Mikhail Gorbachev won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990. A year later, he was out of power and the Soviet Union had dissolved.

I don't mean to compare Barack Obama to Gorbachev, who was, whatever his faults, a truly historic and courageous figure. But let's hope the parallel extends this far: that a year from now the Democrats suffer a major electoral repudiation, and that the New Liberalism goes the way of Reform Communism. And that, beginning in 2013, Obama will have lots of free time to spend hobnobbing with Gorbachev on the international celebrity circuit.

So sayeth Yuval Levin, in a definitive post:

For the Progressives, the world is too complex to be understood in human terms — in terms of sentiment, experience, honor, habit, and piety. For the Burkeans, the world is complex precisely in those human terms, and is too complex to be understood in abstract rational terms — in objective, theoretical, scientific, detached, specialized terms. In this sense the Burkeans have an organic idea of politics, while the progressives have more of a scientific view of politics.

Measured in these terms, I cannot imagine how anyone observing the Obama administration could think the president a Burkean. Community organizing — which aims not to strengthen a community's rooted institutions but to recruit it into action in a larger setting so it can demand the outside expert assistance it deserves — is the epitome of the progressive project, and, I would think, anathema to a Burkean approach to politics. And the ambition, flavor, and character of the Obama administration's agenda thus far reek of the hunger for rational control, not of an appreciation for the organic and gradual nature of lasting change. Burke's warnings against ignoring the difference between change and reform read like an indictment of the Obama health-care plan, and his views about the limits of the government's appropriate role in the economy are certainly out of line with the administration’s doings.

For another, sillier view, try this interview with Sam "Conservatism is Dead" Tanenhaus, in which the noted author claims Burke would support Obamacare because "a true conservative like an Edmund Burke or Benjamin D'Israeli, the great 19th century statesman, believed in exactly those values, using government to protect the rights of ordinary citizens."

Charlie Cook says that "[T]he situation this summer has slipped completely out of control for President Obama and Congressional Democrats. Today, The Cook Political Report’s Congressional election model, based on individual races, is pointing toward a net Democratic loss of between six and 12 seats, but our sense, factoring in macro-political dynamics is that this is far too low."

New ABC News / Washington Post poll has Obama's disapproval rating on health care at 50 percent. Faith in Obama's leadership is at 49 percent.

Pelosi says a bill without a public option won't pass the House, while it's unlikely that a bill with an explicit "public option" could ever pass the Senate.

Gallup's Daily Track has Obama's overall job approval at a new low.

Obama's under criticism from the left and the Obama-friendly right.

Exit questions: Is health care reform more or less likely than it was at the beginning of August? And will the spectacle of the president vacationing at a $50,000-a-week resort on Martha's Vineyard while the unemployment rate is at 9.4 percent improve the White House's prospects?

Over the weekend, the Obama administration backed away from liberal efforts to include the "public option," i.e., a government-run insurance program open to all Americans, in prospective congressional health care legislation. The shift was probably a response to the emerging public opposition to ObamaCare.

The problem is that this concession to the center has enraged influential liberals, including Howard Dean, Paul Krugman, and Russ Feingold. So what did the White House do? It told a friendly reporter that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius "misspoke", and that the president is four-square behind the public option, reports to the contrary notwithstanding. Mickey Kaus eviscerates this spin here.

Obama is trapped. He needs both the left and the center to pass his bill, but satisfying one side endangers his relationship with the other. His conundrum brought to mind this passage from Andrew Ferguson, written shortly after the election:

By positioning himself as the third way between two absurd alternatives that no one favors, Obama has persuaded voters of his reasonableness and moderation; and thus of his ability to get things done. That illusory advantage will go poof soon enough, though. Think about his third way in education reform. There he sits, or so he says, nobly perched between the (nonexistent) more-money and more-reform factions. President Bush, if I can mention the unmentionable, thought he was putting himself in the same position in 2001. He managed to bring his "conservative reformers" together with liberals like Senator Edward Kennedy, water carrier for the educational establishment. Together they produced a complicated and expensive set of reforms that appeared to lasso every warring faction into a united effort.

The unity didn't last long, as you've probably noticed, though in a way, I suppose, No Child Left Behind did prove a unifying force: When put into practice, it managed to frustrate and anger nearly every interested party--for contradictory and irreconcilable reasons. When the law lapses next year, President Obama will find himself smack in the middle of these crosswires, where every move touches off an explosion, often on time-release, set to blow when you least expect it. If we're lucky he won't go back to blaming criminal CEOs and sleazy lobbyists. But we probably won't be lucky.

Ferguson is right; we aren't lucky. At a recent town hall, Obama said the argument over health care reform is -- this is not a joke -- "a contest between hope and fear."

Check out this sharp analysis from the MSNBC crew:

From Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, and Domenico Montanaro
*** Ramping up the rhetoric: As the violence and protests escalated in Iran on Saturday, President Obama stepped up his criticism about what’s happening there. “The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching,” he said in a statement. “We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights.” But the toughest domestic political rhetoric on Iran is coming from Republicans. This is one of those cases where Democrats and the White House are wondering what the reaction would be if the roles were reversed -- i.e., Democrats criticizing a GOP administration’s response on foreign policy. Indeed, Republicans regularly beat up Democrats for supposedly politicizing international issues (do remember that the establishment Democratic Party didn’t start truly criticizing the situation in Iraq until two-plus years after the war began). But who’s politicizing now? Also, it's worth noting that the criticism from Republicans is NOT universal. In fact, the GOP establishment on this issue is more divided than the coverage is suggesting.

I wish it was harder to imagine Chuck Todd writing this kind of thing with a straight face, but liberals seem to be genuinely outraged that anyone would dare criticize a sitting president on matters of foreign policy and national security. Never mind that in 2002, before the war even began, Barack Obama was calling it an attempt by the Bush administration "to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats.... A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics." Fair enough, I guess he wasn't part of the "Democratic establishment" in 2002, but how about John Kerry, in April 2003, calling for "not just a regime change in Saddam Hussein and Iraq, but we need a regime change in the United States." Maybe if Republicans used the president's own rhetoric to attack him the MSNBC crew would be more comfortable.

Republicans must bear witness to the weakness of this White House. Barack Obama must know that the world is watching -- and waiting -- for him to do something, anything, besides eat ice cream and play golf. The arc of the president's drive is long, but it bends toward the sand trap of history.

What struck me most about Barack Obama's speech today in Cairo is what was missing: Iraq. He didn't skip Iraq entirely, but his discussion of it was perfunctory and incomplete. He said:

Let me also address the issue of Iraq. Unlike Afghanistan, Iraq was a war of choice that provoked strong differences in my country and around the world. Although I believe that the Iraqi people are ultimately better off without the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, I also believe that events in Iraq have reminded America of the need to use diplomacy and build international consensus to resolve our problems whenever possible. Indeed, we can recall the words of Thomas Jefferson, who said: “I hope that our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us that the less we use our power the greater it will be.”

Today, America has a dual responsibility: to help Iraq forge a better future – and to leave Iraq to Iraqis. I have made it clear to the Iraqi people that we pursue no bases, and no claim on their territory or resources. Iraq’s sovereignty is its own. That is why I ordered the removal of our combat brigades by next August. That is why we will honor our agreement with Iraq’s democratically-elected government to remove combat troops from Iraqi cities by July, and to remove all our troops from Iraq by 2012. We will help Iraq train its Security Forces and develop its economy. But we will support a secure and united Iraq as a partner, and never as a patron.

That's rather extraordinary. In a speech about freedom and democracy, America and Islam, Obama glides right past the most remarkable development in the region in decades: "Iraq's democratically-elected government." He mentions it only in passing, to note that he's keeping his campaign promised to remove troops.

Iraq today is a model for many of those things Obama says he hopes to see in the region -- women right's, religious freedom, the defeat of "violent extremism," economic development and opportunity, and, yes, democracy. It's an imperfect model, to be sure, but it's a model nonetheless. And the president does himself and the country -- in particular our soldiers -- no favors by ignoring that reality. No one is asking him to defend a war he opposed. But the fact that he can even use that phrase -- Iraq's democratically-elected government -- might have caused him to acknowledge that America's intervention there, despite the tremendous difficulties, has made Iraq a country that practices many of those things that he seeks for the rest of the region.

There were many other problems with the speech. I'll focus on two. First, women's rights. He began, as he often does, with a straw man. "I reject the view of some in the West that a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal, but I do believe that a woman who is denied an education is denied equality." And who, exactly, says that women who make that choice are not equal? The objection from "some in the West" comes not because women make that choice but because in many places they are denied an opportunity to do so.

For all of his talk about the need for candor and honesty, Obama called for women's equality in platitudes and the only country he singled out for criticism? His own. "Issues of women’s equality are by no means simply an issue for Islam. In Turkey, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Indonesia, we have seen Muslim-majority countries elect a woman to lead. Meanwhile, the struggle for women’s equality continues in many aspects of American life, and in countries around the world.

In Saudi Arabia, women cannot drive. In Iran, they're stoned on suspicion of adultery. In Pakistan, politicians publicly defend "honor killings" of young girls who have the audacity to choose their own husbands.

Those women are struggling for equality.

Perhaps the most curious passage was this one: "Given our interdependence, any world order which elevates any nation or group of people above any other will inevitably fail." This is nonsense, of course, as Obama seems to recognize several sentences later when he says that America will "relentlessly confront violent extremists who pose a grave threat to our security."

Does Obama mean to suggest that the United States should not be "elevated" over, say, North Korea? Or state sponsors of terror like Syria and Iran? Indeed, the opposite of Obama's formulation is closer to the truth: Any world order that does not elevate some nations or groups of people over others will inevitably fail. And should.

What's so vexing about Obama's gleeful rejection of American exceptionalism (again) in the context of American power is that he embraces it in other ways. The United States, he frequently argues, must lead by example. Americans must close Guantanamo and end torture, he says, because "we must never alter our principles" or "act contrary to our ideals." And those principles and ideals make America something worth emulating -- they make it exceptional.

In an interview with NPR on Monday President Obama said that being direct and honest will be one of the keys to Middle East peace. In interviews he's given previewing his Cairo speech, while he has noted the value of being a good listener, he has also emphasized the importance of straight talk.

Interesting, then, to note a subtle shift in his language. Over the past week, Obama has repeatedly referred to Palestinian "incitement" as an impediment to progress on the peace process. He often uses "incitement" in places where other presidents have used "attacks" or "terrorism." So in his press conference with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Obama said their "frank exchange" included his view "that it was very important to continue to make progress in reducing the incitement and anti-Israel sentiments that are sometimes expressed in schools and mosques and in the public square." And in an interview with the BBC Obama called on Palestinians to "deal with the security situation, to eliminate incitement." And in his interview with NPR he said: "I've said to the Palestinians that their continued progress on security and ending the incitement that I think understandably makes Israelis so concerned -- that that has to be -- those obligations have to be met."

It will be interesting to see whether Obama in Cairo uses the kind of blunt language he says he believes in
or the euphemism that he so often employs.

Joe Biden is proving impossible to parody.

In one of the few funny jokes at the White House correspondents dinner, Wanda Sykes won loud laughter when she joked that terrorists interested in learning America's most important secrets would only have to ask Biden how he's doing.

According to an account in Newsweek, Biden did give up one of the country's secrets at another dinner where journalists and politicians make fun of Republicans (and occasionally laugh at each other). Biden told his dinnermates about the existence of a secret bunker under the Vice President's Residence at the U.S. Naval Observatory.
Eleanor Clift writes:

Ever wonder about that secure, undisclosed location where Dick Cheney secreted himself after the 9/11 attacks? Joe Biden reveals the bunker-like room is at the Naval Observatory in Washington, where Cheney lived for eight years and which is now home to Biden. The veep related the story to his head-table dinner mates when he filled in for President Obama at the Gridiron Club earlier this year. He said the young naval officer giving him a tour of the residence showed him the hideaway, which is behind a massive steel door secured by an elaborate lock with a narrow connecting hallway lined with shelves filled with communications equipment. The officer explained that when Cheney was in lock down, this was where his most trusted aides were stationed, an image that Biden conveyed in a way that suggested we shouldn’t be surprised that the policies that emerged were off the wall.

Despite more than fifteen trips to the VPR over the past five years, and despite having conducted dozens of interviews about security precautions taken for Cheney and his staff after 9/11, I was never told such a bunker existed.

I was able to learn and write about Cheney's getaways at Camp David, extra measures taken for him when he traveled on Air Force Two, and even the use of a "dummy" plane sometimes used in combat zones. But no one ever mentioned this secure facility at the Naval Observatory.

The obvious conclusion: Its existence was highly classified.

So what was Joe Biden doing talking about it at the Gridiron Dinner? And, if it was indeed classified, will this disclosure be referred to the Justice Department?

The Journal has an important editorial today on the Democrats' "public option" for health care coverage. This would be a government-run program, like Medicare, open to folks of all ages who don't have health insurance. The public option is a cornerstone of the Obama administration's health care reform. But Republicans are leery since it's also the first step toward a government-run health care system. New York Democratic senator Charles Schumer recently outlined some possible compromises - he wants the plan to pay claims through co-pays and premiums - in order to attract Republican support.

The Journal says he can't be trusted, and they have a point. Some history:

When Medicare was created in 1965, benefits were relatively limited and retirees paid a substantial percentage of the costs of their own care. But the clout of retirees has always led to expanding benefits for seniors while raising taxes on younger workers.

In 1965, Congressional actuaries expected Medicare to cost $3.1 billion by 1970. In 1969, that estimate was revised to $5 billion, and it actually came in at $6.8 billion. That same year, the Senate Finance Committee declared a Medicare cost emergency. In 1979, Jimmy Carter proposed limiting benefits, only to have the bill killed by fellow Democrats. Things have gotten worse since, and Medicare today costs $455 billion and rising.

Medicaid was intended as a last resort for the poor but now covers one-third of all long-term care expenses in the U.S. -- that is, it has become a middle-class subsidy for aging parents of the Baby Boomers. Its annual bill is $227 billion, and so far this fiscal year is rising by 17%.

Schip was pitched a decade ago as a safety net for poor kids, and some Republicans helped sell it as a free-market reform. But Schip is now open to families that earn up to 300% of the poverty level, or $63,081 for a family of four. In New York, you can qualify at 400% of poverty.

The tendency of government is to grow, and if the public option is implemented the forces of inertia and politics will expand it to the point where it crowds out the private insurance market. That's what Yuval Levin and James Capretta argue in our editorial this week. The costs such a plan would impose on government, whether tempered by rationing or not, would be huge and despoiling even if the United States wasn't already running almost $2 trillion deficits. Spending on this scale is unsustainable, and to finance it the government will have to impose growth-squelching taxes or middle-class-squeezing inflations. Not good.

A coalition of conservative Democrats and Republicans has thrown wrenches into Obama's cap-and-trade plan. The question this fall: can a similar coalition stop the public option? Does a similar coalition even exist?

I've read that 100 days is about 1/14 of President Obama's first term. So look on the bright side: only 13/14 left to go!

What to say about Obama's presidency thus far? He has continued or expanded many of the policies of the late Bush administration, in both domestic (bailouts) and foreign (Iraq, Afghanistan, terrorist surveillance) policy. The changes he's made from Bush mainly have to do with social and environmental policy and a tonal difference in presidential diplomacy. And he's had his first misstep. His decision to release Bush-era memos on interrogation created a political firestorm that had the president backing away from any prosecutions or independent commissions in the space of one week.

Obama has signed one major piece of legislation: the stimulus. But how big an achievement is that? Getting Congress to spend money is like getting a wino to drink. It's easy. In foreign policy, Obama has been all talk and no cattle. He went to Europe and spoke boldly about nuclear abolition and the need for global stimulus and more troops in Afghanistan. He got nothing. He went to Trinidad, where he yukked it up with Hugo Chavez and sat in silence while Daniel Ortega blamed all of his country's problems, including the weather, on the United States. Obama spoke of a new era between the United States and Cuba. The Cubans have given him nothing. Iran and North Korea? The same.

