves what she got. And furthermore, she's a complete idiot for listening to anyone who believed she could be independent.
Why does the Left always, always take the side of the abusive spouse?
Is Clouthier so blinded by hatred of liberalism, by her belief (widely shared on the right) that liberals live to serve evil, that she's lost the ability to read?
Kaplan isn't siding with the husband. If Clouthier wants a spousal-abuse analogy, she should try this: Why did the U.S. encourage a wife to leave her violent husband, even spurring her on to goad the husband, knowing full when that when the wife was ready to make her escape it fully intended not to show up with a gun and a getaway car, as it had effectively promised it would?
(Kaplan: "Yet Bush continued to entice Saakashvili with weapons, training, and talk of entry into NATO. Of course the Georgians believed that if they got into a firefight with Russia, the Americans would bail them out.")
Try again, Melissa.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Monday, August 11, 2008
DID HOLLYWOOD JOHN GET A FAVOR FROM ONE OF HIS HOLLYWOOD FRIENDS?
In what I believe is his 837th ad in the past two weeks accusing Barack Obama of being a big silly celebrity, how did John McCain get permission to use the final clip, which is apparently from one of the Wayne's World movies?
I'm guessing he wouldn't use the clip without permission, not after Frankie Valli's record label forced him to pull an ad that featured "Can't Take My Eyes Off You."
So how did he get the rights?
Perhaps from the producer of the movies, Lorne Michaels, who has booked McCain on Saturday Night Live twice, and has given five contributions totaling $5,300 to McCain and McCain's PAC since 2000? Lorne Michaels, whose receipt of the Mark Twain Prize was celebrated at the Kennedy Center in Washington by a cast of comics plus a couple of politicians -- one of whom was John McCain? Lorne Michaels, who told The New York Times in March that he would give no more money to McCain now that he was the nominee -- did give McCain an in-kind contribution, namely helping McCain obtain the rights to use the clip?
In other words, did McCain get to use the clip because he's the presidential candidate who hangs out with people in the entertainment business?
****
(Yes, I know -- maybe McCain just used it without permission or acknowledgment. He has been doing things like that lately.)
****
UPDATE: Whoops -- never mind. He apparently had to pull this ad, too -- the new version (which I've embedded above) deletes the Wayne's World clip and replaces it with the onscreen words "WE'RE NOT WORTHY!" (and no audio).
Insert old-guy joke about John McCain being born before the invention of copyright here.
In what I believe is his 837th ad in the past two weeks accusing Barack Obama of being a big silly celebrity, how did John McCain get permission to use the final clip, which is apparently from one of the Wayne's World movies?
I'm guessing he wouldn't use the clip without permission, not after Frankie Valli's record label forced him to pull an ad that featured "Can't Take My Eyes Off You."
So how did he get the rights?
Perhaps from the producer of the movies, Lorne Michaels, who has booked McCain on Saturday Night Live twice, and has given five contributions totaling $5,300 to McCain and McCain's PAC since 2000? Lorne Michaels, whose receipt of the Mark Twain Prize was celebrated at the Kennedy Center in Washington by a cast of comics plus a couple of politicians -- one of whom was John McCain? Lorne Michaels, who told The New York Times in March that he would give no more money to McCain now that he was the nominee -- did give McCain an in-kind contribution, namely helping McCain obtain the rights to use the clip?
In other words, did McCain get to use the clip because he's the presidential candidate who hangs out with people in the entertainment business?
****
(Yes, I know -- maybe McCain just used it without permission or acknowledgment. He has been doing things like that lately.)
****
UPDATE: Whoops -- never mind. He apparently had to pull this ad, too -- the new version (which I've embedded above) deletes the Wayne's World clip and replaces it with the onscreen words "WE'RE NOT WORTHY!" (and no audio).
Insert old-guy joke about John McCain being born before the invention of copyright here.
POKE HIM ... WITH THE GRATUITOUS QUOTATION MARKS!
Uh-oh -- be warned: the righties are bringing out the heavy wit atillery now. Here's something I found this afternoon at the Sean Hannity discussion boards. It's a recipe for -- hope you're sitting down -- "Obama's Anti-American Pie." Har-de-har-har! Hold on to your funny bones, people!
ANTI-AMERICAN PIE
6 "G.D. America" Wright Apples
(Be sure to "cut the hearts out")
3/4 cup "America is Mean" Sugar
1/2 tsp. "No Flag Pin "Senti" mmon
1 Dash of "No Salute to the Flag" salt
1/4 tsp. Bomber Aire's "Nut" meg
1 stick "For Twenty Years, I Didn't Know" Butter
"Dough"
( Be sure to use "Remove the Flag From" Plane Flour
Combine first 6 ingredients and put in pie tin with "empty shell"
"Attempt" to cover with "Plenty of Dough"
Bake in "180* Turn Around Oven" until November 4th
Critic's Warning:
This "Hot Item" looks really yummy when taken immediately from the oven, but after cooling, it quickly becomes bad and is guaranteed to turn your stomach against this country!
Wow.
Please, no mockery. I know, I know: "No Flag Pin "Senti" mmon is rather, um, cryptic. But remember: proofreading is for wussy liberal Democrats. And quotation marks are an appropriate replacement for every other typographic element -- italics, boldface, all other punctuation marks -- not to mention an ideal substitute for actual jokes.
Uh-oh -- be warned: the righties are bringing out the heavy wit atillery now. Here's something I found this afternoon at the Sean Hannity discussion boards. It's a recipe for -- hope you're sitting down -- "Obama's Anti-American Pie." Har-de-har-har! Hold on to your funny bones, people!
ANTI-AMERICAN PIE
6 "G.D. America" Wright Apples
(Be sure to "cut the hearts out")
3/4 cup "America is Mean" Sugar
1/2 tsp. "No Flag Pin "Senti" mmon
1 Dash of "No Salute to the Flag" salt
1/4 tsp. Bomber Aire's "Nut" meg
1 stick "For Twenty Years, I Didn't Know" Butter
"Dough"
( Be sure to use "Remove the Flag From" Plane Flour
Combine first 6 ingredients and put in pie tin with "empty shell"
"Attempt" to cover with "Plenty of Dough"
Bake in "180* Turn Around Oven" until November 4th
Critic's Warning:
This "Hot Item" looks really yummy when taken immediately from the oven, but after cooling, it quickly becomes bad and is guaranteed to turn your stomach against this country!
Wow.
Please, no mockery. I know, I know: "No Flag Pin "Senti" mmon is rather, um, cryptic. But remember: proofreading is for wussy liberal Democrats. And quotation marks are an appropriate replacement for every other typographic element -- italics, boldface, all other punctuation marks -- not to mention an ideal substitute for actual jokes.
POLITICO'S MARTIN LOSES THE LATTES
Adam Nagourney of The New York Times reports that David Axelrod of the Obama campaign has criticized McCain's attack campaign this way:
"Obviously, his strategists met on the portico of the McCain estate in Sedona -- or maybe in one of his six other houses -- and decided what line of attack they were going to use."
I like it. But Politico's Jonathan Martin says today that this line of attack just isn't fair:
To go after McCain on the ranch would be akin to dinging Reagan for Santa Barbara or Bush for Crawford -- places that are more bucolic than glamorous.
Martin explains:
While new-agey and cosmopolitan Sedona is just down the road, McCain's cabin is at the base of a dusty valley in a fairly remote part of Arizona.
Funny -- Martin put that in a somewhat different way a couple of months ago:
Should McCain's cabin become the next Western White House, it will have similarities to, but also key differences from, George W. Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas.
Both are remote. The closest city to Crawford is Waco -- a half-hour drive. Sedona is even more far afield. There is one airstrip locally. To come on a commercial flight, though, one must drive up from Phoenix -- two hours to the south.
The key difference is that McCain's place lies in a resort-heavy area with all the requisite trimmings. One can be in the town of Sedona in a matter of minutes, where there are a variety of restaurants, shops and, yes, places to buy The New York Times. So while it's at the bottom of a long, rocky dirt road -- 4x4 highly recommended -- a latte is never far away.
There's no actual contradiction there, but notice the pronounced shift in emphasis -- and the way Martin has made those lattes vanish.
Also in today's post, Martin says, in defense of the ranch,
Many Americans have weekend cabins.
Yeah, but many Americans don't have weekend cabins on property valued at $1.7 million.
And yes -- Martin does say today that it would be fair to "ding" McCain for the ritziness of his other houses. But watch him defend McCain, by downplaying the poshness of the other properties, if the Obama campaign tries to do that in the future.
(And if you missed it, here's my post from last night about the very New Agey Sedona.)
Adam Nagourney of The New York Times reports that David Axelrod of the Obama campaign has criticized McCain's attack campaign this way:
"Obviously, his strategists met on the portico of the McCain estate in Sedona -- or maybe in one of his six other houses -- and decided what line of attack they were going to use."
I like it. But Politico's Jonathan Martin says today that this line of attack just isn't fair:
To go after McCain on the ranch would be akin to dinging Reagan for Santa Barbara or Bush for Crawford -- places that are more bucolic than glamorous.
Martin explains:
While new-agey and cosmopolitan Sedona is just down the road, McCain's cabin is at the base of a dusty valley in a fairly remote part of Arizona.
Funny -- Martin put that in a somewhat different way a couple of months ago:
Should McCain's cabin become the next Western White House, it will have similarities to, but also key differences from, George W. Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas.
Both are remote. The closest city to Crawford is Waco -- a half-hour drive. Sedona is even more far afield. There is one airstrip locally. To come on a commercial flight, though, one must drive up from Phoenix -- two hours to the south.
The key difference is that McCain's place lies in a resort-heavy area with all the requisite trimmings. One can be in the town of Sedona in a matter of minutes, where there are a variety of restaurants, shops and, yes, places to buy The New York Times. So while it's at the bottom of a long, rocky dirt road -- 4x4 highly recommended -- a latte is never far away.
There's no actual contradiction there, but notice the pronounced shift in emphasis -- and the way Martin has made those lattes vanish.
Also in today's post, Martin says, in defense of the ranch,
Many Americans have weekend cabins.
Yeah, but many Americans don't have weekend cabins on property valued at $1.7 million.
And yes -- Martin does say today that it would be fair to "ding" McCain for the ritziness of his other houses. But watch him defend McCain, by downplaying the poshness of the other properties, if the Obama campaign tries to do that in the future.
(And if you missed it, here's my post from last night about the very New Agey Sedona.)
I HATE MYSELF FOR LOVING YOU
Yesterday, Andrew Sullivan and Open Left's Paul Rosenberg took note of this comment at FiveThirtyEight.com about John McCain's negative campaign:
...How can someone being portrayed as "the biggest celebrity in the world" also be painted as radical and out of the mainstream? Either Obama is like Britney Spears and Paris Hilton: a fluffy, substanceless, mass-consumed but empty celebrity-for-celebrity's sake, or he is an unfamiliar and dangerous other with a hidden anti-American agenda.
It's hard to reconcile the two. By trumpeting Obama's popularity, McCain is calling him -- by definition -- a safe, easily digestible consumer product, broadly acceptable in the mainstream. Thus, McCain boxes himself into a corner when he wants to make the argument not to elect Obama because he's so far outside the mainstream....
Well, no.
If you've ever spent any time in comedy clubs, which I did a million years ago, you've had the heckler experience. It doesn't just happen to comics who are bombing -- some hecklers just want to heckle every comic who walks on stage, regardless of how good the comic is or what the rest of the audience thinks. These people have paid good money to be entertained, yet they clearly find it painful to watch entertainers take over a room, get all the attention, and generate good feeling.
There's also the standard -- and I think accurate -- pop-psychology explanation for the popularity of (real or fictional) soap operas featuring rich, glamorous people enduring great personal trials, an explanation I first heard in the era of Dallas and Dynasty: We watch these shows, or a lot of us do, because we want to be told that money and power don't buy happiness, and in fact bring a great deal of misery. Yes, we want to vicariously wallow in what the rich and powerful have, but we want to be reassured that we're not missing anything by not being those rich, powerful people. We're the hecklers in this case -- we want to see them brought down to our level.
Many ordinary people love celebrities and glamorous people but are also made uncomfortable by them. That's why it's maddening that the Democratic Party is regularly portrayed as the Hollywood party, something that doesn't happen to the GOP even when Republicans literally run a Hollywood star (or, as they've done this year, run someone who loves hanging out with celebrities and has done a number of Hollywood screen appearances). If you're Republican and you go Hollywood, you are, by definition, the heckler, or the person watching Dynasty -- you're the ordinary person evening the score. You're never the star.
Yesterday, Andrew Sullivan and Open Left's Paul Rosenberg took note of this comment at FiveThirtyEight.com about John McCain's negative campaign:
...How can someone being portrayed as "the biggest celebrity in the world" also be painted as radical and out of the mainstream? Either Obama is like Britney Spears and Paris Hilton: a fluffy, substanceless, mass-consumed but empty celebrity-for-celebrity's sake, or he is an unfamiliar and dangerous other with a hidden anti-American agenda.
It's hard to reconcile the two. By trumpeting Obama's popularity, McCain is calling him -- by definition -- a safe, easily digestible consumer product, broadly acceptable in the mainstream. Thus, McCain boxes himself into a corner when he wants to make the argument not to elect Obama because he's so far outside the mainstream....
Well, no.
If you've ever spent any time in comedy clubs, which I did a million years ago, you've had the heckler experience. It doesn't just happen to comics who are bombing -- some hecklers just want to heckle every comic who walks on stage, regardless of how good the comic is or what the rest of the audience thinks. These people have paid good money to be entertained, yet they clearly find it painful to watch entertainers take over a room, get all the attention, and generate good feeling.
There's also the standard -- and I think accurate -- pop-psychology explanation for the popularity of (real or fictional) soap operas featuring rich, glamorous people enduring great personal trials, an explanation I first heard in the era of Dallas and Dynasty: We watch these shows, or a lot of us do, because we want to be told that money and power don't buy happiness, and in fact bring a great deal of misery. Yes, we want to vicariously wallow in what the rich and powerful have, but we want to be reassured that we're not missing anything by not being those rich, powerful people. We're the hecklers in this case -- we want to see them brought down to our level.
