CNN's Roland Martin argues that Obama's big mistake was that mentioned "Bush, then McCain" then lobbed the charge that "they" would make racist attacks. Had Obama simply referred to "bloggers, columnists, conservative talk show hosts ... he would have been absolutely right," says Martin. "I can understand why [McCain's] camp is responding the way they are. I would do the exact same thing."
Actually conservative columnists, bloggers, and talk-show hosts aren't engaging in race-baiting, but Obama would have gotten away with a more general smear against Republicans--as he did last month.
1) From SlateV.com, “Leave Obama Alone” by Christopher Beam (Please see update below)
This is a first in Required Reading history – Required Viewing! Before diligently completing your assignment, be forewarned: Those pretend whiny Obama supporters can be a salty bunch. There is obscenity in the clip below. If that kind of thing won’t fly in your workplace, you’ll have to wait until you get home to watch it.
As funny and over-the-top as the video is, it crystallizes several important things about the Obama candidacy. It’s not just that people have finally found a way to laugh at Barack Obama. As regular readers of this site know, we cracked that code months ago. But what this clip does is bring together all the parody-worthy elements of the Obama phenomenon. The ridiculous devotion of His followers, His scandalous lack of accomplishments, His and His campaign’s hypersensitivity – they’re all there.
Most noteworthy is the comedy value that the swooning Obama supporter brings to the table. The Obama campaign rests on a foundation of irrational devotion. As I pointed out yesterday, several people who should know better, including conservatives like Andrew Sullivan and Doug Kmiec, have made Barack Obama the vessel for their hopes and dreams. This was never a rational decision, and as the meringue-like solidity of the Obama campaign becomes ever more obvious, that foundation has the potential to crumble.
One last word about negative campaigning, specifically Barack Obama’s reaction to negative campaigning. During the general election season, Obama surrogates have suggested that John McCain is senile and minimized his military service in a serial fashion. Somehow John McCain carried on without whining over these attacks. And yet now the Obama campaign is driven over a mental ledge when a satirical ad compares its hero to Paris Hilton? As Captain Ed Morrissey said on another occasion regarding Obama’s paper thin skin, get a helmet, Buttercup.
UPDATE: I have been informed that the star of this video is doing a voiceover of a talented young gentleman named Chris Crocker who previously starred in the viral video, "Leave Britney Alone." I apologize for my pop culture ignorance.
As the title of this column suggests, Henninger is a little peeved at John McCain:
Is John McCain losing it?
On Sunday, he said on national television that to solve Social Security "everything's on the table," which of course means raising payroll taxes. On July 7 in Denver he said: "Senator Obama will raise your taxes. I won't."
This isn't a flip-flop. It's a sex-change operation.
He got back to the subject Tuesday in Reno, Nev. Reporters asked about the Sunday tax comments. Mr. McCain replied, "The worst thing you could do is raise people's payroll taxes, my God!" Then he was asked about working with Democrats to fix Social Security, and he repeated, "everything has to be on the table." But how can . . .? Oh never mind.
Yesterday he was in Aurora, Colo., to wit: "On Social Security, he [Sen. Obama] wants to raise Social Security taxes. I am opposed to raising taxes on Social Security. I want to fix the system without raising taxes."
What I'm asking is, does John McCain have the mental focus, the intellectual discipline, to avoid being out-slicked by Barack Obama, if he isn't abandoned by his own voters?
It's not just taxes. Recently the subject came up of Al Gore's assertion that the U.S. could get its energy solely from renewables in 10 years. Sen. McCain said: "If the vice president says it's doable, I believe it's doable." What!!?? In a later interview, Mr. McCain said he hadn't read "all the specifics.”
My many critics, please take note: What’s about to come will mark the second time in one day that I’ve defended John McCain. Here’s what people have to understand about John McCain: There are some issues he cares passionately about. Among those issues are the most vital ones, namely those involving national security matters. On such matters, you can count on John McCain to fight like a pit-bull but with much more ferocity.
On virtually everything else, John McCain’s style of leadership is to try to get things done. And that means compromise. Some of those compromises like his notorious one on immigration reform will drive conservatives nuts. But McCain is what he is, and he’s also the only candidate in this race who realizes a national security plan requires more than spewing a lot of One World gibberish on a global tour.
So when McCain expresses what seems to be agnosticism on everything ranging from the environment to payroll taxes, take him at his word. A McCain administration will likely bring a lot of agita to American conservatives. (Good news thought for the makers of Prilosec, the sole known cure for agita.) But conflating the trademark McCain willingness to reach out to the other side with stupidity is unfair.
With his plea for “intellectual discipline,” though, Henninger occupies more solid ground. Candidate McCain long ago developed the habit of freelancing. This was fine when he was riding the Straight Talk Express in 2000 with but a handful of worshipful media types in tow, all eager to play his Boswell. The senator is playing a bigger room now, and he has to sharpen up. If that means he has to cut back on his beloved spontaneity, so be it.
Someone has to say it, so it might as well be me. When Karl Rove first started writing for Newsweek and appearing on Fox News, he was an exciting presence. He was full of fresh insights, and given his pedigree you had to listen to what Rove said.
Now, several months later, Rove is mailing it in. In today’s WSJ column, Rove focuses on Obama skipping Landstuhl and His apparent inability to admit a mistake. Yes, Rove is correct that these are major stories, but the stories and his insights regarding them are both nearly a week old. The column has all the freshness of a chewed piece of Wonder Bread.
It wouldn’t be fair if I left you with the impression that Rove is somehow deficient as an op-ed columnist. I’m always amazed at how many op-ed columns address topics that high end news gatherers had worn out days earlier. So by a more lenient measure, Rove’s effort is par for the course. But Rove is arguably the most accomplished political strategist of the past quarter century. He has more to offer than insights that even Joe Klein might have previously stumbled over.
This is the second time I’m recommending a Chait column in as many days. It’s also the second consecutive day I’m recommending a Chait column for the specific purpose of showing how blinkered Obama supporters can be:
Negative ads work better than positive ads. In focus groups, voters insist they hate negative ads, because that sounds virtuous. Yet studies show the negative advertisements are the ones they remember.