Maybe the president's outreach to America's adversaries will pan out. Probably not.

Obama's largest accomplishment in these 100 days, it seems to me, is getting liberals to feel better about their country. There's no need to link to the numerous over-the-top assessments of the president's greatness to demonstrate how thrilled the opinion-making class is over Obama. Believe it or not, that does count for something. It speaks to a renewed faith in America's capacities that, for the last eight years, was sorely lacking among the people who write our newspapers and magazines and produce our television and cinema. Notice that there's been a jump in the number of people who think the country is headed in the right direction, a jump that's almost entirely attributable to a huge increase in the number of Democrats who think so. This is proof positive, incidentally, that the right track / wrong track number should be junked. All it is, is a reflection of partisan sensibilities.

The polling reveals some fascinating divergences. Here's the best way to put it: More people approve of Obama personally than approve of his presidency, and more people approve of his presidency than approve of his major policies. For example, in the WSJ poll only 38 percent say the stimulus is a good idea, a slim majority approves of a cap-and-trade plan, a majority says Obama was wrong to release the Justice Department memos, and a majority opposes investigating Bush officials involved in interrogation policy. Other polling has shown that the public is outright opposed to the bank and auto company bailouts.

But, hey, he's popular, right? Everything's fine. Of course, Obama's popularity is about average when compared with his predecessors. That's a C grade. But let's make it a C+ for style and effort.

When Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez gave President Obama a copy of Eduardo Galeano's left-wing screed Open Veins of Latin America last week, Obama laughed it off, saying, "I'm a reader." Let's hope Obama also reads Alvaro Vargas Llosa's takedown of Galeano. Llosa: "Everything that has happened in the Western Hemisphere since the book appeared in 1971 has belied Galeano's arguments and predictions."

After sitting through Sandinista strongman and Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega's 50-minute diatribe against the United States, Obama said, "I'm grateful that President Ortega did not blame me for things that happened when I was three months old." Maybe he'll ignore the loony left thesis of a book written when he was 10?

As bizarre and disturbing as it was to see Barack Obama bow to Saudi King Abdallah, it is certainly true, as White House spokesman Robert Gibbs claimed today, that there are more important issues facing the country.

But how odd it is that the White House -- first on background and now on the record -- is denying that Obama did what he plainly did?

QUESTION: And then one unrelated question. When the president met with King Abdullah, there was something that took place which I believe the White House explained as just the president being taller than the king. We took a look at the video, and it does appear that the president actually bowed to King Abdullah. Did he bow or didn't he?

GIBBS: No, I think he bent over with both to shake -- with both hands to shake his hand, so I don't...

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) one hand, that he -- he was just...

GIBBS: Well I -- I -- I -- this is...

QUESTION: Did he bow or didn't he?

GIBBS: No, but I think this meeting was like a week ago, right?

QUESTION: That's right, but this is something that a lot of people are still talking about today.

GIBBS: I can only imagine it is of great cause and concern for many people struggling with the economy.

With the media spending more time on Sarah Palin's daughter's ex-boyfriend, I suppose it is a good sign that someone in the White House press corps actually asked Gibbs why his boss genuflected to the Saudi ruler. But if this had been George W. Bush and Dana Perino would the White House get such a pass?

(H/T John Hinderaker at Powerline.)

Let's set aside Stephen Walt's, um, Israel issues for a moment. Is this the quality of thought we should expect from Harvard?

"From those conservatives who think it is dangerous for the United States to cooperate with others, no doubt Obama’s trip looks like a disaster...Imagine: an American president that others around the world admire and respect! No wonder conservatives are carping."

Which conservatives are carping just because Barack Obama is liked and respected? And who, exactly, are these conservatives who "think it is dangerous for the United States to cooperate with others?"

Given Walt's intellectual pedigree and his Ivy League home I'm sure he'll provide some names -- or even just one example -- in a subsequent post.

The poll has been conducted and the verdict is in. President Obama is the nation's prom king, reports the New York Times: "These sometimes turbulent weeks — marked by new initiatives by Mr. Obama, attacks by Republicans and more than a few missteps by the White House — do not appear to have hurt the president. Americans said they approved of Mr. Obama’s handling of the economy, foreign policy, Iraq and Afghanistan; fully two-thirds said they approved of his overall job performance."

Obama's policies? That's a different story. The Times poll found that the public is ambivalent about Obama's initiatives, and sometimes outright opposed. Polling shows that the public opposes the Geithner bank plan, or PPIP, and also opposes bailing out Detroit.

A recent Quinnipiac poll found that the public is torn over Obama's budget, with slight majority support at 51 percent. Similar, slight majorities supported Obama's first major initiative, the stimulus. Support wasn't overwhelming. The Times poll also found that a 48-percent plurality supported a smaller government that provides fewer services.

Americans trust and admire President Obama, and distrust and dislike the GOP. But they are also split on Obamism. Which means that there's a great opportunity for a successful and loyal opposition to the president's big-government liberalism. All it needs is the right spokesmen (and women!).

From yesterday's press briefing at the most transparent White House in history:

Q Following up on that, when did the President decide that Wagoner had to go, and who specifically asked him to go?

MR. GIBBS: I'm not going to get into a tick-tock.

Q Why not?

MR. GIBBS: Because I'm not.

It's possible that the term "War on Terror" may be outmoded, but surely there were better options than this:

The end of the Global War on Terror -- or at least the use of that phrase -- has been codified at the Pentagon. Reports that the phrase was being retired have been circulating for some time amongst senior administration officials, and this morning speechwriters and other staff were notified via this e-mail to use "Overseas Contingency Operation" instead.'"

Strange times we live in, where naming a conflict can become more important than prosecuting the fight to a victorious conclusion. So the name for the pain is now politically incorrect. Fine. Though surely there exists a handle for the war that isn't completely lame? Take operation, for example. That doesn't even acknowledge that the GWOT is a war, but rather some sort of localized police action. An apt enough title in the slowly quieting Iraqi theater, but anyone who thinks Afghanistan is a "contingency operation" is off his chair.

As for "global?" Unpopular? Maybe. Accurate? Definitely. Overseas may sound definitively less imperial, but at least dubbing it the Global War on Terrorism acknowledged that the fight transcended the twin theaters in Iraq and Afghanistan, with enemies ripe in places like the Philippines, Sub-Saharan Africa, Europe, and even South America -- where groups like the FARC support Islamic insurgencies with drug money to help keep the Pentagon occupied.

If "Overseas Contingency Operation" is an accurate projection of how the Obama administration views the Global War on Terrorism, then suspicions that the president is a poor custodian of the national defense may be well founded.

Florida Republican congressman Connie Mack has called on Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner to resign. Politico blogger Glen Thrush writes that Mack is the "first member (we think) to call for Tim Geithner's head." Give Mack some pioneer points, then, because something tells me he won't be the last person to say Geithner should go.

Geithner's nomination was almost derailed when he admitted to not paying payroll taxes as a banker at the International Monetary Fund. This, even though Geithner, as Treasury secretary, would be in charge of the IRS! Regardless, the Senate confirmed Geithner, though with 34 senators opposed.

Geithner was confirmed because he had a sterling reputation. At that point, his association with the previous administration was considered a plus. And Geithner was also thought to be a better spokesman than Lawrence Summers for the Obama administration's economic policies. He caught a break.

So what happened? Geithner's bank plan was a bust. He came under criticism during a recent Senate Budget Committee hearing. He rarely speaks in public, leaving Summers to appear on the talk shows and deliver speeches.

Geithner knew about the AIG bonuses last Tuesday, but did not get out ahead of them. Nor did he, it seems, organize a public relations strategy to deal with the fallout. As of Sunday, after all, Larry Summers was saying that, while he didn't like the bonuses, AIG was "contractually obligated" to pay them out. A misstep!

Next up for Geithner: announcing the details to his bank rescue plan, which could cost another $750 billion dollars. How will "Doogie Howser, Treasury Secretary," be able to convince Congress to give him the money?

It would be extremely unusual for Obama to switch Treasury secretaries before the end of his first year in office. But these are unusual times. And Geithner is setting himself up perfectly to be the fall guy.

Luckily, Geithner will be able to count on Obama, who stands by his associates in good times and bad and is not the sort who throws folks under the bus as soon as they become political inconveniences. ...

Oh, wait.

Remember everyone's favorite Energy secretary, Steven Chu? Last month he told the Los Angeles Times that, if the Obama administration's climate change policies aren't enacted, "We're looking at a scenario where there's no more agriculture in California." What a party-pooper.

Well, yesterday Chu said he was open to imposing duties on foreign carbon as a "weapon" to fight climate change. "If other countries don't impose a cost on carbon, then we will be at a disadvantage...[and] we would look at considering perhaps duties that would offset that cost," Chu said, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Unsurprisingly, America's trading partners do not like the idea, and Chinese government officials are already on record saying a carbon tariff would be (1) illegal under the WTO and (2) invite retaliation. Which no one really needs right now.

Also, Chu's comments arrive just as the Obama administration has to deal with Mexican anger at Congress's decision to revoke rules allowing Mexican trucks on U.S. highways. So far the Obama administration is doing an excellent job at treating our friends (and competitors) shabbily.

Massachusetts's universal health care plan faces a ginormous budget shortfall, reports the Times:

Thanks to new taxes and fees imposed last year, the health plan’s jittery finances have stabilized for the moment. But government and industry officials agree that the plan will not be sustainable over the next 5 to 10 years if they do not take significant steps to arrest the growth of health spending.

Governor Deval Patrick wants to cut costs by instituting "a new payment method that rewards prevention and the effective control of chronic disease, instead of the current system, which pays according to the quantity of care provided." Good luck with that.

Price is determined by supply and demand. If you have great demand for health care but a limited supply, like we do now, the price will be high. Preventive medicine could reduce demand by making people healthier in the long run, but it will take a long time for those cost savings to be realized. In the meantime, demand for medical services will keep prices high, and government subsidies will make costs go higher, because if you subsidize something (in this case, health insurance and thus demand for health services) you get more of it.

How do you reduce demand? Well, you could institute rationing and limit the medical services available to the consumer. Or you could make the consumer more responsible for his health care decisions. But our political system isn't ready for either option. The upshot: demand continues to increase as government shoulders more of the burden. And the cost of government health care swells.

So, when the Washington Post reports that the Obama health care plan could cost $1.5 trillion over 10 years rather than the $635 billion set aside in the FY2010 budget, we should take that information with a grain of salt. It's likely that the real number will be much higher than that.

The U.S. health insurance system produces a tremendous amount of social and economic distortions. It ought to be reformed. But, if you advocate a reform that insures more people at the government's expense, you ought to realize that the only way to pay for such a proposal is through much, much higher taxes. And not just taxes on the top 2 percent.

A bunch of new polls have come out as the Obama presidency enters its third month. NPR has Obama's approval rating at 59 percent. Pew has the same number, a drop of 5 points since the research center's February poll. Gallup has Obama in the same range, at 61 percent approval. Rasmussen has Obama's approval rating at the low end of 56 percent.

The Gallup poll notes that, in its survey, Obama has a higher approval rating than both Clinton (53 percent) and GWB (58 percent) did at this point in their presidencies. Good for him!

But this misses the most interesting aspect of Obama's numbers. It is not that they are at the high end of the range for recent presidents. It's that they are within the range to begin with. Over the past two years we have been told, over and over again, that Barack Obama is special, new, revolutionary.

Bosh. As far as approval ratings go, he's average.

We've been promised a "new politics," but that was wishful thinking. Reality is about to set in. The fact is that the United States is a large country with two significant political tendencies, liberalism and conservatism, and the degree to which one tendency succeeds sparks disapproval from the other.

As long as he remains committed to his budget, Republicans' disapproval of Obama will rise. Maybe not to the stratospherically high levels of disapproval that Democrats felt toward George W. Bush. But still high. And that means Obama's approval rating will fall to earth. No change. We are stuck with the 50-50 nation.

Except, of course, wounded veterans:

The leader of the nation's largest veterans organization says he is "deeply disappointed and concerned" after a meeting with President Obama today to discuss a proposal to force private insurance companies to pay for the treatment of military veterans who have suffered service-connected disabilities and injuries. The Obama administration recently revealed a plan to require private insurance carriers to reimburse the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) in such cases.

"It became apparent during our discussion today that the President intends to move forward with this unreasonable plan," said Commander David K. Rehbein of The American Legion. "He says he is looking to generate $540-million by this method, but refused to hear arguments about the moral and government-avowed obligations that would be compromised by it."

On Sunday the New York Times reported that the Obama administration is open to taxing exployer-provided health benefits. The money for the president's health care proposals needs to come from somewhere, and the administration's proposals to cap the mortgage-interest and charitable deductions for high earners is going nowhere. So, the Times reports, while Obama "will not propose changing the tax-free status of employee health benefits, neither will he oppose it if Congress does so." A bold stand!

During the campaign, of course, Obama and his campaign attacked John McCain for holding the same views that the Obama administration is now open to. McCain never adequately responded to, nor recovered from, the attack that his health care policy equaled "the largest middle-class tax increase in history." That helped Obama use the issue to throttle McCain. Now that the election is over, however, a modified version of the McCain proposal seems reasonable to Obama. Call the hypocrisy police; they can make another arrest.

The interesting thing is that this is not the first health-care reversal the Obama administration is open to. There's a lot of talk that, while he campaigned against Hillary Clinton's policy of a universal insurance mandate, the Obama health care plan may end up mandating coverage anyway. So, as of now, the president's health reform will probably wind up doing two things that the president explicitly campaigned against. Think about all the possible attacks Republicans will be able to launch against the reform using Obama's own words.

Obama gave Congress a lot of leeway to write the health bill because he didn't want to follow the same path as Bill Clinton. He'll let Congress do the work for him and swoop in for the signing ceremony. But his malleability may come back to haunt him. I still think there's a strong chance we'll see health care reform this year - the stars (and special interests) seem to be aligning - but Obama already may have (inadvertently) exposed the weaknesses of the plan he will soon be championing.

One of Barack Obama's many political talents is his ability to see a political firestorm from a mile away and adapt accordingly. (One possible exception to this rule: his handling of his former pastor.) So Obama announced today that he has ordered everyone's favorite Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, to "pursue every single legal avenue to block these bonuses" that AIG plans to hand out to executives.

This is a sudden reversal from previous administration policy. Yesterday, White House economics adviser Larry Summers lambasted the bonuses, but also said that the administration's options were limited because the money was a contractual obligation. So much for that explanation!

Why did Obama shift so quickly? Here are two reasons. One, the administration may finally be learning that, while it can still blame the economy on Bush (for now), it does own the bailouts. And any populist furor over the bailouts won't just be directed backward at Bush. It will also be projected forward onto Obama and Geithner.

Second, any day now the Obama administration will reveal the details of and begin to implement their bank rescue plan. That plan requires the government to provide leverage for private financial institutions. The private institutions will put up some money, sure. But, to get them to do that, the government will have to put up A LOT of money. Another trillion, perhaps. And that means public support is absolutely necessary. Public support that may slip away if the AIG problem isn't resolved soon.

Politico has not one but two pieces on the White House's new political strategy. "We have exhausted the use of Rush as an attention getter," one Democratic official tells Politico. So the White House is broadening its offensive to include all Republicans who fall under the umbrella of "the party of no" because they oppose the president's budget. The assault of Republican obstructionism will involve the DNC, outside groups, Obama's grassroots voting list and supporters, and congressional Democrats. Ambitious stuff.

The plan came about, Politico reports, because some Democrats feel the GOP got the better of Obama on the ombnibus bill. That bill included earmarks, despite Obama's pledge to root earmarks out of Washington. Now, I find the whole earmark debate silly. Earmarks are a small part of the federal budget, and there is something to the argument that congressmen, who (for the most part) maintain residence in their district or state, have a better grasp on which projects will satisfy voters than D.C.-based bureaucrats do. Still, "some Democrats" are right; the GOP has performed more ably in recent weeks than many expected.