Many ordinary people love celebrities and glamorous people but are also made uncomfortable by them. That's why it's maddening that the Democratic Party is regularly portrayed as the Hollywood party, something that doesn't happen to the GOP even when Republicans literally run a Hollywood star (or, as they've done this year, run someone who loves hanging out with celebrities and has done a number of Hollywood screen appearances). If you're Republican and you go Hollywood, you are, by definition, the heckler, or the person watching Dynasty -- you're the ordinary person evening the score. You're never the star.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
IF WE'RE QUESTIONING OBAMA'S CHILLOUT SPOT, CAN WE TALK ABOUT McCAIN'S?
Steve Benen notes today that it's apparently politically risky for Barack Obama to visit the state where he was born:
...it seems Obama isn't being criticized for taking a break, so much as he’s being criticized for where he's taking a break. TNR's Michael Crowley noted:
Steve also notes a lengthy Politico story about this trip. And the Republican National Committee is already mocking Obama for visiting his home state, where his grandmother still lives.
Under these circumstances, I want to know when we get to start talking about where John McCain goes to relax -- his Arizona home, which (although it's just outside the city limits) he refers to as his "home in Sedona."
Know anything about Sedona, Arizona? If not, read this 2006 article from the New York Times travel section:
... I had my "aura" photographed in Sedona. It's a good city for doing things like that. There are more places here to buy crystals, incense and healing stones than there are places to purchase, say, a bag of ice or a hammer.
... I found myself on my first evening in Sedona standing on a hill called Mystic Vista, taking in the mind-bending views and trying to soak up some "vortex" energy. Sedona is famous for its so-called vortex sites, spots where the earth's energy is supposedly increased, leading to self-awareness and various kinds of healing.
I'd taken a New Age jeep tour with a company called Earth Wisdom.
... at sundown, [a] guy from Arkansas brought out a drum and starting tapping on it, Iron John-style. As if on cue, Larry-the-tour-guide pulled out a wooden flute and began accompanying him, playing cryptic Native American-inspired riffs.... It was a Sedona moment.
..."Even today, if you walked into a cafe and asked how many people had been adducted by aliens," one long-time resident, the writer Eve Conant, told me, "I suspect one in 10 would raise their hands."
...There are more types of cutting-edge massages, facials and yoga programs available [at Sedona's Enchantment Resort] than you thought existed. And it you want a past-life regression session ($220), a psychic massage ($130 an hour), a "palm reading for empowerment" ($130 an hour) or a tarot card reading ($130), you've come to the right place....
I've actually been to Sedona -- you don't have to do New Agey things there, or even go vegetarian, and the landscape and hiking come highly recommended (though I chickened out when crossing Devil's Bridge, unlike, say, this guy).
But if the press and the GOP are going to act as if Barack Obama is indulging himself in what Hawaii has to offer tourists, why shouldn't we being asking about how much time John and/or Cindy spend in healing vortexes?
Steve Benen notes today that it's apparently politically risky for Barack Obama to visit the state where he was born:
...it seems Obama isn't being criticized for taking a break, so much as he’s being criticized for where he's taking a break. TNR's Michael Crowley noted:
I know he grew up [in Hawaii] and all. But if Obama's being smeared as a highfalutin celebrity who is somehow "other" and distant from the American heartland, is Hawaii really the ideal vacation destination? ...
Steve also notes a lengthy Politico story about this trip. And the Republican National Committee is already mocking Obama for visiting his home state, where his grandmother still lives.
Under these circumstances, I want to know when we get to start talking about where John McCain goes to relax -- his Arizona home, which (although it's just outside the city limits) he refers to as his "home in Sedona."
Know anything about Sedona, Arizona? If not, read this 2006 article from the New York Times travel section:
... I had my "aura" photographed in Sedona. It's a good city for doing things like that. There are more places here to buy crystals, incense and healing stones than there are places to purchase, say, a bag of ice or a hammer.
... I found myself on my first evening in Sedona standing on a hill called Mystic Vista, taking in the mind-bending views and trying to soak up some "vortex" energy. Sedona is famous for its so-called vortex sites, spots where the earth's energy is supposedly increased, leading to self-awareness and various kinds of healing.
I'd taken a New Age jeep tour with a company called Earth Wisdom.
... at sundown, [a] guy from Arkansas brought out a drum and starting tapping on it, Iron John-style. As if on cue, Larry-the-tour-guide pulled out a wooden flute and began accompanying him, playing cryptic Native American-inspired riffs.... It was a Sedona moment.
..."Even today, if you walked into a cafe and asked how many people had been adducted by aliens," one long-time resident, the writer Eve Conant, told me, "I suspect one in 10 would raise their hands."
...There are more types of cutting-edge massages, facials and yoga programs available [at Sedona's Enchantment Resort] than you thought existed. And it you want a past-life regression session ($220), a psychic massage ($130 an hour), a "palm reading for empowerment" ($130 an hour) or a tarot card reading ($130), you've come to the right place....
I've actually been to Sedona -- you don't have to do New Agey things there, or even go vegetarian, and the landscape and hiking come highly recommended (though I chickened out when crossing Devil's Bridge, unlike, say, this guy).
But if the press and the GOP are going to act as if Barack Obama is indulging himself in what Hawaii has to offer tourists, why shouldn't we being asking about how much time John and/or Cindy spend in healing vortexes?
NOT TO BE THE DECIDER IS TO BE THE DECIDER
I'm going to ignore the gist of Maureen Dowd's latest column (except to give thanks for small blessings -- her predictable fascination with the John Edwards scandal means she went an entire column without belittling Barack Obama, something that probably won't happen again between now and Election Day).
But I did want to talk about this paragraph:
For some reason, super-strivers have a need to sell what is secretly weakest about themselves, as if they yearn for unmasking. Edwards's decency and concern for the weak in society -- except for his own wife. Bill Clinton's intellect and love of community -- except for his stupidity and destructiveness about Monica. Bush the Younger's jocular, I'm-in-charge self-confidence -- except for turning over his presidency, as no president ever has, to his Veep. Eliot Spitzer's crusade for truth, justice and the American way -- except at home.
The Edwards and Spitzer references make sense. With regard to Clinton, I don't know what the hell she's getting at. (If she'd said he sold New Democrat communitarian moralism -- V-chips and so on -- as a substitute for right-wing moralism, all the while consorting with Monica, that would at least make some kind of sense.)
But Bush? I don't think, in his mind, that there's any inconsistency between his Decider posture and his aversion to detail-sweating. For Bush, as for many old-money preppies, the whole point of being in charge is that you have people to do things for you. True power means you hardly ever have to do a damn thing, and yet you're the Alpha Dog.
I'm not saying this isn't ridiculous. Of course it is. I'm saying that Bush doesn't think this is what's "secretly weakest" about himself -- he thinks you and I just don't understand how real Decideriness works.
Dick Cheney, of course, understands perfectly, as we learned from The Washington Post last year:
...Scores of interviews with advisers to the president and vice president, as well as with other senior officials throughout the government, offer a backstage view of how the Bush White House operates. The president is "the decider," as Bush puts it, but the vice president often serves up his menu of choices.
..."My impression is that the president thinks that the Reagan style of leadership is best -- guiding the ship of state from high up on the mast," said former White House lawyer Bradford A. Berenson. "It seems to me that the vice president is more willing to get down in the wheelhouse below the decks."
...It is well known that Cheney is usually the last to speak to the president before Bush makes a decision....
And this is goodmbecause it makes the president even more powerful!
...[Ron] Suskind [in his book The Way of the World] contends Cheney established "deniability" for Bush as part of the vice president's "complex strategies, developed over decades, for how to protect a president."
"After the searing experience of being in the Nixon White House, Cheney developed a view that the failure of Watergate was not the break-in, or even the cover-up, but the way the president had, in essence, been over-briefed. There were certain things a president shouldn't know -- things that could be illegal, disruptive to key foreign relationships, or humiliating to the executive.
"They key was a signaling system, where the president made his wishes broadly known to a sufficiently powerful deputy who could take it from there. If an investigation ensued, or a foreign leader cried foul, the president could shrug. This was never something he'd authorized. The whole point of Cheney's model is to make a president less accountable for his action...."
See? Giving up power isn't a sign that you're giving up power. Giving up power is a supersecret way to get even more power!
It's brilliant!
I'm going to ignore the gist of Maureen Dowd's latest column (except to give thanks for small blessings -- her predictable fascination with the John Edwards scandal means she went an entire column without belittling Barack Obama, something that probably won't happen again between now and Election Day).
But I did want to talk about this paragraph:
For some reason, super-strivers have a need to sell what is secretly weakest about themselves, as if they yearn for unmasking. Edwards's decency and concern for the weak in society -- except for his own wife. Bill Clinton's intellect and love of community -- except for his stupidity and destructiveness about Monica. Bush the Younger's jocular, I'm-in-charge self-confidence -- except for turning over his presidency, as no president ever has, to his Veep. Eliot Spitzer's crusade for truth, justice and the American way -- except at home.
The Edwards and Spitzer references make sense. With regard to Clinton, I don't know what the hell she's getting at. (If she'd said he sold New Democrat communitarian moralism -- V-chips and so on -- as a substitute for right-wing moralism, all the while consorting with Monica, that would at least make some kind of sense.)
But Bush? I don't think, in his mind, that there's any inconsistency between his Decider posture and his aversion to detail-sweating. For Bush, as for many old-money preppies, the whole point of being in charge is that you have people to do things for you. True power means you hardly ever have to do a damn thing, and yet you're the Alpha Dog.
I'm not saying this isn't ridiculous. Of course it is. I'm saying that Bush doesn't think this is what's "secretly weakest" about himself -- he thinks you and I just don't understand how real Decideriness works.
Dick Cheney, of course, understands perfectly, as we learned from The Washington Post last year:
...Scores of interviews with advisers to the president and vice president, as well as with other senior officials throughout the government, offer a backstage view of how the Bush White House operates. The president is "the decider," as Bush puts it, but the vice president often serves up his menu of choices.
..."My impression is that the president thinks that the Reagan style of leadership is best -- guiding the ship of state from high up on the mast," said former White House lawyer Bradford A. Berenson. "It seems to me that the vice president is more willing to get down in the wheelhouse below the decks."
...It is well known that Cheney is usually the last to speak to the president before Bush makes a decision....
And this is goodmbecause it makes the president even more powerful!
...[Ron] Suskind [in his book The Way of the World] contends Cheney established "deniability" for Bush as part of the vice president's "complex strategies, developed over decades, for how to protect a president."
"After the searing experience of being in the Nixon White House, Cheney developed a view that the failure of Watergate was not the break-in, or even the cover-up, but the way the president had, in essence, been over-briefed. There were certain things a president shouldn't know -- things that could be illegal, disruptive to key foreign relationships, or humiliating to the executive.
"They key was a signaling system, where the president made his wishes broadly known to a sufficiently powerful deputy who could take it from there. If an investigation ensued, or a foreign leader cried foul, the president could shrug. This was never something he'd authorized. The whole point of Cheney's model is to make a president less accountable for his action...."
See? Giving up power isn't a sign that you're giving up power. Giving up power is a supersecret way to get even more power!
It's brilliant!
Saturday, August 09, 2008
DO AS I SAY, NOT AS I DID?
In an excerpt from his forthcoming book published in The Guardian, Michael Moore lists several ways that, in his opinion, the Democrats can lose the election. One is:
Have Obama pick a vice-presidential candidate who is a conservative white guy, or a general, or a Republican.
A general? Um ... Mike, didn't you endorse Wesley Clark four years ago?
Moore's gloss on "general" is :
Yes, it will seem like smart politics at first. Shore up Obama's lack of military experience with a hawk.
But if "hawk" is what Moore means, why does he say "general"? Is this The Guardian's editing error, or does Moore just have a really short memory?
****
BUT: Maybe that's not what's really bothering me about Moore's piece. I think what's bothering me is the main thrust of it, which is this:
"Let's snatch defeat from the jaws of victory."
"We never met an election we'd like to win."
"Why get elected when you can be defeated!"
These have been the mantras of the Democratic Party. Beginning with their stunning inability to defeat the most detested politician in American history, Richard Nixon, and continuing through their stunning inability to defeat the most detested politician in the world, George II, the Democrats are the masters of blowing it....
After the debacles of Iraq, Katrina, gas prices, home foreclosures, our standing in the world, the failure to capture Bin Laden, and revealing the identity of a CIA agent in an act of revenge, it would seem that Barack Obama should be on a cakewalk to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The man should be able to sleep his way through the rest of the campaign season.
Ha! Think again. How many Democrats does it take to lose the most easily winnable election in American history? Not many....
There's no real difference between this and the press's insistence that, for instance, Obama difficulty in staying above 50% in the polls somehow means he's trailing a guy who's having difficulty staying above 45%. (Or, as Atrios puts it, "But Obama should be leading by 150 points!")
I'll say it again: Every four years the press decides (or, rather, finds itself in agreement with the GOP) that the Republican presidential candidate represents dead-center normality and the Democrat represents elitism and weirdness, plus a dangerous tendency to like things that you can't buy at a Sam's Club, or that, even worse, exist overseas. As far as I'm concerned, every Democratic presidential candidate starts with a double-digit disadvantage for these reasons, and that was just as true this year as any other year. Under the circumstances, Obama is doing about just as well as he can do. The fact that he's still ahead in most polls is impressive, not disappointing.
In an excerpt from his forthcoming book published in The Guardian, Michael Moore lists several ways that, in his opinion, the Democrats can lose the election. One is:
Have Obama pick a vice-presidential candidate who is a conservative white guy, or a general, or a Republican.
A general? Um ... Mike, didn't you endorse Wesley Clark four years ago?
Moore's gloss on "general" is :
Yes, it will seem like smart politics at first. Shore up Obama's lack of military experience with a hawk.
But if "hawk" is what Moore means, why does he say "general"? Is this The Guardian's editing error, or does Moore just have a really short memory?
****
BUT: Maybe that's not what's really bothering me about Moore's piece. I think what's bothering me is the main thrust of it, which is this:
"Let's snatch defeat from the jaws of victory."