To go on the attack, Obama doesn't need to engage in character assassination and baseless charges, as his opponent has done. All he needs to do is stop letting McCain paint a wildly distorted self-portrait. The Arizona senator wants voters to see him as a maverick who never changes positions for political reasons. One ad touts the way he bucked Bush on the environment. It doesn't mention that McCain has abandoned the climate-change bill he co-sponsored, demanded wider drilling and a gas-tax holiday that would undermine the goal of burning less fossil fuel, and started raking in huge sums from oil companies.
I hate to burst Chait’s bubble regarding the lily-clean purity of the Obama campaign, but the Obama campaign has indeed attacked. As I mentioned earlier, His surrogates have steadily suggested that John McCain is senile. They have also minimized McCain’s military service. There’s also the flip-flopping charge that Obama and His surrogates have habitually lobbed at McCain. And then just yesterday, Obama Himself dipped his big toe into the vile pool of negative campaigning, implying that the McCain campaign and its supporters were a bunch of closet racists who soon enough would let their true colors show.
So Chait should be happy – these are attacks. What should make Chait unhappy is that they are spectacularly ineffective attacks. The personal attacks have been laughable. The flip-flopping ones had a juvenile I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I quality to them. And the most recent charge of raaacism is about a thousand times more likely to backfire on Obama than to help Him.
There’s a point to negative advertising that eludes Chait, at least as far as John McCain is concerned. The reason negative campaigning worked so well against the likes of John Kerry and Michael Dukakis is because they were unknown quantities. Effective negative campaigning came to define them for the American public.
There’s a problem applying this strategy to John McCain. As the Obama campaign has pointed out on numerous occasions, McCain is not a young man. Indeed, he has been an American political fixture since the earth cooled. In other words, John McCain has defined himself. But if the Obama campaign wants to waste some of its limitless resources on attacking McCain and in the process sullying its candidate’s pristine image, I wish them happy hunting.
Let me be the first to say on behalf of Red Sox Nation – our long national nightmare is over. Manny Ramirez can go be Manny for some other unsuspecting team who thinks they’re merely getting one of the greatest sluggers ever. Yes, the Dodgers are getting that, but they are also getting one of the most frustrating talents ever to play the game. And they’re going to drop him into the middle of a pennant race.
Good luck to the Dodgers. For me, for the first time in almost eight years, it is now once again safe to watch the Red Sox without risking a coronary.
BONUS! A quote of the day from Lindsey Graham: ”Somebody asked me about (Obama in) Germany. I said, ‘There goes Germany. We're going to have to get to 270 without Germany.’”
Mark Hemingway writes that "when Obama says he 'doesn't look like those other presidents on the dollar bills,' he's not talking about race. He's talking about his ears."
Having returned from his European vacation, this is the perfect time for Obama to try out a new lapel pin. The seal is gone, and the American flag was temporarily gone. Here is a proposal that should ring true with his staffers: how about Obama wear a United Nations / USA friendship flag lapel pin?
The Friendship pin will reaffirm the suggestion, which many Obama staffers find flattering, that if European intellectuals were to design an American presidential candidate, you'd get Obama. That whole idea that the Constitution calls upon the American government to regard American interests ahead of all others is just an accident to them. Anyway, if Obama's staffers think the UN/U.S. Friendship pin is a little gutsy, but are still uncomfortable with the patriotic display, perhaps Obama could swap the U.S. flag for the Star Trek Federation Seal.
This could alienate the Borg, a crucial part of Obama's base. But perhaps it could win over others parts of the Universe. How do you say, Yes we can, in Klingon?
Obama Campaign: "Dollar Bill" Comment Not about Race
Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs denies that his candidate's statement that John McCain will try to scare voters by saying that Obama "doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills" had anything to do with race:
"What Barack Obama was talking about was that he didn't get here after spending decades in Washington," Gibbs said Thursday.
"Right, neither did Lincoln, but his face, along with those of many other white men, adorns a dollar bill," writes Jonathan Martin.
"Unadulterated crap," is Allahpundit's even pithier take on Gibbs's spin.
Today is the magical number of 8 days before the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, to be held at 8 p.m. on the 8th day of August, the 8th month of the year.
The number 8 has all sorts of magical attraction for the Chinese. Eight, in Mandarin, also means “prosperity” and “fertility” and “wealth” or “fortune.” A powerful combination of ideas in any culture, so the combination of eights associated with the opening day of these games is like some once-in-a-century aligning of the planets would be to astrologers.
A large group of China’s most famous recording artists have produced a new song,"Beijing Welcomes You," that is not unlike the 1985 “We Are The World,” recorded by an all-star cast of singers and musicians to raise funds for famine relief in Ethiopia. Only this song was inspired not by the desire to generate donations for the recent Sichuan earthquake but to serve as an anthem for the Olympic Games, which are hardly in need of either more treacle or more pomposity—both of which the song has in spades.
You would have to be living underground in China not to know the song at this point. When I tried to email a copy of the MP3 version to a Beijing colleague she told me, “oh I do not need it. You cannot go to a shopping mall or supermarket or anywhere without hearing this now.” We can only be happy it's not 8 minutes long.
In response to Barack Obama's remarks yesterday in Missouri, McCain campaign manager Rick Davis issued this statement: "Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck. It's divisive, negative, shameful and wrong."
You can read Obama's remarks, as provided by the McCain campaign, are after the jump.