Another reason the White House is pursuing this new strategy is that, for the first time, it is encountering skepticism or even pushback on some of its spending priorities. The stimulus bill went through without much of a fight, though some Republicans made a pretty good argument there, too, for an alternative bill that would have frontloaded the spending, suspended the payroll tax, and increased defense outlays. But, now that the budget is at issue, there are more than a few Democrats who worry that Obama has his priorities out of whack and that maybe the big-government stuff can wait until the banks are fixed, the economy has recovered, and tax revenues are on an upswing. If you watched Kent Conrad's recent Senate Budget Committee hearing, you heard exactly these concerns.

The problem with the White House strategy, then, is that it's focused on the wrong people. Obama doesn't really need to worry about Republicans all that much - they have no power and people don't like them anyway. He needs to worry about southern, midwestern, and other budget hawk Democrats who are only just beginning to question the president's opinions. It's these Democrats, more than any Republican, who stand the likeliest chance of derailing the White House agenda.

Of course, it's much easier to demonize the GOP.

In an email to Greg Sargent, New York Times editor Doug Jehl explained the paper's decision to skip covering Chas Freeman:

We did initially elect not to write a story about the campaign against Mr. Freeman. In deciding how to deploy our reporters, my initial judgment was that this squabble fell short of the bar, since the head of the National Intelligence Council is not a Senate-confirmable position and it lies well below cabinet rank.

But the fact that the campaign proved successful certainly justified Mark Mazzetti’s story in this morning’s paper, and we are continuing our reporting efforts today.

It's interesting that Jehl seems to think that the news here is "the campaign against Mr. Freeman," rather than the selection of Freeman itself. It gets tiresome to play the "what if Bush had done this" game, but it seems likely that if George W. Bush had picked someone who had made the statements Freeman had -- defending the Chinese at Tienanmen, praising Saudi reflection after 9/11, "King Abdullah the Great," etc. -- the Times might have found it more newsworthy.

You've got to be kidding. Arthur Herman points out this morning that, while Gordon Brown gave Obama an official gift of a pen holder made from a Royal Navy destroyer and a first-edition of Randolph Churchill's and Martin Gilbert's eight-volume biography of the man who saved Western civilization, Obama gave Brown - I am not making this up - 25 DVDs. The set includes movies like ET, Star Wars, and The Wizard of Oz. All of which I'm pretty sure Brown has seen already. And which he may already own, in fact. Maybe even on Blu-Ray.

Up next: Obama gives Angela Merkel a Best Buy gift card.

There was little question that Barack Obama would reverse George W. Bush's policies on embryonic stem cell research. But many were surprised that he did not do so by executive order upon first taking up residence at the White House. Obama explained his thinking to CNN's John King in an interview that aired two days before the new president was inaugurated.

JOHN KING: You will have the power at the end of that parade to, at the stroke of a pen, lift the federal ban on embryonic stem cell research. There may be the votes to do it in Congress now, but you don't have to wait, you could do it in your first few minutes in office, will you?

BARACK OBAMA: Well, you know, if we can do something legislative, then I usually prefer a legislative process because those are the people's representatives. And I think that on embryonic stem cell research, the fact that you have a bipartisan support around that issue, the fact that you have Republicans like Orrin Hatch who are fierce opponents of abortion and yet recognize that there is a moral and ethical mechanism to insure that people with Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's can actually find potentially some hope out there, you know, I think that sends a powerful message. So we're still examining what things we'll do through executive order. But I like the idea of the American people's representatives expressing their views on an issue like this.

What changed?

It's just like old times. From September 11, 2001, to September 15, 2008, war politics dominated Washington. Public and partisan controversy centered on the war on terror and the Bush administration's response to al Qaeda's attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

War politics began to subside when the surge in Iraq turned near-defeat into a fragile success. Then the collapse of Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2008, drove foreign policy out of the headlines almost entirely. So today's controversies are reminiscent not of the Bush years, but of the Clinton era, when Washington spent its time squabbling over budgets.

And what a budget. No one seems to know what to make of it. Does it "restore balance" and "correct the irresponsible habits of the Bush era"? Or is it the beginning of "the most radical agenda of social transformation seen in our lifetime"? Will it lead to a "moderately more equal country"? Or is it a "major, perhaps irreversible step toward a European-style social welfare state with its concomitant long-run economic stagnation"? Beats me!

I am pretty sure of this, however: the budget debate is almost completely beside the point. Much of Obama's agenda will be enacted. If the past is any guide to the present, that means the spending provisions will become law while the revenue hikes (cap and trade, fixing the private-equity and hedge-fund loophole, capping farm subsidies and the mortgage and charitable interest deductions for high earners) will not.

But the fundamental question is whether or not the Obama administration will implement policies that clean up the mess in the housing and banking sectors and allow economic recovery to take place. It's that simple. The stimulus package tackled the symptoms, not the disease, and it's not likely to be an incredibly effective cure in any case. When it comes to fixing the debt mess, however, the Obama administration seems paralyzed. They don't want the banks to fail and have their balance sheets worked out that way. But they also don't want to take the banks over and wind them down directly. The result has been institutions - Citi, AIG, GM - kept on public life support that prevent dollars from flowing to productive uses and therefore delay economic recovery.

But the risks associated with pulling the plug on these zombies are too scary to contemplate. So what happens? Nothing. And the economic suffering continues.

Like Tom Daschle, Charlie Rangel, Timothy Geithner, et. al. Here.

The White House has its signals crossed. President Obama flew to Williamsburg, Va., tonight to address the House Democrats. Originally the speech was supposed to be off the record. But the White House decided to let the cameras in so that the president's appeal for the economic stimulus bill could be heard around the world.

And what an appeal. Obama lambasted Republican critics of the stimulus and heaped scorn on the Bush administration for piling up the national debt. He said the stimulus bill could end the "tyranny of oil," whatever that means, and made fun of Republicans for questioning whether some of the spending in the bill is actually stimulative. "What do you think 'stimulus' is?" Obama said. "It's spending -- that's the whole point! Seriously." (Just an aside: Obama is wrong. Stimulus is short-term spending to increase aggregate demand during an economic downturn. When the economy recovers, the stimulus spending is supposed to stop. The spending in Obama's plan doesn't stop after the economy recovers. Quite the contrary. Most of the spending is long-term.)

Obama's performance was fiery. He went way off script. He seemed genuinely angry. He's already blaming Republicans for holding up the stimulus -- even though the GOP leader in the Senate says he has no intention of filibustering the bill. No bill, however important, ought to be passed without scrutiny. Certainly Democrats, who have spent the last eight years criticizing Republicans for rushing into things, should realize that.

The speech to the House Democrats is just part of Obama's stimulus counteroffensive. He published an op-ed in today's Washington Post and delivered equally strong remarks this afternoon at the Department of Energy (you can read them here.) The White House has recognized that the debate over the stimulus is spinning out of control and that the bill is in serious danger. So they've retooled their message to make it more aggressive.

One problem. Logically, that message makes no sense. At the Energy Department, Obama said the "time for action is now," but then said that "I would love to see additional improvements" to the stimulus. He says he welcomes new ideas, then goes to Williamsburg, blames the economic crisis on the GOP alone, and says conservative economic policies have been discredited. He says he's not trying to ram this legislation through Congress, then warns of looming economic catastrophe if the package isn't signed into law quickly.

As Obama delivered his call to arms, the Senate debated its version of the stimulus. Earlier this evening, word was that Harry Reid was going to force the Senate to debate all night in order to bring the legislation to a vote. Then, hours later, Reid sent the Senate home and asked them to try again tomorrow. The bipartisan group of senators who want to pare the stimulus back by $100 billion will be given another chance to rein in some of the spending.

So who told Reid to get some rest? To let the folks with the discredited ideas shape the bill? The White House!

Confusion reigns. The stimulus has hit rocky shoals. There's now a chance that the legislation may have to be seriously revised. A tell-tale sign in politics is when people get angry. It means they are losing the argument. Obama is angry. And he has only himself to blame.

Thomas E. Ricks:

"That sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach is caused by the course of Obama's cabinet picks: Richardson blew up on the launch pad, two of the more prominent picks have tax problems, his CIA pick seems inexplicable, his no. 2 guy at the Pentagon needed a waiver from his new anti-lobbying rule, and Hillary Clinton and her hubbie strike me as a ticking bombs."

This is going to be fun.

Simple question: Has the Obama White House had discussion with New Hampshire Governor John Lynch (D) about a successor to Senator Judd Gregg (R) if Obama chooses Gregg as his next Commerce Secretary?

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, at his afternoon briefing: The Obama administration ""has had nothing and wants nothing to do with that going forward."

Governor Lynch, in a statement today: "I have had conversations with Senator Gregg, the White House and U.S. Senate leadership."

(H/T Jonathan Martin)

Among the first “directives” of this very young presidency is one Barack Obama has given himself. From a press release issued earlier today:

I will also hold myself as President to a new standard of openness. Going forward, anytime the American people want to know something that I or a former President wants to withhold, we will have to consult with the Attorney General and the White House Counsel, whose business it is to ensure compliance with the rule of law. Information will not be withheld just because I say so. It will be withheld because a separate authority believes my request is well grounded in the Constitution.

This is a curious directive. As he has before, Obama here seems to be trying to draw a contrast with his predecessor, George W. Bush. But if there were occasions on which Bush failed to consult with White House or Justice Department lawyers on claims of privilege, they don’t come to mind. I checked with a lawyer who worked for Bush in the White House Counsel’s office who could not recall any either.

Maybe Obama’s real complaint is not with Bush but with Bush’s lawyers. Maybe he thinks they approved claims that were not “well grounded in the Constitution.”

A question Obama does not address is what happens if, following his own directive, his Attorney General says “no” to a request but his White House Counsel says “yes.” Someone has to be the decider, if I may use that word, and it would have to be Obama, who, after all, is the president.

What does it take to become president of the United States? The ability to say more or less the same thing, again and again, for two years straight.

Here is Barack Obama to Steve Kroft, in early 2007, on why he should be president:

"We have a narrow window to solve some of the problems that we face. Ten years from now, we may not be in a position to recover the sense of respect around the world that we've lost over the last six years. Certainly, when you look at our energy policy and environment and the prospects of climate change, we've gotta make some decisions right now. And so I feel a sense of urgency for the country."

And here is Obama to Steve Kroft, in late summer 2008, on why he should be president:

"Well, I think that when you think about the challenges we face these are challenges that require us to look forward and not backwards."

Note the skill at which Obama stays on message without saying anything of substance. An extraordinary talent.

What struck me as I watched the 60 Minutes program on Obama last night was not only his unflappability. It was the fact that, for the least experienced president-elect since at least Jimmy Carter, Obama made only one and a half unforced errors throughout the entire long campaign. The first gaffe came in the summer of 2007, when he pledged to meet with the leaders of rogue regimes without precondition. As Charles Krauthammer has pointed out, it was a "metastatic gaffe" that trailed Obama for more than a year. Now that he is president, he has quietly dropped the pledge -- an implicit acknowledgment of a mistake.

The half of an unforced error was the Obama campaign's lack of preparedness for the inevitable attack on its candidate's ties to Jeremiah Wright. David Axelrod says here that "We didn't review all of the tapes of Jeremiah Wright as we should have." Translation: We weren't ready. But they knew what was coming. Which is why this counts as only half of an unforced error. The real mistake happened twenty years ago. The real mistake happened when Obama chose Wright as his mentor.

Let me know if I missed any major Obama mistakes during the campaign. I don't think I have.

Be sure to check out this Bret Stephens column on why the incoming Congress should just go ahead already and establish the Barack H. Obama Presidential Monument Commission. Yes, the piece is slightly tongue-in-cheek. But, as Stephens points out, there is a case that, "even if Mr. Obama turns out to be a mediocre or bad president, the very symbolism of his election is a historic achievement unto itself, a reflected monument to America, its promise, and every prejudice it has overcome." How much room is left on Mt. Rushmore?

You get the feeling sometimes that Obama himself thinks like this. He is constantly trying to link himself to our greatest president - as we see in his decision to be sworn in on the Lincoln bible, which has not been used since, well, Lincoln. As someone who has a great deal of admiration for Obama, I worry that he wasn't in church when Rev. Wright talked about that whole "pride-goeth-before-the-fall" thing.

Finally, Stephens mentions the latest Time magazine profile of Obama, which includes, amazingly, the following sentence:

""His genome is global, his mind is innovative, his world is networked, and his spirit is democratic."

Whew! That's a relief. For a second there I was afraid Obama's genome was national, his mind regressive, his world disconnected, and his spirit authoritarian. Glad we straightened that out.

So the president-elect has asked Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration. It’s an interesting decision. Warren, a Southern Baptist, is pastor of Saddleback, the evangelical megachurch in Orange County, Ca. When I was at the church in August for the debate between Obama and McCain that Warren moderated (and in which Obama did badly), one of his congregants told me that church members would vote overwhelmingly for McCain (and it’s hard to imagine they didn’t). On issues, Warren is pro-life and against defining marriage as other than between a man and a woman. But his agenda, which extends worldwide, also includes items Obama approves--such as confronting poverty, AIDS, climate change, and genocide in Darfur. Warren is not your usual religious conservative, and in fact some years ago declined to assume a leadership role as such. Obama and Warren do count each other as friends, and there is no more prominent pastor in America or, for that matter, the world, than Warren. Obama has best-sellers but Warren’s The Purpose-Drive Life has sold more than 22 million copies. Obama has picked to do the first prayer (so to speak) a man about as big in religion as Obama is in politics. It’s a choice that if you polled on it would doubtless do very well, and you could even call it a unifying choice, since Warren is to Obama’s right theologically and culturally.

Still, the selection of Warren is understandably frustrating religious liberals who expected something else. Note that Obama did not choose a pastor from his denomination, the theologically liberal United Church of Christ. Nor a preacher trained up in black liberation theology--the theology of his former church (Trinity, in Chicago) and his former pastor (the Rev. Jeremiah Wright) and, to infer from what Obama himself has written, the theology he knows best. Nor did Obama choose a pastor known for his work in the inner city. Nor a black or Hispanic or female preacher in an effort to score some diversity points. In sum, in picking Warren, Obama didn’t confirm what liberals thought Obama’s election might signify--a religious left revival.

Is it Jim Lindgren day on The Blog?

For those of you following the contours of the Blago scandal, check out Lindgren's various posts at the Volokh conspiracy. He was the first person (or at least the first person I read) to focus on Valerie Jarrett, the importance of the November 8-12 time period, and the November 10th conference call. Lindgren notes the dramatic change in Obama's position during this brief period on Valerie Jarrett as his potential replacement in the Senate. First came leaks noting that Obama wanted Jarrett to have the position (leaks that presumably came from the transition). They were followed shortly by leaks that Obama wanted Jarrett with him at the White House. (And, as Lindgren notes, it's interesting -- and potentially revealing -- that Obama said that he wanted Jarrett at the White House rather than Jarrett simply declaring that she wasn't interested in the Senate seat. What happened in between? The November 10th conference call in which Blagojevich tells a large group that he wants something in exchange for the Senate seat.

Lindgren put together this timeline a couple days ago and, as he notes, it is quickly becoming the conventional view of what likely happened.

Obama's press conference did little to shed new light on all of this. It seems clear that he did not talk to Blagojevich by phone about the seat. If he had, it's inconceivable that he'd be making the kind of categorical denials he's made in recent days and made again today. It also seems clear that his staff did have contacts with Blagojevich (or his staff) about the seat. He has twice in recent days refused to rule out such staff contacts and this morning said he had ordered his staff to detail all such contacts so that he can make them public. That's smart.

