After the Future

Quote of the Day: Daniel Larison

It is easy to talk about principle when there is no crisis happening and no risk attached to standing on principle.  The real test comes when holding fast may actually cost something.  Holding to a principle, if it means anything, means that you value it more than mere self-interest, satisfaction or comfort.  A lot of Americans want to have it all–the pretense that they are free, with none of the responsibilities or dangers that go with it.  In reality, you can either have the latter and remain free, or you can cease being free and then be kept free (temporarily) from responsibility and danger. 

More here in a piece he wrote criticizing the bailout.

As a subsidiarist, I disagree with Larison's strict, Ron-Pauline, Libertarian principles, but I respect his consistency and the rigor of his thinking. His conservative principles have led him to see the dangers to Liberty posed by the GOP and Dem collaboration to be as serious as I see them.

For what it's worth, as a subsidiarist, I am not in principle opposed to federal intervention in the financial markets. We have good reason to be suspicious about whether this intervention is necessary, and if it is necessary whether it will be effective. I am quite sympathetic to what Larison in the above excerpted from post says here:

Few on the right are more hostile to the perverse appeal to “creative destruction” than I am when it is used to justify de-industrialization, the displacement of people, the transformation of local communities or demographic upheaval through mass immigration, but what we are faced with this week is the victory of Hamiltonian collusion between finance and government to use the latter’s apparatus of power to shore up the former’s wealth.  Central government is robbing the people to prop up concentrated wealth, and claiming in the process that it is doing us a favor.  Never mind that the government’s alarmism may well be wrong.

But by no means do I think that the only alternative is to simply let the markets  play themselves out. It's one thing if the the people gaming the market system are punished by the folly of their risk-taking; it's quite another if there is a serious risk that the rest of us must suffer because of their folly.

So that's where Larison and I part company. This situation would never have got to this point if there were prudent, federally imposed rules limiting the risks these players can take insofar as they might do harm to the commonweal. I'm all for risk-taking where the risk-taker reaps the rewards as well as the liabilities, but not when such risk-taking has the potential to punish people who have no stake in the reaping the rewards. This debacle should never have been allowed to happen in the first place. That's just common sense, but common sense that Libertarian principles obstruct one who has them from embracing.

And whether one is hostile to appeals to it or not, isn't creative destruction  concomitant with strict libertarianism? I know that the great Whig Burke looking forward from his perch in 1800 embraced laissez-faire, but I wonder if having seen the destruction it wrought in the ensuing century he would have still done so from the perspective of 1900.  I don't know, but I do know that anybody who is a free-market capitalist and someone who values the preservation of stable community life, with its traditional values and mores is living an unresolvable contradiction.

The First Debate (Updates 1 & 2)

Some quick thoughts:

McCain's goals:  On economic policy: cut spending, particularly earmarks and pork. Key to foreign policy: we're winning in Iraq and victory there must be achieved no matter what the cost. 

He also wanted to make Obama look like he's naive and doesn't understand how things work.  "Obama doesn't understand . . ."  I think the repetition of this line was effective.  Close: I don't think he has knowledge and experience to be president.

Obama's goals: Economic policy--help the middle class. Foreign policy: Get out of Iraq and into Afghanistan; get Osama.

Obama needs to make McCain look like he's rigid, impulsive, and out of touch. I don't think he's done it. 

I'm biased, and I'm in no position to judge who won on Main Street.  I'm disappointed that McCain did as well as he did--no major or at least obvious gaffes.  He held his own for the most part as a "communicator" where you think that Obama would run rings around him. The political question is not who's right--most people don't know enough to judge when there's a difference on the facts or of opinion--but who makes the stronger attack and who defends his positions better. 

So Obama was ok. I think he came across as more agreeable, comfortable, and poised, and McCain came across as kind of crotchety. But, and this is where I could be wrong, McCain came across as more aggressive, and I think scored more points on his attacks. I think that's what has to be done in these venues, but maybe that kind of aggression turns off Main Streeters more than it wins them over. I found the way McCain kept talking over Obama to be boorish, and maybe other people were put off by that. It's one thing to be aggressive; it's another thing to be a bully.  He never looked at Obama. He was, I thought, unlikable. So while Obama won the body language debate, he still was playing more defense--and he shouldn't be. He got some punches in, but not nearly as many as he should have.

