Totally Unprofessional....

By any reasonable standard, the McCain campaign's response to his forgetfulness as to how many homes he owns is childish, whiny, grating, and totally unprofessional - at least by any standard other than political campaigning. Which I guess is the best his campaign can do.

The saddest part is not McCain's perpetuation of his gutter tactics - it's that, as in past elections, they seem to work.
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Update: Apparently McCain's confusion arises from the fact that he doesn't own any homes. The number "zero" eluded him, but... well, whatever. In any event, that makes any criticism of his inability to remember the number "zero" an attack on Cindy McCain. Is anybody swallowing it?

A Strange Choice of Words

While informing us, "McCain unsure how many houses he owns," Politico states

In recent weeks, Democrats have stepped up their effort to caricature McCain as living an outlandishly rich lifestyle — a bit of payback to the GOP for portraying Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) as an elitist, and for turning the spotlight in 2004 on the five homes owned by Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry.

Caricature?

You know what? From everything I've read, John Kerry and Teresa Heinz Kerry lived an outlandishly rich lifestyle. Mitt Romney and John Edwards seems to do the same. As do John and Cindy McCain. As does George H.W. Bush. Do I even need to keep listing names?

It's the funny thing about outlandishly rich people, particularly the self-indulgent outlandishly rich. You don't need to exaggerate to argue or establish that they live an outlandishly rich lifestyle. They almost always do. The surprise is finding the exceptional individual who does not.

Any person who owns so many homes that he can't keep count? He's living an "outlandishly rich lifestyle". (Similarly, any guy who buys the home next door to use as a guesthouse and to make more room for his BBQ parties....)

That's okay - it's his and his wife's money. When the Obamas are outlandishly rich, as is likely to eventually be the case, they'll probably live an outlandishly rich lifestyle as well. But let's not pretend that this is a caricature - it's the lifestyle the McCains actually live.

Whining About Bloggers

Is it just me, or are the pundits, media figures and politicians who spend the most time whining about bloggers - and here I mean bloggers generally, not specific bloggers or blog posts, or blog coverage of a particular story or event - typically... Not very bright, not very careful with the facts, not very honest, or some combination thereof?

McCain Has To Run A Sleazy Campaign

It's fascinating to me how Republican hacks like David Brooks can find ways to excuse pretty much any bad conduct by the political right. Lately, right-wing pundits give us an interesting mix of editorials first defending McCain's campaign tactics as legitimate, and then suggesting that they are somehow not his fault because he's under the mind control of his campaign advisors. Today, Brooks seems to concede that McCain's campaign has gone dirty, but claims that poor John had no choice.

According to Brooks, if McCain tried to run a clean campaign on the issues he would lose. But no, he's not running a dirty campaign because he wants to win. He's running a dirty campaign because he can't win any other way.¹ And that's your fault.

I could easily revise the opening of Brooks' editorial to make it less flattering:

On Tuesdays, Senate Republicans hold a weekly policy lunch. The party leaders usually hand out a Message of the Week that the senators are supposed to repeat at every opportunity. These messages come from political advisors and pollsters who believe that if their carefully constructed half-truths are repeated enough they will provide a political advantage.

John McCain loves these lunches with his gang of fellow ne’er-do-wells.² Typical of his style, he cracks jokes, razzes the speaker and acts like nobody else in the room has anything important to say. Then he takes the paper with the Message of the Week back to his office. He then gives it to a staffer, typically commanding: “Here’s your message. Learn it. Love it. Live it.”

Brooks sees McCain as inclined toward frivolity, describing his pre-campaign personality as a "frantic and freewheeling style, which was unpredictable, untamed and, at some level, unprofessional." Brooks laments,

When McCain and his team set out to win the presidency in 2008, they hoped to run a campaign with this sort of spirit....

It hasn’t turned out that way. McCain hasn’t been able to run the campaign he had envisioned. Instead, he and his staff have been given an education by events.

The problems for McCain apparently started in the primary, where some reporters had the audacity to treat him like every other candidate they covered.

McCain started out with the same sort of kibitzing campaign style that he used to woo the press back in 2000. It didn’t work. This time there were too many cameras around and too many 25-year-old reporters and producers seizing on every odd comment to set off little blog scandals.

But according to Brooks, having failed to learn the lessons of his primary campaign which he won despite coming across as having "lacked focus", McCain attempted to extend his unsuccessful tactic into the general election.

McCain started his general-election campaign in poverty-stricken areas of the South and Midwest. He went through towns where most Republicans fear to tread and said things most wouldn’t say. It didn’t work. The poverty tour got very little coverage on the network news.

I think it's more accurate to say that the press did cover the "poverty tour", but that it didn't work because the public at large doesn't much care about issues of poverty, and it's pretty clear that McCain doesn't either. There may be courage in taking a "poverty tour" into the storm-damaged areas of New Orleans, particularly when your prior message to its residents verged on "Let them eat cake," but which voters did McCain hope to win over with his stunt? (Other than oil industry executives.)

McCain and his advisers realized the only way they could get TV attention was by talking about the subject that interested reporters most: Barack Obama.

This, of course, elides McCain's conduct during his primary campaign, in which he engaged in many direct and pointed attacks on Mitt Romney and his record. Those primary campaign tactics are consistent with McCain's present tactics against Obama.

Brooks' analysis then devolves into pure fiction:

McCain started with grand ideas about breaking the mold of modern politics. He and Obama would tour the country together doing joint town meetings.

As anybody who follows election campaigns can tell you, the person trailing in the polls always wants more debates; the person leading typically wants fewer. Where was Brooks in 2004, when G.W. tried to limit Kerry to two debates? Also, as should be obvious, this series of "town hall" debates would both avoid any substantive debate of the issues and effectively dictate a large part of Obama's campaign schedule. A win-win-win for McCain, so let's not pretend he had lily-white motives.

He would pick a postpartisan running mate, like Joe Lieberman.

I must have missed this tentative choice by McCain, as opposed to his playing around by refusing to deny others' speculation about his potential choices. Surely Brooks isn't simply making this up, and can source this claim? No, wait... you say he's making it up? I'm shocked.

And what, exactly, makes Lieberman "postpartisan"? The fact that he is aligned with McCain and the GOP on numerous issues? Was Zell Miller "postpartisan" as well? By Brooks' apparent definitions, and his apparent believe that a "postpartisan" choice would be so wonderful for the country, why doesn't he urge McCain to choose Lincoln Chafee?

He would make a dramatic promise, like vowing to serve for only one totally nonpolitical term.

Again, pure fiction. Even if McCain were inclined to do this it would only work against his campaign - the implicit message being, "I'm so old, I'll only run for one term so I don't end up dying or going senile while in office." But there's absolutely no reason to believe McCain has ever considered running for only a single term, let alone a single "non-political" term.

The issue is not closed, but G.O.P. leaders are resisting a cross-party pick like Lieberman.

More fiction. The issues were never open.

McCain and his advisers have been compelled to adjust to the hostile environment around them. They have been compelled, at least in their telling, to abandon the campaign they had hoped to run. Now they are running a much more conventional race, the kind McCain himself used to ridicule.

And yet Obama has so far managed to largely avoid engaging in McCain-style dirty campaigning. So Brooks is really telling us that when McCain realized he was unlikely to win on the merits he tossed all of his purported scruples and standards out the window. But only because they "had to"... to win. Which is all that matters, right?

What astonishes me is that there are still people who swallow this tripe. McCain hasn't been forced to do anything. He has chosen to embark on a low-road campaign. If Obama follows suit it will not be because McCain's slimy tactics forced him to do so - it will because he wants to win. The lesson here is how little it takes for McCain to shed his skin, and how readily hacks like Brooks will provide him with cover.

The man who hopes to inspire a new generation of Americans now attacks Obama daily. It is the only way he can get the networks to pay attention.

Nonsense. If McCain were to give a speech lamenting the conduct of the media and insisting that they cover specific issues, his statements would dominate media coverage of the campaign. If he were to deplore the media's coverage of personalities or campaign commercials and ask that they substantively look at the contrasts between himself and Obama on specified key issues, the media would dutifully follow his instruction. He doesn't, and he won't, because he loses on the issues.

As a result of McCain's sleaze-ball tactics, Brooks tells us, "A long-shot candidacy now seems entirely plausible." But that's nonsense. The proper question, before or after McCain went dirty, is "Why isn't McCain winning?"