But one thing in his comments today struck me as problematic. Shortly after he told reporters that he was looking into the nature of any staff contacts with Blagojevich he claimed knowledge of the contents of any such discussions. Obama said he was "absolutely certain" that "our office had no involvement in any deal-making for my Senate seat." That may be true. And if the narrative that Lindgren has put together is right, then it seems likely that someone on Obama's staff may have notified Patrick Fitzgerald of the pay-to-play scheme or have been otherwise cooperating with him. (Remember, in the Scooter Libby investigation, Fitzgerald asked Richard Armitage to say nothing public about the fact that he was the leaker in order to allow the investigation to proceed.)

Two concluding points. 1) Even with a 76-page complaint, a lengthy press conference by Fitzgerald and lots of reporting on this, we know very little about what actually happened. 2) Contrary to a lot of excitement on the right, it is possible -- and maybe likely -- that Obama will come out of this unscathed and perhaps even looking good. The opposite could be true, too, of course if Obama is not as transparent as he has pledged to be. As I say, there's a lot we don't know.

You got the feeling at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver that if Barack Obama were to win the White House, his party's first domestic policy priority would be universal health insurance. The financial crisis has changed that somewhat; now universal health care is Obama's number two domestic policy priority. Philip Klein helpfully explains why it will be much harder for conservatives to defeat Obamacare than it was to defeat HillaryCare:

The Washington Post reports that Tom Daschle, who hasn't even been formally named Secretary of Health and Human Services yet, is already engaging activists on the issue, asking for their input, and hoping build on the success that the Obama campaign had in mobilizing the grassroots during the campaign. This is not somebody who is taking the HHS job to manage its day-to-day bureaucracy.

Meanwhile, yesterday, America's Health Insurance Plans, the largest trade group of insurance companies, proposed its own universal health care plan, declaring that, "now is the time for health care reform." This is a stunning development, given that the insurance industry played a major role in the defeat of HillaryCare. In the proposal, insurers agree to cover individuals with pre-existing conditions, if the government imposes a mandate requiring that every American purchase health insurance. Meanwhile, to control costs, the group proposes "a public-private advisory group be created to provide specific policy recommendations to Congress on reducing health care costs" – which is similar to Daschle's idea of a Federal Health Board. They also endorse an expansion of S-CHIP.

The roughly $8 trillion the Bush administration has obligated so far to rescue the global financial system also makes it more likely that Obama will get some version of his universal health care plan. While such a plan will be expensive, and will likely grow only far more expensive in the future, the initial costs will pale in comparison to the trillions of dollars Bush and Paulson have poured into Wall Street.

Meanwhile, Obama's centrist economic and national security teams have the left feeling some buyer's remorse. To satisfy the left, Obama is likely to make a strong push for health care next year, as well as hand them the keys to the Labor Department, EPA, and all the various humanities programs (NEA, NEH, etc.). Our national checkup with Dr. Daschle is about due.

So far, so good. According to the USA Today / Gallup poll, more than three quarters of the country express approval for Obama's conduct during the presidential transition. Sixty-nine percent approve of his selection of Hillary Clinton to be Secretary of State. More - 80 percent - support his decision to retain Bob Gates at the Defense Department.

In other Obama numbers news, NBC's First Read has examined the Georgia Senate runoff results and notes that, without Obama's name on the ballot, Saxby Chambliss increased his margin of victory from 3 points on Election Day to 14 points on December 2.

"How many House or Senate Democrats," asks First Read, "who believe they won because of Obama coattails - especially in states like Alabama, North Carolina, and Virginia - saw the run-off result and said, 'Uh, oh. 2010 is going to be tough'?" Point taken, but let's not forget that folks like Mark Warner, Kay Hagen, and the Udall cousins in Colorado and New Mexico all ran ahead of, or even with, Obama.

Mike Allen reported over the weekend that "Gregory B. Craig, a well-known Washington lawyer who quarterbacked President Bill Clinton’s impeachment defense, has been chosen White House counsel by President-elect Barack Obama".

Believe it or not, the time Craig spent shilling for Clinton may have been his most honorable days of work. John J. Miller wrote in this May 2000 article National Review:

In the early 1980s, [Craig] was an attorney for John Hinckley, the man who shot President Reagan and three others. Craig helped put together an insanity defense that led to Hinckley’s acquittal. Nine years later, he advised Ted Kennedy in the Palm Beach rape case involving the senator and his nephew, William Kennedy Smith. ...

Craig orchestrated a 1984 [Senate] hearing for Kennedy on alleged human-rights abuses committed by Nicaragua’s rebels, the Contras. He worked with groups closely tied to the Sandinista regime to find witnesses for the forum, which led to a round of anti-contra news coverage in the U.S. Soon afterward, however, Joshua Muravchik, currently of the American Enterprise Institute, exposed a fraud: The most compelling witnesses — three Miskito Indians — had been served up by the Sandinistas.

And a fourth participant, Father Alfredo Gundrum, an American priest living in Nicaragua, had been asked to play the role of honest broker — to place the testimony “into some kind of perspective,” as Kennedy put it. Gundrum, described as “totally apolitical” in background material distributed by Kennedy’s staff, told of how the Contras launched vicious raids on Indian villages “almost every day.” Yet Gundrum had been the subject of a San Francisco newspaper article just one month before the hearing. He was photographed standing before his church with a Soviet-made rifle in his hands and quoted as saying, “To me it was a day of grace the day the Sandinistas took over, and I really mean it.”

In 2000, while serving as the lawyer for Elian Gonzalez's father, Craig did the bidding of the Castro regime by killing an agreement "to transfer custody of Elian to his father, as long as [Elian's family from Miami] could live with the boy and his father in an environment free of U.S. and Cuban officials." Since then, Craig has represented foreign officials accused of war crimes such as former Bolivian Defense Minister Carlos Sánchez-Berzaín and Pedro Miguel González, the president of Panama's legislature, who is under federal indictment for the murder of U.S. Army Sgt. Zak Hernández Laporte.

But at least he didn't lobby for Fannie Mae.

Some recent headlines:

N. Korea to halt border crossings with S. Korea

N. Korea rejects request for nuclear sampling

Kremlin Plans Missiles Targeting NATO if U.S. Defense Shield Proceeds

Russia rejects U.S. missile proposals

Cuban president Raul Castro to visit Russia

Iran test-fires new missile

Police: 3rd day of deadly bombings in Baghdad

Is one or more of these hostile actions what Joe Biden had in mind when he predicted that there would be a generated international crisis to test Obama's mettle? Or does Biden think we should be waiting for something much bigger?

The Pentagon is planning to expand the number of air bases in the remote regions of Afghanistan’s south and east, USA Today reports. The bases will allow the U.S. military to sortie more of the deadly unmanned Predator and Reaper aircraft that provide surveillance and striking power for U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The bases are needed “particularly in the rugged mountain area near the border with Pakistan” as the region “has seen some of the toughest fighting for U.S. troops.”

The article focuses on using the Predators and Reapers to support U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan, but the USA Today misses the elephant in the room. The U.S. military and CIA have been conducting covert airstrikes into Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas that border eastern Afghanistan, primarily with unmanned Predators and Reapers. The strikes have skyrocketed over the past year after President Bush loosened the restrictions on striking inside Pakistan. U.S. intelligence is deeply concerned the next attack on the West will be hatched in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

The United States has conducted at least 28 airstrikes and cross-border attacks in Pakistan in during 2008 (you can see the current list here). Twenty-one of these attacks have occurred between Aug. 31 and Nov. 7. At least four senior al Qaeda leaders have been killed in these attacks. In comparison, there were only 10 recorded strikes during 2006 and 2007 combined.

The big question is whether or not President-elect Barack Obama will continue the current policy of hitting al Qaeda and their Taliban allies inside Pakistan. The Pakistani government has already implored Obama to halt the attacks. Obama has run on a platform that emphasizes a kinder, gentler foreign policy that stresses diplomacy. He also promised to be aggressive inside Pakistan. He will soon learn that being “liked” and “respected” by the international community often conflicts with vital U.S. national security interests.

Professor Bainbridge makes the case that the best help one could give to GM is to allow it to file for bankruptcy:

Let’s focus on GM. GM’s problems are manifold, but at the top of the list are:

1. An incredibly inefficient bureaucracy...

2. An excessive number of brands, which results in substantial cost duplication...

3. Although GM didn’t bet as heavily on trucks and SUVs as did Ford, it still has almost no profitable small and medium-sized car models...

4. An antiquated distribution system cemented into place by state franchise laws that insulate dealers from any real changes...

5. Union contracts that impose astronomical health and pension costs, make innovation harder, reduce production flexibility, and fail to ensure quality...

6. Massive pension and health costs for retired workers.

Here’s what has to happen. Cerebus needs to sell Chrysler to somebody with cash and a need for access to the US market. India’s Tata comes to mind.

GM and Ford should be allowed to go through bankrupt reorganizations. Yes, there will be huge transaction costs. Yes, some of those costs will be borne by the taxpayers. The bankruptcy court’s ability to remake contracts, however, will be critical. GM and Ford need to tear up their contracts with the unions, its retirees, and its dealers. Bankruptcy is the easiest way of doing so...

Many analysts argue that GM's structural problems won't be solved by throwing money at the company. That move will only delay the necessary reckoning. In this view, it doesn't matter whether the Big 3 are 'an essential part of our industrial base,' as Rahm Emanuel asserts. Throwing taxpayer money at the problem only delays the day when America's car manufacturers can be competitive again -- when the automakers can truly serve as the backbone of America's manufacturing base. Until that shakeout comes, GM seems likely to do no better than ward of the state. So why do it?

Perhaps Barack Obama's early priorities should give us a clue. While Rahm Emanuel has spoken of children's health and stem cell research as the first initiatives out of the box, it's clear that card check and the auto bailout are also on the fast track. Those are the top priorities of Big Labor -- which spent $450 million to put Barack Obama in the White House, and desperately needs government help to remain viable.

This space is not usually reserved for confession, but I have a secret vice to reveal: I close my office door here at THE WEEKLY STANDARD, direct my computer to the YouTube site, and bathe in the sights and sounds of Barack Obama music.

Specifically, I have found myself addicted to four videos in particular. The first, which was produced by rapper will.i.am during the primary season, is called "Yes, We Can" and features Mr. am's fellow celebrities--John Legend, Scarlett Johanssen, and others--lip-synching to Obama boilerplate about the magical phrase "Yes, we can," which (according to Senator Obama) seems to have circulated throughout the populace at choice moments in history.

Then there is a second video, also produced by will.i.am, called "We Are the Ones"--taken from the famous Obamian formula that "we are the ones we've been waiting for"--which also features selected celebrities (Jessica Alba, among others) describing the kind of world they would like to inhabit once Obama is elected.

The third video is the brainchild of a rocker named Dave Stewart and is called "My American Prayer"--although, as the singer renders the phrase, it sounds more like "my 'merican prayer." This, too, is a vehicle for familiar faces (Forrest Whittaker, Seinfeld's Jason Alexander) to move their lips in harmony with Mr. Stewart's lyrics or Senator Obama's oratory.

The final video is not a video per se, but a performance by Little Stevie Wonder at a rally for Obama at UCLA where he exhorts the audience to "remember this melody" and then, singing up and down the scale, repeats "Barack Obama" in a slow rhythmic chant, clapping with the audience, and invoking "Barack Obama" over and over again.

I confess that Little Stevie Wonder's performance has something like a hypnotic effect on me. His grating, high-pitched voice, which was never particularly comfortable to listen to, has a kind of screeching quality which, combined with the endless incantation of "Barack Obama," is very difficult to dislodge from memory. I also admit that the other three videos appeal to me largely for their considerable quotient of kitsch: There is slow-motion imagery of pregnant women, blissful Gray Panthers, solemn dreadlocked hipsters, earnest Young Hollywood, and multitudes of the sort of people you would expect to see shopping at Whole Fields in, say, Cambridge, Massachusetts or Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Yet what is most striking about these sounds and images is their extraordinary solemnity. There is an overarching theme of sadness, melancholy, misfortune, loss, even reproachfulness: The beautiful young things gaze balefully into the cameras, warbling in slow, mournful tempos, swaying and staggering instead of dancing; they appear at times to be on the verge of tears. It is as if they are moaning their way out of Stalingrad, or expect the viewer to crush the dreams they describe. This is as far from 'Happy Days are Here Again' or 'hope' as one could imagine. Even the Obama musical video--"Choose to Unite"--is suffused with candlelight vigils and progressives in pain.

What does this mean? Perhaps the inference is that the United States, after eight years of George W. Bush, is so far down the road to perdition that even the dying words of Martin Luther King (featured in 'My American Prayer') cannot redeem it. Or maybe these long, self-indulgent eulogies are largely a reflection of the copious piety, insufferable self-absorption, and mutual admiration of Senator Obama and his acolytes? Either way, they generate bouts of helpless laughter and genuine astonishment in one viewer, at least.

Ben Smith reports:

Answering questions after a meeting with Biden and national security advisers, Obama insists that Joe Biden intended to say that the next president will be tested by foreign powers, regardless of who is elected.

"Joe sometimes engages in rhetorical flourishes, but i think his core point was that the next administration is going to be tested, regardless of who it is," he said at the Richmond, Va., event.

"I think the point that Joe made is actually very similar to the one that Secretary Chertoff made today or yesterday, which is that whoever is the next president is going to have to deal with a whole host of challenges internationally, and that a period of transition in a new administration is always one in which we have to be vigilant, we have to be careful, we have to be mindful that as we pass the baton in this democracy, that others don’t take advantage of it.," Obama said, stressing that either he or McCain would be tested.

Read the the full Biden quote in context, and decide whether Biden was merely saying that the next president will be tested "regardless of who it is" (emphases mine):

"And here's the point I want to make. Mark my words. Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy. And he's gonna have to make some really tough - I don't know what the decision's gonna be, but I promise you it will occur. As a student of history and having served with seven presidents, I guarantee you it's gonna happen. I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate. And he's gonna need help. And the kind of help he's gonna need is, he's gonna need you, not financially to help him, we're gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna be apparent that we're right. Because all these decisions, all these decisions, once they're made if they work, then they weren't viewed as a crisis. If they don't work, it's viewed as you didn't make the right decision, a little bit like how we hesitated so long dealing with Bosnia and dealing with Kosovo, and consequently 200,000 people lost their lives that maybe didn't have to lose lives. It's how we made a mistake in Iraq. We made a mistake in Somalia. So there's gonna be some tough decisions. They may emanate from the Middle East. They may emanate from the sub-continent. They may emanate from Russia's newly-emboldened position because they're floating in a sea of oil."

After again touting Cantwell's judgment, Biden told the crowd to "gird your loins."

"Only thing I'm asking you is, you know, gird your loins. We're gonna win with your help, God willing, we're gonna win, but this is not gonna be an easy ride. This president, the next president, is gonna be left with the most significant task. It's like cleaning the Aegean stables, man. This is more than just, this is more than - think about it, literally, think about it - this is more than just a capital crisis, this is more than just markets, this is a systemic problem we have with this economy."

Is there any doubt that Biden meant that our foreign adversaries would seize the unique opportunity to "test" the "mettle" of the untested 47-year-old Obama? McCain foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann acknowledged on Monday that "the next president of the United States will be tested," but he argued that Obama's weakness on foreign policy "invites testing."

"In foreign policy, it is weakness real or perceived weakness that is provocative. Weakness invites challenge, invites testing, invites attack," Scheunemann said, as he went on to point out that Obama has shown signs of weakness repeatedly. Obama said Georgia should "show restraint" after it had been invaded by Russia. He opposed trade pacts with our allies. He opposed the surge and would have accepted a defeat to Al Qaeda in Iraq rather than alter his plan for withdrawal. He pledged to meet with Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong Il, the Castro brothers, Hugo Chavez, and Bashar al Asad. Even if Obama intends to give all these tyrants a good talking to a la Lee Bollinger, does he really think that presidential summits--without precondition--will do anything but embolden our enemies?