I was hoping for Obama to find a more compelling, memorable way to negatively frame McCain.  I don't think he made a strong case for how miserably the kind of policies and philosophy that McCain supports have failed. And McCain made his absurd world-view sound almost reasonable and respectable. McCain was helped more by this debate than Obama was, and in a race that shouldn't be this close, that's not a good thing.

The Obama campaign has to find a way of condensing its attacks into key, repeatable ideas that people will remember. There was a lot of detail in Obama's remarks, but not much that was memorable. People will remember McCain's  "Senator Obama doesn't see to understand. . ."  People will remember the victory in in Iraq idea.  Will people remember anything from Obama's remarks?  Maybe the "wrong, wrong, wrong", bit on the middle east.  But it just wasn't as compelling as it needed to be.

SATURDAY UPDATE: The conventional mainstream wisdom this morning seems to be that Obama won. That's a relief to me, because on points I think he lost: you win not by being right but by making more attacks that go without being effectively rebutted. Obama made fewer attacks and did not effectively rebut many of McCain's attacks. But I suppose if we've learned anything in the last eight years actually winning a debate is irrelevant. 

At this point what the base of either party thinks is irrelevant; what takes shape as CW in the mushy middle of undecideds does.  And, to be honest, I don't know anybody whose opinion is not already made up, so it's difficult for me to fathom how anybody who has not made up his mind by this point thinks. So I'm just taking the media reaction as a kind of indicator.

So whether McCain won on points or did not, it's important that he be perceived to be the loser.  I think the media and elite opinion has shifted irrevocably toward Obama starting about two weeks ago. McCain's desperate antics during this time have been perceived by these people as over the top, and they now see McCain through a different lens than they did before the convention. So as we saw with Gore and Kerry, when the media don't like you, and they have established in their heads a negative narrative, it has an enormously powerful shaping influence on public opinion of undecideds. That McCain has squandered his advantage with the media, whom he often called his 'base', is one of the truly remarkable developments and more significant blunders of his campaign.

P.S. This from a McCain supporter at the American Spectator:

Obama actually won style points by repeatedly noting topics on which he agreed with McCain or credited him. This is a year when the public is absolutely sick of nastiness and wants evidence that somebody can lower the volume of discord. McCain might have the record of reaching across the aisle, but Obama has the style -- and got that point across tonight brilliantly, just by his attitude. Conversely, McCain did well once or twice to say that Obama "just doesn't understand." But when he did it a sixth or seventh time, it sounded mean and condescending.

Frankly, I was surprised. Just in the last 12 hours I had begun grudgingly crediting McCain because I thought that his gambit of sticking his nose into the bailout negotiations had actually turned out to be surprisingly helpful, in that it got the House conservatives a hearing at the table in a way they would not have had. I predicted at about 6:30 to a colleague that McCain would find a way to rattle Obama tonight; I had one of my "gut feelings," like the one I had before the Ryder Cup (correctly in the case of the Cup), that McCain would have a trap for Obama or would goad him into a sound-bite mistake. I was wrong. Overall, despite my criticisms, McCain did okay tonight; I think most Americans would be at least semi-comfortable with him as president. But McCain did NOT knock Obama off stride and Obama was more likable and quite sufficiently competent-seeming. Obama started the night ahead in the polls, and I think he extended his advantage in the debate.

Hillyer has the same reaction to his guy as I had to mine--did OK, but not well enough to advance his cause. We'll see if there's any more separation in the polling next week.

UPDATE 2: Schaller gets what I'm talking about:

By my informal count, at least six times McCain said Obama "doesn't understand" this or that. I find that condescending, but maybe it's working with swing voters. I dunno.