Barack Obama's Comments Yesterday In Springfield, Rolla And Union, Missouri:
Barack Obama In Springfield, Missouri: "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." (Barack Obama, Remarks, Springfield, MO, 7/30/08)
· Watch: http://blip.tv/file/1132434
Barack Obama In Rolla, Missouri: "That's not the debate we're getting out of John McCain right now. He's spending an awful lot of time talking about me. You notice that? I haven't seen an ad yet where he talks about what he's gonna do. And the reason is because those folks know they don't have any good answers, they know they've had their turn over the last eight years and made a mess of things. They know that you're not real happy with them. And so the only way they figure they're going to win this election is if they make you scared of me. So what they're saying is, 'Well, we know we're not very good but you can't risk electing Obama. You know, he's new, he doesn't look like the other presidents on the currency. He's got a funny name.' I mean, that's basically the argument -- he's too risky." (Barack Obama, Remarks, Rolla, MO, 7/30/08)
· Watch: http://blip.tv/file/1132429
Barack Obama In Union, Missouri: "John McCain and the Republicans, they don't have any new ideas, that's why they're spending all their time talking about me. I mean, you haven't heard a positive thing out of that campaign in a month. All they do is try to run me down, and you know, you know this in your own life, right? If somebody doesn't have anything nice to say about anybody, that means they've got some problems of their own. So they know they've got no new ideas, they know they're dredging up all the stale, old stuff they've been peddling for the last eight, ten years. But since they don't have any new ideas the only strategy they've got in this election is to try to scare you about me. They're going to try to say that I'm a risky guy, they're going to try to say, 'Well, you know, he's got a funny name, and he doesn't look like all the presidents on the dollar bills and the five dollar bills,' and they're going to send out nasty e -mails. And the latest one they got me in an ad with Paris Hilton. You know, never met the woman. But, you know, what they're going to try to argue is that somehow I'm too risky. You know, basically what they're saying to you is we know we didn't do a real good job, but he's too risky." (Barack Obama, Remarks, Union, MO, 7/30/08)
House Democrats Pull Out All The Stops to Win - A Five-Week Vacation!
House Democrats pulled out all the stops to win a hard fought legislative victory yesterday – prevailing on a dramatic 213-212 nail-biter vote on the “adjournment resolution,” authorizing a five-week summer recess. Congress sets dates for its “district work periods”, through these normally routine measures that must pass both the House and Senate, but don’t require the President’s signature.
Earlier in the week, House Republican leader John Boehner urged his colleagues to “vote no” on what customarily amounts to a legislative housekeeping matter. He implored Congress not skip town without considering comprehensive energy plan, including lifting the ban on offshore drilling.
For their part, House Democratic leaders seemed more interested cracking the whip for a five-week vacation than hammering out a plan to lower gasoline prices. Still, 17 Democrats – almost all from vulnerable districts – joined all the Republicans present (195) and voted “no” on the motion to adjourn. But 213 members (all Democrats) voted to leave town. You can read the tally here.
Losing would have amounted to a stinging embarrassment for the House majority. Even the speaker of the House – who by tradition normally abstains except for highly substantive or symbolic matters – cast a vote for adjournment. Speaker Pelosi joined in the last minute cajoling like a burly Chicago precinct captain. But Democrats from swing-districts that voted “no” decided to buck their leaders’ heavy lobbying rather explain why they chose a holiday over energy price relief.
The “vacation vote” arm-twisting became rather heated, according to several sources that witnessed yesterday’s legislative battle. Majority Leader Steny Hoyer reportedly “got in the face” of freshman Rep. Heath Shuler of North Carolina and persuaded him to switch his vote at the last minute to “yes” after he initially voted “no.” The former Washington Redskins quarterback doesn’t have much of a race this November. Nevertheless it still may be tough to explain back in the Tar Heel state where Mr. Shuler likes to advertise his “independence” from the liberal congressional Democratic leadership.
As you know, I haven’t exactly established myself as a robotic defender of the McCain campaign. Thus, in the spirit of a very minor league Nixon going to an even more minor league China, I will be the first member of the right wing press to unequivocally defend the McCain ad that compares Barack Obama to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton.
Former McCain aide John Weaver has settled some old scores and called the ad childish and lamented the campaign’s “tomfoolery.” As to the ad’s purported puerility, I’ll stick to assessing its effectiveness while noting that nobility seldom equates with impact in the world of political advertising. Weaver also observed that “John’s been a celebrity ever since he was shot down.” With that last critique, Weaver shows precisely why the ad is effective.
Some of the ad’s critics have noted that Britney Spears and Paris Hilton aren’t even such enormous celebrities. Tiger Woods and Brad Pitt, they rightly argue, are much bigger stars. But that analysis misses the point as far as Obama is concerned. Unlike Britney and Paris, Tiger Woods earned his fame. No one could accuse Tiger Woods of being a media sensation or being famous just for being famous.
And that’s why linking Obama to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton is so spot on. Think back on Weaver’s strangely acid observation that McCain has been a celebrity since he was shot down. This critique tacitly acknowledges a critical difference between McCain and Obama. McCain has come about his circa 2008 fame the old-fashioned way – he earned it. Obama, on the other hand…Someone tell me precisely why Barack Obama “has become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions.” Was it because of His spectacular achievements as a community organizer? Or His stellar work as a part-time lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School? Or maybe it all boils down to those good grades He got in law school.
The point is, like Britney and Paris, Barack Obama hasn’t earned the status that He (like they) so enjoys. And then there’s the further and still more relevant issue that He’s unworthy of that status. Obama’s ranking as a Savior would be easier to handle if it turned out He had all the right stuff to handle the presidency. But repeatedly, Obama has shown Himself to be ill-informed, historically illiterate and more impressed with His own superficial analyses than actual facts.
Think about the ad this way – it has annoyed many people. Most presidential campaign ads this cycle, especially the drearily self-righteous ones excreted by the spendthrift Obama campaign, have come and gone with no one either noticing them or caring about them. Why are people talking about this one? Because it hits close to home.
A new USA Today/Gallup poll finds nearly half of Americans saying the U.S. troop surge in Iraq, now over, has made the situation there better, up from 40% in February and just 22% a year ago. Accordingly, the percentage believing the surge "is not making much difference" has declined from 51% a year ago, and 38% in February, to just 32%.
Gallup also notes: "Americans' views about the surge have been, and remain, highly politicized. However, all three partisan groups -- Republicans, independents, and Democrats -- have grown more likely since February to believe the surge is helping."
Byron York reports that President Bush announced today:
The progress in Iraq has allowed us to continue our policy of "return on success." We now have brought home all five of the combat brigades and the three Marine units that were sent to Iraq as part of the surge. The last of these surge brigades returned home this month. And later this year, General Petraeus will present me his recommendations on future troop levels — including further reductions in our combat forces as conditions permit.
As part of the "return on success" policy, we are also reducing the length of combat tours in Iraq. Beginning tomorrow, troops deploying to Iraq will serve 12-month tours instead of 15-month tours. This will ease the burden on our forces — and it will make life easier for our wonderful military families.