Barack Obama yesterday:

“I don't think me calling House Republican members would have been that helpful. I tend not to be that persuasive on that side of the aisle”

Barack Obama today in Wisconsin:

“I’ve been reaching out to leaders in both parties to do whatever I can to help pass this plan.”

It's a hit: "Over 38 million Americans watched TV coverage of Barack Obama accepting his party's nomination for president on Thursday, far more than tuned in for the acceptance speeches of past Democratic contenders."

How many of these viewers were watching Obama for the first time? Did they like what they saw? How many were voters who have already made up their minds?

The answers to such questions are not clear. But it is likely that the Obama bounce is about to bounce a little higher.

David Brooks:

"[T]his election isn’t about the past or the present, or even the pluperfect conditional. It’s about the future, and Barack Obama loves the future because that’s where all his accomplishments are."

There are half-a-dozen lines from the column that are just as good, and I'm only half-done. A classic.

Denver
Having followed Barack Obama around on the campaign trail quite a bit, I found tonight's big speech to be of the middle-rank, at least by his own standards. At his best, Obama is a riveting orator--his Iowa caucus victory speech was gob-smacking in the brilliance of both its rhetoric and delivery. When Obama does not have his fast-ball, his speeches tend to be unkindly exposed, like when you catch a magician in a trick. Tonight he was neither at his best nor his worst.

Two observations: First, the speech came insanely over-promised, both by the setting (not only a stadium, but in front of that grandiose set) and the puffery about him pouring his heart and soul into it with monkish fervor. The crowd loved it and him. Yet from where I was sitting in the 100 level, it seemed to me that the audience was more energetic and excited when he first stepped on stage than it was when he finished.

Partly, that may be because this wasn't the speech they expected. Many of the people in the crowd came with an eye toward witnessing history and Obama's speech was more political than historical. As such, he grounded it more in making his explicitly political case for the presidency than in the histrionics of the moment. There was only one passage which reached for the rhetorical heavens:

The times are too serious, the stakes are too high for this same partisan playbook. So let us agree that patriotism has no party. I love this country, and so do you, and so does John McCain. The men and women who serve in our battlefields may be Democrats and Republicans and Independents, but they have fought together and bled together and some died together under the same proud flag. They have not served a Red America or a Blue America--they have served the United States of America.

The crowd went nuts for this passage, but it was the only one to arouse serious passion. (There was an excited, but not rhapsodic, response to his allusion to Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, which, interestingly enough, excluded mention of either the title of the speech or King's name. This isn't a criticism; I thought it was the most elegantly phrased passage of the entire convention.)

Second, Obama's speech represents a departure from the way he has constructed the argument for his candidacy. Up until this week--tonight, even--the Obama campaign rested on Hope / Change. He has now found a second act: economic populism. Following along, I saw the speech break into twelve fairly distinct sections. Eight of them were principally concerned with economic populism. The other four were about personal responsibility, foreign policy, patriotism, and bridge issues.

This new vector may prove very fruitful for Obama. It certainly seems like the smartest direction for his campaign.

But one issue was extremely notable in its absence: the surge. Obama went to some lengths to inoculate himself from attacks Republicans will make next week in terms of his judgment, his experience, his foreign policy toughness, his elitism, and his patriotism. He completely elided his miscalculation on the surge, suggesting that he has not yet figured out how to square this particular circle.

When discussing foreign policy, Obama said this: "We are the party of Roosevelt. We are the party of Kennedy. So don't tell me that Democrats won't defend this country."

It's been more than 40 years since John F. Kennedy was president. Since then, three other Democrats have held the office: Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton. Why didn't Obama mention them? Is this a tacit acknowledgment that the foreign policies of those presidents were, to put it charitably, a mixed bag?

Obama's economic message is clearly aimed at middle-class families that have seen prices rise and incomes stagnate. This is his clearest advantage. And he pressed it in his speech tonight here:

Now, I don't believe that Senator McCain doesn't care what's going on in the lives of Americans; I just think he doesn't know.
Why else would he define middle-class as someone making under $5 million a year? How else could he propose hundreds of billions in tax breaks for big corporations and oil companies, but not one penny of tax relief to more than 100 million Americans?

And here: "I will cut taxes - cut taxes - for 95 percent of all working families."

And here: "If you have health care, my plan will lower your premiums."

And here: "But I will also go through the federal budget, line by line, eliminating programs that no longer work and making the ones we do need work better and cost less - because we cannot meet twenty-first century challenges with a twentieth-century bureaucracy."

McCain can respond to these assertions by pointing out that Obama would raise the overall tax burden, support a renewal of the ban on offshore drilling, and has no record of spending cuts. That may not be enough, however. Because McCain's lack of a middle-class tax cut remains his key domestic policy liability.

Barack Obama's speech was a historic event. From where I was sitting, the stadium shook. But Obama was clearly playing defense. People have said he isn't specific enough, so he filled the speech with specifics. He found it necessary to respond to McCain's jokey (and effective) "celebrity" ad. He spent paragraphs proclaiming his patriotism - though McCain has never questioned it. He responded to John McCain's convention theme, "putting country first," by saying, "We all put our country first." Really? Everyone? To those who say the election is a referendum on his ability to lead in a dangerous world, Obama said, "This election has never been about me. It's been about you." No it hasn't. It really is all about him.

Yuval Levin highlights a few of Obama's evasions, issues he did not mention in the text. There is also this section:

We may not agree on abortion, but surely we can agree on reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies in this country.
The -- the reality of gun ownership may be different for hunters in rural Ohio than they are for those plagued by gang violence in Cleveland, but don't tell me we can't uphold the Second Amendment while keeping AK-47s out of the hands of criminals.
I know there are differences on same-sex marriage, but surely we can agree that our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters deserve to visit the person they love in a hospital and to live lives free of discrimination.
You know, passions may fly on immigration, but I don't know anyone who benefits when a mother is separated from her infant child or an employer undercuts American wages by hiring illegal workers.

In a gesture to compromise, Obama skirts taking a stand on critical divides. We all know where he stands on those issues, of course. He's a liberal. But he seeks to mask his liberalism in a gauze of sentiment and straw men. It worked at Invesco Field. It may no longer work by November 4.

"This Greek Temple thing is going to cling to Obama like some Kerry spandex."

Juan Williams's op-ed commentary throughout the campaign has been superb - passionate, informative, and incisive. His latest is not to be missed.

The Washington Post's opinion writers will be filing quick takes on the conventions here. The upshot: you get to read Krauthammer more than once a week. Here's his first item. A sample:

Obama’s problem is that he has compounded [his thin resume] with a detached imperiousness and unnerving grandiosity so completely disproportionate to his own accomplishments. Grandiosity in a de Gaulle is one thing, though even with him it often reached the point of the ridiculous. But Obama?

Read the whole thing, as they say.

Why is the presidential race tied? It's the game everyone is playing. Democrats in particular really want to know the answer to this question. They assume, reasonably, that the underlying political conditions favor their party. They note that the Democrats maintain a sizable lead on the generic ballot. Yet Obama and McCain are running neck and neck.

Watching the Democratic convention last night, you got the sense that some Democrats are worried Obama isn't winning handily because he's not considered "American" enough. That's why Michelle Obama stressed the fundamental similarities between her family and her husband's, and their family and all American families. As David Brooks notes today, other Democrats think Obama isn't experienced, aggressive, or populist enough: "It’s like a Greatest Misses compilation of every Democratic campaign idea ever conceived."

But the simplest explanation is often best. Despite what you may be hearing, America remains a closely divided country. The parties split Americans' loyalties down the middle, give or take a few percentage points. So it doesn't help when the Democrats nominate one of the most liberal tickets in memory. Obama's problem isn't his race, or his cosmopolitanism, or his campaign style. It's his politics.

(His youth and inexperience don't help, either.)

David Brooks writes today that

At the core, Obama’s best message has always been this: He is unconnected with the tired old fights that constrict our politics. He is in tune with a new era. He has very little experience but a lot of potential. He does not have big achievements, but he is authentically the sort of person who emerges in a multicultural, globalized age. He is therefore naturally in step with the problems that will confront us in the years to come.

True enough. And there's a strong argument to be made that this future-oriented message is one reason for Obama's youth appeal. But then Brooks goes and writes this: "[T]he old free market policies worked fine in the 20th century, but no longer seem to be working today."

Really? China just ended an almost two-week-long coming out party showcasing its incredible economic growth since Deng Xiaoping declared "to get rich is glorious" thirty years ago. (Semi) free-market policies seem to be working pretty well for China, and free-market economics seem to be working for Eastern Europe and Ireland too, among other places.

The "old free market policies" produced a two-decade long period of low inflation and economic growth in the United States. It may be true that lately this growth hasn't been reaching everybody. That's a problem. But history suggests that drastically raising taxes and expanding the government's reach into yet more parts of our daily economic life isn't the answer. Some lessons apply equally to both the twentieth century as well as the twenty-first.

Apparently even he doesn't know.

From the Politico, “Obama Preps in Solitude for Speech” by Carrie Budoff Brown

Behold! The most egregious Obama puff piece of the day! As you read, you’ll almost hear echoes of Ms. Budoff Brown chanting “O-ba-ma!” while she worked the keyboard.

CHICAGO — For three days in a row, Barack Obama traded his Hyde Park home for a solitary Park Hyatt hotel room.

He needed space to think, on his own. With no aides and a small security detail, he put his pencil to his legal pad and worked on a nomination acceptance speech that pundits will inevitably compare to the 2004 Democratic National Convention address that catapulted him into political stardom.

Facing expectations much higher this time around, Obama was ensconced inside the downtown luxury hotel — alone, according to aides — preparing for the biggest speech of his career. He worked on it for 20 hours, until past midnight each day…

He has collaborated with speechwriters and top aides, but with many of them in Denver already, Obama has worked alone at the hotel, Psaki said.

The late-night sessions shed light on the meticulous preparations that are going into the speech. Expectations will undoutedly (sic) build this week as the media revisits Obama's 2004 convention performance and speculate about the impact of this year's address…

“This speech requires more thought, more preparation,” Obama told the Chicago Tribune in an interview published Saturday. “I’m not focused on trying to match the soaring rhetoric or levels of excitement that we had four years ago. This is much more a yeoman-like task of making the case for my presidency.”

First off, remember what I said a while ago about Obama donors demanding a refund? Here’s what your money, dear Obama donor, is going towards - Obama’s mansion isn’t sufficiently comfortable for him, so you have to put him up in a luxury hotel a few miles away so he can properly think.

On a more substantive note, Obama’s concluding quote reveals how he has painted himself into a corner. He excels at the vague stem-winders that rev up the audience. But stung by the celebrity charge, he knows he has to offer more substance. Yet if he does an updated version of Bill Clinton endlessly prattling on about midnight basketball, he’ll disappoint even his most devoted acolytes. (Okay, his most devoted acolytes will never find him disappointing, but you get my drift.)

So what does Obama do? He’s talking about making a “yeoman-like” case for his presidency, which sounds like he intends to show more seriousness and specificity than he typically does at these big addresses. And yet he long ago committed to delivering this yeoman-like speech in a 75,000 seat football stadium and just committed to having Jon Bon Jovi precede him on the stage and Bruce Springsteen follow him. I love Jersey rock as much as the next guy, but this presentation doesn’t bespeak great seriousness.

The Obama campaign realizes its old narrative of hope/change/new politics has grown stale. But it apparently doesn’t quite know how to put it out to pasture.

From the Politico, “Obama Preps in Solitude for Speech” by Carrie Budoff Brown

Behold! The most egregious Obama puff piece of the day! As you read, you’ll almost hear echoes of Ms. Budoff Brown chanting “O-ba-ma!” while she worked the keyboard.

CHICAGO — For three days in a row, Barack Obama traded his Hyde Park home for a solitary Park Hyatt hotel room.

He needed space to think, on his own. With no aides and a small security detail, he put his pencil to his legal pad and worked on a nomination acceptance speech that pundits will inevitably compare to the 2004 Democratic National Convention address that catapulted him into political stardom.

Facing expectations much higher this time around, Obama was ensconced inside the downtown luxury hotel — alone, according to aides — preparing for the biggest speech of his career. He worked on it for 20 hours, until past midnight each day…

He has collaborated with speechwriters and top aides, but with many of them in Denver already, Obama has worked alone at the hotel, Psaki said.

The late-night sessions shed light on the meticulous preparations that are going into the speech. Expectations will undoutedly (sic) build this week as the media revisits Obama's 2004 convention performance and speculate about the impact of this year's address…

“This speech requires more thought, more preparation,” Obama told the Chicago Tribune in an interview published Saturday. “I’m not focused on trying to match the soaring rhetoric or levels of excitement that we had four years ago. This is much more a yeoman-like task of making the case for my presidency.”

First off, remember what I said a while ago about Obama donors demanding a refund? Here’s what your money, dear Obama donor, is going towards - Obama’s mansion isn’t sufficiently comfortable for him, so you have to put him up in a luxury hotel a few miles away so he can properly think.

On a more substantive note, Obama’s concluding quote reveals how he has painted himself into a corner. He excels at the vague stem-winders that rev up the audience. But stung by the celebrity charge, he knows he has to offer more substance. Yet if he does an updated version of Bill Clinton endlessly prattling on about midnight basketball, he’ll disappoint even his most devoted acolytes. (Okay, his most devoted acolytes will never find him disappointing, but you get my drift.)

So what does Obama do? He’s talking about making a “yeoman-like” case for his presidency, which sounds like he intends to show more seriousness and specificity than he typically does at these big addresses. And yet he long ago committed to delivering this yeoman-like speech in a 75,000 seat football stadium and just committed to having Jon Bon Jovi precede him on the stage and Bruce Springsteen follow him. I love Jersey rock as much as the next guy, but this presentation doesn’t bespeak great seriousness.

The Obama campaign realizes its old narrative of hope/change/new politics has grown stale. But it apparently doesn’t quite know how to put it out to pasture.

The Democratic convention has not even begun, and already Barack Obama is in danger of losing it to the Clintons. Patrick Ruffini:

The Clinton chatter is dominant. The Clintons will get two nights in Denver -- Hillary Tuesday, and Bill Wednesday. The coverage on the cables so far this morning has been all about the Clintons. High-profile Clinton surrogates complaining about the lack of VP vetting with the RNC/McCain capitalizing, Bill being upset about his speech topic, Hillary jerking her delegates around, effectively telling them "Nevermind" after making a show about the "catharsis" of the roll call a couple of weeks ago. If the Clintons really wanted to screw with Obama's chances, setting up Hillary 2012, this would be the week to do it. And this is what they seem to be doing.

A lot of this might have been prevented had Obama gone with Clinton for his vice presidential choice rather than Biden. He didn't, of course. And now he's in danger of letting the Clintons turn the story of the convention into the kind of story they like best: one that is all about them.

Sean Wilentz, the Democratic party's house historian, likens his party's presidential nominee to none other than Jimmy Carter. And he doesn't mean it as a compliment:

Obama's liberal alternative to the post-Bush GOP to date has much in common with Carter's post-Watergate liberalism. Rejecting "politics as usual," attacking "Washington" as the problem, promising to heal the breaches and hurts caused by partisan political polarization, pledging to break the grip that lobbyists and special interests hold over the national government, wearing his Christian faith on his sleeve as a key to his mind, heart and soul—in all of these ways, Obama resembles Jimmy Carter more than he does any other Democratic president in living memory.

In other ways, Obama's liberal vision appears clouded, uncertain and even contradictory. During his four years in Washington, he has compiled one of the most predictably liberal voting records in the Senate—yet he presents himself as an advocate of bipartisanship and ideological flexibility. He has offered himself as the tribune of sweeping change—yet he also proclaims national unity, as if transformation can come without struggle. He has emerged as the champion of a new, post-racial politics, even though he has only grudgingly separated himself from his pastor of 20 years, who every week preached a gospel of "black liberation theology" that has everything to do with racial politics.