What I do know is that Obama did not come up with the caustic, repeatable sound bite. Can somebody explain to me why Obama didn't interrupt just once to say, "You know, Senator McCain keeps saying I don't understand this or that, but on the biggest foreign policy and military decision of the past 40 years -- the Iraq invasion -- the senator got it wrong. Repeat: Wrong. So he ought to save all his condescending lectures about who understands what, because he didn't understand what was at stake in Iraq, and that misunderstanding cost us 4,000 lives and a trillion dollars."

Now that's a rebuttal. There were several occasions when Obama could have made the point that it was in fact McCain that did not understand or was getting it wrong, and he let them pass.  In a debate any assertion is considered true until it's rebutted. I think the debate is the principal high-profile venue when Obama and Biden have to make the case how wrong McCain and the Republicans are on just about everything.  Obama's best because most memorable moment was when he told the audience how repeatedly wrong McCain has been on issues relating the Middle East. If he has been so consistently wrong in the past, what reason have we to believe he will not be consistently wrong in the future?

An Enormity Awe-Inspiringly Surreal

The whole political situation has taken on a bizarre, surreal quality.  2000 and 2004 were weird, but this one is for the ages. I am made stupefied and nearly speechless by it. To proceed as if we are involved in anything that is sane or normal is about the most insane thing anyone could do. The idea that there is still a possibility that McCain could win this thing is just mind boggling at this point.  His campaign has just become a sick joke.

In any event, John Cole called Palin's Couric interview a train wreck.  One of his commenters wrote in and said:

“Train wreck” is being charitable – it was more like a train derailing on a bridge, tumbling a thousand feet into a canyon and landing on a pile of old dynamite and gas drums. And then a jumbo jet crashed into the flaming wreckage. Followed by an earthquake that caused the whole mess to slide off a cliff into the sea, where the few miraculous survivors were eaten by sharks.

It's maybe an image that has pertinence for our broader political/economic predicament.  But regarding Palin, Cole went on to comment:

Conservatives sometimes remark that Sarah Palin must worry liberals since we can’t stop talking about her. Worry has nothing to do with it. You cannot look away.

I have to say that a change has come over me in the last week.  I've stopped worrying for some reason.  It's as if things have moved beyond a point where worry has any relevance. My attitude now is rather one of fascination as I watch this magnificently cinematic train wreck. Whatever happens happens. It all has a macabre beauty. Is there a Swift or Hunter Thompson out there with enough power of imagination to grasp and represent back to us what is truly happening now? 

Wall Street Week

I don't have a lot to say about the momentous events taking place this week with regard to American financial markets except to repeat some things I've said frequently before. It's a complicated mess--and of course some kind of government intervention is necessary--but it boils down to some fundamental ideas. One is that the people who are responsible will not be held responsible. The system is rigged in their favor; their cronies in government will cover their butts, and the best the rest of us can hope for is that there will be some impetus to make sure this kind of thing won't happen again--at least for a little while. (Or perhaps as Rick Perlstein points out, this crisis could be an opportunity like the one Roosevelt took in 1935.  That or course depends on Obama getting elected and his choosing to seize the opportunity.)

But it will happen again. We never learn from our mistakes. There are always clever rationalizations to describe why this situation is not like previous situations.  Remember how we were all instructed that Iraq is not Vietnam? In many respects it was not, but in the most important ways it was. And with regard to this financial markets meltdown it was completely predictable on the basis of knowing  the consequences that follow from the rejection of the New Deal principles of social democracy and the embracing of economic Libertarianism. I've written time and time again in this space that what is now embraced as Libertarian economic approach is no different from the philosophy of the 19th Century Social Darwinians, and we're seeing that play out now.

There are, I'm sure, some principled Libertarians who are outraged that the government is stepping in to socialize the financial markets. But what did they expect? Do they really believe that the people who run these and other huge corporations have espoused Libertarian ideas about taxes and deregulation for any other reason than to remove restraints so they can do as they please?  Do they also think that these same people ever considered that they should bear the consequences of their recklessness?

Of course not; they've been gaming the system all along using Libertarian jargon as their cover story. It's always been for these people maximum reward and minimum risk. Or to put it more bluntly--maximum reward for them knowing that the public would be forced to accept the risks and the negative consequences when they over-reached. And why shouldn't they over-reach if they knew that there would be no negative consequences to them?

