"Quote of the Day

Baltimore Sun , July 9, 2004 (no link):

"The American public is going to take into consideration the fact that John Kerry made his decision [to choose John Edwards as VP] in terms of political expediency rather than expertise and experience," said Kevin Madden, a spokesman for Bush's re-election campaign. "He made it to close the charisma gap."

Now's the time to do some truth-telling--

They have to distinguish between the McCain today and the McCain POW.  These are not the same men.  Heck, McCain now is not even McCain 2000.

If the Obama camp keeps talking about how honorable McCain is, then why shouldn't voters believe McCain's ads?  Obama has vouched for him.

This needs to stop.  NOW.

Obama needs to "call a spade a spade" without using that phrase, of course.  If he used the phrase, he'd no doubt be accused of playing the race card.  Against himself.

Please limit your comments to a discussion of what he wrote.

As for whether we should write about Palin, please take that discussion to posts about that or an open thread.

Obama did not energize his base on the basis of his distinct stance on the issues or his immense national security qualifications. I don't remember Andrew having anything to say about that. In fact Andrew's primary argument for Obama was based on what he represented culturally -both because of his ethnic background and his membership in a new generation. It is the height of hypocrisy for Sullivan to make this argument, and to use it to impugn McCain's character after Sullivan's history of character assassination against the Clintons is downright despicable.

Second, the race was dead even 10 days ago, which is hardly a sign that McCain is going to lose in November.  

Third, he picked a woman against whom Obama has few, if any arguments.  Obama will fail on pastor problems (Rev. Wright), lobbyists (Joe Biden's history), earmarks ($1 billion to Illinois), executive experience (Obama has none), and so on.  He took away the uniqueness of Obama's story, and showed some that he was not afraid to go outside the entrenched Washington interests for a VP.  

Fourth, injecting enthusiasm into the base is not a bad thing, and the GOP sure needed it.

Fifth, picking Palin for the number two spot had the perhaps unintended consequence of comparing her not to Biden, where she does come up short on FP experience, but to Obama, who's not exactly a FP/national security heavyweight.  That's something that's easier for people to see, and some of them are more comfortable having a novice in the second spot than in the top one.

Sixth, Sullivan again comes back to his own theory, which he ascribes to McCain as fact, that he only picked her because she would shore up the Christianist base.  If that's all he wanted to do, he could have picked Mike Huckabee.

Finally, embedded in the ridiculous statement that no one who cares about the country's safety would gamble on a total unknown is the realization that, but for him being in our faces for the last 19 months, Obama would be that same relative unknown, with little experience in matters of national security.  If 18 million Democrats were willing to take a chance on Obama as the #1 guy, there's no reason millions won't be willing to accept Palin as McCain's #2.

The Emperor has no clothes
If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

All of these stories about Sarah Palin, Governor Reformer, do not add up in a way that reflects on Republican political ideology. For Republicans, her story has too fit into tidy lines of executive / anti-Washington command (the decider), fiscal responsibility, family values (Somerby's "three pleasing tales").

But, Palin's governing and her life just cannot be contained by the caricature that both the right AND the left have made for her. What we really witness in the absurdity of Sarah Palin's political narrative is the inability - once again! - of the Republican philosophy of government and conservative political ideology to even remotely characterize or describe a functioning political state and civil society. Palin ran a state government for the past 2 years, not a failed political movement.

The theme of "lying" implies that McCain knows right or truth, that Republicans know the difference between what works and what does not. Democrats could have made that argument, but only if they used their convention to impugn McCain's character as the Republicans impugned Obama's character.  The "Palin tales" are not lies, they are blinders - blinders at the very core of the failure of conservatism. Blindness is an entirely different beast. Blinders imply not only a failure to do what is right or reform what is broken, it signifies an inability to grasp the conditions on the ground.

But since Palin was nominated, his opinion of McCain has gone into the toilet. What is relevant to him is what the choice of Palin says about McCain, and how McCain is using that choice to embrace gutter politics.

Sullivan is wrong on many things, but he has been consistently right in despising Karl Rove style politics as being fundamentally toxic to the country. Now that McCain is embracing the gutter, Sullivan is disappointed that we can't have a reasonable debate about ideas anymore. I think that's a fair point, and hearing it from a self-identified conservative is important.

McCain could have chosen several Republican women. Olympia Snowe, for example, has an independent streak that could have matched up well - though she differs from McCain on women's choices. Snowe would have had an easier time attracting women voters, but  not the fundamentalists. Selecting Palin was more about the latter, and winning at any cost than it was about women voters or national security.

For some similarities, I recommend Googling '1988 election', then going to Wikipedia, to see the strategies employed by Bush Sr and Quayle. I expect to see the same from Palin in debate.

And the one thing that deserves more mention is that McCain's constant effort to claim everything is an attack on Sarah is a clever way to sidestep issues, and to gain free publicity, sparing him expensive ad buys.