Wilentz supported Hillary Clinton during the Democratic primaries. What's that about "party unity" again?

David Frum's analysis of Obama's Biden pick is worth your time. Frum writes: "If Obama had felt confident, he would have picked Tim Kaine. Now, though, a month of bad polls have taken their toll, and Obama is acting defensively and protectively."

Frum makes several good points, but the one that resonates the most is this: The line on Biden is that his roots in Scranton, Pennsylvania, will help Obama connect with the fabled "working-class whites" who so far are not supporting the Illinois senator. Frum points out that Obama, as the head of a party that has won Pennsylvania in the last four presidential elections, shouldn't be worried about the Keystone State at all. And yet it seems he is. By picking Kaine or Bayh, Obama would've been attempting to expand the geographical reach of the Democratic party. He didn't do that, though. Which suggests the Obama campaign may be worried about Obama's appeal in places normally open to Democratic presidential candidates.

Kudos to author Matt Bai for writing this piece in today's Times. Some liberals are already beginning to assert that racism, not rational policy disagreement or unease with the candidate's youth and inexperience, will lead to Barack Obama's defeat in November. Bai calls this line of argument what it is: hogwash. Here's Bai:

While it’s entirely possible that Mr. Obama’s race is costing him some support, it’s also true that the electorate that voted in the last two presidential elections was almost symmetrically divided between the two parties. It would defy the laws of politics if, at this early stage of the campaign, moderate Republicans and conservative independents were to reject Mr. McCain (a candidate many of them preferred back in 2000) simply because they don’t like George W. Bush.

Second, Mr. Obama faces genuine obstacles that are more salient than skin color. By any historical measure, he has remarkably little governing experience and almost none in foreign policy. And he represents not only a racial milestone in American life, but also a stark generational shift. It’s hard to extricate these things from Obama’s blackness. (If older white voters recoiled at Mr. Obama when he exchanged a fist-bump with his wife, were they reacting to his youth or to his race?) There are legitimate reasons that some older white voters might reserve judgment on Mr. Obama without being closet racists.

Read the whole thing, as they say.

As Democrats gather in Denver, commentators are starting to tire of Barack Obama's "change" mantra. Paul Krugman devotes today's column to the need for Obama to attack John McCain. Joe Klein worries that Obama is failing "to define his opponent" and failing, "in all but the most amorphous ways, to define himself." Republican strategist Mike Murphy writes that "many of the old-school party regulars now assigned to loyally wave HOPE and CHANGE signs for the TV cameras in Denver would dearly love to see Obama switch out some of his 'together we can' endive salad for a big populist pile of economic red meat."

Last week E.J. Dionne wrote that many Democrats worry Obama lacks "a compelling narrative about how Americans who now feel economically insecure will find their way toward greater confidence." And in an excellent piece in yesterday's New York Times Magazine, David Leonhardt writes, Obama "still hasn’t quite figured out how to sell it. For all his skills as a storyteller and a speaker, he has not settled on a compelling message about how to put the economy on the right path."

Clearly the political class is tiring of Obama's message of "hope and change." But how about the voters? Most will just begin to tune into this election this week. But the latest poll numbers suggest that, for those who have been paying attention, the ch-ch-ch-changes message isn't gaining any traction either.

Andy McCarthy brings some moral clarity to the debate surrounding Barack Obama's vote defending infanticide:

There wasn’t any question about what was happening. The abortions were going wrong. The babies weren’t cooperating. They wouldn’t die as planned. Or, as Illinois state senator Barack Obama so touchingly put it, there was “movement or some indication that, in fact, they’re not just coming out limp and dead.”

No, Senator. They wouldn’t go along with the program. They wouldn’t just come out limp and dead.

They were coming out alive. Born alive. Babies. Vulnerable human beings Obama, in his detached pomposity, might otherwise include among “the least of my brothers.” But of course, an abortion extremist can’t very well be invoking Saint Matthew, can he? So, for Obama, the shunning of these least of our brothers and sisters — millions of them — is somehow not among America’s greatest moral failings.

No. In Obama’s hardball, hard-Left world, these least become “that fetus, or child — however you want to describe it.”

Most of us, of course, opt for “child,” particularly when the “it” is born and living and breathing and in need of our help. Particularly when the “it” is clinging not to guns or religion but to life.

But not Barack Obama. As an Illinois state senator, he voted to permit infanticide. And now, running for president, he banks on media adulation to insulate him from his past.

The record, however, doesn’t lie.

Infanticide is a bracing word. But in this context, it’s the only word that fits. Obama heard the testimony of a nurse, Jill Stanek. She recounted how she’d spent 45 minutes holding a living baby left to die.

Read the rest here.

Here is an audio recording of Barack Obama on the floor of the Illinois State Senate in 2002.

I suspect that doctors feel that they would be under that obligation, that they would already be making these determinations, and that essentially adding an additional doctor, who then has to be called in an emergency situation to come in and make these assessments, is really designed simply to burden the original decision of the woman and the physician to induce labor and perform an abortion.

Here's more of Obama's speech on the senate floor:

It looks like abortion wasn't above Obama's pay grade back in 2002. He had full faith and trust that an abortionist would make an accurate decision as to whether the child he failed to kill was "viable". That's to say nothing of Obama's blithe disregard for the little girls who could not survive outside the womb born-alive non-viable fetuses who gasped for air during the few hours they lived after birth.

Hat Tip: Erick Erickson

Update: This post has been modified since it's original posting. (HT: Hot Air)

The 3,000-word puff-piece on Obama's online operation in this morning's Washington Post is beyond tedious. A sample:

Texting is a two-way street, and staffers and volunteers respond to texts from supporters who send questions such as "Where's my polling place?" He wouldn't divulge how many supporters receive texts, but the strategy was effective enough to be used in subsequent contests. "Help Barack get out the vote in Pennsylvania! If you can get to PA between now and 4/22, REPLY to this msg: TVL and your NAME (ex. TVL Ann). Please fwd msg," read a text sent before the Keystone State primary.

Note the casual reference to the candidate ("Barack"); the request to forward ("fwd") the text; and the timing -- the text was sent two weeks before polls opened, giving it plenty of time to be passed around. Says Goodstein, "We've just begun to crack how valuable texting is."

Ahem. Note also what the reporter fails to note: Obama lost that Keystone State primary by 9 points.

When an Obama TV ad claimed that the senator had "worked his way through college and Harvard Law", factcheck.org was a little skeptical. Obama's campaign provided only two examples: a summer construction job during college and his work as a summer associate at a big law school. Now, Lynn Sweet reports, "During one school year at Columbia, Obama was a telemarketer in midtown Manhattan selling New York Times subscriptions over the phone, wearing a headset. He did not like the job because 'he worried that some of the people he called couldn't really afford the subscription.'"

Having worked a couple of summers during college as a paid telemarketer raising money for the GOP, I can sympathize with Obama. It was no fun asking little old ladies to dip into their Social Security checks--especially considering some of that money was blown on people like Lincoln Chafee. Ugh, that still gnaws at my conscience.

Furthermore, telemarketing is the most mind-numbing work you can imagine. Somehow, coffee and my subscription to The Onion kept me mostly sane. But if this is what explains Obama's experimentation with "a little blow," far be it from me to judge.

Kevin Vance has done some fresh reporting on Obama's vote against the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act. Earlier this week, the NRLC provided a document showing that Obama voted against a version of the bill that included an amendment clarifying that the act would not be used to undermine Roe v. Wade. Obama said the lack of such language was one reason he voted against the bill.

After talking to Obama's colleagues in the Illinois state senate, Vance reports that Obama's other excuse for voting against the bill is equally spurious:

The other reason Obama opposed the bill, according to his website, is that the "born alive principle was already the law in Illinois." An existing 1975 law is cited as proof that new legislation was unnecessary.

Illinois state senator Dale Righter, the ranking Republican on the 2003 Health and Human Services Committee, says Obama did not raise that concern at the hearing: "There was no discussion of anything like that." Democratic state senator Susan Garrett similarly says she did not remember the 1975 law being raised during the hearing.

Obama's campaign did not return a phone call asking for a response to Righter's claim.

In any case, the 1975 law does not apply to non-viable infants born alive. According to Paul Linton, special counsel for the Thomas More Society, the 2003 bill was a response to the question, "What duties are owed to a non-viable child born alive?" The bill sought to guarantee comfort care for non-viable infants similar to the care that would be provided to any terminally ill adult. "Many of these babies lived for hours after birth," Susan T. Muskett, legislative counsel at the NRLC, writes in an email. "Are these babies medical waste, or persons protected by the Constitution? Obama's reaction was to consider them non-entities under Roe v. Wade until they were 'viable,' even when they were gasping outside the mother."

A month ago, Barack Obama righteously (not to mention correctly) opposed tapping the Strategic Oil Reserve. Back then, Obama said that we should only tap the reserve in the event of an emergency. Since then, oil prices have plummeted by $25/barrel, or more than 16%. And yet now, inexplicably, the Emergency According to Obama has grown since His last pronouncement on the subject and we must now tap the Strategic Reserves. Here’s Obama a month ago:

Thank heavens Barack Obama will bring us a different kind of politics, and we as a society will finally turn the page on the politics of pandering and demagoguery.

PS – Now we know how he’s able to claim such excellent judgment. By taking both sides of every issue, he’s bound to never miss the right decision.

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.

Speaking to a bunch of Democratic congress-crtitters last night, Barack Obama proved beyond any measure of a doubt that his ego has completely run away with him. Quoth the longtime community organizer:

"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?

When Hillary Clinton kicked off her 2000 campaign for senate, she gaudily commenced a “listening tour” in which she traveled New York listening to the concerns of ordinary voters. The cynics among us never wholly swallowed the notion that the then-First Lady really cared what the Joe Six-packs of the Empire State were thinking, but the display of modesty was becoming. It played in Poughkeepsie.

Barack Obama last week gave his answer to the listening tour – the first-of-its-kind “Talking Tour.” In spite of going to areas where he had little or no expertise, Obama showed scant regard for what he might have heard on his global travels. When David Petraeus spoke about the needs of the Iraqi theatre, Obama haughtily dismissed Petraeus’ concerns as beneath his potential pay-grade. Of course, the Talking Tour culminated in grand fashion – the foreign policy neophyte addressed hundreds of thousands of Germans, rendering a sloppy history of the Berlin Airlift and the Cold War in the process. If Obama’s journey was supposed to be a listening tour, then that was a curious and ill-fitting showpiece.

Then again, does Barack Obama really do listening? Remember, to Obama, a national dialogue on race was in actuality him giving a single speech.

In America, we don’t actually expect our presidential aspirants to be humble individuals. Individuals marked by unusual quantities of humility don’t seek to rule 300 million people. But we do expect our politicians to know their limits. And we do expect them to keep some shackles on their egos. Most presidential candidates understand this and work very hard to at least appear somewhat humble.

Barack Obama obviously has deemed such efforts beneath him. In so doing, he has made a critical error. A Gallup poll out this morning suggests that his Talking Tour will damage him with the voters. Quoth Gallup, "Could John McCain benefit from Barack Obama's much-publicized foreign trip? Several observations from the just-completed USA Today/Gallup poll suggest that this is a possibility."

Only 35% of voters had a positive impression of Obama’s trip. 26% had a negative impression, while 39% had no opinion. Mind you, these numbers come after a week of saturation media coverage that wrapped the Talking Tour in glory. As we get further away from that coverage and the impression of an unjustly haughty neophyte solidifies, the narrative of the Obama campaign will be rewritten.

The Rasmussen tracking poll also suggests that the long term impact of the Talking Tour will harm Obama. An initial bump from the trip that swelled Obama’s lead to eight points at the end of last week has vanished. Today, the lead has shrunk to one.

What’s especially problematic for Obama is there’s no obvious way for him to undo the damage of his Talking Tour. If he suddenly decides that he should value David Petraeus’ opinion rather than publicly minimize it, his insincerity will be transparent. And it’s impossible for him to unring the bell of talking 40 minutes of One World gibberish to a bunch of swooning Germans.

In Democratic circles, there has long been the concern that Barack Obama’s ego would ultimately make a mess of his campaign. While the mainstream media was swooning, it happened last week. Other politicians would have made their first trip to the war zone in three years humbly vowing to learn all they could. Obama instead used his public pronouncements abroad to confirm his own brilliance and sense of self-importance. That he may have done, but he redefined himself for the worse in the process.

As you know, Barack Obama is still trotting across the globe, sinking three pointers, ignoring military counsel and healing the occasional leper. Amidst all the hullabaloo, these Obama comments regarding Israel and terrorism have been sadly overlooked:

“Um, let me be absolutely clear. Israel is a strong friend of Israel’s.”

Hah! Truly eloquent, and still more evidence of what Marc Ambinder refers to as Obama’s “talented, incredible gift of a mind.” But that comment hasn’t been overlooked, and really isn’t important. But these comments have been overlooked and are a lot more important than the typical Obama gaffe:

“What I think can change is the ability of the United States government and a United States president to be actively engaged with the peace process and to be concerned and to recognize the legitimate difficulties that the Palestinian people are experiencing right now and recognize that it is not only in the interest of the Palestinian people that their situation improves - I believe that it is in the interest of the Israeli people…That’s why terrorism is so counterproductive as well as being immoral because it makes I believe the Israelis want to dig in and simply think about their own security regardless of what’s going on beyond their borders.”

This is the conventional lefty trope about Israel, and it is completely contrary to all the facts. Then again, we all know by now that Obama has the ugly habit of repeating lefty tropes, blithely unconcerned about their accuracy or lack thereof.

The Israel government has responded to the many terrorist provocations of the past 15 years by pursuing an increasingly desperate search for peace. Israel spent the Clinton years trying to broker a deal with the since-deceased mass murdering capo of the Palestinian regime. That misguided Israeli effort to give away the store mercifully failed when Yasser Arafat spurned Israel’s way-too-generous peace proposals.

Okay, that’s ancient history and took place when Obama was still consumed with trying to organize communities and teach a Con Law class at the University of Chicago. But more recently, just last week as a matter of fact, Israel exchanged a terrorist prisoner infamous for shattering the skull of a four year-old for the corpses of two Israeli soldiers. Israel made this deal with the decidedly non-peaceful terror organization, Hezbollah.

The point is that Israel, as recently as last week, has consistently scrambled for peace and has willingly engaged terrorist organizations to do so. Far from driving Israel into “digging in,” Hezbollah’s terrorist activities have often had their desired effect. And yet Barack Obama yesterday peddled the risible notion that Arab terrorism had somehow squelched the Israeli desire for peace and forced Israel into a protective shell.

How can Obama, he of the “talented, incredible gift of a mind,” be unaware of such basic facts? Then again, in Obama-world, perhaps such a deal would be called “tough and principled diplomacy.” Regardless, Obama’s assertion that terrorism has made Israel "dig in" is ludicrously counterfactual. I understand that on the Obama campaign bus they only watch ESPN, but it’s still surprising that the news of last week’s prisoner swap escaped the presumptive nominee’s notice.

In July 2007 when he was still frantically courting the far left, Barack Obama flatly declared that genocide wouldn’t be a good enough reason to keep American troops in Iraq:

SUNAPEE, N.H. - Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Thursday the United States cannot use its military to solve humanitarian problems and that preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn’t a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces there.

“Well, look, if that’s the criteria by which we are making decisions on the deployment of U.S. forces, then by that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now — where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife — which we haven’t done,” Obama said in an interview with The Associated Press.

“We would be deploying unilaterally and occupying the Sudan, which we haven’t done. Those of us who care about Darfur don’t think it would be a good idea,” he said.