"We never met an election we'd like to win."
"Why get elected when you can be defeated!"
These have been the mantras of the Democratic Party. Beginning with their stunning inability to defeat the most detested politician in American history, Richard Nixon, and continuing through their stunning inability to defeat the most detested politician in the world, George II, the Democrats are the masters of blowing it....
After the debacles of Iraq, Katrina, gas prices, home foreclosures, our standing in the world, the failure to capture Bin Laden, and revealing the identity of a CIA agent in an act of revenge, it would seem that Barack Obama should be on a cakewalk to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The man should be able to sleep his way through the rest of the campaign season.
Ha! Think again. How many Democrats does it take to lose the most easily winnable election in American history? Not many....
There's no real difference between this and the press's insistence that, for instance, Obama difficulty in staying above 50% in the polls somehow means he's trailing a guy who's having difficulty staying above 45%. (Or, as Atrios puts it, "But Obama should be leading by 150 points!")
I'll say it again: Every four years the press decides (or, rather, finds itself in agreement with the GOP) that the Republican presidential candidate represents dead-center normality and the Democrat represents elitism and weirdness, plus a dangerous tendency to like things that you can't buy at a Sam's Club, or that, even worse, exist overseas. As far as I'm concerned, every Democratic presidential candidate starts with a double-digit disadvantage for these reasons, and that was just as true this year as any other year. Under the circumstances, Obama is doing about just as well as he can do. The fact that he's still ahead in most polls is impressive, not disappointing.
DOUBLE STANDARD? YEAH, I HAVE ONE. SO WHAT?
(This is not a particularly well-informed post, I realize now. I'm not proud of it, but I'll leave it up.)
I haven't posted anything until now about the John Edwards adultery story, and maybe it was a bad thing that many traditional-media sources were reluctant to cover it, but I don't really care. I don't know what their reasons were, but here's mine -- and it's the obvious reason.
In a rational world, ordinary adultery involving politicians would be titillating, gossipy news, but no more than that. If the parties worked things out and made matters right, we could move on and make political judgments based on more relevant criteria, namely the pols' job performance and positions on issues.
But we don't live in a rational world. Some politicians use attacks focused on sexual morality, including the morality of ordinary citizens, to help them win power. They attack gay people and people who have non-marital sex and people who have abortions or just believe abortion should be a legal option. They try to keep realistic sex education out of schools. Some of them, not content with classifying abortion as murder, try to classify some forms of birth control as abortion.
Needless to say, most of these politicians are Republicans, and their strain of Republicanism is the dominant one at the national level.
So, hell yes, I'll mock a D.C. Republican who runs on a platform of superior sexual morality and then is found stalking same-sex youths, or trolling for sex in public toilets, or serving his wife divorce papers while she's mortally ill. And I'll hold a Democrat to a different standard because Democrats haven't proudly branded themselves as the Party That's Better Than You in terms of sexual morality.
The party split isn't absolute. Here in New York State, after Eliot Spitzer was (justifiably) compelled to leave office after the public learned about sexual behavior on his part that was both illegal and hypocritical (he'd been a moralizing crusader against prostitution), his Democratic successor, David Paterson, acknowledged adultery in his own marriage -- and state Republicans really haven't tried to make a big deal of that. They understand local mores -- or maybe they realize that the guy they may run against Paterson, Rudy Giuliani, has a far more checkered marital past. In any case, I'd be inclined not to gloat if I learned about garden-variety adultery in the marriage of a New York State Republican.
And on the other hand, in some of the red states, pols from both parties moralize in this way. All of them deserve mockery if they get caught doing something they've declared is the Devil's work.
But on a national level, I'm going to maintain a double standard. John Edwards cheated? Fine -- he's done a bad thing. But he's a Democrat. He's not a member of the party that wants to sniff around my sexual behavior, or my neighbors', when that behavior isn't anybody's business. So I'm much less inclined to dwell on his.
(This is not a particularly well-informed post, I realize now. I'm not proud of it, but I'll leave it up.)
I haven't posted anything until now about the John Edwards adultery story, and maybe it was a bad thing that many traditional-media sources were reluctant to cover it, but I don't really care. I don't know what their reasons were, but here's mine -- and it's the obvious reason.
In a rational world, ordinary adultery involving politicians would be titillating, gossipy news, but no more than that. If the parties worked things out and made matters right, we could move on and make political judgments based on more relevant criteria, namely the pols' job performance and positions on issues.
But we don't live in a rational world. Some politicians use attacks focused on sexual morality, including the morality of ordinary citizens, to help them win power. They attack gay people and people who have non-marital sex and people who have abortions or just believe abortion should be a legal option. They try to keep realistic sex education out of schools. Some of them, not content with classifying abortion as murder, try to classify some forms of birth control as abortion.
Needless to say, most of these politicians are Republicans, and their strain of Republicanism is the dominant one at the national level.
So, hell yes, I'll mock a D.C. Republican who runs on a platform of superior sexual morality and then is found stalking same-sex youths, or trolling for sex in public toilets, or serving his wife divorce papers while she's mortally ill. And I'll hold a Democrat to a different standard because Democrats haven't proudly branded themselves as the Party That's Better Than You in terms of sexual morality.
The party split isn't absolute. Here in New York State, after Eliot Spitzer was (justifiably) compelled to leave office after the public learned about sexual behavior on his part that was both illegal and hypocritical (he'd been a moralizing crusader against prostitution), his Democratic successor, David Paterson, acknowledged adultery in his own marriage -- and state Republicans really haven't tried to make a big deal of that. They understand local mores -- or maybe they realize that the guy they may run against Paterson, Rudy Giuliani, has a far more checkered marital past. In any case, I'd be inclined not to gloat if I learned about garden-variety adultery in the marriage of a New York State Republican.
And on the other hand, in some of the red states, pols from both parties moralize in this way. All of them deserve mockery if they get caught doing something they've declared is the Devil's work.
But on a national level, I'm going to maintain a double standard. John Edwards cheated? Fine -- he's done a bad thing. But he's a Democrat. He's not a member of the party that wants to sniff around my sexual behavior, or my neighbors', when that behavior isn't anybody's business. So I'm much less inclined to dwell on his.
Friday, August 08, 2008
SKIMBLE'S GOODBYE TO ALL THIS
I'm sorry I haven't addressed Skimble's retirement from blogging, or his angry farewell post.
I have ceased to care about McStupid's Britney video and Obama's acting presidency. Or the New Yorker cover. Or Cindy McCain's 20 painkillers a day. Or the endless hand-wringing about the fucking narrative.
The 24/7 minutiae of yet another artificial campaign horserace cannot captivate me. The big story is this: The Democrats have failed to hold the existing administration accountable for its flagrant and abundant crimes against Americans and Iraqis and Afghanis and all humanity. History will not be kind to Nancy and Harry, thanks to their perfect ineffectuality. History will also judge the present crop of American citizens as unbearably privileged and hopelessly idiotic for sitting complacently watching CNN while the oily machinery behind this administration waltzed off with the contents of the US Treasury and whatever coin it found in the pockets of the American working class....
I agree that ordinary Americans regularly embrace politicians who make no secret of the fact that their intention is to aggrandize other Americans, those who aren't at all ordinary. I fault the public for letting itself be duped again and again by the fake-average poses these politicians strike as they line the pockets of the rich.
Where I differ with Skimble is that I blame those phony "regular-guy" Republicans for doing the duping, and blame Republicans for their Borg-like blockage of the agenda Democrats were elected to carry out in 2006, more than I blame the Democrats. In the Senate, for instance, Harry Reid doesn't have the power to repeal the laws of math and make 50 equal 67, and that's what he needed to be able to do over the past year and a half.
I don't blame Skimble for being sick of the narrative. It's sane to be sick of it. If I focus on it, and focus on the press that spoons it out to us, it's because the narrative is largely the reason the public falls for the bunkum year after year. Our elite journalists, terrified of being called "liberal," allay their anxieties by telling us that opposition to the war is a radical minority position and that John McCain is a universally beloved maverick and that Bush's aircraft-carrier landing gave a unified country a patriotic thrill. And on and on and on back through recent history.
We assess blame somewhat differently, and I keep at this, but I think Skimble has a point and, where we disagree, he may well have it right while I have it wrong.
Whatever the case, I hope something happens in the future that he finds a pleasant surprise -- and I hope he gets back to blogging someday, at his blog and, once in a while, maybe here, too.
You'll be missed, Skimble.
I'm sorry I haven't addressed Skimble's retirement from blogging, or his angry farewell post.
I have ceased to care about McStupid's Britney video and Obama's acting presidency. Or the New Yorker cover. Or Cindy McCain's 20 painkillers a day. Or the endless hand-wringing about the fucking narrative.
The 24/7 minutiae of yet another artificial campaign horserace cannot captivate me. The big story is this: The Democrats have failed to hold the existing administration accountable for its flagrant and abundant crimes against Americans and Iraqis and Afghanis and all humanity. History will not be kind to Nancy and Harry, thanks to their perfect ineffectuality. History will also judge the present crop of American citizens as unbearably privileged and hopelessly idiotic for sitting complacently watching CNN while the oily machinery behind this administration waltzed off with the contents of the US Treasury and whatever coin it found in the pockets of the American working class....
I agree that ordinary Americans regularly embrace politicians who make no secret of the fact that their intention is to aggrandize other Americans, those who aren't at all ordinary. I fault the public for letting itself be duped again and again by the fake-average poses these politicians strike as they line the pockets of the rich.
Where I differ with Skimble is that I blame those phony "regular-guy" Republicans for doing the duping, and blame Republicans for their Borg-like blockage of the agenda Democrats were elected to carry out in 2006, more than I blame the Democrats. In the Senate, for instance, Harry Reid doesn't have the power to repeal the laws of math and make 50 equal 67, and that's what he needed to be able to do over the past year and a half.
I don't blame Skimble for being sick of the narrative. It's sane to be sick of it. If I focus on it, and focus on the press that spoons it out to us, it's because the narrative is largely the reason the public falls for the bunkum year after year. Our elite journalists, terrified of being called "liberal," allay their anxieties by telling us that opposition to the war is a radical minority position and that John McCain is a universally beloved maverick and that Bush's aircraft-carrier landing gave a unified country a patriotic thrill. And on and on and on back through recent history.
We assess blame somewhat differently, and I keep at this, but I think Skimble has a point and, where we disagree, he may well have it right while I have it wrong.
Whatever the case, I hope something happens in the future that he finds a pleasant surprise -- and I hope he gets back to blogging someday, at his blog and, once in a while, maybe here, too.
You'll be missed, Skimble.
NOONAN ABANDONS HER RAREFIED BUBBLE FOR A BUBBLE SOMEWHAT LOWER TO THE GROUND
Peggy Noonan is a member of the media elite, so when I read the opening of her latest column, I thought she was going to tell us she'd left her lofty perch to walk among us hoi polloi:
You're in a plane and you're flying over the campaign at a level of about 10,000 feet, and you look down and see: Not much has changed. Battle lines fixed, topography the same, troops pretty much where they were.
But land the plane, walk around and talk to people, and you realize: This thing is moving. Things are shifting around a bit. That's what I see looking back at the past four weeks....
She certainly seems interested in what we in the rabble are thinking:
There's a thing that's out there and it's big, and latent, and somehow always taken into account and always ignored, and political professionals always assume they understand it. It has been called many things the past 50 years, "the silent center," "the silent majority," "the coalition," "the base." The idea of it has evolved as its composition has evolved, but the fact that it's big, and relatively silent, and somehow always latent, maintains.... I see it as the old America, and if and when it reasserts itself, the campaign will shift indeed....
And, in fact, she thinks it is shifting.
But what's her evidence -- conversations with actual voters? Heavens, no. She may not still be at 10,000 feet, but she's hardly letting her feet touch ordinary ground. She has three sources:
1. Her own feelings.
2. Recent polls (no, not the ones that show Obama holding his lead).
and
3. Conversations with two of her friends:
But the other day a friend said something I hadn't heard before: "This is 1948, and Obama is Tom Dewey" -- the sleek, well-groomed, inevitable one who lost.... even the cliches have begun to shift....
Two weeks ago a journalist, a moderate liberal, spoke to me of what he called Mr. Obama's arrogance....
That's it. That's the sum total of her evidence. "The cliches have begun to shift" because one friend -- a fellow political pro -- referenced Dewey in 1948.
Oh, but her own feelings are deduced from a close reading of political news:
Mr. Obama got tagged the past month as something new, not the candidate from Men's Vogue but arrogant, aloof and somehow ethereal.
Excuse me, but Noonan's fellow Republicans put out a press release calling Obama "arrogant" (and "insulated," which is very much like "aloof") in February 2007. One of their sources was this column by Noonan's catty doppelganger, Maureen Dowd, which had recently appeared and called Obama "sniffy," "huffy" and "emotionally detached" (and, for good measure, "legally blonde"). "Something new"? Those are the oldest bits in the Obama-bashing playbook.
Ah, but McCain hung out with bikers, which thrills Noonan and literally makes her write the words "vroom vroom." So you know she's in tune with regular folks.
Peggy Noonan is a member of the media elite, so when I read the opening of her latest column, I thought she was going to tell us she'd left her lofty perch to walk among us hoi polloi:
You're in a plane and you're flying over the campaign at a level of about 10,000 feet, and you look down and see: Not much has changed. Battle lines fixed, topography the same, troops pretty much where they were.
But land the plane, walk around and talk to people, and you realize: This thing is moving. Things are shifting around a bit. That's what I see looking back at the past four weeks....
She certainly seems interested in what we in the rabble are thinking:
There's a thing that's out there and it's big, and latent, and somehow always taken into account and always ignored, and political professionals always assume they understand it. It has been called many things the past 50 years, "the silent center," "the silent majority," "the coalition," "the base." The idea of it has evolved as its composition has evolved, but the fact that it's big, and relatively silent, and somehow always latent, maintains.... I see it as the old America, and if and when it reasserts itself, the campaign will shift indeed....
And, in fact, she thinks it is shifting.