Brooks closes by again "blaming the system" for McCain's conduct:

Both he and Obama had visions of upending the system. Maybe in office, one of them will still be able to do that. But at least on the campaign trail, the system is winning.

So why is it that Obama is still in the lead,³ despite not (yet) joining McCain in the gutter "system"?
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Update: Matt Yglesias suggests that, as Brooks is a long-time McCain fanboy, we owe him the benefit of the doubt. Granted, what one hand giveth the other hand taketh away - the message Yglesias draws from the piece is "Brooks: McCain is an Unprincipled Sellout". But personally, I don't think the tone of the piece was "more in sadness than in anger". I think the piece follows the current "memo of the week", that attempts to distance McCain, the noble maverick former-POW straight-talker, from the tactics of his campaign. Brooks seeks to relieve McCain of both fault and responsibility for his campaign's decisions.

As for a "progressive blogosphere convention that everything David Brooks writes must be read in the most ungenerous way possible", I'm not sure that I'm part of that particular sphere, nor do I take my lead from it. My criticisms of Brooks probably started long before the "ungenerosity" of others. I'm also not one to hand out "benefit of the doubt" like candy. When was the last time Brooks made an error or dubious statement that did not inure to the benefit of the political right? The benefit of the doubt I give him is that I think he's smart enough to know exactly what he's doing. Thus, on those occasions when I take issue with his errors and dubious claims, I hold him responsible for his own words and actions.
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1. This, apparently, is a very important distinction.

2. Note that it was Brooks who called McCain a "ne'er-do-well", not me. ("John McCain generally spends the lunches at a table with a gang of fellow ne’er-do-wells.")

3. Pollster.com has Obama leading nationally by 2.6%.

Why Isn't McCain Winning?

It seems like a fair question. A better question than, "Why doesn't Obama have an insurmountable lead?"

McCain had incredible advantages going into this race. He had (and has) many prominent medial figures in his corner, he has a reputation as a "maverick" and "straight talker" that has allowed him to avoid being tarred with G.W.'s record, he has a reputation for being strong on defense and national security, he has a long history of legislation he can point to as accomplishments. It was my opinion during the Republican primary, and I was far from alone, that he would be a strong Republican presidential candidate. Other than whining that Obama, also, is popular with the media, he tells us that Obama has none of his qualifications.

So why isn't McCain winning? Why can't McCain take and hold a lead?

Given that they are so happy to ask the same question about Obama, why don't prominent pundits or others in the media raise that question about McCain?

Obama Was Too Christian?

At least, that's what Bill Kristol is suggesting:

So while Obama talked of confronting evil, McCain spoke of defeating it. Obama took the view that evil is generally abroad in the world; McCain focused on radical Islam and 9/11. Obama claimed that all of us must be metaphorical “soldiers” against evil; McCain paid tribute to actual American soldiers. And McCain couldn’t resist saying again Saturday night that if he has to follow Osama bin Laden to the gates of hell¹ to get him and bring him to justice, he’ll do so.

Now, I'll forgive Kristol for not being up on the teachings of Christ, but this was a quasi-religious forum. Which answers are more consistent with the Christian view of evil?
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1. To the gates of Hell, yes, but not into Pakistan. Not that I would expect Kristol to remind us of the facts.

The Problem Wasn't The Joke....

It was the serious stuff. I read that McCain defined "rich" as having an income of $5 million or more per year, and decided to check it out. That number was tossed out both as a joke and as a means of evading the question. McCain took great pains not to attach a dollar figure to the concept of "rich". But in evading a very simple question about the amount of wealth somebody should have before being deemed "rich", starting with his platitudinous opening, he did manage to say quite a lot:

Some of the richest people I've ever known in my life are the most unhappy.

A suggestion McCain can pass along to his "poor little rich boy" friends: they can send me their money and see which of us ends up happier.

I think rich is, should be defined by a home, a good job, an education, and the ability to hand to our children a more prosperous and safer world than the one that we inherited.

See? "Rich" has nothing to do with money.

I don't want to take any money from the rich. I want everybody to get rich.

Particularly given that we're applying a definition of "rich" that doesn't necessarily involve having any money.

I don't believe in class warfare or redistribution of the wealth. But I can tell you, for example, there are small businessmen and women who are working 20, uh, 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, that some people would classify as, quote, rich.

For example, if in addition to their business they have "a home, an education, and the ability to hand to our children a more prosperous and safer world than the one that we inherited", John McCain would define them as "rich".

McCain, of course, is deliberately conflating two separate issues - hours worked and income. My guess is that some of the people to whom McCain alludes are rich by any reasonable definition, while some are trying to keep struggling businesses afloat. But I'm guessing that there aren't many of them. We can also consider that there are rich people don't work at all, work minimal hours, or host an occasional $1,000/plate fund-raiser and spend the rest of the time bragging of their devotion to "charitable work". Would McCain have them pay more taxes than the guy who works 112 hours each week? Oh, let's not discuss that... to do so is "class warfare".

My friends who want to raise their taxes, who want to raise their payroll taxes. Let's have, keep taxes low, let's give every family in America a $7,000 tax credit for every child they have.

How would that tax credit improve on our current system of deductions? How would we pay for it? What benefits would it return to the economy? Why would we give such a tax credit to people who don't need it? Oh, you only said it because you think it sounds good? Well then, on to the next point:

Let's give them a $5,000 refundable tax credit to go out and get the health insurance of their choice.

Let's do a direct comparison - how much would it cost McCain to drop his insurance coverage from his Senate gig, and pick up a comparable private policy? Assuming he could even get insurance with his health history. Would that $5,000 cover the first month?

Let's not have the government take over the healthcare system in America.

An idea endorsed by exactly... none of the candidates. A comment inserted to mislead voters.

And then the joke:

So, so, so, I think if you're just talking about income, how about, $5 million.

So, no, but seriously, I don't think you can, I don't think seriously, that, the point is that I'm trying to make here, seriously, and I'm sure that that comment will be distorted, but the point is, the point is, the point is that we want to keep people's taxes low and increase revenues.

Well, then, how do you "increase revenues" without taxation?

And my friend, it was not taxes that mattered to America in the last several years. It was spending, spending got completely out of control. We spent money in the ways that mortgaged our kids' future.

Wait - you just said that the problem was that we need to increase revenues. Now you're saying that the problem is out-of-control spending? Which is it?

My friends, we spent $3 million of your money to study the DNA of bears in Montana. Now, I don't know if that was a paternity issue or a criminal issue, but the point is, but the point is, it was $3 million of your money.

A joke well-delivered. It got a laugh. It deserved a laugh, or at least a good natured groan. But McCain is aware that, even if we assume that his caricature is accurate and it's something we shouldn't be funding, we're not going to balance the budget by cutting this type of scientific research funding out of the budget.

It was your money. And you know we laugh about it but we cry. And we should cry, because the Congress is supposed to be careful stewards of your tax dollars.

So what are McCain's actual ideas, whether for balancing the budget or making Congress budget more responsibly?

So what did they just do in the middle of an energy crisis, when in California we are paying $4 a gallon for gas? Went on vacation for five weeks. I guarantee you, two things they never miss: A pay raise and a vacation.

Okay... and McCain's been around Washington for a long time, voting himself pay raises and taking long vacations. But what does that have to do with either balancing the budget or making Congress more responsible? What does McCain imagine that Congress will do during the next five weeks, assuming everybody comes back from their vacation and campaign activities?

And we should stop that and call them back, and not raise your taxes.

So they should come back, vote not to raise taxes, and then go back on vacation? Seriously - what does McCain hope to accomplish, particularly given his own attendance record?

We should not and cannot raise taxes in tough economic times.

Back to platitudes. When can we raise taxes? If the answer is "never", don't layer on the B.S. - just say that "We can never raise taxes, even when we're rolling in dough."

So it doesn't matter really what my definition of "rich" is because I don't want to raise anybody's taxes. I really don't.

He's happy to increase the financial burden on working families by taking away employer-sponsored health care in favor of inadequate "tax credits", but that's different from raising taxes, so let's not get into what it would mean to "raise taxes on the rich."

In fact I want to give working Americans a better shot at having a better life.