ABC News has video of Barack Obama telling voters in Missouri today:
Nobody really thinks that, that, that Bush or McCain have a real answer for the challenges we face. So what they are going to try to do is make you scared of me. You know he--oh, he's not patriotic enough. He's got a funny name. You know, he doesn't look like all of those other presidents on those dollar bills.
I'm sure the Washington Post is hard at work on a front-page story debunking this scurrilous and unfounded accusation.
Sen. John Ensign, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, declined to endorse Stevens' campaign for reelection. The NRSC describes itself on it's Web site as "the only political committee solely dedicated to electing Republicans to the U.S. Senate."
Ensign, instead of endorsing the longest serving Senate Republican in history, said he wanted to wait for the results of Alaska's Republican primary on August 26th. Stevens faces six opponents.
"The candidates are on the ballot right now, and we're going to wait to see how that whole thing plays out," Ensign said.
"Do you still endorse Sen. Stevens?" a reporter asked Ensign.
"I've said exactly what I was going to say," Ensign responded. "We'll wait and see how the process plays out."
This is remarkable, given the NRSC's policy of endorsing incumbents. Perhaps Republicans want to win after all.
The Ego has landed! A mere three days ago, Barack Obama sat comfortably perched atop a nine point lead in the Gallup tracking poll. Now it’s down to four. Rasmussen shows an even tighter race. In Rasmussen’s tracking numbers, Obama’s six point lead of four days ago has shrunk to two. And let’s not forget the notorious Gallup non-tracking poll which showed McCain with a four point lead. True, that one was an obvious outlier and as responsible analysts we should ignore the outliers. But the big picture is obvious – Barack Obama’s lead is a slim one.
So what gives? If you think I’m about to slip in a peroration on the effectiveness of the McCain campaign, think again. Regarding the McCain operation, the most charity I’m capable of is that as much as the outfit has struggled, it’s still right in the thick of things. Imagine if they get their act together.
Obama’s relative misfortunes are his own doing. Yesterday I was having a conversation with a friend, a fellow conservative who as it turns out has traveled the same political journey the last several months that I have. At the start of the year, both of us found Barack Obama a very attractive candidate. Neither us would have considered voting for him because of his reflexive and dangerous dovishness (among other problems), but his personal decency and his call for national unity were appealing.
Six months later, the thrill is gone. The simple fact is Barack Obama doesn’t wear well. The more most people see of him, the less they like. This phenomenon has much to do with his lack of substance. Calling for nice things like unity, whether in Boston or Berlin, is a swell thing. (Did you like the way I worked in some Obama-style alliteration there?) But the endless repetition of the call unaccompanied by a substantive plan of action eventually grates. After a while, the whole Hope/Change thing begins to sound like empty rhetoric.
And then you have Obama’s ego. If ever there was a presidential candidate who had cause to be modest, it’s Barack Obama. By presidential aspirant levels, he has accomplished virtually nothing of significance in his life. And then there’s the disquieting fact that we’re not exactly talking about Bob Casey Jr. here – where Senator Casey Jr. has no discernible talents, Obama is a highly intelligent and gifted guy. And what has he done with his life?
The longer and closer you pay attention to Barack Obama, the more concerning these things become. And I’m not just talking about the reaction of conservatives. I implore you to read the lefty blogs. Their lack of enthusiasm for Obama is almost as marked as their opposite numbers’ lack of excitement for McCain.
Here’s some free strategic advice for the Obama campaign – acknowledge that your guy doesn’t wear well and won’t wear well. His substance-free style of politicking eventually frustrates a fair share of the electorate, and his self-regard reaches a tipping point when a level of over-exposure is reached. The obvious solution is to amp down the rock star aspects of the Obama campaign.
Problem is, being a rock star seems to be Obama’s favorite part of the process.
Apparently having nothing newsworthy to print today, the Grey Lady ran this extended appreciation of Barack Obama’s days as a lecturer (not a Professor) at the University of Chicago Law School. Guess what? His students loved him. I’m not surprised. As I’ve written many times, the people who went to law school with him sing the same tune regardless of their current political orientation – they all adore him. By all accounts on a personal level, Barack Obama is a swell guy.
If he were running to be my next door neighbor rather than president, he’d have my vote (especially since John McCain seems like he could be highly irritable if I hit a whiffle ball into his yard). But the presidency involves more than personal affability and charm. So why am I linking this meaningless story? I don’t expect you to follow the link – indeed, I’ll be angry if you do. I may even track down your ISP and send you an angry email. But I still wanted to call Professor Richard Epstein’s characteristically cogent assessment of his semi-colleague to your attention:
“I don’t think anything that went on in these chambers affected him,” said Richard Epstein, a libertarian colleague who says he longed for Mr. Obama to venture beyond his ideological and topical comfort zones. “His entire life, as best I can tell, is one in which he’s always been a thoughtful listener and questioner, but he’s never stepped up to the plate and taken full swings.”
Why is the Democratic candidate always a flip-flopper? John Kerry, as everybody remembers, came to be defined almost exclusively as a flip-flopper. (A 2004 Wall Street Journal news article described him as "a politician with a troublesome reputation for trying to have it both ways.")
Al Gore was relentlessly attacked by Republicans for his alleged waffling. ("Mr. Gore has a bit of a reputation for flip-flopping and corner-cutting," reported The New York Times in 2000.) Bill Clinton was attacked by George H.W. Bush for "turn[ing] the White House into a Waffle House" and the subject of a famous Time cover story titled, "Why Voters Don't Trust Bill Clinton."
Chait’s answer to why every Democrat is a flip-flopper?
In the late 1980s, the popular revolt against government that had bubbled up in the mid-'60s began to peter out, sapping the power of straightforward anti-government appeals. And, starting in 1992, Democrats ruthlessly purged nearly all their political liabilities by embracing anti-crime measures, welfare reform, and middle-class tax cuts, and, more recently, by abandoning gun control. What's left is a political terrain generally favorable to Democrats, which has, in turn, forced Republicans to emphasize the personal virtue of their nominees.