But what's her evidence -- conversations with actual voters? Heavens, no. She may not still be at 10,000 feet, but she's hardly letting her feet touch ordinary ground. She has three sources:
1. Her own feelings.
2. Recent polls (no, not the ones that show Obama holding his lead).
and
3. Conversations with two of her friends:
But the other day a friend said something I hadn't heard before: "This is 1948, and Obama is Tom Dewey" -- the sleek, well-groomed, inevitable one who lost.... even the cliches have begun to shift....
Two weeks ago a journalist, a moderate liberal, spoke to me of what he called Mr. Obama's arrogance....
That's it. That's the sum total of her evidence. "The cliches have begun to shift" because one friend -- a fellow political pro -- referenced Dewey in 1948.
Oh, but her own feelings are deduced from a close reading of political news:
Mr. Obama got tagged the past month as something new, not the candidate from Men's Vogue but arrogant, aloof and somehow ethereal.
Excuse me, but Noonan's fellow Republicans put out a press release calling Obama "arrogant" (and "insulated," which is very much like "aloof") in February 2007. One of their sources was this column by Noonan's catty doppelganger, Maureen Dowd, which had recently appeared and called Obama "sniffy," "huffy" and "emotionally detached" (and, for good measure, "legally blonde"). "Something new"? Those are the oldest bits in the Obama-bashing playbook.
Ah, but McCain hung out with bikers, which thrills Noonan and literally makes her write the words "vroom vroom." So you know she's in tune with regular folks.
WELCOME BACK, MY FRIENDS, TO THE SHOW THAT NEVER ENDS
So there's going to be a Hillary Clinton speech at the Democratic convention on Tuesday night and, now, this:
NBC News has learned that the Obama campaign, in an effort to quiet talk of the Obama-Clinton drama, has offered Bill Clinton a speaking role on Wednesday night at the Democratic convention -- before the vice presidential running mate speaks.
Sources say that Clinton in fact will speak....
More here.
****
Regular readers of this blog know that I had negative things to say about Obama's decision to do the Berlin speech -- and then I was upbeat when recent poll numbers came out. This isn't a wild mood swing -- I think he's running a good campaign. But I still think he loses votes when he's surrounded with too much spectacle and drama. And now, on top of the big football-stadium speech he's planning, he's going to have to endure a couple of nights of the Clintons' rock-star act (plus, possibly, a contested roll-call vote against Hillary) before he does his rock-star act. Not good.
Or is it possible that the inevitably ecstatic reaction to the Clintons' speeches will make the Obama speech on Thursday seem less hubristic than it would have seemed otherwise? I just don't know.
I wonder if Obama should have made his speech like a stadium-rock show, in one way -- by inviting the Clintons up to speak, the way a band might invite a fellow superstar to play a couple of numbers. That might have worked better -- the two Clintons as Obama's opening acts. Then it wouldn't have been a solo show that could be called an ego trip -- it would be Demopalooza.
At the very least, he really ought to share the stage by ending the speech with a hands-in-the-air victory tableau -- himself, his running mate, and the two Clintons. I remember the post-convention image of Dukakis joined by Bentsen and Jackson and it utterly buried the notion of party disunity, which was the talk of the political world before that. (Dukakis's subsequent collapse was for other reasons.) Dukakis came out of that convention with a huge lead; a unity tableau might not do Obama as much good, but it will be a plus, and I think he needs to do it. It would also be an indelible visual rebuke to all (the press, the McCain campaign) who want to use the Clintons to bash Obama.
So there's going to be a Hillary Clinton speech at the Democratic convention on Tuesday night and, now, this:
NBC News has learned that the Obama campaign, in an effort to quiet talk of the Obama-Clinton drama, has offered Bill Clinton a speaking role on Wednesday night at the Democratic convention -- before the vice presidential running mate speaks.
Sources say that Clinton in fact will speak....
More here.
****
Regular readers of this blog know that I had negative things to say about Obama's decision to do the Berlin speech -- and then I was upbeat when recent poll numbers came out. This isn't a wild mood swing -- I think he's running a good campaign. But I still think he loses votes when he's surrounded with too much spectacle and drama. And now, on top of the big football-stadium speech he's planning, he's going to have to endure a couple of nights of the Clintons' rock-star act (plus, possibly, a contested roll-call vote against Hillary) before he does his rock-star act. Not good.
Or is it possible that the inevitably ecstatic reaction to the Clintons' speeches will make the Obama speech on Thursday seem less hubristic than it would have seemed otherwise? I just don't know.
I wonder if Obama should have made his speech like a stadium-rock show, in one way -- by inviting the Clintons up to speak, the way a band might invite a fellow superstar to play a couple of numbers. That might have worked better -- the two Clintons as Obama's opening acts. Then it wouldn't have been a solo show that could be called an ego trip -- it would be Demopalooza.
At the very least, he really ought to share the stage by ending the speech with a hands-in-the-air victory tableau -- himself, his running mate, and the two Clintons. I remember the post-convention image of Dukakis joined by Bentsen and Jackson and it utterly buried the notion of party disunity, which was the talk of the political world before that. (Dukakis's subsequent collapse was for other reasons.) Dukakis came out of that convention with a huge lead; a unity tableau might not do Obama as much good, but it will be a plus, and I think he needs to do it. It would also be an indelible visual rebuke to all (the press, the McCain campaign) who want to use the Clintons to bash Obama.
Thursday, August 07, 2008
ZOMG!!!! OBAMA SAID AMERICA IS SOMETIMES BETTER THAN IT IS AT OTHER TIMES!!!!
Somebody must have had to fetch a double dose of smelling salts for Hot Air's Ed Morrissey -- he's freaking out (as are others on the right) over a campaign clip in which Barack Obama tells a child at a campaign appearance,
America is …, uh, is no longer, uh … what it could be, what it once was. And I say to myself, I don't want that future for my children.
On YouTube the clip is titled "Barack Obama To Little Girl: America's Not So Great."
Er, kids? If it's not permissible to say that America is less great at some moments than it is at other moments, then I guess the guy on this 1980 campaign button is a big fat commie:
This one, too.
Yup, Reagan said we had to make America great again. That meant that, in 1980, he didn't think America was great.
Filthy America-basher. (And I hear he was from Hollywood, too.)
****
UPDATE: I see that Limbaugh is whining about this now. Meanwhile, I go over to Amazon and someone who calls himself "Long-Time Rush Limbaugh Fan" is recommending a Dittohead reading list that includes such titles as Men in Black: How the Supreme Court Is Destroying America and Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline. See, right-wingers are allowed to talk all they want about an America being "destroyed" or being in "decline" -- no patriotism questions there! Well, righties, Barack Obama reserves the same right. The only difference is, he says it's your side's fault. Oh, one other difference: he's right.
Somebody must have had to fetch a double dose of smelling salts for Hot Air's Ed Morrissey -- he's freaking out (as are others on the right) over a campaign clip in which Barack Obama tells a child at a campaign appearance,
America is …, uh, is no longer, uh … what it could be, what it once was. And I say to myself, I don't want that future for my children.
On YouTube the clip is titled "Barack Obama To Little Girl: America's Not So Great."
Er, kids? If it's not permissible to say that America is less great at some moments than it is at other moments, then I guess the guy on this 1980 campaign button is a big fat commie:
This one, too.
Yup, Reagan said we had to make America great again. That meant that, in 1980, he didn't think America was great.
Filthy America-basher. (And I hear he was from Hollywood, too.)
****
UPDATE: I see that Limbaugh is whining about this now. Meanwhile, I go over to Amazon and someone who calls himself "Long-Time Rush Limbaugh Fan" is recommending a Dittohead reading list that includes such titles as Men in Black: How the Supreme Court Is Destroying America and Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline. See, right-wingers are allowed to talk all they want about an America being "destroyed" or being in "decline" -- no patriotism questions there! Well, righties, Barack Obama reserves the same right. The only difference is, he says it's your side's fault. Oh, one other difference: he's right.
BARACK, SAVE JOHN McCAIN FROM HIMSELF! DO TOWN HALL MEETINGS WITH HIM!
In today's Washington Post David Broder argues that the currently nasty presidential campaign will get less nasty if Obama will simply agree to do a lot of town meetings with John McCain. Broder quotes McCain:
"When you have to stand on a stage with your opponent, as I've done in other campaigns, you obviously have a tendency to improve the relationship.... When you have to spend time with somebody, I think it changes the equation."
Really, John? You mean like this?
Or like this?
Give me a break. Broder and McCain may manage to turn this into a meme that's endlessly repeated in the media ("Senator Obama says he wants a civil campaign, but he refused John McCain's offer of a series of town meetings!"), but not only is "Save McCain from himself!" a ridiculous argument, the evidence of this primary season suggests that it wouldn't even work.
****
(I see Michael Crowley of The New Republic already said this.)
In today's Washington Post David Broder argues that the currently nasty presidential campaign will get less nasty if Obama will simply agree to do a lot of town meetings with John McCain. Broder quotes McCain:
"When you have to stand on a stage with your opponent, as I've done in other campaigns, you obviously have a tendency to improve the relationship.... When you have to spend time with somebody, I think it changes the equation."
Really, John? You mean like this?
Or like this?
Give me a break. Broder and McCain may manage to turn this into a meme that's endlessly repeated in the media ("Senator Obama says he wants a civil campaign, but he refused John McCain's offer of a series of town meetings!"), but not only is "Save McCain from himself!" a ridiculous argument, the evidence of this primary season suggests that it wouldn't even work.
****
(I see Michael Crowley of The New Republic already said this.)
I REALIZE THIS IS HERESY IN THE LEFT BLOGOSPHERE, BUT...
...um, er, maybe Bruce Ivins was the anthrax killer? Maybe what we're getting is legit?
There's no question that the case is circumstantial. There's a hell of a lot of room for doubt.
But if this is disinformation, it seems very odd that what used to be, so to speak, Monica Goodling's Justice Department is now telling us that part of the anthrax killer's motive is religious-right anger at pro-choice politicians. It also seems odd that the Bush DOJ is telling us that the return address on one anthrax letter was a coded reference to a supposed case of religious persecution promoted by the American Family Association, a Christian-right organization to which, we're told, Ivins gave several donations, including one just after the AFA reported on the case in question.
If you're not clear what I'm getting at in that second reference, see page 2 of the DOJ document excerpts collected by the Smoking Gun (click to enlarge):
To me that's very, very intriguing circumstantial information, if it's an accurate account.
If you're looking for evidence of a Bush administration cover-up in this case, it seems to me you could just as easily ask whether Ivins wasn't a top suspect because the government didn't want to pursue a guy whose motives made the Christian right look bad.
(Me, I'm more inclined to suspect that the screw-up has less to do with politics and more to do with the FBI's excessive faith in "profiling," which -- however entertaining it may seem on Criminal Minds and in The Silence of the Lambs -- is utter bollocks, as this New Yorker story from last year makes abundantly clear. The FBI was -- as usual -- looking for a "loner," and Ivins seems not to have fit that description.)
I have nothing but praise for Glenn Greenwald's efforts to discover why the news media fell for the lie that bentonite in the anthrax was evidence of a link to Iraq. And I'm sure that, for a lot of you, that makes the whole story a poisoned tree, and you think all its fruit is bad by definition. I agree that we shouldn't just put aside any suspicions about the current story. But the current narrative is, at least in part: Religious Rightist with Mental Problems Kills Five. I'm not going to reject that out of hand.
...um, er, maybe Bruce Ivins was the anthrax killer? Maybe what we're getting is legit?
There's no question that the case is circumstantial. There's a hell of a lot of room for doubt.
But if this is disinformation, it seems very odd that what used to be, so to speak, Monica Goodling's Justice Department is now telling us that part of the anthrax killer's motive is religious-right anger at pro-choice politicians. It also seems odd that the Bush DOJ is telling us that the return address on one anthrax letter was a coded reference to a supposed case of religious persecution promoted by the American Family Association, a Christian-right organization to which, we're told, Ivins gave several donations, including one just after the AFA reported on the case in question.
If you're not clear what I'm getting at in that second reference, see page 2 of the DOJ document excerpts collected by the Smoking Gun (click to enlarge):
To me that's very, very intriguing circumstantial information, if it's an accurate account.
If you're looking for evidence of a Bush administration cover-up in this case, it seems to me you could just as easily ask whether Ivins wasn't a top suspect because the government didn't want to pursue a guy whose motives made the Christian right look bad.
(Me, I'm more inclined to suspect that the screw-up has less to do with politics and more to do with the FBI's excessive faith in "profiling," which -- however entertaining it may seem on Criminal Minds and in The Silence of the Lambs -- is utter bollocks, as this New Yorker story from last year makes abundantly clear. The FBI was -- as usual -- looking for a "loner," and Ivins seems not to have fit that description.)
I have nothing but praise for Glenn Greenwald's efforts to discover why the news media fell for the lie that bentonite in the anthrax was evidence of a link to Iraq. And I'm sure that, for a lot of you, that makes the whole story a poisoned tree, and you think all its fruit is bad by definition. I agree that we shouldn't just put aside any suspicions about the current story. But the current narrative is, at least in part: Religious Rightist with Mental Problems Kills Five. I'm not going to reject that out of hand.
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
HEY, McNASTY, THE SPITBALLS AREN'T WORKING
Hell, even I'm happy about the new polls, and I've been just about the gloomiest pro-Obama blogger around. I don't care about the ridiculous Dems-are-doomed notes in the stories ("Trouble Signs in Obama's Lead") -- when Obama is up by 5% in the latest Time poll, after being up by 5% in the last Time poll, and leads by 6 in the new CBS poll, after leading by 6 in the last CBS poll, he's, um, sustaining his lead. Got it?
Two interesting stats. From CBS:
Just 20 percent of those surveyed say Obama is "very likely" to be an effective commander in chief, down 4 percentage points from last month. McCain is seen as "very likely" to be effective by 38 percent of respondents, down eight points from last month but still significantly ahead of Obama.
We're supposed to read that as a sign that Obama's trip failed, and maybe it is a sign of that, but what's far more interesting to me is that McCain's C-in-C numbers are dropping faster than Obama's. Why? Why are they dropping at all? Well, both polls were conducted starting July 31, just after the Britney ad hit, and ending August 4 (Time) or August 5 (CBS). I think the problem is the McCain campaign's clownishness. I think he looked serious to 8% more people before this clown period than he does now.