I don't think there is anything on the American scene more foolish than a principled Libertarian. Principled Libertarians have been duped, and as I've written before (here and here) they are the unwitting enablers of tyranny.  It's an iron-clad law of history, and you don't have to be a genius to understand it, just clearheaded enough to see what's right before your eyes: When you lift the restraints from the powerful, they aggregate power and wealth to themselves, and with that aggregated power and wealth they dominate the markets and the political system.  When the markets deliver disaster, as they have in the last eighteen months, then their domination of the political system insures they will get bailed out and the rest of us foot the bill because the rest of us haven't power enough to insist on any other outcome.

Principled Libertarians can complain all they want that the power elites are not following the Libertarian principles, but it's the Libertarian script that gave the power elites the means to dominate the system so that there's no possibility of enforcing Libertarian principle.  Libertarian philosophy is like a storeowner giving thieves the keys to his store but only on the condition that they promise not to rob him, and then when they do, the he is shocked, just shocked.

How Smart Is McCain? (Update near top)

From Josh Marshall:

Well, we've heard the interview now. And John McCain either doesn't know who the Prime Minister of Spain is, thinks Spain is a country in Latin America, or possibly both. Read more.

[UPDATE:  See also Marshall's response to Scheunemann's explanation of McCain's apparent confusion.  You can judge for yourself what you think is going on. See also here: 

Back to the post title: by 'smart' I don't mean in the sense of IQ, but more in the sense of being alert and on top of things, or caring about getting things right and being thoroughly well versed.  Bush, for instance, is intelligent, but he's not smart in this sense.  He just doesn't care--it's not important to him to be broadly knowledgeable, and McCain is looking more like Bush every day.

I don't expect political leaders to be encyclopedic in their knowledge and understanding of the world, but McCain exhibits the strangest pattern of ignorance and obtuseness about subjects he should know about. It's as if, like Bush, he's gotten by on attitude and swagger rather than having any substantive grasp of the issues he's talking about.

In any event, even though I haven't seen anyone write about it, I wonder if a part of the explanation for McCain's lapses and temperament issues lies with his having adult ADD or ADHD. I think it's a legitimate question to ask, and could very well be a key to understanding the impetuous pattern of behavior he has exhibited over his entire life from his poor academic record at Annapolis, through his career crashing jets, his reputation for being a rules-breaking maverick, his problem with anger control.

My wife is herself ADHD and she's a teacher trained to work to help kids who have this and other fairly common learning disabilities to develop coping strategies to manage their lives effectively. Lots of adults have it, but in very few who have it is ADHD been diagnosed--especially in McCain's generation. And lots of adults who have it are high functioning and manage to have interesting productic careers.  But there are some jobs they are just not suited for.  Senator, yes.  President, no.

Here's an excerpt from the Wikipedia article on adult ADHD:

The Hallowell Center identifies the following indicators to consider when ADHD is suspected and recommends that individuals with at least twelve of the following behaviours since childhood—provided these symptoms are not associated with any other medical or psychiatric conditions—consider professional diagnosis[15]:

• A sense of underachievement, of not meeting one’s goals (regardless of how much one has actually accomplished).
• Difficulty getting organized.
• Chronic procrastination or trouble getting started.
• Many projects going simultaneously; trouble with follow through.
• A tendency to say what comes to mind without necessarily considering the timing or appropriateness of the remark.
• A frequent search for high stimulation.
• An intolerance of boredom.
• Easy distractibility; trouble focusing attention, tendency to tune out or drift away in the middle of a page or conversation, often coupled with an inability to focus at times.
• Often creative, intuitive, highly intelligent
• Trouble in going through established channels and following proper procedure.
• Impatient; low tolerance of frustration.
• Impulsive, either verbally or in action, as in impulsive spending of money.
• Changing plans, enacting new schemes or career plans and the like; hot-tempered.
• A tendency to worry needlessly, endlessly; a tendency to scan the horizon looking for something to worry about, alternating with attention to or disregard for actual dangers.
• A sense of insecurity.
• Mood swings, mood lability, especially when disengaged from a person or a project.
• Physical or cognitive restlessness.
• A tendency toward addictive behavior.
• Chronic problems with self-esteem.
• Inaccurate self-observation.
• Family history of ADHD or manic depressive illness or depression or substance abuse or other disorders of impulse control or mood.