Or maybe the answer is simpler than Chait posits. First of all, Bill Clinton wasn’t typecast as a flip-flopper. A fraud? Check. A pathological liar? Yessir. But not a flip-flopper. Clinton had a well articulated and consistent political philosophy both times he ran for president. For instance, in both campaigns he promised to deliver tax relief to the long-suffering middle class that “worked hard and played by the rules.” Of course, he completely ignored those campaign promises when the elections were over. Attacking him as a flip-flopper wouldn’t have made any sense, especially since the fabulist attack had such a solid basis in reality. It’s nice that Chait was able to produce that undated Bush 41 quote, but Republicans generally did not go after Clinton as a flip-flopper.
Not so much for Al Gore either, even though Gore underwent a startling transformation when he headed the ticket in 2000. The erstwhile southern moderate metamorphosed into a shrieking, angry populist when he sewed up his party’s nomination. As Jay Cost might say, this was a meta-flip-flop. And yet the charge of flip-floppery was not commonly heard in 2000. Instead, Gore’s general strangeness and unappealing nature, two things vastly amplified by his bizarre performance in the first general election debate, proved more fertile ground.
As for Kerry and Obama, it’s true they have been the targets of the flip-flop charge. As I’ve said many times, this is unfair – both men are in fact straddlers. But semantics aside, such charges are made because they have a solid basis in reality, a possibility that Chait doesn’t seriously countenance before going on to suggest that John McCain is the real flip-flopper.
A brief prediction: If Mitt Romney should join McCain on the Republican ticket, Chait will find the whole flip-flopping issue suddenly far more germane.
Burlingame’s brother died in the 9/11 attack, and she has watched in horror as the American left has rallied to the cause of the Gitmo detainees:
The poem, "To My Captive Lawyer, Miranda," was written by Abdullah Saleh Al-Ajmi while he was a detainee at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. No doubt, it would have given the former detainee, who was released in 2005, immense satisfaction to know that his last earthly deed was referenced in Justice Antonin Scalia's dissenting opinion in Boumediene v. Bush. That's the recent Supreme Court decision that gave Guantanamo detainees the constitutional right to challenge, in habeas corpus proceedings, whether they were properly classified by the military as enemy combatants.
Al-Ajmi, a 29-year-old Kuwaiti, blew himself up in one of several coordinated suicide attacks on Iraqi security forces in Mosul this year. Originally reported to have participated in an April attack that killed six Iraqi policemen, a recent martyrdom video published on a password-protected al Qaeda Web site indicates that Al-Ajmi carried out the March 23 attack on an Iraqi army compound in Mosul. In that attack, an armored truck loaded with an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 pounds of explosives rammed through a fortified gate, overturned vehicles in its path and exploded in the center of the compound. The huge blast ripped the façade off three apartment buildings being used as barracks, killing 13 soldiers from the 2nd Iraqi Army division and seriously wounding 42 others.
Using the name "Abu Juheiman al-Kuwaiti," Al-Ajmi is seen on the video brandishing an automatic rifle, singing militant songs and exhorting his fellow Muslims to pledge their allegiance to the "Commander of the Faithful" in Iraq. Later, Al-Ajmi's face is superimposed over the army compound, followed by footage of the massive explosion and still shots of several dead bodies lying next to the 25-foot crater left by the blast.
In 2006, Al-Ajmi's "Miranda" poem was included in a recitation of detainee poetry at a "Guantanamo teach-in" sponsored by Seton Hall Law School. The all-day event was Webcast live to 400 colleges and law schools across the country and abroad.
Here in a nutshell is what makes the left’s attack on Gitmo so galling. Attacking the detention center as somehow un-American or unconstitutional or unwise is fine and in bounds. I disagree with such attacks, but consider them in good faith. But why have so many members of the left felt the need to declare solidarity with the Al-Ajmi’s of the world, wannabe killers who despise our way of life and no doubt chortle at the useful idiots who celebrate their poetry and facilitate their murderous plans?
It’s clever. Predictably, the Obama campaign has responded with its characteristic lightness of heart and good natured bonhomie:
On a day when major news organizations across the country are taking Senator McCain to task for a steady stream of false, negative attacks, his campaign has launched yet another. Or, as some might say, 'Oops! He did it again.' Our dependence on foreign oil is one of the greatest challenges we face.
In this election the American people have a real choice -- between Obama's plan to provide tax rebates to American families while creating a renewable energy economy in America that frees us from our dependence on foreign oil, and Senator McCain's plan to continue the same failed energy policies by handing out nearly $4 billion in tax breaks to oil companies while investing almost nothing in the new energy sources that represent our future.
Stop it! I’m laughing so hard, my sides hurt!
In his post on the subject, Allah wonders why, unlike the McCain campaign, all of Obama’s ads have been so dull and forgettable. Perhaps it’s because the Obama campaign has taken on the true personality of its candidate – both have become drearily self-righteous bores.
Rapper Ludacris has released a new song called "Politics: Obama Is Here." In the song, Ludacris attacks Hillary Clinton, John McCain, President Bush, even Jesse Jackson, with nasty, hateful words. An excerpt:
Said I handled his biz and I'm one of his favorite rappers
Well give Luda a special pardon if I'm ever in the slammer
Better yet put him in office, make me your vice president
Hillary hated on you, so that b**** is irrelevant
In November 2006, Obama met with Ludacris to discuss "empowering the youth." This rap doesn't seem like it will do much good for America's youth, does it?
As Barack Obama has said many, many times in the past, rap lyrics today too often perpetuate misogyny, materialism, and degrading images that he doesn't want his daughters or any children exposed to. This song is not only outrageously offensive to Senator Clinton, Reverend Jackson, Senator McCain, and President Bush, it is offensive to all of us who are trying to raise our children with the values we hold dear. While Ludacris is a talented individual he should be ashamed of these lyrics.
I noted yesterday that opinions in the presidential race are more fluid and softer than usual--resulting in a high degree of variability and volatility in the polls. Today, Rasmussen released this new survey that further underscores that point. According to its most recent poll, about twice as many likely voters are “uncommitted” when given a choice between the two major candidates as they were at this point in the race in 2004.
When given a choice between BarackObama and John McCain for President, 14% of voters are uncommitted. That figure includes 6% who say they’d vote for some other candidate and 8% who are undecided…
It’s worth noting that there are far more uncommitted voters at this point in Election 2008 than there were four years ago. The Election 2004 Presidential Tracking Poll showed that 92% of voters were committed to either President Bush or Senator Kerry on July 24, 2004. Only 8% were uncommitted.