And there's this, from Time:
Asked which candidate is most likeable, Obama beats McCain 65% to 20%....
I don't have comparable numbers from the previous Time poll, so I don't know if this is a decline -- but wasn't McCain supposed to be likeable, too? Shouldn't this be a tad less lopsided? I wonder if McCain's coming off as cranky and not funny at all -- I confess I thought this stuff would work, but apparently the act is bombing.
****
UPDATE: Hey, Tom Daschle -- there is no "poll dip." See paragraph #1 above. Relax. We're winning.
Hell, even I'm happy about the new polls, and I've been just about the gloomiest pro-Obama blogger around. I don't care about the ridiculous Dems-are-doomed notes in the stories ("Trouble Signs in Obama's Lead") -- when Obama is up by 5% in the latest Time poll, after being up by 5% in the last Time poll, and leads by 6 in the new CBS poll, after leading by 6 in the last CBS poll, he's, um, sustaining his lead. Got it?
Two interesting stats. From CBS:
Just 20 percent of those surveyed say Obama is "very likely" to be an effective commander in chief, down 4 percentage points from last month. McCain is seen as "very likely" to be effective by 38 percent of respondents, down eight points from last month but still significantly ahead of Obama.
We're supposed to read that as a sign that Obama's trip failed, and maybe it is a sign of that, but what's far more interesting to me is that McCain's C-in-C numbers are dropping faster than Obama's. Why? Why are they dropping at all? Well, both polls were conducted starting July 31, just after the Britney ad hit, and ending August 4 (Time) or August 5 (CBS). I think the problem is the McCain campaign's clownishness. I think he looked serious to 8% more people before this clown period than he does now.
And there's this, from Time:
Asked which candidate is most likeable, Obama beats McCain 65% to 20%....
I don't have comparable numbers from the previous Time poll, so I don't know if this is a decline -- but wasn't McCain supposed to be likeable, too? Shouldn't this be a tad less lopsided? I wonder if McCain's coming off as cranky and not funny at all -- I confess I thought this stuff would work, but apparently the act is bombing.
****
UPDATE: Hey, Tom Daschle -- there is no "poll dip." See paragraph #1 above. Relax. We're winning.
DOG WHISTLE? WHAT DOG WHISTLE?
Michelle Bachmann, the God-bothering, gay-bashing, Bush-worshiping Minnesota congresswoman who's now an ANWR drilling zealot, sends a racist message in code via the religious-right site OneNewsNow, while pretending to talk about energy:
An urban America -- the Democrats' vision?
...Representative Michele Bachmann (R-Minnesota) says it has not escaped Democrats what the cost of gasoline and loss of jobs are doing to the country.
"This is their agenda," Bachmann states bluntly. "I know it is hard to believe, it's hard to fathom -- but this is 'mission accomplished' for them," she asserts. "They want Americans to take transit and move to the inner cities. They want Americans to move to the urban core, live in tenements, [and] take light rail to their government jobs. That's their vision for America." ...
I know, I know -- there have been some false positives among recent sightings of racism on the political landscape. I think Bob Herbert is overreaching when he sees sinister intent in the use of tall ("phallic") buildings in McCain's Paris/Britney ad. I think Slate's Timothy Noah is really straining when he says talking about Obama's thinness is a way to make us think about his race. (Plus, Tim, I would have like a bit of credit after you cited my Amy Chozick research.)
But really, Michelle -- "inner cities"?
"Urban core"?
"Tenements"?
That's so blatant it's barely code.
Michelle Bachmann, the God-bothering, gay-bashing, Bush-worshiping Minnesota congresswoman who's now an ANWR drilling zealot, sends a racist message in code via the religious-right site OneNewsNow, while pretending to talk about energy:
An urban America -- the Democrats' vision?
...Representative Michele Bachmann (R-Minnesota) says it has not escaped Democrats what the cost of gasoline and loss of jobs are doing to the country.
"This is their agenda," Bachmann states bluntly. "I know it is hard to believe, it's hard to fathom -- but this is 'mission accomplished' for them," she asserts. "They want Americans to take transit and move to the inner cities. They want Americans to move to the urban core, live in tenements, [and] take light rail to their government jobs. That's their vision for America." ...
I know, I know -- there have been some false positives among recent sightings of racism on the political landscape. I think Bob Herbert is overreaching when he sees sinister intent in the use of tall ("phallic") buildings in McCain's Paris/Britney ad. I think Slate's Timothy Noah is really straining when he says talking about Obama's thinness is a way to make us think about his race. (Plus, Tim, I would have like a bit of credit after you cited my Amy Chozick research.)
But really, Michelle -- "inner cities"?
"Urban core"?
"Tenements"?
That's so blatant it's barely code.
SYNCHRONICITY
Two big headlines at Memeorandum right now:
"Bin Laden's Former Driver Convicted by Military Tribunal"
"Flashback: Seven years ago today, Bush received 'Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.' memo."
Amazing how the timing worked out so that first story trumped the second one.
But I'm sure it's just a coincidence.
Two big headlines at Memeorandum right now:
"Bin Laden's Former Driver Convicted by Military Tribunal"
"Flashback: Seven years ago today, Bush received 'Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.' memo."
Amazing how the timing worked out so that first story trumped the second one.
But I'm sure it's just a coincidence.
THE UNCROSSABLE THRESHOLD OBAMA HAS ACTUALLY CROSSED SEVERAL TIMES
Politico today:
Yet, in poll after poll, Obama conspicuously fails to cross the 50-percent threshold.
Yes, he just can't seem to cross that threshold -- except in the polls where he actually has. Such as these, just from the summer:
* CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll, July 27-29, 2008: McCain 44, Obama 51
* Research 2000 for news media clients. July 25-27, 2008: McCain 39, Obama 51
* CBS News/New York Times Poll. July 7-14, 2008: McCain 40, Obama 51
* Newsweek Poll, June 18-19, 2008: McCain 36, Obama 51
By the way, there was a presidential candidate who went all summer without ever going above 50% in polls from Newsweek, Pew, Fox, Time, AP, the L.A. Times, NBC/Wall Street Journal, Marist, ARG, and ABC. Hell, he never even got above 45% in summer polls from CBS, Zogby, Quinnipiac, NPR, Democracy Corps, ICR, and TIPP. He got above 50% in one (1) summer CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll.
That big fat unelectable loser was George W. Bush in 2004. (Keep scrolling through the "Earlier polling" pages for the numbers.)
And yes, he was a polarizing figure running an increasingly unpopular war, but if he'd had a "(D)" next to his name, the press would have said, "He's a wartime president, and the public always rallies around wartime presidents. Plus, the economy's in pretty good shape. Why isn't he doing better?"
Politico today:
Yet, in poll after poll, Obama conspicuously fails to cross the 50-percent threshold.
Yes, he just can't seem to cross that threshold -- except in the polls where he actually has. Such as these, just from the summer:
* CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll, July 27-29, 2008: McCain 44, Obama 51
* Research 2000 for news media clients. July 25-27, 2008: McCain 39, Obama 51
* CBS News/New York Times Poll. July 7-14, 2008: McCain 40, Obama 51
* Newsweek Poll, June 18-19, 2008: McCain 36, Obama 51
By the way, there was a presidential candidate who went all summer without ever going above 50% in polls from Newsweek, Pew, Fox, Time, AP, the L.A. Times, NBC/Wall Street Journal, Marist, ARG, and ABC. Hell, he never even got above 45% in summer polls from CBS, Zogby, Quinnipiac, NPR, Democracy Corps, ICR, and TIPP. He got above 50% in one (1) summer CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll.
That big fat unelectable loser was George W. Bush in 2004. (Keep scrolling through the "Earlier polling" pages for the numbers.)
And yes, he was a polarizing figure running an increasingly unpopular war, but if he'd had a "(D)" next to his name, the press would have said, "He's a wartime president, and the public always rallies around wartime presidents. Plus, the economy's in pretty good shape. Why isn't he doing better?"
FOUR LEGS GOOD, TWO LEGS BETTER
So I guess -- after making two ads a few months ago mocking the Woodstock festival -- John McCain is just fine now attending a shindig with a lot of naked women walking around and the national anthem being played on electric guitars.
Just want to make sure I'm clear on that.
Oh, and I guess mock-pimping his wife as a potential nude beauty contestant isn't going to lead to a whiff of protest from all the PUMAs who were accusing Obama of sexism....
So I guess -- after making two ads a few months ago mocking the Woodstock festival -- John McCain is just fine now attending a shindig with a lot of naked women walking around and the national anthem being played on electric guitars.
Just want to make sure I'm clear on that.
Oh, and I guess mock-pimping his wife as a potential nude beauty contestant isn't going to lead to a whiff of protest from all the PUMAs who were accusing Obama of sexism....
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
HE SAYS "PRIDE IN BEING IGNORANT" LIKE IT'S A BAD THING!
In a post this morning about the Republicans' inane campaign to ignore Barack Obama's energy plan and focus on (and mock) his statement on tire pressure (which was, after all, in response to a question about what individuals can do themselves immediately in the gas crisis), Steve Benen wrote this:
I was talking to a friend of mine yesterday about all of this, and he said I was overly concerned with facts and truths. Republicans win elections because they don't care -- in a case like this, the only thing anyone will remember is the stunt/prop, not the fact that they were blatantly lying and blatantly wrong.
That may very well be. Indeed, it probably points to a vicious cycle -- Republicans make up a lie. We point out how insane the lie is, and feel better about being smarter than Republicans. Voters, not knowing better, believe the lie. Satisfied with the reward, Republicans feel encouraged to make up a new lie, which again leads us to point out how insane the lie is....
The problem is, Steve is skipping a step. After "We point out how insane the lie is, and feel better about being smarter than Republicans," what happens is that voters (or at least some of them) resent us for being smarty-pants -- and resent the politician we're defending for the same reason.
Ta-Nehisi Coates addressed this today in response to another issue -- the sneering reference by a McCain campaign spokesman to the herb tea Obama likes and the power bars he eats. Coates says:
What the elitism slur banks on is the idea that people don't resent those who have more than them, they resent those who know more than them. Or at least seem to.
I think something like that is going on with regard to Obama and energy. When he downplays what must seem to a lot of people like the obvious immediate windfall to be had from "drill here, drill now," when he says (correctly) that it wouldn't be immediate and wouldn't be as much of a windfall as is widely believed, and then when he adds that a simple adjustment by individual drivers can achieve a lot, it's quite possible that people think he's just a smart guy trying to bamboozle them. Hunh? What's he saying? Obviously drilling here and drilling now would be the solution ... er, right?
They resent his fancy logic, which says that changing oil supply isn't as simple as it looks. So they want him brought down a peg.
That's why this part of Obama's response isn't going to cut it with those voters:
"Now two points, one, they know they're lying about what my energy plan is, but the other thing is they're making fun of a step that every expert says would absolutely reduce our oil consumption by 3 to 4 percent. It's like these guys take pride in being ignorant...."
Yes, that's precisely what the McCainites are taking pride in. They're reassuring voters that there's nothing to be gained from paying attention to the smart-sounding guy, and, in fact, it's better to just make fun of him.
The only question is how many voters feel good in response to the McCain approach -- and how many can listen to someone who's offering nuanced solutions without feeling diminished.
In a post this morning about the Republicans' inane campaign to ignore Barack Obama's energy plan and focus on (and mock) his statement on tire pressure (which was, after all, in response to a question about what individuals can do themselves immediately in the gas crisis), Steve Benen wrote this:
I was talking to a friend of mine yesterday about all of this, and he said I was overly concerned with facts and truths. Republicans win elections because they don't care -- in a case like this, the only thing anyone will remember is the stunt/prop, not the fact that they were blatantly lying and blatantly wrong.
That may very well be. Indeed, it probably points to a vicious cycle -- Republicans make up a lie. We point out how insane the lie is, and feel better about being smarter than Republicans. Voters, not knowing better, believe the lie. Satisfied with the reward, Republicans feel encouraged to make up a new lie, which again leads us to point out how insane the lie is....
The problem is, Steve is skipping a step. After "We point out how insane the lie is, and feel better about being smarter than Republicans," what happens is that voters (or at least some of them) resent us for being smarty-pants -- and resent the politician we're defending for the same reason.
Ta-Nehisi Coates addressed this today in response to another issue -- the sneering reference by a McCain campaign spokesman to the herb tea Obama likes and the power bars he eats. Coates says:
What the elitism slur banks on is the idea that people don't resent those who have more than them, they resent those who know more than them. Or at least seem to.
I think something like that is going on with regard to Obama and energy. When he downplays what must seem to a lot of people like the obvious immediate windfall to be had from "drill here, drill now," when he says (correctly) that it wouldn't be immediate and wouldn't be as much of a windfall as is widely believed, and then when he adds that a simple adjustment by individual drivers can achieve a lot, it's quite possible that people think he's just a smart guy trying to bamboozle them. Hunh? What's he saying? Obviously drilling here and drilling now would be the solution ... er, right?
They resent his fancy logic, which says that changing oil supply isn't as simple as it looks. So they want him brought down a peg.
That's why this part of Obama's response isn't going to cut it with those voters:
"Now two points, one, they know they're lying about what my energy plan is, but the other thing is they're making fun of a step that every expert says would absolutely reduce our oil consumption by 3 to 4 percent. It's like these guys take pride in being ignorant...."
Yes, that's precisely what the McCainites are taking pride in. They're reassuring voters that there's nothing to be gained from paying attention to the smart-sounding guy, and, in fact, it's better to just make fun of him.
The only question is how many voters feel good in response to the McCain approach -- and how many can listen to someone who's offering nuanced solutions without feeling diminished.
IS McCAIN RUNNING WITH ROMNEY, OR JUST RIPPING OFF HIS SLOGAN?
The first line of John McCain's new ad is: "Washington's broken."
Interesting -- "Washington is broken" was a phrase Mitt Romney repeated incessantly during his campaign.