Which again has nothing to do with "the rich". But let's hear him out:

And we all know the challenges, my friends, if I could be serious. Americans tonight in California and all over America are sitting at the kitchen table, recently and suddenly lost a job, can't afford to stay in their home, education for their kids, affordable health care.

Yes, I can almost picture John and Cindy having such a discussion. First they would have to pick a home in which to have the discussion. But not one of the homes on the beach that John doesn't like. And then hop on Cindy's private jet to go to that home. And then the could sit down at their kitchen table and talk about the plight, oh, let's say some of the workers at Cindy's family beer distributorship. But make no mistake: John knows exactly what you're going through. Which is why they come up with such good ideas:

These are tough problems. These are tough problems. You talk to them every day, every day.

Right. You come up with those great ideas by talking about these issues every day. And those ideas are?

My friends, we've got to give them hope and confidence in the future. That's what we need to give them.

Well, as Edison said, "Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration." And McCain's been working hard on this, so let's see what he has to offer:

And I can inspire them.

Ah - he's got the first 1% of the job covered for you!

I can lead, and I know that our best days are ahead of us.

Who could argue with that....

A Bit Late?

George Will advises the McCain campaign,

Furthermore, his populism subverts his strength - the perception that although he is an acquired taste, he is serious, hence incapable of self-celebratory froth such as "we are the ones we've been waiting for."

Right. He's completely incapable of self-adulatory froth - an entirely serious "American President Americans have been waiting for."

Americans suffer political astigmatism. They squint at Washington, seeing an incompetent cornucopia that is too big but that should expand to give them more blessings. Their voting behavior, however, generally conforms to their professed suspicion about unchecked power in Washington: In 31 election cycles since the restoration of normal politics after the Second World War, 19 produced divided government -- the executive and legislative branches not controlled by the same party.

Nineteen out of thirty-one... That's a whopping 61% of the time. And, you know, it couldn't be explained by something other than a desire to have the presidency and Congress controlled by different parties, such as an occasional expression of disapproval for the party holding the White House by voting for the other party in a midterm election. That's clearly not what happened in 1994 or 2006.

Will wants McCain to promise to veto theoretical legislation:

Two Democratic priorities in the next Congress would placate two factions that hold the party's leash -- organized labor and the far left. One is abolition of workers' right to secret ballots in unionization elections. The other is restoration of the "fairness doctrine" in order to kill talk radio, on which liberals cannot compete.

Yeah.... those are sure to be hot button issues with the electorate. After all, they are exceedingly important to George Will, and isn't that pretty much the same thing?

He should ask Obama to join him in a town meeting on lessons from Russia's aggression.

And he could expect to be told, "We already have a schedule for debates. Let's talk then." Really, Will intends this to take the form of grandstanding - with McCain trumpeting that after the candidates agreed to a debate schedule Obama wouldn't agree to toss out the agreement. I might worry that Obama would take him up on the offer, and draw a lot of attention to McCain's presumptuous behavior in relation to the conflict, as well as his close ties to lobbyists for Georgia. But what am I thinking - is George Will ever wrong.

McCain must convince voters that Obama's complacent confidence in the taming abilities of soft power is the effect of liberalism's scary sentimentalism about a dangerous thing, human nature, and a fiction, "the community of nations."

I would encourage McCain to make a campaign ad presenting that message, word-for-word. Perhaps Will will do the voiceover?

Until Russian tanks rolled into Georgia, it seemed that not even the Democratic Party could lose this election. But it might if McCain can make it turn on the question of who is ornery enough to give Putin a convincing, deterring telephone call at 3 a.m.

Right. Because any world leader who gives G.W. a big "F.U." is going to be cowed on the same issue by a 3 AM call from a septuagenerian who gets confused on foreign policy issues when he's awake.

History suggests that George Will detests McCain. "With friends like these...."

Agreeing With David Frum....

Because, unsurprising, he didn't think things through:

George W. Bush's political opponents will surely revile him long after he's gone. But you can be sure of this: Just as the Bush presidency led Democrats to express an unexpected nostalgia for Ronald Reagan, the next Republican president can expect to hear from pundits and academics alike that he falls far short of the high standard set by the last one."

Absolutely, George W. Bush made the previous Republican President, George H.W. Bush, look like a genius.

Looking good in comparison to a disastrously incompetent President doesn't make you a great President - George H.W. Bush was adequate. But boy, does he look good by comparison. If the next Republican President makes us nostalgic for G.W., he would have to be a catastrophic disaster.

Protecting Democracy

The Washington Post offers a curious, unsigned editorial that is in my estimation unduly credulous of Mikheil Saakashvili. Although not entirely endorsing his claims, the Post conveniently drops from mention the dubious claim that Russia tried to bomb a BP pipeline. They don't share his discredited claim that the U.S. military was going to take control of Georgia's ports and airports - the type of overstatement that casts a shadow across anything he says and perhaps illuminates the type of self-delusion that could have caused him to believe that the U.S. military would back his venture even if everybody told him otherwise.

Part of the blame-the-victim argument is tactical - the notion that the elected president of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili, foolishly allowed the Russians to goad him into a military operation to recover a small separatist region of Georgia. Mr. Saakashvili says, in an article we publish on the opposite page today, that the facts are otherwise, that he ordered his troops into action only after a Russian armored column was on the move. If that's not true - if he moved first - he was indeed foolish, and if Georgian shelling targeted civilians, it should be condemned.

Now, normally I would be fully prepared to accept that Russia "moved first" or did something exceptionally provocative. And it's clear that Russia was prepared for Georgia's military action. But I am to believe that all of this occurred beneath the notice of the U.S. intelligence community and the U.S. military (including advisors posted in Georgia), and Saakashvili didn't feel obligated to inform them of his detection of Russian troop movements or even of his own intentions before initiating his military action. The Post is correct that the alternate version of events - the one consistent with the story given by the U.S. government, U.S. military, and U.S. intelligence - would make Saakashvili look foolish. And if Saakashvili's story is true, it makes the U.S. government, U.S. military, and U.S. intelligence look foolish.

So why not take a step back and give us an analysis of which side - which of the two allies - is most likely lying? And provocations or not, can we truly believe that either the U.S. or Georgia (so capable of detecting Russian troop movements) overlooked Russia's build-up? It seems far more likely that Saakashvili believed G.W.'s hype - and that either Russia would be cowed by the idea that the U.S. military would rush to Georgia's aid in the event that his incursion was repelled, or that the U.S. military would quickly force a Russian retreat. Which brings us to the rest of the editorial:

But if the charge is that the Bush administration encouraged Georgia's yearnings for true independence, the verdict surely is "guilty" - just as when the Clinton administration encouraged Georgia under Eduard Shevardnadze and as the first President Bush welcomed the freedom of Warsaw Pact nations when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. Now we are told that Russia's invasion last weekend proves the improvidence of this policy: The United States should have helped Georgia to understand that it lies in Russia's "sphere of influence," beyond the reach of American help.

No. What it shows is that the United States should not be suggesting to small, weak countries that it will help them militarily when it does not intend to do so. It also shows that you can meet every standard the U.S. wants - build up a military you can't afford, send a huge percentage of your armed forces to support a U.S military action, create a "flat tax" structure consistent with various U.S. right-wing ideologies, etc. - and still not be important enough to merit military intervention. (And democracy's all about voting and economics, right? So we should overlook little transgressions that don't appear to much matter to the Bush Administration.)

But today, Fred Hiatt and friends don't like realpolitik:

At first blush, that may sound like common sense. What is Georgia to us, after all, far away and without natural resources? And yet, where would the logic carry us? Poland, too, used to be in Moscow's "sphere" -- and Hungary, Estonia, Lithuania, and on and on. Should they, too, bow to Vladimir Putin? Why not Finland, while we're at it? You can quickly begin to see the reemergence of a world that would be neither in America's interest nor much to Americans' liking.

With all due respect to the "slippery slope", failing to draw a line in the sand on the northern border of Georgia doesn't mean we won't draw a line in the sand somewhere - just not there. More to the point, where's the cry for democracy and freedom in Taiwan, where the U.S. constantly tiptoes around China's sensitivities? What about non-democracies gripped by humanitarian disaster - the Darfur region, for example. Now, I think it's obvious that Russia wanted this demonstration of force to serve as a warning to other nations on its border, but it's simply not the case that the United States can or should intervene militarily whenever a democracy is engaged in a political battle with... whatever classification we are giving to Russia's government this week. (If Venezuela's democracy is threatened, will the Bush Administration intervene to support it? Or celebrate.)