All of us have something that is not quite right, and we find ways of working around it and to manage our lives effectively, and with people who have ADHD, there are degrees of severity. So I'm just throwing this idea out there for what it's worth.  Let's just say it's a question about trying to understand what everyone recognizes as a "temperament problem" with McCain throughout the years. 

Quote of the Day: John Steinbeck

From East of Eden:

It wasn't very long until all the land in the barren hills near King City and San Ardo was taken up, and ragged families were scattered through the hills, trying their best to scratch a living from the thin flinty soil. They and the coyotes lived clever, despairing, submarginal lives. They landed with no money, no equipment, no tools, no credit and particularly with no knowledge of the new country and no technique for using it. Surely such venture is nearly gone from the world. And the families did survive and grow.  They had a tool or a weapon that is also nearly gone, or perhaps it is only dormant for a while.  It is argued that because they believed thoroughly in a just, moral God they could put their faith there and let the smaller securities take care of themselves.  But I think that because they trusted themselves and respected themselves as individuals, because they knew beyond doubt that they were valuable and potentially moral units--because of this they could give God their own courage and dignity and then receive it back.  Such things have disappeared perhaps because men do not trust themselves any more, and when that happens there is nothing left except perhaps to find some strong sure man, even though he may be wrong, and to dangle from his coattails. (p.12, Penguin Centennial Edition)

I think the tool or weapon to which Steinbeck refers is in fact dormant.  We will learn somehow to retrieve it. It must be rediscovered and chosen.  Nothing is given anymore.

What's at Stake (Updated)

Frank Rich shows this morning that he understands what the stakes are:

WITH all due deference to lipstick, let’s advance the story. A week ago the question was: Is Sarah Palin qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency? The question today: What kind of president would Sarah Palin be?

It’s an urgent matter, because if we’ve learned anything from the G.O.P. convention and its aftermath, it’s that the 2008 edition of John McCain is too weak to serve as America’s chief executive. This unmentionable truth, more than race, is now the real elephant in the room of this election.

No longer able to remember his principles any better than he can distinguish between Sunnis and Shia, McCain stands revealed as a guy who can be easily rolled by anyone who sells him a plan for “victory,” whether in Iraq or in Michigan. A McCain victory on Election Day will usher in a Palin presidency, with McCain serving as a transitional front man, an even weaker Bush to her Cheney. . . .

Obama’s one break last week was the McCain camp’s indication that it’s likely to minimize its candidate’s solo appearances by joining him at the hip with Palin. There’s a political price to be paid for this blatant admission that he needs her to draw crowds. McCain’s conspicuous subservience to his younger running mate’s hard-right ideology and his dependence on her electioneering energy raise the question of who has the power in this relationship and who is in charge. A strong and independent woman or the older ward who would be bobbing in a golf cart without her? The more voters see that McCain will be the figurehead for a Palin presidency, the more they are likely to demand stepped-up vetting of the rigidly scripted heir apparent. . . .

This election is still about the fierce urgency of change before it’s too late. But in framing this debate, it isn’t enough for Obama to keep presenting McCain as simply a third Bush term. Any invocation of the despised president — like Iraq — invites voters to stop listening. Meanwhile, before our eyes, McCain is turning over the keys to his administration to ideologues and a running mate to Bush’s right.

As Republicans know best, fear does work. If Obama is to convey just what’s at stake, he must slice through the campaign’s lipstick jungle and show Americans the real perils that lie around the bend.

If I were to publish a lexicon of political phrases, next to "like putting lipstick on a pig," I would insert a picture of Ronald Reagan. He was the ideal GOP candidate because of his actor's charm putting a pretty face on everything that is ugly about the American right. The GOP is a Potemkin Village that presents to the public an "Aw shucks, we're just regular folk" facade which hides behind it a vicious right-wing agenda .