Maybe this means Romney's the VP choice. Or it may just mean McCain likes to steal things -- he already ripped off Barack Obama's slogan a few weeks ago, recasting "Change You Can Believe In" as "A Leader We Can Believe In."
(If McCain were a Democrat, pundits would be all over this compulsion to change slogans and pilfer the new ones from other people -- they'd be calling him a thief and saying he "doesn't know who he is.")
Oh, and of course he borrowed his current campaign strategy from Hillary Clinton.
For what it's worth, he also refers to himself in the ad as "the original maverick." (Is that supposed to remind us of "original gangsta"? Are pathetic desperate-to-be-hip Republicans going to start calling McCain "the O.M."? If so, please shoot me.)
The first line of John McCain's new ad is: "Washington's broken."
Interesting -- "Washington is broken" was a phrase Mitt Romney repeated incessantly during his campaign.
Maybe this means Romney's the VP choice. Or it may just mean McCain likes to steal things -- he already ripped off Barack Obama's slogan a few weeks ago, recasting "Change You Can Believe In" as "A Leader We Can Believe In."
(If McCain were a Democrat, pundits would be all over this compulsion to change slogans and pilfer the new ones from other people -- they'd be calling him a thief and saying he "doesn't know who he is.")
Oh, and of course he borrowed his current campaign strategy from Hillary Clinton.
For what it's worth, he also refers to himself in the ad as "the original maverick." (Is that supposed to remind us of "original gangsta"? Are pathetic desperate-to-be-hip Republicans going to start calling McCain "the O.M."? If so, please shoot me.)
DAVID BROOKS CALLS OBAMA A ROOTLESS COSMOPOLITAN
OK, "rootless cosmpolitan" isn't quite the way Brooks words it, but that's the gist of his theory as to why Obama's not winning in a landslide:
...When we're judging candidates (or friends), we don't just judge the individuals but the milieus that produced them. We judge them by the connections that exist beyond choice and the ground where they will go home to be laid to rest. Andrew Jackson was a backwoodsman. John Kennedy had his clan. Ronald Reagan was forever associated with the small-town virtues of Dixon and Jimmy Carter with Plains.
...If Obama is fully a member of any club -- and perhaps he isn't -- it is the club of smart post-boomer meritocrats. We now have a cohort of rising leaders, Obama's age and younger, who climbed quickly through elite schools and now ascend from job to job. They are conscientious and idealistic while also being coldly clever and self-aware. It's not clear what the rest of America makes of them.
So, cautiously, the country watches. This should be a Democratic wipeout. But voters seem to be slow to trust a sojourner they cannot place.
"Post-boomer meritocrats" almost sounds like a translation from the original Russian.
Elsewhere in the column, Brooks explicitly makes the case for how disturbing the rootlessness isto him -- er, to voters, allegedly:
There is a sense that because of his unique background and temperament, Obama lives apart. He put one foot in the institutions he rose through on his journey but never fully engaged. As a result, voters have trouble placing him in his context, understanding the roots and values in which he is ineluctably embedded.
...He was in the [University of Chicago] law school, but not of it.
... His childhood was a peripatetic journey through Kansas, Indonesia, Hawaii and beyond. He absorbed things from those diverse places but was not fully of them.
His college years were spent on both coasts. He was a community organizer for three years but left before he could be truly effective. He became a state legislator, but he was in the Legislature, not of it....
And on and on.
****
What's preposterous about this is that our last three Republican presidents all benefited from an utterly phony sense of rootedness. Reagan, as Brooks says, was believed to have "small-town virtues" even though he went Hollywood 43 years before he was elected president. Both Bushes were old-money preppies, born in New England, who pretended to be down-home Texans, and the younger Bush compounded the fraud by cynically buying an ersatz "ranch" a year before running for president.
And if rootedness is what Americans want in a president, what happened in 1988? No candidate's roots had been more on display than those of Michael Dukakis, a son of Greek immigrants. But his blueblood opponent painted him as someone whose ideas were "born in Harvard Yard's boutique," and he lost the election. Roots don't matter if the GOP character-assassination machine successfully paints you as a sinister egghead and, by implication, internationalist.
****
UPDATE: Right-wing hatchetman Robert Stacy McCain cuts to the chase and calls Obama "rootless," accompanied by an Obama picture captioned in Russian.
****
AND: Why is Obama not way ahead? Primarily because he's a Democrat. Every Democratic presidential candidate starts at a double-digit disadvantage, simply because the well-rooted Republican slanders on Democrats are reapplied every four years, with the "liberal" media's help. Every four years, the Republican is the dead-center salt of the earth and the Democrat is the coastal elitist weirdo freak who's going to tax us to death and get us all killed. I talk about some of that here.
OK, "rootless cosmpolitan" isn't quite the way Brooks words it, but that's the gist of his theory as to why Obama's not winning in a landslide:
...When we're judging candidates (or friends), we don't just judge the individuals but the milieus that produced them. We judge them by the connections that exist beyond choice and the ground where they will go home to be laid to rest. Andrew Jackson was a backwoodsman. John Kennedy had his clan. Ronald Reagan was forever associated with the small-town virtues of Dixon and Jimmy Carter with Plains.
...If Obama is fully a member of any club -- and perhaps he isn't -- it is the club of smart post-boomer meritocrats. We now have a cohort of rising leaders, Obama's age and younger, who climbed quickly through elite schools and now ascend from job to job. They are conscientious and idealistic while also being coldly clever and self-aware. It's not clear what the rest of America makes of them.
So, cautiously, the country watches. This should be a Democratic wipeout. But voters seem to be slow to trust a sojourner they cannot place.
"Post-boomer meritocrats" almost sounds like a translation from the original Russian.
Elsewhere in the column, Brooks explicitly makes the case for how disturbing the rootlessness is
There is a sense that because of his unique background and temperament, Obama lives apart. He put one foot in the institutions he rose through on his journey but never fully engaged. As a result, voters have trouble placing him in his context, understanding the roots and values in which he is ineluctably embedded.
...He was in the [University of Chicago] law school, but not of it.
... His childhood was a peripatetic journey through Kansas, Indonesia, Hawaii and beyond. He absorbed things from those diverse places but was not fully of them.
His college years were spent on both coasts. He was a community organizer for three years but left before he could be truly effective. He became a state legislator, but he was in the Legislature, not of it....
And on and on.
****
What's preposterous about this is that our last three Republican presidents all benefited from an utterly phony sense of rootedness. Reagan, as Brooks says, was believed to have "small-town virtues" even though he went Hollywood 43 years before he was elected president. Both Bushes were old-money preppies, born in New England, who pretended to be down-home Texans, and the younger Bush compounded the fraud by cynically buying an ersatz "ranch" a year before running for president.
And if rootedness is what Americans want in a president, what happened in 1988? No candidate's roots had been more on display than those of Michael Dukakis, a son of Greek immigrants. But his blueblood opponent painted him as someone whose ideas were "born in Harvard Yard's boutique," and he lost the election. Roots don't matter if the GOP character-assassination machine successfully paints you as a sinister egghead and, by implication, internationalist.
****
UPDATE: Right-wing hatchetman Robert Stacy McCain cuts to the chase and calls Obama "rootless," accompanied by an Obama picture captioned in Russian.
****
AND: Why is Obama not way ahead? Primarily because he's a Democrat. Every Democratic presidential candidate starts at a double-digit disadvantage, simply because the well-rooted Republican slanders on Democrats are reapplied every four years, with the "liberal" media's help. Every four years, the Republican is the dead-center salt of the earth and the Democrat is the coastal elitist weirdo freak who's going to tax us to death and get us all killed. I talk about some of that here.
ENGLAND'S JUDY MILLER SERVED AS PRESS AGENT FOR BUSH FORGERY
This, obviously, is the story of the day:
A new book by the author Ron Suskind claims that the White House ordered the CIA to forge a back-dated, handwritten letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam Hussein.
Suskind writes in "The Way of the World," to be published Tuesday, that the alleged forgery -- adamantly denied by the White House -- was designed to portray a false link between Hussein's regime and al Qaeda as a justification for the Iraq war....
How did this story reach the public? Courtesy of Con Coughlin, Defence ansd Security Editor of England's Telegraph -- and, as I'll note below, he has a long history of carrying the War Party's water.
The letter's existence has been reported before, and it had been written about as if it were genuine. It was passed in Baghdad to a reporter for The (London) Sunday Telegraph [Coughlin] who wrote about it on the front page of Dec. 14, 2003, under the headline, "Terrorist behind September 11 strike 'was trained by Saddam.'"
..."The White House had concocted a fake letter from Habbush to Saddam, backdated to July 1, 2001," Suskind writes. "It said that 9/11 ringleader Mohammad Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq -- thus showing, finally, that there was an operational link between Saddam and al Qaeda, something the Vice President's Office had been pressing CIA to prove since 9/11 as a justification to invade Iraq. There is no link."
The Coughlin article is no longer online at the Telegraph's site, but Free Republic has preserved it. That wasn't the only lie in the document it cites -- there was also this:
The second part of the memo, which is headed "Niger Shipment", contains a report about an unspecified shipment -- believed to be uranium -- that it says has been transported to Iraq via Libya and Syria.
Yup, the Bushies packed this memo with lies.
This is how Coughlin works. He reported a story in the 1990s alleging ties between currency forgers and Moammar Qaddafi's son; the son successfully sued for libel and it was revealed that the story was an MI6 fabrication. He pushed the Iraq "45 minutes"story. And now he's moved on to retailing scary, often unbelievable stories about Iran -- a lot about nukes, as well as gems such as "Iran Plotting to Groom Bin Laden's Successor," from November 2006. But my personal favorite, which I blogged about in March 2006, was this one:
Iran's Revolutionary Guards have taken the extraordinary step of cutting down thousands of trees in Teheran to prevent United Nations inspectors from finding traces of enriched uranium from a top-secret nuclear plant.
...According to western intelligence sources, more than 7,000 trees which may have contained incriminating nuclear traces have been lost in a popular parkland area in the city near the Lavizan atomic research centre....
Yeah, right, that'll work -- because no nuclear traces will remain in, y'know, the soil.
This, obviously, is the story of the day:
A new book by the author Ron Suskind claims that the White House ordered the CIA to forge a back-dated, handwritten letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam Hussein.
Suskind writes in "The Way of the World," to be published Tuesday, that the alleged forgery -- adamantly denied by the White House -- was designed to portray a false link between Hussein's regime and al Qaeda as a justification for the Iraq war....
How did this story reach the public? Courtesy of Con Coughlin, Defence ansd Security Editor of England's Telegraph -- and, as I'll note below, he has a long history of carrying the War Party's water.
The letter's existence has been reported before, and it had been written about as if it were genuine. It was passed in Baghdad to a reporter for The (London) Sunday Telegraph [Coughlin] who wrote about it on the front page of Dec. 14, 2003, under the headline, "Terrorist behind September 11 strike 'was trained by Saddam.'"
..."The White House had concocted a fake letter from Habbush to Saddam, backdated to July 1, 2001," Suskind writes. "It said that 9/11 ringleader Mohammad Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq -- thus showing, finally, that there was an operational link between Saddam and al Qaeda, something the Vice President's Office had been pressing CIA to prove since 9/11 as a justification to invade Iraq. There is no link."
The Coughlin article is no longer online at the Telegraph's site, but Free Republic has preserved it. That wasn't the only lie in the document it cites -- there was also this:
The second part of the memo, which is headed "Niger Shipment", contains a report about an unspecified shipment -- believed to be uranium -- that it says has been transported to Iraq via Libya and Syria.
Yup, the Bushies packed this memo with lies.
This is how Coughlin works. He reported a story in the 1990s alleging ties between currency forgers and Moammar Qaddafi's son; the son successfully sued for libel and it was revealed that the story was an MI6 fabrication. He pushed the Iraq "45 minutes"story. And now he's moved on to retailing scary, often unbelievable stories about Iran -- a lot about nukes, as well as gems such as "Iran Plotting to Groom Bin Laden's Successor," from November 2006. But my personal favorite, which I blogged about in March 2006, was this one:
Iran's Revolutionary Guards have taken the extraordinary step of cutting down thousands of trees in Teheran to prevent United Nations inspectors from finding traces of enriched uranium from a top-secret nuclear plant.
...According to western intelligence sources, more than 7,000 trees which may have contained incriminating nuclear traces have been lost in a popular parkland area in the city near the Lavizan atomic research centre....
Yeah, right, that'll work -- because no nuclear traces will remain in, y'know, the soil.
Monday, August 04, 2008
BUT THEY'RE ALL MAVERICKS, AREN'T THEY?
Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com had an op-ed in today's L.A. Times called "Why McCain Is Still in It":
...How has McCain done it? It has mostly to do with his reputation as a moderate. In [an] NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, only 21% of voters said they viewed McCain as "very conservative," while 34% pegged him as a moderate. As long as he maintains his moderate brand, McCain will seem acceptable to some large number of independent voters and some smaller number of Democrats.
...The GOP will nominate a candidate who is widely perceived as being to the left of the party's conservative base, whereas the Democratic Party will again pick a standard-bearer more authentically liberal than centrist.
... the Republicans seem wise to have compromised, because polling showed that Obama was headed for a landslide victory if his opponent was an identifiably right-wing candidate....
But here's the thing: By now, no one the Republicans nominated would be "an identifiably right-wing candidate," because the press would be doing what it always does in presidential election years: defining the Democrat as a big scary liberal and declaring that wherever the Republican stands is dead center (which means to the left of the GOP's actual stances).
If the nominee had been Giuliani, we'd be expected to ignore his Podhoretz-brand neoconservatism and contempt for African-Americans and focus exclusively on his moderate stands on abortion and gay rights. Huckabee? Well, don't think about the fact that he doesn't believe in evolution or preached at John Hagee's church -- he's a different kind of evangelical; hey, he supports arts education! With Fred Thompson, even though he spoke the right-wing lingo better than any other big-name candidate ("Mr. Thompson has been talking about things conservatives actually talk about," Peggy Noonan wrote shortly before he got into the race), we'd be reminded that he voted for only one impeachment charge against Bill Clinton and he supported McCain-Feingold and, perhaps most important, "Everyone loves Fred" according to no less an authority than Sally Quinn. And as for Romney, we'd have been told that his headlong rush to the right for the primaries was just a ruse, and the "real" Romney is the pro-choice guy from Massachusetts with the health care plan.