If a democratically elected Ukraine chooses not to join NATO -- and Ukrainians are divided on the question - NATO will not force itself on Ukraine. But if Ukrainians -- or Georgians, Armenians or anyone else - recoil at Russia's authoritarian model and choose to associate with the West, should the United States refrain from "egging them on"?

No, by all means, invite them to join the West, associate with the West, emulate the West.... Just don't suggest to them that their admiration for and emulation of the West is going to result in their falling under Western military protection in the event of an armed conflict with a neighbor - even one that doesn't have a large military force and nuclear weapons.

How, and how effectively, the United States can support those aspirations inevitably will vary from case to case and from time to time, and supporting those aspirations certainly won't always involve military force. But for the United States to counsel a "realistic" acceptance of vassal status to any nation would mark a radical departure from past principles and practices.

Except for Taiwan? No, really, we can support the aspirations of small democracies while making it clear to them that they can neither excessively provoke military powers on their borders, nor (as appears to be more apt here) see a large, juicy worm dangled by a military power, just across the border of a contested region, and expect us to get them off the hook if they have the poor sense to take the bait. The Post reports that the U.S. government instructed Saakashvilii to demonstrate restraint, and seems to accept that had Saakashvili listened this wouldn't have happened.

What the West should do is keep its promises to the young, weak democracies it wishes to foster. If the Post believes the Bush Administration misled Saakashvili into believing that the U.S. Armed Forces would rescue him in this sort of confrontation, that's where they should direct their scorn.

One of Those Liberal-Conservative Things....

Richard Posner has written an essay questioning the "originalism" of the Heller decision. I found this assertion interesting:

If loose construction produces a conservative limitation on government, most conservatives will support it and most liberals will oppose it; and if it produces a liberal limitation on government, most liberals and conservatives will switch sides. The qualification in "most" is important, though. Scalia has voted to invalidate, on free-speech grounds, laws forbidding the burning of the American flag. That is loose construction - decidedly non-originalist in the narrow sense of his opinion in Heller - because burning is not speech; and it is a loose construction that produces a liberal outcome. Breyer concurred in a decision that allowed the Ten Commandments to be exhibited on the grounds of the Texas Capitol; and that was a conservative vote (and the swing vote in the case) by a liberal justice.

For flag burning, the question is implied, are libertarians liberal or conservative? You can argue that libertarianism is an offshoot of liberalism, but most libertarians seem inclined to describe themselves as conservative, and to be more comfortable with the Republican party. Yet Posner would place libertarians squarely in the liberal camp on the question of whether the government should have any say over what you do with your own property. If you put it in terms that hide the symbolic speech element, may conservatives would take the "liberal"/libertarian position that the government shouldn't be able to criminalize conduct tantamount to flag burning, provided you own the flag and comply with any applicable laws aimed and protecting the public. So what exactly is it that makes flag-burning laws "conservative" in nature? Is it inherently conservative to put symbols ahead of personal liberty?

Similarly, with the Ten Commandments, how is it inherently conservative to want them exhibited in public spaces? Would we expect non-Christian conservatives to hold the same position, even if symbols of their own religious beliefs are excluded? Is it inherently conservative to wish to erect public monuments to a specific religion or faith, in disregard or derogation of other faiths?

What Happened in Georgia

At least insofar as the start of the conflict, it's anybody's guess. Well, anybody's except Saakashvili's and, perhaps, a few people in the U.S. government. For now, it's denial time:

During a private dinner on July 9, Ms. Rice’s aides say, she warned President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia not to get into a military conflict with Russia that Georgia could not win. “She told him, in no uncertain terms, that he had to put a non-use of force pledge on the table,” according to a senior administration official who accompanied Ms. Rice to the Georgian capital.

It's hard to imagine that Saakashvili would ignore such a direct warning. It's really hard to believe this:

“This caught us totally by surprise,” said one military officer who tracks events in the region, including the American-Georgian training effort. “It really knocked us off our chairs.”

There are some understandably skeptical responses to that claim:

If the Pentagon and CIA were also caught flat-footed by Russia's response, as the McClatchy Newspapers' crack Washington bureau is reporting, then we have to ask: Why are we spending $55 bllion a year on intelligence? What are we getting out of it?

* * *

As easy as it is to believe that the CIA, etc., blew another huge event, I find it impossible to accept that not one of the 127 Pentagon advisors in Georgia, including Special Forces and intelligence contractors, were clueless about Tblisi's intent -- and preparations - to move into South Ossetia.

Similarly,

It is very difficult to imagine that the Georgians launched their attack against U.S. wishes. The Georgians rely on the United States, and they were in no position to defy it. This leaves two possibilities. The first is a massive breakdown in intelligence, in which the United States either was unaware of the existence of Russian forces, or knew of the Russian forces but — along with the Georgians — miscalculated Russia’s intentions. The second is that the United States, along with other countries, has viewed Russia through the prism of the 1990s, when the Russian military was in shambles and the Russian government was paralyzed. The United States has not seen Russia make a decisive military move beyond its borders since the Afghan war of the 1970s-1980s. The Russians had systematically avoided such moves for years. The United States had assumed that the Russians would not risk the consequences of an invasion.

If this was the case, then it points to the central reality of this situation: The Russians had changed dramatically, along with the balance of power in the region. They welcomed the opportunity to drive home the new reality, which was that they could invade Georgia and the United States and Europe could not respond. As for risk, they did not view the invasion as risky. Militarily, there was no counter. Economically, Russia is an energy exporter doing quite well — indeed, the Europeans need Russian energy even more than the Russians need to sell it to them. Politically, as we shall see, the Americans needed the Russians more than the Russians needed the Americans. Moscow’s calculus was that this was the moment to strike. The Russians had been building up to it for months, as we have discussed, and they struck.

* * *

By invading Georgia as Russia did (competently if not brilliantly), Putin re-established the credibility of the Russian army. But far more importantly, by doing this Putin revealed an open secret: While the United States is tied down in the Middle East, American guarantees have no value. This lesson is not for American consumption. It is something that, from the Russian point of view, the Ukrainians, the Balts and the Central Asians need to digest. Indeed, it is a lesson Putin wants to transmit to Poland and the Czech Republic as well. The United States wants to place ballistic missile defense installations in those countries, and the Russians want them to understand that allowing this to happen increases their risk, not their security.

The Russians knew the United States would denounce their attack. This actually plays into Russian hands. The more vocal senior leaders are, the greater the contrast with their inaction, and the Russians wanted to drive home the idea that American guarantees are empty talk.

The article elaborates that Russia has the U.S. over a barrel, as the U.S. needs their cooperation in its conflicts in the Middle East, particulary in relation to Iran.

Meanwhile, McCain is talking loudly and waggling a tiny stick. He's prepared to move forward with NATO membership for Georgia... "at the right time", whenever that is. (He's implicitly stating the obvious - It's not right now, or even at any future time we can presently predict.) He wants to boot Russia out of the G-8, as if that's going to happen. He seems to be admitting that the Iraq war has left the U.S. impotent in the Caucasus: "We don't have, I think, right now, the ability to intervene in any way except in a humanitarian, economic way, and do what we can to help the Georgians".

What we do seem to be getting is a lot of really silly analysis. For example, in The Jerusalem Post:

After the war, the status quo ante in Abkhazia and South Ossetia is no longer tenable and the policy choices facing Russia in the region - official annexation or recognition of their independence - would not be accepted internationally. Moreover, Russian troops can no longer be perceived as an evenhanded peacekeeping force, and this may bring pressure for their replacement with either UN or some other more neutral peacekeeping troops.

Internationally, Russia's use of force could in the long run completely undermine Russian credibility when it speaks against the use of force in Iran or condemns potential future confrontation between Israel and Hizbullah (in 2006, Russia condemned in the harshest terms Israel's "excessive use of force").

Finally, as Israelis know well, bombing and invading small countries never looks good on TV in the West, however justified it might be. In the court of public opinion, Russia has already lost, something the independent Russian media was quick to acknowledge. Some in the US are already calling for a American boycott of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, and that may perhaps be only the beginning.