For a variety of reasons unique to 2008, both candidates produce small degrees of uncertainty among potential voters. McCain generates some reluctance among Republicans because they feel cross-pressured by their desire to support the party’s nominee and his maverick positions on a handful of issues. Obama also engenders uncertainty because many still don’t believe they know him well enough or trust he has the requisite experience to be commander in chief. Some of those polled will state a preference for Obama or McCain--even if those inclinations are weak and changeable. That’s one reason why these survey numbers seem to shift around a bit. Rasmussen’s observation about the number of people without firm commitments at this point in the race helps explain this daily volatility.
More on the controversy over why Obama called off his visit to greet wounded troops at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany. Dan Balz and Michael D. Shear report in the Washington Post:
[Obama campaign official Robert] Gibbs said yesterday that the campaign had planned to inform the traveling media members sometime on the morning of the flight to Ramstein that Obama was intending to visit the hospital but had made no plans to take reporters, including even the small, protective press pool that now accompanies him most places.
But that's not what Gibbs told reporters on Friday:
Q: We would have stayed on the plane, would there have been any pool report?
Gibbs: there may have been, I don't know if we ever came to a decision on that.
Balz and Shear also report Gibbs's initial excuse that the visit was “canceled because Obama decided it would be inappropriate to go there as part of a trip paid for by his campaign.” They fail to note that Obama visited troops during a campaign-funded trip to Colorodo on July 2. Clearly Obama didn't think that was "inappropriate", and no one criticized him for the visit.
"It does now seem that Barack Obama snubbed the troops for reasons other than a lack of photo-op potential, but the initial reports were less clear," writes Michael Goldfarb at The McCain Report. But he explains:
In this haze of confusion, and with the press unable or unwilling to resolve the question of why Senator Obama had snubbed the troops, this campaign drew its own conclusion from the crystal clear statements of Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell:
"We made it clear to him that campaign staff and press would not be permitted to accompany him," Morrell said of Obama. "We relayed those ground rules. They made a choice based upon the information we relayed to them. It was their choice. We had nothing to do with it."
It was their choice--meaning Obama didn't want to do the trip without his press, without his campaign staff, or both. Only when Obama was forced to explain the snub himself did we learn that it was the exclusion of Gration that led him to cancel the trip.
So Obama chose to cancel a visit with wounded troops because a campaign adviser, retired Major General Jonathan S. Gration, couldn't accompany him. That's arguably not as appalling as scrapping the visit because the photographers and press couldn't come along. But since when is a senator unable to meet and greet some wounded soldiers without an adviser to whisper in his ear?
Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens was indicted yesterday "on seven counts of failing to disclose thousands of dollars in services he received from a company that helped renovate his home." MSNBC reports:
Prosecutors said Stevens received more than $250,000 in gifts and services from VECO Corp., a powerful oil services contractor, and its executives.
From May 1999 to August 2007, prosecutors said, the 84-year-old senator concealed "his continuing receipt of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of things of value from a private corporation."
Manyconservativebloggers argue that Stevens should resign from the Senate. The Next Right's Patrick Ruffini says, "At a minimum, Stevens must abandon his re-election campaign if not resign. Let's not act like Democrats, who shield their William Jeffersons." Hot Air's Ed Morrissey adds, "Stevens should resign, but he won’t without his colleagues making it necessary."
What's next for Alaska? Is this bad news for Republicans? TNR's Isaac Chotiner says, "Stevens is in a close--and closely watched--Senate race with Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich. In other words, this is not good news for the GOP." But Kos is worried and says, "It would've been better [for Democrats] for these indictments to hit after the late-August primary."
The Corner's Mark Hemingway remarks, "Stevens' indictment isn't exactly good news for the G.O.P., but he's a corrupt politician first and a Republican second." Most Republicans will be rooting for him to resign or at least drop out of his re-election race, ASAP. As Michelle Malkin says, "Republicans can’t tell the Dems to clean their House, if they won’t come clean about the GOP’s own dirtbags."
Palin said she has no interest in leaving her job as governor should the Republican Party look to find a replacement for Stevens on the election ballot.
Jake Tapper notes that frantic Democrats are attempting to add “context” to Barack Obama’s latest mega-gaffe. In case you’ve already forgotten, Obama’s latest homage to Himself found Him saying, “I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions."
Anyhoo, per Tapper, here’s the purported context:
"His entire point of that riff was that the campaign is NOT about him," says a House Democratic staffer. The Post "left out the important first half of the sentence which was something along the lines of 'it has become increasingly clear in my travel, the campaign, that the crowds, the enthusiasm, 200,000 people in Berlin, is not about me at all. Its about America. I have just become a symbol.'"
Other staffers with whom I spoke back that up, and a Democratic Congressman who isn't a particular fan of Obama agrees, saying that Obama preceded that quote with something along the lines of, 'Those people in Germany weren't excited about me. They were excited by the prospect of America getting back to being all it could be.'"
So in other words, He meant exactly what He said. The staffer and congressman in question both implicitly posit a straw man, namely that some venal conservatives are saying Obama stated “I represent the possibility of America returning to our best traditions.” If in fact any conservatives have misrepresented Obama in this manner, allow me to apologize on behalf of the entire movement.
What Obama said, and what the staffer and congressman confirm, is that in Obama’s view, the world has selected Obama as a repository for its hope and dreams. I’m not sure how this shows less ego than the unsupported straw man argument, but there it is anyway.
Obama’s observation suggests that the longtime community organizer has concluded the world is composed of Andrew Sullivans – people who are just gaga for him and who believe everything depends on his electoral fate. In truth, for every Andrew Sullivan out there, there are 50 Markos Moulitsasi. Kos will vote for Obama and do so enthusiastically, but like most normal people he views Obama as a politician, not an all-important symbol.
What makes Obama’s self-nomination as a global symbol particularly laughable is the kind of cocoon thinking that it represents. Most people are relatively indifferent to politics. Somewhere around half the American population won’t even bother to vote in November. And the vast majority of those who do vote will go on with their lives the next day regardless of who won the election.