The party thought it had struck gold again with George Bush 2, and he was good enough to give them two terms. Reagan had more charm and was a far more effective communicator than Bush 2, and he had the good luck to have Gorbachev redeem his presidency. Bush was not nearly as effective, because even though he looked the part, he didn't have any real actor's talent. As badly as the media and the country wanted to believe his lies, he simply didn't have the talent that Reagan did for telling them.

McCain doesn't fit the GOP mold at all, even though he has tried in recent months to contort himself to fit into it. His attitude has never been right, and attitude is what passes for substance with this crowd. But with Sarah Palin, it appears that the GOP has again struck gold. She is in the Reagan mold as the perfect Potemkin candidate--no substance, just the right attitude presented in a charming well-scrubbed package covering up something deeply ugly.  "Now," the GOP power schemers say to themselves,  "if we can just get her and what's-his-name to 270 on November 4th."  If they do it,  she is the future of the Republican Party and likely our future for the next decade. And that, my friends, is a truly frightening prospect.

***

UPDATE: Greenwald spells it out more explicitly:

In general, the White House is now far and away the most powerful branch of our government -- state power is centralized there to an unprecedented degree. The presidency is so powerful that it's almost impossible for a President not to share substantial responsibility with the Vice President. Moreover, if McCain wins, he is quite likely to perceive -- accurately -- that his victory was due in large part to Palin and the enthusiasm she generated. Independently, her immense political popularity among key GOP factions will empower her. The fact that McCain seems completely uninterested in any issues other than fighting and starting wars and his petty fixation on earmarks -- underscored by his acute indifference to domestic policy -- will leave vast areas for her to manage. His advanced age and previous health problems makes it far more likely than usual that the Vice President will become President.

More alarming than the extremism of the positions that she has clearly formed is the fact that, as her startling ignorance of "the Bush Doctrine" reflects, she doesn't seem to have clearly formed positions on very much of anything. She's clearly willing to spout standard right-wing talking points, and perhaps that's all she'll ever end up embracing, but it's one's inability to know any of that, and the McCain campaign's commitment to ensuring that we won't find out between now and November, that makes her potential ascendancy to that office so deeply disturbing.

And then there's this and this.

How Republicans Think II (Updated)

From John Cole:

The McCain campaign truly is a bizarre exercise in the suspension of reality. Everything they label as a priority, they go out and then do the exact opposite. Consider:

1.) Decide that lobbyists are the number one evil in politics, and then staff your entire campaign from top to bottom with… lobbyists.

2.) Spend months proclaiming you want to run a decent and honorable campaign, and then run the sleaziest general election campaign in years, so bad that folks who honestly love you (the media) are not only revulsed, but shocked into such a state that they are committing actual acts of journalism.

3.) Spend months discussing experience and how yours is superior, then decide change is the real message, and that in order to enact change, we should elect the guy who promises to keep doing things the same way they have been done the last eight years.

4.) Make earmarks the central focus of your reform agenda, then nominate an earmark queen and lie repeatedly about her involvement in the central notorious earmark in the past ten years (the Bridge to Nowhere).

And on an on and on. It really is crazy.

It's not crazy, because it's very effective.  The word nihilistic is more apt. And then there's  the NYT editorial this morning on the Palin interviews:

But that is not what troubled us most about her remarks — and, remember, if they were scripted, that just means that they reflect Mr. McCain’s views all the more closely. Rather, it was the sense that thoughtfulness, knowledge and experience are handicaps for a president in a world populated by Al Qaeda terrorists, a rising China, epidemics of AIDS, poverty and fratricidal war in the developing world and deep economic distress at home.

Ms. Palin talked repeatedly about never blinking. When Mr. McCain asked her to run for vice president? “You have to be wired in a way of being so committed to the mission,” she said, that “you can’t blink.”

Fighting terrorism? “We must do whatever it takes, and we must not blink, Charlie, in making those tough decisions of where we go and even who we target.”