In terms of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, it seems pretty clear that Russia is mostly interested in excluding Georgian troops from those territories, wants a commitment that Georgia won't again attempt to subdue them by force, and won't be inviting in international peacekeepers. Evenhandedness? Who thought Russia was evenhanded before this flare-up of the long-simmering conflict? And what does it really matter? Few countries view Israel as "evenhanded" in its administration of the West Bank; that doesn't mean international peacekeepers will ever take over that role.

And gee whiz... Russia won't have credibilty when it criticizes other nations for the excessive use of force? As if it did in the first place? And people around the world will think of Russia as being a bully against weak neighboring states? That'll be a first....

This piece seems mostly designed to fill column inches:

In the meantime, could it be that Russia, petro-confident and irredentist, seeking to reverse the record of the past two decades, is careering toward another 1989 or 1991? Will it heed the lessons of the Soviet era? What will happen if it does not? Will the North Caucasus break out of Moscow's grip? Will the Far East turn into a Chinese colony? Will the West once again confront the prospect of Moscow's former satrapies suddenly becoming major nuclear powers? Will the specter of Russian "loose nukes" keep haunting the West?

It's written like the ending of a 1950's serialized cliffhanger. And Russia, we're told, may be in for a "hard landing" if it doesn't learn from the lessons of history:

A decade [after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan], there would be no more Warsaw Pact. Europe would be sending humanitarian aid to Russia. The Soviet military would be defeated in Afghanistan. What caused all that? We are still not quite sure.

I sure hope the Russians are taking notes.... (But if you really want silly analysis, turn to Richard Cohen, who apparently isn't even slightly interested in internal consistency. I'd do a "slash and burn" on it, but the pickin's are just too easy.)

Georgia On My Mind

My initial reactions are pretty much in line with Dan Froomkin:

Back in 2005, speaking before a crowd of more than 150,000 exuberant Georgians cheering "Bushi! Bushi!", President Bush made a promise to the people of that former Soviet republic: "The path of freedom you have chosen is not easy, but you will not travel it alone. Americans respect your courageous choice for liberty. And as you build a free and democratic Georgia, the American people will stand with you."

So where was Bush as Russia launched a major military attack against Georgia? Monkeying around with the U.S. women's volleyball players - and otherwise amusing himself at the Beijing Olympics.

This is not to suggest that Bush should have sent in the Marines. But his impotence in the face of such a gravely destabilizing move highlights not only his personal loss of stature, but how deeply he has diminished American authority on the world stage generally and, particularly, in the eyes of Russia.

and Josh Marshall, including the thought that those who essentially want us to go to war with Russia are insane. I am still wondering, did Saakashvili truly believe that the U.S. would back him up militarily? Because if he didn't, it's hard to make any sense of his decisions and tactics.

For more detailed perspectives on this conflict, check in with Eunomia or LGM. (Even if you don't agree with all the conclusions, you'll learn something.) Via lies.com, there's also this excited analysis of the conflict in the voice of a fictional "war-nerd". And there's this news roundup from more traditional sources.

Is Campaign Finance Reform Possible?

You can't have an election without a campaign finance outrage, can you? Last election cycle, the outrage was 527's. This time, it's bundlers.

Ah, the good old days, when bundlers supported G.W. and were given cute names like "rangers" or "pioneers". Then some people bundled for Edwards and were called... criminal suspects. (Oh, I know... I'm assuming that some straw donations collected by Bush's bundlers were conveniently overlooked, and I should instead assume the purest of motives and methods....) Now McCain has a bundling scandal, and the New York Times is calling for reform.

Last week, The Washington Post disclosed that Harry Sargeant III, a prominent McCain booster in Florida and part owner of an oil-trading company with business in Iraq, had rounded up thousands of dollars in small donations from Americans of Middle Eastern origin. Many had not made political contributions before, and were of relatively modest means. The Times followed with a report that at least $50,000 of this had been solicited from a single extended family in California, the Abdullahs, by one of Mr. Sargeant’s business partners, a Jordanian named Mustafa Abu Naba’a.

Though it is unclear whether any of this is illegal — including whether the law forbids foreigners from soliciting contributions — the McCain campaign hurriedly announced that it was returning the money raised by Mr. Abu Naba’a. It also promised to review the money raised so far - about $500,000 - by Mr. Sargeant.

What can we assume about bundlers? If they were solely interested in raising money for a candidate, they wouldn't have to stick themselves in the middle - between the donor and the candidate. It's reasonable to assume that they expect something, whether it's a starry-eyed wish for a photo op with a newly elected President, some form of quid pro quo somewhere down the line, or something in between.

The Times looks at the situation and notes that neither candidate wants to come clean about their bundlers. Obama apparently comes closer, and "is sponsoring legislation that would require disclosure of all bundlers who raise more than $50,000." The fact that McCain isn't all over that reform suggests how important bundlers are to his fund-raising, and how important it is to some of his bundlers that their names not be made public.

The Times continues, "That could be a useful addition to the law, but it is not enough." Right. Why not have complete transparency, and require full disclosure about all bundlers? No, that's too logical a direction to take.

What is really needed is an overhaul of the public financing system for presidential campaigns, which has not kept pace with the actual costs of running for office.

Here's a sad truth: the public financing system can't keep pace with the "actual costs" of running for office. No matter how much money you toss into the system, it's just a matter of time before one candidate or the other, perhaps both, find it inadequate.

You want to complain about increasing college tuition costs? Colleges have nothing on political campaigns. Or even gas prices. I have the following (unverified) figures for the cost of the winner's campaign in the last few Presidential races:

• 1996 - $141.3 million (Clinton) out of $449 million total.


• 2000 - $256.4 million (Bush) out of $649.5 million total.


• 2004 - $457 million (Bush) out of $1,016.5 million total.

This election cycle looks like another bank breaker. Can you really expect public financing to keep up with that?

At this point, I think we need to be pushing for maximum transparency. It won't fix the system, but at least we'll get a sense of who's trying to buy the candidates favor.

"But It Gets Worse...."

Why TV news in the US is utter rubbish.

It's Like A Black Fly in Broder's Chardonnay

David Broder tells us how the candidates feel about the negative tone of the campaign:

"I'm very sorry about it," McCain said in a Saturday interview at his Arlington headquarters. "I think we could have avoided at least some of this if we had agreed to do the town hall meetings" together, as he had suggested, during the summer months.

Obama, in a phone interview yesterday from Elkhart, Ind., argued that "the classic tit-for-tat campaigning" of recent weeks "is part of the politics of the past that we have to move beyond." Ironically, having turned down McCain's proposal for weekly joint town halls, Obama argued that the formal debates, starting in late September, may refocus the campaign on real issues.

How is that ironic?

In any event, I think it's simplistic to suggest that if there were an exhausting series of "town hall meetings", the discourse would suddenly become elevated. I don't recall that, during their respective, seemingly never-ending series of debates, either the Republican or Democratic primaries were sunny and positive. 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."

Why let facts get in the way of that?

Campaign Ad Humor

I know that it's dangerous to run ads like these, because you're going to get an indignant response, "Can you believe he just compared himself to one of our great Presidents," as if that's the point. But you could still have some fun with the idea:

You know I respect you, but you're a newcomer to the Capitol. You've only been here a couple of years. I've been here working hard for decades. Sure, you're a celebrity. Everybody knows your name. They love you in France. Heck, they love you so much, they're probably going to put up a statue in your honor. [Chuckle] But does your standing up to George - opposing his war - really qualify you to be President?

No, Mr. Washington, it doesn't.

---

I appreciate your work for civil rights. Me, I've fought my entire life for equal rights for everyone. But aren't you being presumptuous? You did some good things as a lawyer back in Illinois, but you're trying to become commander in chief. These are troubled times, my friend, times of war. You've never been on a battlefield. You've never commanded soldiers. What makes you think that you can govern a divided nation and defend our way of life?

Sorry, Mr. Lincoln, I just don't think you're qualified.

---

You? President? You're kidding me, right? You write beautifully, I have to admit that. But you're inconsistent in your support for our nation's military forces. And you're always talking about civil rights and freedoms, but your policies make it hard for us to fight terror. You talk about "due process," "excessive bail," "probable cause" - admit it, you're soft on crime. If we do things your way how do we keep terrorist off our streets?

Sorry, Mr. Madison, your ideas are way too liberal.

I Am Not Impressed....