With all the scrubbing and airbrushing that’s been going on at the Obama campaign and its website, the fact that he has flip-flopped on genocide has been sadly overlooked. That’s right - the presumptive Democratic nominee now opposes genocide! According to his website’s new and improved 16 month withdrawal plan:

“Obama would also work with Iraqi authorities and the international community to hold the perpetrators of potential war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide accountable. He would reserve the right to intervene militarily, with our international partners, to suppress potential genocidal violence within Iraq.”

I for one applaud this flip-flop, although I lament the ongoing straddle. Note carefully how the longtime community organizer is still trying to occupy both sides of the issue. He reserves the right to intervene militarily to interrupt a genocide, but he doesn’t say he will intervene militarily. Which way would President Obama decide? Candidate Obama is unwilling to say.

So maybe calling the latest Obama incarnation “anti-genocide” represents a premature celebration. And I’m sure Obama’s not-quite muscular phrasing of “reserving the right to intervene” (with our international partners!) provides little comfort to any nervous Sunnis in Iraq. Still, Obama’s new position is far more responsible than his old one.

Which raises an interesting exit question – was he really as indifferent to genocide as he made it seem a year ago?

Barack Obama delivered a speech in West Lafeyette, IN on Wednesday and once again mangled some well known historical facts:

Throughout our history, America's confronted constantly evolving danger, from the oppression of an empire, to the lawlessness of the frontier, from the bomb that fell on Pearl Harbor, to the threat of nuclear annihilation. Americans have adapted to the threats posed by an ever-changing world.

Aaah yes – "the bomb that fell on Pearl Harbor." Who can forget that? It was the big one, the one that took out all those boats. I guess Obama's political correctness prevents him from noting someone actually dropped "the bomb" and it didn't just fall.

This is a surprising error for a Hawaii native (via the great Kansas heartland) to make. Perhaps Obama was merely confused, as he and his surrogates so often accuse John McCain of being.

The missile shield that was designed and (partially) fielded under the Bush Administration consists of several highly sophisticated weapon platforms and C2 assets that were intended to function in unison. In the strange world of Obama defense policy (the same that allows for a miraculous 16 month drawdown from Iraq), a functional missile shield can be stood up on a nickel budget, with a fraction of the planned weapon platforms, and sans any further R&D funding. The Obama camp seems to think missile defense is a static defensive option that meets future threats simply by existing, where Senator McCain looks at missile defense in the same way that he looks at fighters, tanks, combat ships, and rifles: weapons that must be continuously advanced and evolved to counter enemy technological achievements.

Here's how the shield was designed to work, courtesy of the Missile Defense Agency. A buffalo nickel to anyone who can spot which "unproven systems" Obama wants to cut from the defensive calculus.

This week's cover of the New Yorker sparked the Controversy of The Day (So Far!). This parody by some Georgetown students is highly amusing - more so than the actual cover, in fact.

(HT: Wonkette.)

Lefty blogger Glenn Greenwald does a nice job documenting Barack Obama's serial betrayals of the last two weeks:

The choices Obama makes about how he campaigns and the positions he takes are extremely consequential in how political issues in this country are perceived. In the last two weeks alone, Obama has done the following:

*intervened in a Democratic Congressional primary to support one of the worst Bush-enabling Blue Dogs over a credible, progressive challenger;

* announced his support for Bush's FISA bill, reversing himself completely on this issue;

* sided with the Scalia/Thomas faction in two highly charged Supreme Court decisions;

* repudiated Wesley Clark and embraced the patently false media narrative that Clark had "dishonored McCain's service" (and for the best commentary I've seen, by far, on the Clark matter, see this appropriately indignant piece by Iraq veteran Brandon Friedman);

* condemned MoveOn.org for its newspaper advertisement criticizing Gen. Petraeus;

* defended his own patriotism by impugning the patriotism of others, specifically those in what he described as the "the so-called counter-culture of the Sixties" for "attacking the symbols, and in extreme cases, the very idea, of America itself" and -- echoing Jeanne Kirkpatrick's 1984 RNC speech -- "blaming America for all that was wrong with the world";

* unveiled plans "to expand President Bush's program steering federal social service dollars to religious groups and -- in a move sure to cause controversy . . . letting religious charities that receive federal funding consider religion in employment decisions," a move that could "invite a storm of protest from those who view such faith requirements as discrimination" -- something not even the Bush faith programs allowed.

That's quite a two weeks.

Here's what I don't get: Obama spent the entire primary season showing a shocking breadth of ignorance on a staggering array of issues. As I've written many times, he has never come across as a man who has given policy matters much serious thought. It was a telling moment when he was photographed with Fareed Zakaria's latest book. While I thought the book was weak, even if one thought otherwise it still inarguably wasn't exactly groundbreaking in any scholarly or philosophical sense. It was the thinly footnoted ramblings of a Newsweek columnist. Little in it would have been new (except for the fact that America is defintiely in decline because we no longer have the world's biggest Ferris Wheel) to a wonk or a big-brained Harvard law grad who had been pondering significant matters for decades. The fact that Obama had possibly turned to it as a potential repository of deep thoughts was equal parts disturbing and laughable.

The point is this: Whatever positions Obama has espoused have not been the result of a hard-earned and rigorously arrived at political philosophy. As such, his positions will inevitably prove malleable as he goes through the process of familiarizing himself with policy debates. To put it another way, can you really flop if you never flipped in the first place?

Or try another formulation: Is Obama such an attractive figure and his hope/change shtick so alluring that we should just give him the presidency and let him figure out where he stands once he gets into office?

David Axelrod tells Howard Kurtz what makes Barack Obama so extraordinarily normal:

"The most extraordinary thing about him, maybe the most surprising, is how normal he is. ... He'll read Foreign Policy magazine, a treatise on economic policy and Sports Illustrated."

Now, I'm pretty sure only one of those publications counts as "normal" reading material. And it isn't the "economic treatise." Also: How can someone be "extraordinary" and "normal" at the same time?

Then again, when you are the one we have been waiting for, anything's possible. ...

Here's Sam Anderson in New York magazine on Obama's speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention:

"In ten minutes, America watched him rip off the rumpled suit of anonymous, mild-mannered state-senatorhood and squeeze into the gaudy cape and tights of our national oratorical superhero -- a honey-tongued Frankenfusion of Lincoln, Gandhi, Cicero, Jesus, and all our most cherished national acronyms (MLK, JFK, RFK, FDR)."

Jon Stewart on Obama: "You're allowed to laugh at him."

Which is what you will do during this video:

Jim Johnson, the author of the Fannie Mae debacle and seemingly a lifetime magnet for the appearance of impropriety, has stepped down as Barack Obama’s chief running-mate vetter. Personally, I find this devastating news. If Johnson had done for Obama what he did for Fannie, Obama probably would have wound up with Pauly Shore or Carrot Top on his ticket.

So what have we learned here? Once again, Obama continues to make unforced errors. The fact that tabbing Johnson as an eminence grise would trigger catcalls and raise eyebrows was far from unforeseeable. Indeed, it seems like everyone recognized the danger instantly except for Obama himself.

Obama seems to have an odd and rather unendearing personality tic whereby he considers his every instinct to be perfect. If he had pondered the matter a little more closely, he probably would have realized that Johnson wasn’t the right guy for the job. I guess the whole Hope/Change gestalt doesn’t allow for reflection.

The choice of Johnson, an insider Democratic muckety-muck who I’m pretty sure predates the New Deal, reveals something even deeper about Obama. Obama is a decidedly inside-the-box thinker. Because he personifies a new kind of politics, the public has been slow to perceive how conventional Barack Obama’s philosophy and deep thoughts are.

You could say the same applies to every politician, but you’d be wrong. Both Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton created new paradigms in the 1990’s. They did so by dint of their own intellectual vibrancy. Obama only offers fresh substance when a spontaneous pronouncement goes awry.

Could it be that Barack Obama is just a sleeker version of Michael Dukakis who gives great speeches?

Over the weekend, Barack Obama gave his best Roberto Duran “No Más” impersonation and divorced himself from Trinity United Church, however belatedly. The proximate cause was a sermon given at the church last Sunday by his longtime friend, Father Michael Pfleger, in which the Caucasian Catholic priest vividly mocked white people and called America “the greatest sin against God.”

Of course, the big question most people will ask is did Obama associate with people like Pfleger and the equally kooky Reverend Wright because he saw in them fellow travelers or did he do so out of political expedience. Personally, I go with the latter. Although I don’t care for Obama’s politics and consider him unprepared to be president, I believe the reports of virtually everyone who’s known him that he’s a decent guy. Besides, it’s not like Democrats suddenly have developed a monopoly on cozying up to unattractive religious leaders who say bizarre and hateful things.

But if you think I’m rushing to Obama’s defense, slow down. I think his little minuet with Trinity United over the past 18 months provides a neat little case study that shows why Obama lacks the personal attributes to be president. For well over a year now, any sensible analysis of the Trinity United affiliation from the Obama campaign’s perspective would have concluded that he needed to lance this particular personal boil, the sooner the better. And yet Obama dithered. Rather than act, he offered talk. When he gave his hide-the-ball speech on a national conversation on race, he let the swooning of his acolytes like Joe Klein, Andrew Sullivan and Gary Wills convince him that he solved the political problem. Perhaps more than any recent politician, Obama shows an unseemly eagerness to believe the gushing he hears in his customized echo chamber.

If Obama acted decisively on this matter 18 months ago, it wouldn’t be a major issue today. And yet he tacked the opposite direction with his racial reconciliation speech:

Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way….

Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety - the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.

With these comments, Obama wed himself to Trinity United for the duration of the campaign. For better or for worse. And the whole reason was because he seemingly lacks the capacity for decisive action. He prefers talking to doing. And he prefers ambiguity to clarity. These are not desirable qualities for a President.

While Barack Obama’s serial gaffes had a strangle-hold on my attention this week, I completely ignored the story of the ongoing lunacy being spouted from his church’s pulpit..

Personally, I consider Father Michael Pfleger’s oratory from this past Sunday at Obama’s Trinity United Church less striking than Jeremiah Wright's. Nevertheless, it’s still odd how Obama wound up in the company of so many people for 20 years whose true natures eluded him. By his own reckoning, the candidate is clearly a less-than-canny observer of human nature. I certainly hope he acknowledges this shortcoming before attempting mano-a-mano diplomacy with the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadenijad.

Anyway, don’t take my word regarding Fr. Pfleger’s sermon. Judge for yourself. Click the video above or read the transcript below. Or do both – we’re all about options here:

I must now to address the one who says, 'Don't hold me responsible for what my ancestors did.' But you have enjoyed the benefits of what your ancestors did! And unless you are ready to give up the benefits — Throw away your 401 fund! [sic] Throw away your trust fund! Throw away all the money that been put away in the company you walked into 'cause your daddy and your granddaddy and your great grandaddy —

Unless you are willing to give up the benefits, then you must be responsible for what was done in your generation! 'Cause you are the beneficiary of this insurance policy!

[garbled] expose white entitlement. And supremacy, wherever it raises its head. I said before, I really don't want to make this political, because you know I'm really very unpolitical.

When Hillary was crying, and people said that was put on, I really don't believe it was put on. I really believe that she just always thought, 'This is mine. I'm Bill's wife. I'm white, and this is mine. I just gotta get up and step into the plate.'

Then out of nowhere came, 'Hey, I'm Barack Obama!'

And she said, 'Oh, damn! Where did you come from? I'm white! I'm entitled! There's a black man stealing my show!'

(mocks crying)

She wasn't the only one crying, there was a whole lot of white people crying!

I'm sorry. I don't want to get you in any more trouble. The live-streaming just went out again.

What I really like about this scandal is Fr. Pfleger’s apology: “I regret the words I chose on Sunday. These words are inconsistent with Senator Obama’s life and message, and I am deeply sorry if they offended Senator Clinton or anyone else who saw them.”

I’ve grown awfully fond of these non-apology apologies and the way they suggest that the fault lies not with the offender but with the offended. I think I’ll try one out this weekend with my wife: “Honey, I’m sorry if my failure to honor my promise to clean out the gutter has angered you, however inexplicable your anger might be.” If public figures are able to get away with such nonsense, I should be able to, also. I’ll let you know how it works.

(HT: Jim Geraghty, with a special thanks for doing the hard work in preparing a transcript.)

Now the Grey Lady waddles in, desperately trying to make sense of Barack Obama’s hyper-nuanced pledge to chat with foreign despots. Yet even the Grey Lady seems to be scratching her head.

This week, Mr. Obama said that he was still considering meeting with Iranian leaders, though he would not necessarily guarantee a direct meeting with Mr. Ahmadinejad.

“There is no reason why we would necessarily meet with Ahmadinejad before we know that he is actually in power,” Mr. Obama told reporters. “He is not the most powerful person in Iran.”

Last week, Mr. Obama offered a similarly nuanced explanation about meeting with President Raúl Castro of Cuba, saying he would do so only “at a time and place of my choosing.”

The caveats belie the simple answer Mr. Obama gave during a debate last summer, when the issue was first raised in a major public forum. Without hesitation or qualification, Mr. Obama said he would hold direct talks with America’s enemies, drawing strong and immediate criticism from his rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

Of course, no story of this sort would be complete without Obama displaying a dollop of smug, self-satisfied ignorance:

“I think that it is an example of how stunted our foreign policy debates have become over the last eight years that this is an issue that political opponents try to seize on,” Mr. Obama said in an interview on Wednesday. “It is actually a pretty conventional view of how diplomacy should work traditionally that has fallen into disrepute in Republican circles and in Washington.”

Predictably, Obama has it perfectly wrong again. It’s true that Reagan met with Gorbachev, but he didn’t meet with Daniel Ortega, Fidel Castro, the Ayatollah Khomeini or Daffy Khadaffy. Actually, he did sort of meet with Khadaffy, but I don’t think that’s the sort of meeting that Obama has in mind.

Believe it or not, Bill Clinton was cut from a similar cloth. During his eight intern-chasing years in the Oval Office, he didn’t make time to personally meet with Kim Il Sung or Kim Jong Il although he did dispatch Jimmy Carter as an emissary to appease the former. Clinton also didn’t meet with Saddam Hussein or the crackpots who were running Iran. So Clinton didn’t subscribe to Obama’s so-called "conventional view." Perhaps Obama was referring to the legendary Jimmy Carter/Ayatollah Khomeini summit. Or maybe the Eisenhower/Castro sit down?

It’s rather amazing that Obama can’t distinguish between direct presidential diplomacy and sending a Bill Richardson-type shlub to chat with a dictator. It’s even more amazing that as wrong as he is, he still thinks he’s the only person out there with a proper understanding of this corner of diplomatic history.

The Washington Post’s official “fact-checker,” Michael Dobbs, has taken Barack Obama to the woodshed over his Auschwitz-related ignorance:

“Many Americans might have problems distinguishing Buchenwald and Ohrdruf from Auschwitz. But should we not expect more from a Harvard-educated presidential candidate? Is it too much to ask that an aspiring commander-in-chief knows (1) that Auschwitz (like many of the other Nazi death camps) is in Poland, and (2) that the eastern advance of the U.S. Army in World War II stopped on the river Elbe?”

1) It’s not often that I rush to defend my dear old alma mater, but Obama received a Harvard education only at the law school. I would be willing to bet that if he was asked to produce the holding of Capron v. Van Noorden, he could do so quite ably. Unfortunately, such knowledge isn't the most useful thing in the world for a potential future president. The blame for Obama's ignorance in other areas rightfully rests with the lesser institution where he did his undergrad work, Columbia University.

2) The key phrase in the fact-checker’s beef is not “Harvard-educated” but rather “aspiring commander-in-chief.” Back in their school days, John McCain was a dreadful student where Barack Obama was a spectacular one. But for an aspiring commander-in-chief, John McCain knows what you have to know. It’s becoming increasingly apparent that Barack Obama doesn’t.

HT: LGF

Above is a commercial from the advocacy group Vets for Freedom urging Barack Obama to go to Iraq, see for himself what’s happening there and meet with David Petraeus. Go ahead, watch the spot – I’ll wait.