Hell, if Newt Gingrich had somehow run and won the nomination, we'd be told he's a moderate -- he's been known to collaborate with Hillary!
McCain had a big head start, but by now any Republican presumptive nominee would be, according to the press, a "maverick," a "different" sort of Republican, a moderate who's breaking with party tradition. The press and GOP spinners might have to work harder to make this case with another nominee than with McCain, but trust me, the job would get done.
Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com had an op-ed in today's L.A. Times called "Why McCain Is Still in It":
...How has McCain done it? It has mostly to do with his reputation as a moderate. In [an] NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, only 21% of voters said they viewed McCain as "very conservative," while 34% pegged him as a moderate. As long as he maintains his moderate brand, McCain will seem acceptable to some large number of independent voters and some smaller number of Democrats.
...The GOP will nominate a candidate who is widely perceived as being to the left of the party's conservative base, whereas the Democratic Party will again pick a standard-bearer more authentically liberal than centrist.
... the Republicans seem wise to have compromised, because polling showed that Obama was headed for a landslide victory if his opponent was an identifiably right-wing candidate....
But here's the thing: By now, no one the Republicans nominated would be "an identifiably right-wing candidate," because the press would be doing what it always does in presidential election years: defining the Democrat as a big scary liberal and declaring that wherever the Republican stands is dead center (which means to the left of the GOP's actual stances).
If the nominee had been Giuliani, we'd be expected to ignore his Podhoretz-brand neoconservatism and contempt for African-Americans and focus exclusively on his moderate stands on abortion and gay rights. Huckabee? Well, don't think about the fact that he doesn't believe in evolution or preached at John Hagee's church -- he's a different kind of evangelical; hey, he supports arts education! With Fred Thompson, even though he spoke the right-wing lingo better than any other big-name candidate ("Mr. Thompson has been talking about things conservatives actually talk about," Peggy Noonan wrote shortly before he got into the race), we'd be reminded that he voted for only one impeachment charge against Bill Clinton and he supported McCain-Feingold and, perhaps most important, "Everyone loves Fred" according to no less an authority than Sally Quinn. And as for Romney, we'd have been told that his headlong rush to the right for the primaries was just a ruse, and the "real" Romney is the pro-choice guy from Massachusetts with the health care plan.
Hell, if Newt Gingrich had somehow run and won the nomination, we'd be told he's a moderate -- he's been known to collaborate with Hillary!
McCain had a big head start, but by now any Republican presumptive nominee would be, according to the press, a "maverick," a "different" sort of Republican, a moderate who's breaking with party tradition. The press and GOP spinners might have to work harder to make this case with another nominee than with McCain, but trust me, the job would get done.
WOULD McCAIN'S INAUGURAL ADDRESS FEATURE A DRUMMER PLAYING RIMSHOTS?
I said a few months ago that John McCain comes off like Don Rickles -- a little bullet-headed fireplug of a guy who specializes in insult jokes. Hell, the two of them even look alike:
I didn't expect that, like Rickles, McCain would construct an entire act -- er, campaign -- based on nothing but insult jokes.
But here we are. Every bit of McCain's campaign seems as if it's building up to a rimshot.
Hey, Obama and the press -- get a room! (Ta-da BOOM!)
Paris and Britney! (Ta-da BOOM!)
Hasselhoff! Charlton Heston! Tire gauges! (Ta-da BOOM! Ta-da BOOM! Ta-da BOOM!)
Why isn't this the issue?
We know what it's like to have a clown for president -- we've had one for eight years. Barack Obama should talk about this. Barack Obama should make ads about this.
We don't need an insult comic for president. We need a grown-up.
I said a few months ago that John McCain comes off like Don Rickles -- a little bullet-headed fireplug of a guy who specializes in insult jokes. Hell, the two of them even look alike:
I didn't expect that, like Rickles, McCain would construct an entire act -- er, campaign -- based on nothing but insult jokes.
But here we are. Every bit of McCain's campaign seems as if it's building up to a rimshot.
Hey, Obama and the press -- get a room! (Ta-da BOOM!)
Paris and Britney! (Ta-da BOOM!)
Hasselhoff! Charlton Heston! Tire gauges! (Ta-da BOOM! Ta-da BOOM! Ta-da BOOM!)
Why isn't this the issue?
We know what it's like to have a clown for president -- we've had one for eight years. Barack Obama should talk about this. Barack Obama should make ads about this.
We don't need an insult comic for president. We need a grown-up.
IS OBAMA'S CLASS PROBLEM JUST AN AGE PROBLEM?
It's nice to see another truism about Obama debunked:
Democratic Sen. Barack Obama holds a 2 to 1 edge over Republican Sen. John McCain among the nation's low-wage workers....
Obama's advantage is attributable largely to overwhelming support from two traditional Democratic constituencies: African Americans and Hispanics. But even among white workers -- a group of voters that has been targeted by both parties as a key to victory in November -- Obama leads McCain by 10 percentage points, 47 percent to 37 percent, and has the advantage as the more empathetic candidate....
(Emphasis mine.)
But what about Hillary Clinton's advantage over Obama in blue-collar areas? Well, maybe this explains it:
The new poll included interviews with 1,350 randomly selected workers 18 to 64 years old who put in at least 30 hours a week but earned $27,000 or less last year.
This poll doesn't survey people from working-class areas. This poll surveys lower-wage people who are actually of (traditional) working age. Obama may still have somewhat of a problem in working-class enclaves, but it's likely that that problem is with older workers and retirees, not people in the midst of their working years.
Notice something about the crowd at Bronko's, the Indiana workingman's bar where Hillary famously downed her beer-and-a-shot?
The suit-wearers are local pols, Clinton campaign staff, and Secret Service. The non-suit-wearers? They're the locals -- and there aren't a lot of young people in that crowd.
We know Obama's having some trouble with older voters in general. In the most recent Quinnipiac swing-state poll, he leads Florida by 2 overall, but trails by 10 among respondents 55 and over; in Ohio, it's another 2-point lead overall, but a 7-point deficit among older respondents; in Pennsylvania, he's +7 overall, but tied among older respondents.
The very good, myth-busting news is that there's nothing inherent about the combination of low melanin and callused hands that turns people off to Obama -- younger low-wage workers actually seem quite persuadable. Obama's challenge is to get younger blue-collar people to vote at a high enough rate to offset the wariness (and, almost certainly, racial close-mindedness) of their elders, in a country where older people are traditionally more eager voters.
It's nice to see another truism about Obama debunked:
Democratic Sen. Barack Obama holds a 2 to 1 edge over Republican Sen. John McCain among the nation's low-wage workers....
Obama's advantage is attributable largely to overwhelming support from two traditional Democratic constituencies: African Americans and Hispanics. But even among white workers -- a group of voters that has been targeted by both parties as a key to victory in November -- Obama leads McCain by 10 percentage points, 47 percent to 37 percent, and has the advantage as the more empathetic candidate....
(Emphasis mine.)
But what about Hillary Clinton's advantage over Obama in blue-collar areas? Well, maybe this explains it:
The new poll included interviews with 1,350 randomly selected workers 18 to 64 years old who put in at least 30 hours a week but earned $27,000 or less last year.
This poll doesn't survey people from working-class areas. This poll surveys lower-wage people who are actually of (traditional) working age. Obama may still have somewhat of a problem in working-class enclaves, but it's likely that that problem is with older workers and retirees, not people in the midst of their working years.
Notice something about the crowd at Bronko's, the Indiana workingman's bar where Hillary famously downed her beer-and-a-shot?
The suit-wearers are local pols, Clinton campaign staff, and Secret Service. The non-suit-wearers? They're the locals -- and there aren't a lot of young people in that crowd.
We know Obama's having some trouble with older voters in general. In the most recent Quinnipiac swing-state poll, he leads Florida by 2 overall, but trails by 10 among respondents 55 and over; in Ohio, it's another 2-point lead overall, but a 7-point deficit among older respondents; in Pennsylvania, he's +7 overall, but tied among older respondents.
The very good, myth-busting news is that there's nothing inherent about the combination of low melanin and callused hands that turns people off to Obama -- younger low-wage workers actually seem quite persuadable. Obama's challenge is to get younger blue-collar people to vote at a high enough rate to offset the wariness (and, almost certainly, racial close-mindedness) of their elders, in a country where older people are traditionally more eager voters.
McCAIN: PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE MISERABLE FAILURE WHO SPOKE LAST NIGHT
A few weeks ago I read that Team McCain's plan for George W. Bush at the Republican convention is to have him speak on the first night. That was presented as a way to put a few days' distance between Bush's speech and McCain's. I hadn't quite focused on the fact that, as William Kristol points out in today's New York Times, that means the speech will be on Labor Day night, when (although Kristol doesn't say this) most Americans will be too preoccupied with the last hours of the holiday (evening traffic, cheap-beer-and-burger dyspepsia) to pay Bush much mind.
But Kristol tells us that the McCain people are really determined to keep you from noticing the Bush speech, although, again, Kristol doesn't put it quite that way. Here's what he says about McCain's VP pick:
...the current inclination is to wait until after Labor Day weekend, which ends with President Bush's speech Monday, the first night of the G.O.P. convention. Then the McCain camp would hope to seize attention Tuesday with the V.P. announcement.
And keep TV news clips of Bush down to an absolute minimum.
Unpopular president? What unpopular president?
A few weeks ago I read that Team McCain's plan for George W. Bush at the Republican convention is to have him speak on the first night. That was presented as a way to put a few days' distance between Bush's speech and McCain's. I hadn't quite focused on the fact that, as William Kristol points out in today's New York Times, that means the speech will be on Labor Day night, when (although Kristol doesn't say this) most Americans will be too preoccupied with the last hours of the holiday (evening traffic, cheap-beer-and-burger dyspepsia) to pay Bush much mind.
But Kristol tells us that the McCain people are really determined to keep you from noticing the Bush speech, although, again, Kristol doesn't put it quite that way. Here's what he says about McCain's VP pick:
...the current inclination is to wait until after Labor Day weekend, which ends with President Bush's speech Monday, the first night of the G.O.P. convention. Then the McCain camp would hope to seize attention Tuesday with the V.P. announcement.
And keep TV news clips of Bush down to an absolute minimum.
Unpopular president? What unpopular president?
Sunday, August 03, 2008
PRACTICALLY THE ONLY THING REPUBLICANS KNOW HOW TO DO, BUT THEY DO IT EXCEEDINGLY WELL
I've said many times that Republicans couldn't govern their way out of a paper bag, but they know how to do two things well: line their contributors' pockets and practice character assassination on their enemies.
One reason they're much, much better than Democrats at besmirching character is that they spend inordinate amounts of time perfecting the ability to walk right up to the line separating "acceptable" and "unacceptable" discourse and getting as close as possible to "unacceptable" without (because they've also mastered deniability) going over that line. Democrats still don't have any idea how that works, and when they try to return fire, as often as not they are perceived as having crossed the line.
And here we go again:
Only 22% Say McCain Ad Racist, But Over Half (53%) See Obama Dollar-bill Comment That Way
Sixty-nine percent (69%) of the nation's voters say they've seen news coverage of the McCain campaign commercial that includes images of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton and suggests that Barack Obama is a celebrity just like them. Of those, just 22% say the ad was racist while 63% say it was not.
However, Obama's comment that his Republican opponent will try to scare people because Obama does not look like all the other presidents on dollar bills was seen as racist by 53%. Thirty-eight percent (38%) disagree....
Character assassination is the modern Republican Party's Manhattan Project, its race to the moon, its construction of the Pyramids. Just imagining what could be accomplished if this much brainpower were actually devoted to an endeavor that benefits the human race is enough to make a grown man weep.
I've said many times that Republicans couldn't govern their way out of a paper bag, but they know how to do two things well: line their contributors' pockets and practice character assassination on their enemies.
One reason they're much, much better than Democrats at besmirching character is that they spend inordinate amounts of time perfecting the ability to walk right up to the line separating "acceptable" and "unacceptable" discourse and getting as close as possible to "unacceptable" without (because they've also mastered deniability) going over that line. Democrats still don't have any idea how that works, and when they try to return fire, as often as not they are perceived as having crossed the line.
And here we go again:
Only 22% Say McCain Ad Racist, But Over Half (53%) See Obama Dollar-bill Comment That Way
Sixty-nine percent (69%) of the nation's voters say they've seen news coverage of the McCain campaign commercial that includes images of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton and suggests that Barack Obama is a celebrity just like them. Of those, just 22% say the ad was racist while 63% say it was not.
However, Obama's comment that his Republican opponent will try to scare people because Obama does not look like all the other presidents on dollar bills was seen as racist by 53%. Thirty-eight percent (38%) disagree....
Character assassination is the modern Republican Party's Manhattan Project, its race to the moon, its construction of the Pyramids. Just imagining what could be accomplished if this much brainpower were actually devoted to an endeavor that benefits the human race is enough to make a grown man weep.
SHORTER MAUREEN DOWD, ATTEMPTING TO CHANNEL JANE AUSTEN ON THE SUBJECT OF BARACK OBAMA
"The sable gentleman is exceedingly well favored. Ah, but would that he were not uppity!"
"The sable gentleman is exceedingly well favored. Ah, but would that he were not uppity!"
Saturday, August 02, 2008
REASONS NOT TO BE CHEERFUL, PART 3
Gallup yesterday:
Gallup Daily: Race Tied at 44%
According to Gallup Poll Daily tracking from July 29-31, John McCain and Barack Obama are now tied at 44% in the preferences of national registered voters....
Nine-point lead: gone.
Yeah, those bad McCain optics during the Obama overseas trip and the blistering media criticism of McCain's negative campaign are really killing the old maverick, aren't they?