With Andrew Malcolm of the L.A. Times. Regarding Bill Clinton's statement, "I am not a racist," Malcolm says,

Former presidents get a whole lot of leeway in what they say in public. But former President Bill Clinton just violated one of the prime rules of political communications: Never say what you are not.

"I am not a crook," said Richard Nixon, which, of course, raised or confirmed the issue in the minds of millions during the long-running Watergate scandal that forced him from office. And provided a historic sound bite.

Uh oh... I said what I'm not. Does Malcolm think that means that I am, in fact, impressed?

Don't count on it.

Let's apply Malcolm-think to some of McCain's statements:

• McCain's an economist!

• McCain has guaranteed the success of 'the surge'!

• McCain's in the habit of making promises to his country that he does not intend to keep!

• McCain is unappreciative of blogs! (Okay, that may in fact be his actual thought.)

A similar list could be compiled of Obama's "I am nots" - some keep trying with this one - but I picked McCain out of the apparent partisan nature of Malcolm's potshot.

Weatherstripping, Nothing....

Bob Herbert endorses conservation, suggesting,

Because of the high price of oil, people in many parts of the country are already frightened, in the heat of summer, about their winter heating bills. Families are worried about having to choose between mortgage payments and fuel bills, or fuel bills and prescription medicine.

The Senate considered but was unable to pass a measure that would have substantially increased financing for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program. It was a very bad sign. If the government can’t get that done in the current atmosphere, it hardly seems likely that it could move to an even more important step: finding a way to get the homes of these cash-strapped families properly weatherized so that they use substantially less fuel over the course of each winter.

How about we start subsidizing the conversion of their homes to geothermal heating and cooling systems. Using grants, subsidized loans and conventional loans, it should be possible to create affordable paths to geothermal systems for most consumers, with any loans repaid in a manner that still results in a net savings (and much greater stability) in their heating bills.

Laugh It Off?

As you might expect from a person smart enough to see through the smokescreen, Dan Larison believes that Obama has a viable campaign tactic in laughing off attacks:

This is very much like the overheated response to “Celeb” or “The One”–rather than simply laughing off these ads and articles as ridiculous, Obama’s supporters and many media figures seem to be deadly serious about stressing the cunning, super-secret deployment of racial messages in both. Whether it is Perlstein hallucinating Nazi propaganda film homages or Gergen detecting racist tropes or Noah discerning skinniness as the latest one of these tropes, the responses have managed to make the various targets of their criticism seem sane, well-balanced and serious by comparison.

Yet one of the reasons campaigns don't laugh off these attacks can be seen in the history of the Swift Boat Liars campaign against John Kerry. Kerry attempted the Larison approach, "mock them for their stupidity, and stop investing them with the importance that their creators want you to give them", and by the time he recognized the failure of his tactics it was too late to stamp out the lies.

Obama seems intent on staying above the fray, with statements like "John McCain is an honorable man who is running an increasingly dishonorable campaign". But history tells us, dishonorable campaigns work. That's why McCain is running one, and why he now has a nominal lead in the polls. If they're unrebutted, they grow legs. That's what happened with the Swift Boat nonsense, to the point that a lot of people who were more than smart enough to "know better" were defending the attacks. And for people so passively receptive to smears and innendo as to believe that Obama's comment about not looking like past presidents was racist?Larison wrote,

What I find even more remarkable is the idea that anyone could interpret Obama’s comment as being racist. It is now “racist” to hint that others are going to use a candidate’s race against him? Does that make any sense? Do 53% of likely voters really think Obama making an obvious reference to his race (one so obvious that you have to think your audience morons to deny it) is racist? If so, can we officially declare that the word has no more meaning, or at least that for the most part it is trotted out whenever we want to refer to something as Very Bad? Obama’s remark may be many things, but of all the words I can think of to describe it racist is not among them.

What hope should anybody have that those voters will see through McCain's smokescreen?

If I were running ads, I would pull some examples of McCain deploring negative campaigning in the past, contrast them with his current smear tactics, and lament that McCain's sense of honor seems to have disappeared. Perhaps that's the next step after "he's an honorable man who is running a dishonorable campaign" - it could become, "I used to think he was a man of honor, but actions speak louder than words".

I don't actually have a problem with "attack ads" as such - a lot of fair comparison ads get called "attack ads". I don't see accurate ads that boil down to, "My position is X, my opponent's position is Y, and my position is better" as a bad thing, even if unflattering pictures are presented of the opposing candidate as ominous music plays. I don't think the public would be served by a sushine and lollipops campaign of positive ads that elide any differences between the candidates - we saw in 2000 how a popular conception of, "there are no real differences between the candidates," coupled with media ennui, can lead to huge numbers of voters actually buying into that nonsense.

You know what? The biggest audience for the harshest critics of the current round of McCain ads is Obama's supporters. Check the blogs - to the extent that they're commenting, McCain's supporters appear to be uniformly gloating about them. They're unaffected by the criticism. To the extent that there has been a shift, it has been in the perception of some pundits who are pretty much taking Obama's line - they can't believe that the great and honorable McCain is behaving like this. (Maybe it's mind control.)

Obama's probably correct, to keep his official pronouncements in sync with the punditocracy's views. Letting them decide when this is, in fact, McCain's "real voice" rather than the work of a doppleganger. To get ahead of them would likely result in their turning on him. But no, pretending to laugh at bad jokes doesn't make them go away. It's more likely to trigger a response of, "It's not funny unless there's some truth behind it, and even you think it's a joke." When a smear campaign is launched, its authors are deserving of scorn, and although I see it as largely ineffectual I have no problem with the target's supporters initiating what amounts to a grassroots expression of scorn. At the same time, smear campaigns usually don't get legs without the active cooperation (and sometimes collaboration) of the mainstream media. So for criticism pointed in that direction, at all levels of the campaign, I say "(cautiously) turn up the heat."

A Nasty Two-Way Street

One thing that continues to hurt the Democratic party, and results in an absurd number of self-described Democrats to say they're "undecided" or inclined to vote for McCain,¹ is the party's tendency to devour itself. You saw the same thing going on during the Republican primaries but, now that they have their candidate, for the most part they're pulling themselves together and presenting a unified front. The Dems have never been that disciplined.

Making it worse, of course, is the continued tension between the Clintons and their supporters and the Obama team. You'll still find Clinton dead-ender sites saying it's Obama's fault that race is presently an issue in the campaign, or that picking Hillary Clinton as a Vice Presidential candidate would be a magic cure-all for Obama's campaign, but portending disaster if he picks somebody else. Meanwhile, this type of conduct is also blamed on Obama:

Snow asked Clinton, "Do you personally have any regrets about what you did campaigning for your wife?"

With his arms folded and looking a bit tense, Clinton replied, "Yes, but not the ones you think. And it would be counterproductive for me to talk about it."

Barely pausing for a breath, he added, "There are things I wish I'd urged her to do, things I wish I had said, things I wish I hadn't said. But I am not a racist, I never made a racist comment, and I didn't attack him personally," a clear allusion to Sen. Barack Obama.

So he won't go into the mistakes that he regrets, but he'll stick in something he wasn't asked about - something that as being "counterproductive" goes can only help McCain - the implication that Obama or Obama's supporters wrongly branded him as a racist.

Seriously, folks, other than some poor choices of words that one would not expect from a politician of Clinton's skill, has anybody said, "Bill Clinton's a racist"? Does anybody believe that Bill Clinton's a racist? If so, I'd like to meet this person. There is a population that views some of the Clinton team's comments as having been intended to draw attention to Obama's race, and imply the rhetorical question, "Can a black candidate win the election", but there's a world of difference between believing the Clintons engaged in some low road politics and believing that they're racist. (And no, I don't care if their perception is entirely fair, entirely unfair, or somewhere in between - it exists, and thus it's something that must be dealt with.)

Meanwhile, Paul Krugman asks why the Obama camp isn't engaged in rapprochement. And he raises a valid point. Obama is too slow to credit Clinton, either individually or as a Democratic President, when contrasting the 90's to the Bush II years. And perhaps as the nominee, Obama should take the initiative.

But at the same time, unless they've been secretly told with 100% certainty that Hillary Clinton will be the nominee, I think it would do wonders if the Clinton camp would stop playing up Hillary Clinton as the best, perhaps only, V.P. choice, and start campaigning unreservedly for Obama. And if they have been told that Hillary Clinton will be the V.P. choice, they should already be doing just that.