We all know this idea will have absolutely zero interest for Senator Obama. If there’s one thing we’ve learned about Obama in the past few weeks, he likes his narratives clean and simple. Once he’s settled on one, he won’t allow the actual facts to confuse him.

For example, somewhere somehow Barack Obama decided that the Cuban Missile Crisis provided an object lesson on the salubrious effects of negotiating with our malefactors. Even though the actual facts of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the disastrous Kennedy/Khrushchev Vienna conference that preceded it prove the precise opposite, Obama has determinedly hewed to the comforting narrative he dreamed up in his ignorance.

Isn’t it ironic? The left has come to champion a candidate who is as dogmatic and close-minded as they’ve always accused George W. Bush of being.

Barack Obama continues to use weasel words and equivocations in his lame effort to step back from his pledge that as president he would chat with any malefactor willing to stand still with him long enough for a photo-op. Let’s first remember the policy pronouncement from the YouTube debate:

QUESTION: In 1982, Anwar Sadat traveled to Israel, a trip that resulted in a peace agreement that has lasted ever since.

In the spirit of that type of bold leadership, would you be willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea, in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries?

OBAMA: I would.

Just reading that clips gives me nostalgic pangs for the Obama of old: Bold, forthright, not given to avoiding delicate topics like so many politicians. The only problem with this policy was that it meant Obama would make a priority of sitting down with characters like Mahmoud Ahmadenijad. Not that such a pledge was a problem for everyone. The Atlantic’s Matthew Yglesias lionized the pronouncement in the most recent issue of the magazine.

Still, the policy was enough of a problem for a sufficient number of voters that Obama and his eager acolytes like Joe Klein have gone to extraordinary lengths to make it disappear. Today, Obama “clarified:”

"There's no reason why we would necessarily meet with Ahmadinejad before we know that he was actually in power. He's not the most powerful person in Iran," Obama told reporters while campaigning in New Mexico.

So there you have it. It’s not that he will meet with A’jad. And it’s not that he won’t meet with A’jad. It’s “there’s no reason he’ll necessarily meet” with A’jad.

I’m so pleased he cleared that up.

Yesterday I posted the news that Geraldine Ferraro may not vote for Barack Obama because of his “terribly sexist” ways. I mocked Ferraro’s shrill claim of sexism, but I now realize that perceiving sexist activity is not a strength of mine.

Fortunately, a presumed Hillary supporter and definite Obama detractor emailed me with a list of all the hideously sexist things that the longtime community organizer has done on the campaign trail. I think you’ll agree this bill of particulars is quite horrifying:

Obama is VERY sexist. The (New York Times) article (on aggrieved Hillary supporters of the fairer sex who won’t vote for Obama) did a poor job of explaining it and the incidents haven't been widely reported by the Obama loving media.

My list of evidence:

1) Obama saying Hillary is "likable enough" during the NH debate and looking down his nose at her constantly.

2) Obama tells female factory worker in Allentown- “You look like you might be a dancer… You’re gorgeous.”

3) "Sen. Barack Obama approached first overflow in the parking lot outside of the Scranton town hall, and immediately went to Denise Mercuri, a pharmacist from Dunmore who was wearing a Hillary Clinton button. She held an Obama button in her hand, and he asked what he needed to do to get her to wear his instead of his rival’s. “What do I need to do? Do you want me on my knees?” he asked. He then conceded, keeping with his flirty trend of the day (see earlier report), “I’ll give you a kiss."

4) Jake Tapper's list of Obama's sexist references to Clinton such as "You challenge the status quo and suddenly the claws come out." and Language such as "when she's feeling down" "periodically" she "launches attacks."

5) Called a female report "sweetie" while ducking her question.

This is just my unofficial list. There's surely more if you look for it.

On second thought, this list is rather weak tea. I, too, look down my nose constantly at Hillary, but I assure you, it has nothing to do with sexism. I happen to look down my nose much more at her husband. My wife also looks down her nose at Hillary, and I’m pretty sure she by definition can’t be a sexist (although she could be a self-loathing Gyno-American, I guess).

As for Obama’s alleged flirtations, these strike me as either benign or boorish depending on the circumstances and your point of view. The only way they could be seen as sexist is if we’re going to label all flirting a manifestation of sexism, and I don’t think any of us want to go there. Think how dull office life would become!

The most damning charge against Obama is “Sweetie-gate,” mentioned in item number 5. It is my understanding that feminists don’t like being called “Sweetie.” (“Kitten” and “Pussycat” should also be avoided.) In fact, the vast majority of women don’t care for such terms of endearment.

Barack Obama continued to display his surprisingly flimsy grasp of American history yesterday. “This whole notion of not talking to people,” began the longtime community organizer. “It didn't hold in the '60s, it didn't hold in the '70s ... When Kennedy met with (Soviet leader Nikita) Khrushchev, we were on the brink of nuclear war."

There’s only one problem with this analysis – Khrushchev and Kennedy met in the first months of Kennedy’s term. The Cuban Missile Crisis didn’t happen until 16 months later. Furthermore, if we really want to dig into the history, many historians believe that the Vienna Summit between the two leaders did much to trigger the Cuban Missile Crisis. Khrushchev, relying on the Bay of Pigs fiasco and what he later saw at Vienna, determined that his American counterpart was a weak sister who could be bullied.

Since Obama obviously knows nothing about the Vienna Summit, he surely doesn’t know that in some circles it’s viewed as a cautionary tale regarding the inherent risks of diplomacy with malevolent regimes (or “talking to people” as Obama prefers to think of such activities). Besides, Kennedy at Vienna was quite frankly a much tougher and more hard-headed leader than one can imagine Obama being. At one point, Kennedy responded to Khrushchev’s blustering by declaring, “Then, Mr. Chairman, there will be a war. It will be a cold, long winter.”

More on point, what are we to make of Obama’s ignorance regarding relevant historical events? Mind you, these are historical events that he chooses to talk about. I realize the senator is the victim of an Ivy League education, but he’s had decades to repair that damage.

Truth be told, in yesterday’s comments, Obama showed trademark characteristics of a callow, young Ivy League grad – he thinks he knows more than he does, and has the audacity to lecture others when he doesn't know what he's talking about. Obama seems perversely intent on transporting an old adage regarding Harvard over to the Crimson’s law school: “You can always tell a Harvard man, but you can’t tell him much.”

A few exit questions for you to mull:

1) Seriously, Obama’s a bright guy – how is it possible that he doesn’t know such basic facts of American history?

2) Is there any chance Obama really isn’t so ignorant but instead misrepresents historical events to better suit his political arguments? (I doubt it, but I figured I’d put it out there.)

3) Every time Obama opens his mouth, there’s a chance he’ll let loose a whopper like yesterday’s. Will Obama say something so foolish before this campaign’s end that it will dwarf all previous political blunders?

HT: Hugh Hewitt

I've been waiting patiently for Matthew Yglesias to explain the sudden end to Obama's "Accidental Foreign Policy," which met its demise over the weekend with a report in the New York Times that the candidate does not now, nor has he ever, supported direct and immediate talks with the leader of Iran. This happened just as Yglesias published a piece in the Atlantic celebrating Obama's bold and unwavering support for direct and immediate talks with the leader of Iran.

I must know: was Obama's fearless call for talks with Ahmadinejad the correct policy? Or did Obama make no such call, and would such a policy, in fact, be naive and foolish as Hillary Clinton and John Edwards first said when Obama called (or maybe didn't call) for them?

I suspect that Obama supporters will argue that he was right when he made the call for talks, and that he is right now to say that he never did so. Still, I'm terribly confused, and Yglesias has yet to note the shift. Neither has Andrew Sullivan, for that matter. Please, gentlemen, at your earliest convenience, tell me what to make of all of this. I'm assuming we should be saluting Obama's wonderfully supple mind and extraordinary flexibility, but I'd like to be sure.

Dan McLaughlin (who blogs as the Baseball Crank) has written what may well be the seminal essay to date on Barack Obama’s experience, or what little there is of it. By all means take a few minutes and read the whole thing, but here’s a sample:

He's never run anything at all, not even a small law practice like John Edwards. Besides his campaign, probably the biggest thing he's ever run was the Harvard Law Review.

He has nothing resembling national security experience or even particularly sustained advocacy on the issue before announcing his candidacy in 2007. The man has apparently hardly even traveled to Europe, to pick one example.

He is running in a contested election outside the insular world of Chicago politics for the first time and has never had any sort of responsibility for political leadership.

He's never served in the military and seems to have scarcely any experience even knowing people who served in the military.

His private-sector business background is negligible.

Are any of these things disqualifying from the Presidency? No. But electing a man who is so seriously lacking in all of them is indeed unprecedented. And that is and should be a central issue in this campaign.

I would add to the Crank’s list a related point that I blogged on this morning: It often doesn’t seem like Obama has even seriously considered serious presidential-level matters as an outside observer the way most readers of this magazine have. The lack of literacy he has displayed on issues such as the capital gains tax and FDR’s shuttle diplomacy with Hitler are jarring coming from such an intelligent guy.

But hey – he has great judgment, right? And that should compensate for everything else.

By now you've seen the footage of Barack Obama ruing the fact that he hasn't been able to visit all 57 states in this great union of ours. If you haven't, scroll down a bit and read Goldfarb's post on the matter. I'll wait.

This faux pas is beyond weird; I know the guy is tired, but “How many states are there in America?” is the kind of question they ask you at the hospital after you've had a seizure to see if your brain is still working. I speak from personal experience on this matter, by the way. When I had a random seizure in 1996, the guy at the emergency room asked me how many states there were and then who was president. I responded with a ten minute rant on Whitewater - he urgently ordered up more tests.

But I digress. What I'm trying to say is there is no way Obama could have been so disoriented as to have even momentarily forgotten that we have but 50 states. Besides, there was something about Obama’s additions to the Union that rang a bell. Then I remembered - Grand Strategist (and likely Obama supporter) Thomas P.M. Barnett in his seminal work “The Pentagon’s New Map” urged America to add several states to the nation, perhaps as many as a dozen.

Has Obama absorbed such expansionist designs to such an extent that he's already counting his proverbial new chickens before they’ve hatched? Is he planning on adopting Canada? Perhaps he only has his eyes on the cool parts of Canada like Montreal and Toronto, and will let the remainder of our northern neighbor peacefully tend to its hockey playing and curling. And what of our neighbors to the south? Will we find ourselves in an Obama administration forced to refer to Haiti as Really South Dakota?

Regardless, I'm shocked that Obama apparently believes in a hyper-muscular 21st century version of Manifest Destiny. Truly, I didn't see that one coming.

Deftly pivoting on a dime, the Obama campaign has emphatically declared the irrelevancy of the Hamas endorsement. But it was not ever thus. Let's enter the way-back machine and journey all the way back to April when Hamas let its preference be known:

When asked about the endorsement, Obama's chief strategist, David Axelrod, was flattered that Hamas compared his candidate to JFK: “We all agree that John Kennedy was a great president, and it's flattering when anybody says that Barack Obama would follow in his footsteps.”

And yet suddenly it's dirty pool to mention this endorsement, one that initially flattered the Obama campaign? Actually, Axelrod's initial reaction highlights something I pointed out a couple of weeks ago – Obama loves to be loved, and that leads him to some strange places. We truly have entered some odd ground when a presidential campaign welcomes kind words from an Iranian terror proxy.

The affair hints at the biggest concern many serious voters will have about an Obama campaign. Too often when it comes to foreign affairs, Obama’s instincts head in precisely the wrong direction. In his stirring speech on Tuesday, Obama chided the Bush administration, saying, "I trust the American people to understand that it is not weakness, but wisdom to talk not just to our friends, but to our enemies, like Roosevelt did."

Forget the fact that the implied FDR-Hitler summit never actually happened nor was it ever contemplated. Instead focus on FDR's truly vigorous pre-war diplomacy with Imperial Japan. This Obama proclaimed "wisdom" got us Pearl Harbor.

Talking to Iran in itself would not be bad. But assuming that we have a good faith partner in such a dialogue would be not only obtuse, but dangerous. So then the next question becomes, Would Obama make such an assumption and govern as a latter-day Jimmy Carter? Carter has never met a dictator or potentate that he didn't think he could move by his unique combination of sanctimony and self-regard. The potentates and dictators have also uniformly charmed the former president. Perhaps Obama would be cut from the same cloth.

Of course, Obama could assuage such concerns by making an announcement that an Obama administration, like a McCain administration, would be Hamas’ worst nightmare. Such a statement would also be a quaint tip of the hat to a bygone era when politics ended at the water's edge. But such vulgar saber-rattling would sound uncomfortably Bush-like. Besides, if Obama made such a statement, there would be people somewhere who wouldn't love him. Would he be willing to pay such a high price?

More importantly, is Obama capable of making such a hard-headed determination that America actually has enemies in this world who are intractable? If the answer to that is yes, we have seen no signs of it in the campaign to date. Obama seems very comfortable with the left wing notion that America's international disputes began with George W. Bush and thus will end with Bush's departure from office.

Very important exit question: Do you think our enemies are trembling at the prospect of dealing with the blood-and-iron troika of Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama?

Jonathan Alter on Barack Obama:

"Opposition to him is not so much old-fashioned racism as fear of the 'other,' with the subtext not just our tortured racial history, but tangled views of class and patriotism."

Hmm. Maybe opposition to Obama is not so much any of the above as it is opposition to Obama's politics? Opposition to a policy program that calls for higher taxes to pay for bigger government, more regulation, and a less assertive foreign policy?

Nah, that couldn't be it.

Despite Hillary Clinton's victory yesterday, the Democratic party is likely to nominate for president a candidate who lost primaries in large, key states like California, Florida, Michigan, New York, Texas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. One reason this will happen is that Obama leads in states won and in pledged delegates. That is because he has won - in addition to primary victories in places like Wisconsin, Illinois, Virginia, and Maryland - almost every one of the caucuses held so far. And he has won many of them - dominated by antiwar grassroots activists hostile to Sen. Clinton - by significant margins. He won Alaska 75 percent to 25 percent, for example; Hawaii 76 percent to 24 percent; Nebraska 68 percent to 32 percent. He also won the Texas caucuses by 12 points. Those margins of victory translate into Obama's probably insurmountable lead among pledged delegates.

When the history of this primary campaign is written, therefore, a major theme will be the Clinton campaign's hubris. It was hubristic to believe that the backing of the party establishment and a sense of "inevitability" meant that grassroots organizing at the state level was unnecessary. It was hubristic to assume that the nomination fight would be over by February 5 - an assumption which led to confusion, the misallocation of resources in the post-Super Tuesday One states, and Obama's string of victories that month.

Thanks to demographics and Obama's past few bad weeks, Clinton now has a (slim) second chance. But all of this could have been avoided. If her campaign had treated the caucuses seriously and won a fair share of them, Hillary Clinton would now be the Democratic nominee for president.

(Thanks to WEEKLY STANDARD intern Robin E. Wright, who helped research this blog.)

We've heard about the waffles. Now Illinois's Democratic governor Rod Blagojevich, dogged by questions over his relationship with indicted Chicago fixer Tony Rezko, recently deployed the trademark political dodge:

Blagojevich came out of his Capitol office after meeting with top legislators about a public works construction bill. He was accompanied by former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Southern Illinois University President Glenn Poshard. Hastert did the talking while Blagojevich remained silent.

While this was going on, a group of school kids touring the Capitol crowded around to catch a glimpse of the governor. Then the questioning turned to events in the federal corruption trial of Blagojevich fundraiser Antoin "Tony" Rezko, including statements by one witness that Blagojevich had offered him state business in exchange for raising money for a possible run at national office.

Blagojevich turned from reporters and looked at the kids.

“Kids, get over here when I need you,” Blagojevich said.

Continuing to ignore questions, Blagojevich lifted a security rope and invited the students into his office. “C’mon over. C’mon,” he said.

(HT: Political Diary.)