Being surrounded by adoring sycophants for months on end has apparently warped Obama’s perspective. The candidate obviously believes everyone is as wrapped up in Barack Obama as He is.
"I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions."
Somehow I don't see this magnificent flight of ego restoring the missing Obama bounce. Exit question: Will this be a gaffe so large that it removes the Landstuhl fiasco from the headlines?
The Chicago Sun-Times's Lynn Sweet wrote in a blog post on Friday, July 25:
Though the Rammstein visit had been planned for days, Obama senior strategist David Axelrod said that that Pentagon notified an Obama military advisor only yesterday or the day before that he should not come. The Pentagon "viewed this as a campaign event and therefore they said he should not come," Axelrod said.
Tonight Sweet writes that she rewrote that paragraph "to eliminate an Axelrod quote that I misunderstood." She does not explain how she "misunderstood" the Axelrod quote, which appears to be pretty straightforward. Was the wording inaccurate, or was it somehow taken out of context?
Sweet could have made an honest mistake, but as it stands there's no way to know for sure that Axelrod didn't spin her.
This is not a parody. PBS's ombudsman reports that viewers were "outraged" and "appalled" that Max Boot demolished Lawrence Korb's arguments during PBS's NewsHour last week.
Of course, they say they're angry that Boot was given more time to speak than Korb, but NewsHour's host Margaret Carlson writes in her defense: "A look at the transcript will show that since Lawrence Korb tended to give relatively short answers, I tried to compensate by asking him two questions at each of his 'turns' to speak."
The trend from 1988 - 2004 shows that the GOP candidate tends to under-poll in the summer--with the exception [...] of the 2000 campaign. In each of the other four years, the Republican candidate had been polling significantly behind the Democrat at this point in the race. Each of those times, however, the Republican improved his position, gaining an average of 15 points relative to the Democrat.
The question is not whether Stevens should resign, but whether he should resign now or after Alaska’s August 26 primary. If he steps aside now, the nomination will go to one of the six relatively unknown Republicans who are registered to run in the primary. The deadline for registration has passed, so it is too late for the party to field a stronger contender. If, however, Stevens won the primary and then stepped aside, the party could replace him with a better candidate.
Barack Obama's campaign has been spinning their candidate's position on the surge for the past two months. First, David Axelrod said on MSNBC that Obama "never disputed the fact that if you throw a surge of American soldiers in an area that you can make a difference." A week later Obama's communications director Robert Gibbs said that "there's no doubt that the security situation has improved, much as everybody admitted it would if we put more troops on the ground."
Obama himself has engaged in this spin, most recently telling Tom Brokaw on Meet the Press "I know that there's that little snippet that you ran," referring to a clip from January 2007 in which Obama said the surge would "do the reverse" of solving sectarian violence.
But, Obama told Brokaw, "there were also statements made during the course of this debate in which I said there's no doubt that additional U.S. troops could temporarily quell the violence. But unless we saw an underlying change in the politics of the country, unless Sunni, Shia, Kurd made different decisions, then we were going to have a civil war and we could not stop a civil war simply with more troops."
Jake Tapper asked the Obama campaign to provide him "with any information of Sen. Obama saying the surge would reduce violence 'during the course of this debate' over the surge."
Tapper writes:
The earliest quote they provided from Obama suggesting the surge might reduce violence came in March 2007, when Obama told Iowa's WQAD that "I don't think there's been any doubt that if we put U.S. troops in that, in the short term, we might see some improvement in certain neighborhoods because the militias are going to fade back into the community. That's one of the characteristics of what we've seen. The problem is that we don't see any change in the underlying dynamic which is Shia militias infiltrating the government, Sunni insurgents continuing the fight, that's the essence of the problem and unless we say that we're going to occupy Iraq indefinitely, we're gonna continue to see problems. I would disagree the bombings and the deaths that have been occurring over the last several weeks, you hadn't seen any real significant difference over what we've seen in the last year.”
From there, it doesn't seem he made any comments along those lines until August 2007.
As Tapper points out, Obama's tepid statement that violence would "temporarily" go down "in certain neighborhoods" statement occurred after relevant votes and debate on the surge in February of 2007.
As they say up in Alaska, oy gevalt. At least that’s what they say up there in a Michael Chabon novel. Anyway, the Republican party has a new poster boy for the 2008 election. He’s an 84 year-old whose alleged turn-ons include accepting petty gifts without disclosing them.
You know what really grates about this scandal? The almost absurd pettiness. Ted Stevens allegedly compromised his country, his high office and his party for $250,000 worth of “things of value” including a Viking stove. Viking stoves are nice, but when a big-thinker like LBJ used his office for personal gain, he walked away from the dealings a rich man.
Over at the Daily Kos, they are of course hanging the metaphorical bunting to greet this news. The fact that Stevens is up for reelection does not diminish their joy. Or does it? Kos rightly points out that Stevens was an endangered incumbent to begin with. Assuming Stevens does the right thing and falls on his sword (or puts his head in his Viking range to use a more appropriate metaphor) any time up to 48 days before his election, the Republicans can replace him on the ballot. And of course, he hasn't won the nomination yet.
Long story short? Sarah Palin looks good anywhere she goes, but she would look especially good in the United States Senate.
Cohen has belatedly discovered that Barack Obama is a man of few accomplishments. One wonders how Cohen finally arrived at this breathtaking conclusion. Has he been attending remedial pundits’ school? Here’s the introduction:
"Just tell me one thing Barack Obama has done that you admire," I asked a prominent Democrat. He paused and then said that he admired Obama's speech to the Democratic convention in 2004. I agreed. It was a hell of a speech, but it was just a speech.
On the other hand, I continued, I could cite four or five actions -- not speeches -- that John McCain has taken that elicit my admiration, even my awe.
Nice. Now here’s a middle passage:
Obama is often likened to John F. Kennedy. It makes sense. He has the requisite physical qualities -- handsome, lean, etc. -- plus wit, intelligence, awesome speaking abilities and a literary bent. He also might be compared to Franklin D. Roosevelt for many of those same qualities. Both FDR and JFK were disparaged early on by their contemporaries for, I think, doing the difficult and making it look easy. Eleanor Roosevelt, playing off the title of Kennedy's Pulitzer Prize-winning book, airily dismissed him as more profile than courage. Similarly, it was Walter Lippmann's enduring misfortune to size up FDR and belittle him: Roosevelt, he wrote, was "a pleasant man who, without any important qualifications for office, would very much like to be president." Lippmann later recognized that he had underestimated Roosevelt.