As it stands, there's something to the Hillary Clinton dead-enders' claim - which to me comes across as a gloat - that Obama will be harmed by any choice of V.P. other than Clinton. If he picks a woman, "Why is she more qualified than Clinton?" If he picks a man, "Why not a woman?" But you know what? If the "white voter" concerns Hillary Clinton raised are as pressing as she suggested at the time - and pretty much everybody concedes that there is a block of voters that is unlikely or unwilling to vote for a black man - I don't think that his picking her will help him with that block. I'm not sure that any pick will, but unfortunately I suspect that the type of voter at issue would be most influenced by the presence of a white man on the ticket.

Meanwhile, something brooding , negative comments don't help overcome are the Clinton's negatives with large numbers of voters. Sure, they're mostly Republicans, but some are independents or "swing" voters. Clinton's negatives raise valid concerns for the Obama team that adding her to the ticket could hurt him in the polls. A cheery, enthusiastic Clinton team pressing right now for Obama's victory (whatever their personal feelings may be) could help demonstrate both that the Clintons can help Obama win and that concerns about Hillary Clinton's negatives are overblown. A sulking, half-hearted "he's the candidate"-type endorsement, accompanied by the reciprocal nursing of grudges over a hard-fought primary? The Clintons are more than smart enough to know where that leads. Here's an idea: no more of the childish refusal to endorse Obama as qualified to be President.

I guess this goes out to Obama and both Clintons: You need to be in this to win, and to the extent that it means you have to "get over yourselves", do it.
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1. I think there's an inherent absurdity for any person, after proclaiming ideological alignment with one political party, to then say, "But I'm going to vote for the other party's presidential candidate." If your party affiliation is that tenuous, why claim it in the first place?

The Answer To Everything? A Series of Sound Bite Showdowns!

Today Fred Hiatt actually signs his name to a column on the presidential race. Looking at Obama's remark,

"So nobody really thinks that Bush or McCain have a real answer for the challenges we face, so what they're going to try to do is make you scared of me. You know, he's not patriotic enough. He's got a funny name. You know, he doesn't look like all those other Presidents on those dollar bills, you know. He's risky. That's essentially the argument they're making."

Hyatt claims,

I was more struck by the preamble to that comment: by Obama's statements that McCain and the Republican Party are so bankrupt in policies that they can win only by spreading fear.

Except that Obama didn't say anything about the Republican Party - he identified policies associated with the President and the Presidential nominee. Isn't that the same thing, you ask? Perhaps Hiatt has forgotten the scathing attacks on Bush from within his own party, the efforts congressional candidates are making to distance themselves from Bush and his policies, various right-wing pundits trying to claim that he's really a "liberal", his 20% approval rating.... And perhaps he's forgotten the similar attacks on John McCain that preceded his winning the nomination. Only through an astonishing case of amnesia could you believe that the Republican Party as a whole marches in lockstep with Bush and McCain.

Really, Hiatt's assertion could be seen as an attack on McCain. Did you hear that, John? Fred Hiatt thinks there's not a whit of difference between what you stand for and the policies of G.W. Bush. Well, it would be an attack if Hiatt weren't so confident that the entire Republican Party shares those same views.... I suspect that what's really going on is that Hiatt largely shares those views, so he takes it personally that Obama (and most of the nation) see the Bush/McCain platform as having failed.

Hiatt proposes an interesting cure for Obama's dip in the polls, something he says "political practitioners" (but not himself?) "seemed to agree" resulted from McCain's "negative ads and petty misrepresentations" - a zillion or so "town hall" encounters with McCain.

The forums would return attention to the issues, where Obama believes he has a clear advantage. And if McCain sought to use them for personal attacks, he would at least have to bear full personal responsibility for doing so.

Really? I think the lesson of the zillion or so debates during the Democratic primary process is that fatigue sets in quickly - that voters lose interest - at which point the contest becomes "what sound bite can be best misrepresented" or "how can the moderator spice things up". If Obama wants to take the high road to McCain's low road, as a result of voter fatigue, media sensationalism aimed at breaking through that fatigue, and the media's preference for covering claims in what they later concede to be "negative ads and petty misrepresentations" as if they're the gospel truth, the zillion "town halls" create risk.

Take, for example, one of Hiatt's paper's star reporters, Dana Milbank, his happy repetition of one of the McCain campaign's favorite themes (Obama's being "presumptuous") and his misrepresentation of Obama's recent remarks. I understand why Hiatt wants Obama to feed that dysfunctional media machine, but since the primaries ended it seems to primarily serve McCain. Really - where's the upside for Obama?¹
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1. I do not intend to suggest that these two examples are representative of Milbank's work as a whole.
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Update: As if I needed another example of the media's irresponsibly helping to perpetuate a McCain campaign misrepresentation/smear, we now have insipid coverage of comments on tire pressure.

Carving Out Space

In standard form for one of its unsigned editorials, the Washington Post has some silly things to say about the current election campaign. The sort of thing that, understandably, would make any self-respecting columnist hesitant to sign the thing:

There was, no doubt, a calculated element of tactical foul-crying in the McCain campaign's loud and immediate protestations that Mr. Obama had not only "played the race card" but dealt it "from the bottom of the deck." This assessment was overstated. But just as the Obama campaign is free to do what it can to counteract the complications of running as the first African American nominee, the McCain campaign needs to carve out space to wage a vigorous campaign without fear of being labeled racist at the slightest criticism.

I agree with the assertion that Obama shouldn't be suggesting that his opponent is making an issue of race when that's not the case. But when I first heard an actual recording of the "dollar bills" comment and found out that Obama used the line to elicit a laugh from his audience, it seemed pretty clear that he was attempting to defuse race as a potential issue, not inject it. And I still don't see how anybody but McCain benefits from making race an issue - as evidenced by his campaign's working overtime to keep it front and center.

Beyond that, as the Post describes,

[McCain]'s not entitled to be dishonest, as he was, for example, in the ad suggesting that Mr. Obama preferred to play basketball rather than visit wounded troops on his trip to Germany.

And boy, was that dishonest. After all, didn't that footage in fact come from a military base? But hold on a second... did you say basketball? You have an ad comparing Obama to two young, white women whose recent media attention has been driven by scandal, followed by an image of him playing basketball (and playing it well)? [Addendum: David Gergen states that McCain's "The One/Messiah" ads are racist "code", adding yet another example to the series of dubious allusions.] With the ads produced by some of the most sophisticated smear artists in the business? Who clearly want race to be an issue? We're supposed to believe that it's all innocent, because the smear artists say so?

If Fred Hiatt and his gang wanted to be honest about what is going on, they would confront the McCain campaign based upon the most reasonable interpretation of their over-the-top statements and continued effort to keep this issue at the top of the news - they're trying to set up a context where when they inject race into the campaign (whether deliberately or accidentally) and Obama responds, they can shrug and say, "There he goes again". Is Hiatt being deliberately obtuse in playing along?

Attack of the McCain Shills

The issue of offshore drilling presents a conundrum for Obama. History tells us that if, during a political campaign, you try to explain a complicated position - why offshore drilling is unwise even in an era of high gas prices, how it won't affect current gas prices, and how it's unlikely to have any material impact on future gas prices - you lose the war of the sound bite. So Obama has offered nuance to those who he hopes can understand it, while trying to remove the issue from the table by saying that under the right circumstances he would support lifting the moratorium on offshore drilling.

In contrast, the Repubican attack machine has been in overdrive. Remember how a month or so ago they were perpetuating the lie that Cuba was drilling off of our shore? They're eagerly suggesting, knowing their claim to be entirely false, that offshore drilling or ANWR drilling will somehow lower gas prices. They want very much to keep this issue on the table, hoping that fabricated claims, accusations and sound bites will prevail. So out comes a McCain shill:

On policy, [potential McCain V.P. pick Tim] Pawlenty said he doubted Obama's statement Friday that he would support expanded offshore oil drilling if it were the key to a compromise on comprehensive energy policy.

"He's put so many contingencies around it that I wonder - in fact I question - whether he would do it at all," Pawlenty said in an interview. "It may be a way for him to gain favor during the election, and tube it later because all the contingencies weren't met."

Why is this even news?