****
I've been saying that McCain is actually benefiting from his decision to express Nixonian resentment of the elites and swells (defined as Obama and the media). I keep wondering why that works for Republicans as often as it does -- why they're able to link whining about being victims to a perception that they're the tough guys. And I realize that when you talk about a Nixon strategy, you have to go back to George Wallace -- Nixon poached a lot of his act from Wallace. Which means it get back to non-coastal, non-elite whites versus Northeast Corridor and West Coast cities (where, yes, non-white people live) plus college students, college professors, the media, secularists, people who aren't sexually conservative, urban muggers, big-city junkies, frou-frou entertainers ... am I leaving anything out?
This is always the subtext of GOP whining. It's about race, but it's about a lot more than race. It's the kind of class war we have in America instead of the class war we should have (i.e., actual non-rich people versus the rich). And McCain, the child of privilege and husband of an heiress, is fighting it right now, against a black son of a sometime welfare mother, and he's apparently winning.
*****
I see that Steve Kornacki of The New York Observer agrees with what I said yesterday about the dubious political value of Obama's speeches to huge crowds:
Obama's Mass Addresses Are Great Theater, So-So Politics
...While Mr. Obama has stirred profound passion and devotion among his supporters, there isn't any evidence -- yet -- that the compelling sounds and images produced when he addresses his flock prompt more ambivalent voters to give in to their emotions and jump on the bandwagon.
The best example of this came in the run-up the New Hampshire primary earlier this year.
On the Thursday night before the primary, Mr. Obama handily defeated Mrs. Clinton in the lead-off Iowa caucuses..... In defeat that night, Mrs. Clinton listlessly addressed a small crowd in Iowa, surrounded on stage by a collection of anonymous politicians and her husband's former appointees. The pictures and words communicated to television viewers exactly what Iowa's results did: loser.
Mr. Obama, meanwhile, triumphantly addressed a sea of supporters, speaking in sweeping terms about his candidacy's historic potential. And the stagecraft was perfect: No political hacks in sight, just jubilant young supporters -- the future! -- cheering (at a safe distance) behind the candidate. This was the scene that millions of Americans witnessed on the small screen.
And it only got better for Mr. Obama the following night, when he addressed a traditional pre-primary dinner in New Hampshire. As he was called to the stage, his supporters rushed forward, as if a prophet were arriving, and had to be warned back – repeatedly – by the public address announcer. Mrs. Clinton, by contrast, was lustily booed....
And then Mrs. Clinton, apropos of just about nothing, won the primary. Mr. Obama and his supporters had created some of the most powerful and arresting television imaginable, but it didn't matter.
The same basic phenomenon has played out repeatedly since then....
Read the whole thing. It's going to happen at the convention again -- another huge crowd, in this case (as Kornacki notes) with comparisons to Dr. King (this will be on the 45th anniversary of the "I Have a Dream" speech) -- and then, to judge from current patters, no bounce. I think it could be worse -- accusations of hubris because it will be said that he sees himself as a second King.
As a supporter, I really, really wish he wouldn't do this. And I'm really tired of hearing from some of you that I'm the problem if I say this. Facts are facts -- he simply doesn't get a bounce from these big moments, and he gives McCain the opportunity to be the resentful Everyman, the surrogate for every ordinary voter who's never caught a break in life. That's absolutely not how we want McCain to look.
Gallup yesterday:
Gallup Daily: Race Tied at 44%
According to Gallup Poll Daily tracking from July 29-31, John McCain and Barack Obama are now tied at 44% in the preferences of national registered voters....
Nine-point lead: gone.
Yeah, those bad McCain optics during the Obama overseas trip and the blistering media criticism of McCain's negative campaign are really killing the old maverick, aren't they?
****
I've been saying that McCain is actually benefiting from his decision to express Nixonian resentment of the elites and swells (defined as Obama and the media). I keep wondering why that works for Republicans as often as it does -- why they're able to link whining about being victims to a perception that they're the tough guys. And I realize that when you talk about a Nixon strategy, you have to go back to George Wallace -- Nixon poached a lot of his act from Wallace. Which means it get back to non-coastal, non-elite whites versus Northeast Corridor and West Coast cities (where, yes, non-white people live) plus college students, college professors, the media, secularists, people who aren't sexually conservative, urban muggers, big-city junkies, frou-frou entertainers ... am I leaving anything out?
This is always the subtext of GOP whining. It's about race, but it's about a lot more than race. It's the kind of class war we have in America instead of the class war we should have (i.e., actual non-rich people versus the rich). And McCain, the child of privilege and husband of an heiress, is fighting it right now, against a black son of a sometime welfare mother, and he's apparently winning.
*****
I see that Steve Kornacki of The New York Observer agrees with what I said yesterday about the dubious political value of Obama's speeches to huge crowds:
Obama's Mass Addresses Are Great Theater, So-So Politics
...While Mr. Obama has stirred profound passion and devotion among his supporters, there isn't any evidence -- yet -- that the compelling sounds and images produced when he addresses his flock prompt more ambivalent voters to give in to their emotions and jump on the bandwagon.
The best example of this came in the run-up the New Hampshire primary earlier this year.
On the Thursday night before the primary, Mr. Obama handily defeated Mrs. Clinton in the lead-off Iowa caucuses..... In defeat that night, Mrs. Clinton listlessly addressed a small crowd in Iowa, surrounded on stage by a collection of anonymous politicians and her husband's former appointees. The pictures and words communicated to television viewers exactly what Iowa's results did: loser.
Mr. Obama, meanwhile, triumphantly addressed a sea of supporters, speaking in sweeping terms about his candidacy's historic potential. And the stagecraft was perfect: No political hacks in sight, just jubilant young supporters -- the future! -- cheering (at a safe distance) behind the candidate. This was the scene that millions of Americans witnessed on the small screen.
And it only got better for Mr. Obama the following night, when he addressed a traditional pre-primary dinner in New Hampshire. As he was called to the stage, his supporters rushed forward, as if a prophet were arriving, and had to be warned back – repeatedly – by the public address announcer. Mrs. Clinton, by contrast, was lustily booed....
And then Mrs. Clinton, apropos of just about nothing, won the primary. Mr. Obama and his supporters had created some of the most powerful and arresting television imaginable, but it didn't matter.
The same basic phenomenon has played out repeatedly since then....
Read the whole thing. It's going to happen at the convention again -- another huge crowd, in this case (as Kornacki notes) with comparisons to Dr. King (this will be on the 45th anniversary of the "I Have a Dream" speech) -- and then, to judge from current patters, no bounce. I think it could be worse -- accusations of hubris because it will be said that he sees himself as a second King.
As a supporter, I really, really wish he wouldn't do this. And I'm really tired of hearing from some of you that I'm the problem if I say this. Facts are facts -- he simply doesn't get a bounce from these big moments, and he gives McCain the opportunity to be the resentful Everyman, the surrogate for every ordinary voter who's never caught a break in life. That's absolutely not how we want McCain to look.
Friday, August 01, 2008
REMIND ME AGAIN: WHAT BENEFIT WAS OBAMA SUPPOSED TO DERIVE FROM THE BERLIN SPEECH?
(Plus: a guy who's really obsessed with Obama and blond women)
Is it possible that we're going to look back on the Berlin speech as the moment Barack Obama lost the election? It's given him nothing but trouble -- after a visit to the Middle East that was virtually all positives. What exactly was the speech supposed to accomplish? I really can't figure that out. I know what it did accomplish: It gave McCain and the Republicans a huge peg on which to hang many, many negative ideas about Obama (totalitarian, cult leader, vacuous, vain ... add your own to the list). And now it's led to the Paris/Britney ad, which led to charges of race baiting, which led Obama to charge McCain with racism at a moment when McCain had sufficient deniability to turn the accusation around and put Obama on the defensive again.
All this from one high-profile speech. Hey, good thing Obama's not going to try to make any more big rock-star speeches to mega-crowds. Oh wait -- yes he is, when he accepts the nomination. Dammit, how do we stop him? How do we get him back into the convention hall for that speech?
Not to pat myself on the back, but even before the speech took place -- back when McCain was running his press-loves-Obama videos -- I wrote this, and the only thing I got wrong was the gender of the celebrities he'd be compared to:
This all makes me wish Obama would turn around and come home right now, before he gets to Europe. He's established his foreign policy bona fides; far too much of what's left is the movie star/sex god part, and that has the potential to hurt him in Nixonland. This is the part where he runs the risk of seeming less like a political figure and more like a celebrity with political notions -- Richard Gere talking to the Dalai Lama or, to put it in Nixon-era terms, Warren Beatty in a turtleneck flashing a peace sign next to a kohl-eyed ingenue in a miniskirt.
****
And yes, as I said yesterday, I'm inclined to think McCain's Paris-Britney ad is saying that Obama is a ditzy blond (celebrity) chick, not saying he wants to have sex with blond chicks -- surely there are photos and videos of Obama greeting (i.e., having close contact with) admirers who happen to be female and blond, possibly even in Berlin, where I'm told blondness is fairly common; it would have been easy for Team McCain to slip such images into the ad, insisting that the only point intended was that Hollywood Obama makes some starstruck people go ga-ga. There's nothing like that, so I think the point is that Obama's the bimbo -- or, as John Aravosis says, that Obama's a big swish:
I know a thing or two about gay-baiting. I've been working on gay civil rights issue since the early 1990s....
Yesterday, a McCain spokesman described Obama as fussy and prone to hysterics. A few days earlier, we were told that Obama was "flitting" around Europe. And before that, a GOP operative called Obama "a fancy lad." Also, who is Obama compared to in the latest McCain ad? ... Two women, and kind of ditzy women at that - Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. Let's review. A fussy, fancy lad who flits around Europe, is prone to hysteria, and reminds you of ditzy blonde chicks. Sorry, but that's a stereotypical gay guy.
****
But maybe it doesn't matter, because some people already have the black man/blond woman sex combination on the brain. Have you seen the site for Obama's Chocolate Nuts?
Yeah, this is a really high-minded product. The scantily clad blonde interacting with the nuts (occasionally on all fours) can be seen in action in promotional videos (on the site and at YouTube). Bring the kiddies.
David Feingold, the proprietor of OCN, is a comedian and has no connection to the McCain campaign -- he seems to have ties the Barely Political crowd, the people who brought you Obama Girl (which would explain the Obama Girl vibe here). He thinks Obama's African grandmother "looks like Aunt Jemima" and, having concluded that he can't support Obama because, in his opinion, Obama was inadequately dismissive of Louis Farrakhan, he now riffs that Obama sends him fund-raising letters addressed to "Dirty Jew Jewerstein." I guess hubba-hubba thoughts about Obama and blondes just go together with that kind of angry, ethnicity-obsessed thinking naturally -- for him and probably for a lot of other people.
(Plus: a guy who's really obsessed with Obama and blond women)
Is it possible that we're going to look back on the Berlin speech as the moment Barack Obama lost the election? It's given him nothing but trouble -- after a visit to the Middle East that was virtually all positives. What exactly was the speech supposed to accomplish? I really can't figure that out. I know what it did accomplish: It gave McCain and the Republicans a huge peg on which to hang many, many negative ideas about Obama (totalitarian, cult leader, vacuous, vain ... add your own to the list). And now it's led to the Paris/Britney ad, which led to charges of race baiting, which led Obama to charge McCain with racism at a moment when McCain had sufficient deniability to turn the accusation around and put Obama on the defensive again.
All this from one high-profile speech. Hey, good thing Obama's not going to try to make any more big rock-star speeches to mega-crowds. Oh wait -- yes he is, when he accepts the nomination. Dammit, how do we stop him? How do we get him back into the convention hall for that speech?
Not to pat myself on the back, but even before the speech took place -- back when McCain was running his press-loves-Obama videos -- I wrote this, and the only thing I got wrong was the gender of the celebrities he'd be compared to:
This all makes me wish Obama would turn around and come home right now, before he gets to Europe. He's established his foreign policy bona fides; far too much of what's left is the movie star/sex god part, and that has the potential to hurt him in Nixonland. This is the part where he runs the risk of seeming less like a political figure and more like a celebrity with political notions -- Richard Gere talking to the Dalai Lama or, to put it in Nixon-era terms, Warren Beatty in a turtleneck flashing a peace sign next to a kohl-eyed ingenue in a miniskirt.
****
And yes, as I said yesterday, I'm inclined to think McCain's Paris-Britney ad is saying that Obama is a ditzy blond (celebrity) chick, not saying he wants to have sex with blond chicks -- surely there are photos and videos of Obama greeting (i.e., having close contact with) admirers who happen to be female and blond, possibly even in Berlin, where I'm told blondness is fairly common; it would have been easy for Team McCain to slip such images into the ad, insisting that the only point intended was that Hollywood Obama makes some starstruck people go ga-ga. There's nothing like that, so I think the point is that Obama's the bimbo -- or, as John Aravosis says, that Obama's a big swish:
I know a thing or two about gay-baiting. I've been working on gay civil rights issue since the early 1990s....
Yesterday, a McCain spokesman described Obama as fussy and prone to hysterics. A few days earlier, we were told that Obama was "flitting" around Europe. And before that, a GOP operative called Obama "a fancy lad." Also, who is Obama compared to in the latest McCain ad? ... Two women, and kind of ditzy women at that - Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. Let's review. A fussy, fancy lad who flits around Europe, is prone to hysteria, and reminds you of ditzy blonde chicks. Sorry, but that's a stereotypical gay guy.
****
But maybe it doesn't matter, because some people already have the black man/blond woman sex combination on the brain. Have you seen the site for Obama's Chocolate Nuts?
Yeah, this is a really high-minded product. The scantily clad blonde interacting with the nuts (occasionally on all fours) can be seen in action in promotional videos (on the site and at YouTube). Bring the kiddies.
David Feingold, the proprietor of OCN, is a comedian and has no connection to the McCain campaign -- he seems to have ties the Barely Political crowd, the people who brought you Obama Girl (which would explain the Obama Girl vibe here). He thinks Obama's African grandmother "looks like Aunt Jemima" and, having concluded that he can't support Obama because, in his opinion, Obama was inadequately dismissive of Louis Farrakhan, he now riffs that Obama sends him fund-raising letters addressed to "Dirty Jew Jewerstein." I guess hubba-hubba thoughts about Obama and blondes just go together with that kind of angry, ethnicity-obsessed thinking naturally -- for him and probably for a lot of other people.
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