You can see the column went downhill rather sharply. Anyway, let’s play Cohen’s game and “compare” Candidate Obama to Candidate FDR in regards to actual accomplishments, the intellectual software that Cohen trotted out at the start of the column. I must have missed the four years when Obama served as governor of the country’s most populous state. Or the time when Obama served as a wartime Assistant Secretary of the Navy. Even more importantly, what has Obama done that shows the character FDR displayed in overcoming his polio-induced paralysis? Yup, Cohen nails it – Obama and FDR are practically two peas in a pod.
I single out the FDR comparison because Cohen is to my knowledge the first columnist sufficiently obtuse to draw such a parallel. Cohen is on much safer albeit more clichéd grounds when he likens Obama to JFK. But if you challenged someone in 1960 to name one thing that JFK had done that was worthy of admiration, you’d get an answer. His war heroics might have come up. Or his distinguished 12 years in congress. Or the Pulitzer Prize winning book that he sort of wrote. (Okay, he only commissioned it, but that’s the next best thing.) And yet Cohen wants us to take the FDR and JFK comparisons seriously enough so he can conclude with this inscrutable passage:
The next president will have to be something of a political Superman, a man of steel who can tell the American people that they will have to pay more for less -- higher taxes, lower benefits of all kinds -- and deal in an ugly way when nuclear weapons seize the imagination of madmen.
The question I posed to that prominent Democrat was just my way of thinking out loud. I know that Barack Obama is a near-perfect political package. I'm still not sure, though, what's in it.
Take it from one who knows – that last paragraph is an example of brilliant polemicizing. Any time you leave the reader scratching his head and grunting “Huh?” you’ve done your job well.
As you know, the left’s latest talking point is the Surge was indeed wonderful, but all the good stuff that’s happened in Iraq since the Surge basically would have happened anyway. Twisting themselves into this intellectual pretzel is the only way the left can simultaneously minimize the surge in Iraq while insisting on the necessity of a surge in Afghanistan.
Among those peddling this risibly counterfactual rubbish is Barack Obama advisor Professor Colin Kahl who has written, “In short, contrary to the Bush administration’s claims, the Awakening began before the surge and was driven in part by Democratic pressure to withdraw.” Democratic pressure – is there anything it can’t do? Too bad our Democrats in congress won’t put some of their vaunted pressure on gas prices, no?
I strongly encourage you to read Herschel Smith’s wonderful takedown of this latest Democratic fad.
Please also note the wonderful subtitle: “Photo ops and Fecklessness.”
Taheri doesn’t break any new ground with this piece, but he does return the focus to where it should be – Barack Obama’s almost stunning indifference to winning in Iraq:
Iraqis were most surprised by Obama's apparent readiness to throw away all the gains made in Iraq simply to prove that he'd been right in opposing the 2003 overthrow of Saddam Hussein. "He gave us the impression that the last thing he wanted was for Iraq to look anything like a success for the United States," a senior Iraqi official told me. "As far as he is concerned, this is Bush's war and must end in lack of success, if not actual defeat."
Okay, that view suggests not just indifference to winning, but actual hostility to victory. When John McCain said last week that Obama preferred losing a war in order to win a campaign, the phony outrage industry went into overdrive. “Scurrilous!” bellowed Joe Klein and other similarly scandalized media bigfoots.
In retrospect, I would label McCain’s comments not scurrilous but misguided. By attacking Obama’s good faith, McCain ventured into the realm of the unsupportable. Better to have remained (and now to return) to what can be proven – Barack Obama is sufficiently indifferent to victory in Iraq that he’s not willing to bear any burden in order to prevail there.
If Obama wants to argue that Iraq is unimportant and America should turn its back on the victory we are now almost able to claim, let’s have that argument. More likely, Obama will argue that his plan – full and rapid retreat – is actually a plan for victory. Assuming he makes that case, the McCain people can still get him on the hypothetical level. As we’ve seen, savvy media commentators like Richard Cohen often liken Obama to John F. Kennedy. Kennedy was perhaps best known for not only promising to “bear any burden” for freedom, but walking the walk as well. Asking Barack Obama what burdens he would bear in order to win in Iraq will eventually evidence a curt answer that lies beneath all the soaring rhetoric – none.
The kids aren’t alright. As the Wall Street Journal reports, they can be a bunch of dolts. Many young-ish job seekers have substituted overly familiar text messaging for the traditional thank you notes people used to send after a job interview. The interviewers have not been amused.
Looking for a job is a lot like running for office – you have to shore up your weaknesses. If you’re a young person, maturity is going to be the big issue that potential employers are going to be wary of. Thus, a young person on the job prowl will want to dress himself or herself in traditional garb for the interview and avoid any overly youthful references like talking about the great Rave he attended last weekend.
In politics, it’s the same way. If you have an office-seeker who has a thin résumé, he can’t ever risk coming across like he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Hence Barack Obama’s refusal to admit error even when he obviously blew it like he did on the surge.
Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens (R) was charged with seven counts of making false statements on his financial disclosure forms in an indictment unsealed in federal court in the District this afternoon. [...]
Stevens, a senator since 1968, "knowingly and willfully engaged in a scheme to conceal a material fact" according to the 28-page indictment.
Items Stevens received include the creation of a new first floor, garage, and a wraparound deck on a Girdwood, Alaska property the lawmaker dubbed "the chalet," according to the court papers. He also received a professional Viking gas grill and a tool cabinet, prosecutors said.
In return, Allen and his company sought funding and help with international projects in Pakistan and Russia, as well as federal grant and contract requests, according to the charges. Veco officials also sought assistance to construct a natural gas pipeline on Alaska's north slope.
Stevens faces a contested primary on August 26. But Chris Cillizza notes that Stevens's Republican challengers are not as well known as the presumed Democratic candidate Mark Begich; the deadline for candidates to enter the race has already passed. The most recent Alaska Senate race