Meanwhile, on the "race card" front, another shill crawls out of the woodwork:

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Barack Obama is "absolutely" injecting the issue of race into the presidential campaign on Sunday morning, and twice calling it "a lie" for the Democratic presidential nominee to claim otherwise.

“To say that Barack Obama did not intentionally inject the idea of his name and his race is a lie,” Graham said in an interview on "Fox News Sunday."

Is there anybody out there with half (or more) of a brain who believes that Obama gains from having race be an issue in the campaign? If that's the case, as with offshore drilling, why is McCain sending out an army of shills to try to keep the issue front and center?

Rather than asking that question, for the most part the media (as you might expect) plays along. Or observes, "This is horrible, but this isn't the true voice of the wise and honorable John McCain."

McCain's New Campaign Song?

McCain's focus on Obama's "celebrity" seems to be coopting the campaign song I once suggested for Joe Biden, "New Kid In Town", a song is in the voice of somebody who is past his prime. Heck, it's even about a guy named (albeit figuratively) Johnny.

You're walking away and they're talking behind you,
They will never forget you 'til somebody new comes along.

Where you been lately? There's a new kid in town.
Everybody loves him, don't they?

C'mon, John, you used to be happy to play up your status as a political celebrity. If you drew a crowd of 200,000 to one of your own speeches, you would justifiably crow about your accomplishment.

As much as people want to claim that this isn't really McCain's authentic voice, that he's uncomfortable with the low road, for now it nonetheless is his voice.

Update: Another round of McCain's tactics being "out of sync with the real guy".

McCain's Bad Analogies

Yesterday on On Point, in response to an assertion that Obama's statements about his appearance as compared to past Presidents was "stating the obvious" to try to defuse attacks, National Review staff writer Stephen Spruiell said (starting at 18:31),

Stating the obvious, I mean, that's just not something that McCain and Bush have been doing, have been going around and pointing out that Obama is black. I mean, that's what he said that they were doing and they're not. Now I mean as far as the veteran card as opposed to the gender card or the race card. I mean the difference would be that being a veteran is something that you can legitimately put on your résumé and say, you know, like, this is something that I've done. You know, this is something that, you know, you can judge for yourself, but maybe it qualifies me to lead the country better than sort of a one-term Senator who, you know, had some experience in state politics before.

When asked specifically about the comparison of Obama to two "blonde, flouncing white girls" could be seen as a kind of race statement "in the music if not in the words",

That's, I think that's so ludicrous. I mean, you know, clearly the ad was comparing Barack Obama to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton and saying that he has a lot of fame, but he has not done a lot to, you know, justify that. I mean, that is, sort of, Paris Hilton is famous for being famous. I mean, what, we, you know, you can't juxtapose Obama next to any white woman without somebody like, immediately accusing whoever made the ad of racism? I mean, that's, I, that's, that's so, so paranoid as to, you know, defy belief.

This is a pretty stupid defense of the ad. Granted, the McCain campaign's official defenses are pretty stupid, also - the idea that they're comparing Obama to the world's biggest celebrities, by pulling two blonde young women out of yesterday's news. The absurd claim that they're the #2 and #3 celebrities in the world behind Obama? Pure fiction. Citing the Forbes Celebrity 100, upon which neither Spears nor Hilton appear,

Instead, the top 10, in order: Oprah Winfrey, Tiger Woods, Angelina Jolie, Beyonce Knowles, David Beckham, Johnny Depp, Jay-Z, The Police, JK Rowling, Brad Pitt.

So, they didn't pick other big celebrities, who were either men, or black, or married.

What they picked was two sexually available white women.

But it must have been a coincidence, because we know John McCain wants to run an elevated campaign focusing on the serious issues that America faces.

Okay, so the McCain camp's excuse for why it picked Spears and Hilton is a fraud. Perhaps that's why Spruiell tried to bend the excuse into something new - the idea that Obama, Spears and Hilton did nothing to deserve their celebrity. Except Spears did a lot to earn her celebrity status. In addition to being talented as a child - as a singer, gymnast and performer - and working harder during her pre-teen years than many people do during their entire lives, she actually picked up the pace during her period of fame. If McCain thinks his touring schedule is rough, perhaps he should ask Spears how many weekends she got to take off during the height of her fame.

Now if the analogy is to Spears current public image, muddied by her legal problems, drug problems, erratic behavior and mental illness? Let's say that type of judgment should hit a bit too close to home. It's not fun watching a talented person turn their life into a train wreck over drugs. Anybody who has lived through the ordeal of a loved one spiraling toward rock bottom should have empathy for somebody like Spears (and for her family) - to me, if that's the image of Spears that McCain intended to convey, it's disgusting to claim pride in exploiting her illness.

As for Paris Hilton, let's see.... Which of the candidates took middling political talent, mixed it with a strong family name and millions of dollars in inherited cash, and bought his way into status as a political celebrity? Hm... Strangely, it doesn't seem to have been Obama.

McCain Needs Better Defenders

One of McCain's supporters makes an embarrassing series of assertions in defense of John McCain:

But former Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, a Republican who supports McCain, called Obama's comments "a very sophisticated injection of race."

"It was sort of like a political prophylactic," Blackwell said. "[Obama] was anticipating, you know, that race will be an issue, although John McCain has worked very, very diligently to make sure that race is not the issue.

So you see? Obama was working too hard to try to prevent race from becoming an issue. So as part of his diligent effort to make sure that race is not an issue, McCain had to make race an issue.

"We'll let the chips fall where they may when it comes to how people perceive this, but we are not going to let anybody paint John McCain, who's fought his entire life for equal rights for everyone, to be able to be painted as racist."

Right... McCain has a long history devoted to equal rights for people who didn't want to celebrate Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday. And equal rights for those who want to fly the Confederate Battle Flag. Besides, if that's not what you mean by "equal rights", he's flip-flopped so that doesn't count any more. Also, he supports, er, used to support but now opposes affirmative action, but either way he was supporting "equal rights". Equal rights for gay people? No, wait, don't bring that into a discussion of race....

We didn't draw first blood. I mean, this campaign has been rough and tumble since the day Barack Obama got his nomination, and we've withered under the attacks of the Obama campaign on a daily basis.

Ooh... You can almost picture McCain, dressed up as Rambo, slurring out, "He drew first blood."

Would these be the "attacks" where McCain has been accused of supporting the Bush Administration policies that he... supports? The reciprocal misrepresentation of the meaning of Senate votes on multi-issue bills? I'll grant that I bypass most commercial television, and thus rarely see the attack ads, but what did I overlook?

Meanwhile, McCain doesn't seem much better at defending his gutter tactics. He is "proud of" an attack ad that compares Obama to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. Is he similarly proud of the lies in his ad about Obama's cancelled visit with injured troops in Germany? Are we to believe that it is a coincidence that his "race card" claims were released at a time when there was growing media attention being paid to those lies - and the fact that he had another attack ad scripted and ready to go if Obama had visited the troops?

Is the worst part that the media continues to follow the campaign at the surface level, that it drops the ball on real stories to pick up the latest campaign fluff, that McCain seems to have obtained a bounce in the polls through his gutter tactics, or that this could be the point where the campaign gets truly dirty on both sides?

The Great Equalizer

Consider taking a moment to honor the bar exam.

If Martians Landed On The Earth, Would Obama Given Them Human Rights?

Here's how a conversation might go between a columnist and the Obama campaign:

Q. I have a question about Obama's health care policies?

A. Did you review the materials on our website?

Q. Of course. But I was hoping for a few more specifics on when the candidate might impose a mandate....

But the act of picking up the phone and dialing a number? It's too much for our poor columnists and their overstressed dialing fingers? Which is why we get this type of stuff from Ruth Marcus:

To read Obama's exams is to get a glimpse of the supple intelligence he would bring to the presidency and to be impressed by his lawyerly capacity - perhaps even compulsion - to see the other side's argument and mine the weaknesses of his own case.

But it is also a reminder of Obama's essential elusiveness, and how little we understand about how the candidate himself would resolve these thorny problems....

Reading them buttressed my confidence in Obama's capacity to grasp the nuances of any question, no matter how complex. They also underscored my sense that, in the hardest cases, I'm not always sure where Professor Obama, or President Obama for that matter, comes down.

I dunno. Maybe it's just me, but if I were a Washington Post columnist and thought one of his exam questions was that pressing, I would call him up and ask him about it. Would that make for too short a column?