That should have been her answer to the question about the Bush Doctrine:  Never Blink.  The mentality of the Right in every culture and in every era is about the raw assertion of the will to power, and whoever blinks first loses.  It's also at the heart of the primitive "kindergarten politics" I wrote about the other day.  It's about never backing down, no matter how ill-conceived and ridiculous your ideas or policies. It's not about whether you're right or wrong; it's about dominating the opponent, no matter how much it costs or how much damage you cause.  There is, in fact, a certain glee in the blowing of things up--if you're going down, so is everyone else.

Extra credit:  Question: What political philosophy combines nihilism and the raw assertion of power?  Answer:

A thought for moderates:  Your mistake is to assume that there is good will where there is none with McCain and the people running his campaign. For you to make such a mistake is a sign of your decency and good will, but at least consider the possibility that people people like this have no compunction to take advantage of your decency. McCain, like the rest of us is a complex human with many contradictions. There was a time when McCain had a soul--even recently--but it's becoming clear he sold what was left of it to realize this last ambition.

***

UPDATE: I have to say I am encouraged by the widespread media condemnation of McCain's campaign tactics.  The shift I first picked up on Wednesday that caused me some optimism seems to have some heft to it.  It really is as if people--most importantly the people behind the media elites--have had "enough" of this Republican nonsense. I suppose I should wait to see if there is any effect in the polls.  Nevertheless, we never saw anything like this in the MSM when Rove/Cheney were doing much the same thing in the last eight years. Going into November it will be huge if McCain no longer gets the automatic pass from the MSM.

Once Again, Scales Fall from Sullivan's Eyes (Updates 1 & 2)

But he's a barometer of sorts for those Tory moderates skirting the edges of Whiggery who are bright enough and well-informed enough to understand what's really going on, but won't until overwhelming evidence forces them to:

For me, this surreal moment - like the entire surrealism of the past ten days - is not really about Sarah Palin or Barack Obama or pigs or fish or lipstick. It's about John McCain. The one thing I always thought I knew about him is that he is a decent and honest person. When he knows, as every sane person must, that Obama did not in any conceivable sense mean that Sarah Palin is a pig, what did he do? Did he come out and say so and end this charade? Or did he acquiesce in and thereby enable the mindless Rovianism that is now the core feature of his campaign?

So far, he has let us all down. My guess is he will continue to do so. And that decision, for my part, ends whatever respect I once had for him. On core moral issues, where this man knew what the right thing was, and had to pick between good and evil, he chose evil. When he knew that George W. Bush's war in Iraq was a fiasco and catastrophe, and before Donald Rumsfeld quit, McCain endorsed George W. Bush against his fellow Vietnam vet, John Kerry in 2004. By that decision, McCain lost any credibility that he can ever put country first. He put party first and his own career first ahead of what he knew was best for the country.  Read more.

It's interesting that the epigraph on his website is a quote from Orwell: "To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle."

***

UPDATE: It's clear that everyday is a good day when the McCain campaign can distract the media from looking at the subtance of its positions on the issues.  But I'm encouraged that this whole pig lipstick thing seems to be backfiring. The media, like Sullivan, seems finally catching on that McCain is playing them for idiots. Obama's response (or see below) was forceful and appropriate in ridiculing McCain on this.  On Letterman he said that the idea that he was talking about Palin makes no sense--the logic of the metaphor would require that Palin is the lipstick and McCain's policies are the pig. 

***

UPDATE 2:  Josh Marshall makes the same point about the media tide shifting among those who once respected McCain here.  I guess I find it hard to believe that anybody could still buy his act after what we've seen of him especially in the last two years. But Marshall is particularly forceful at the end of his post:

It's easy to get twisted up in your head about strategy and message and optics. But what is already apparent is that John McCain is running the sleaziest, most dishonest and race-baiting campaign of our lifetimes. So let's stopped being shocked and awed by every new example of it. It is undignified. What can we do? We've got a dangerously reckless contender for the presidency and a vice presidential candidate who distinguished her self by abuse of office even on the comparatively small political stage of Alaska. They've both embraced a level of dishonesty that disqualifies them for high office. Democrats owe it to the country to make clear who these people are. No apologies or excuses. If Democrats can say at the end of this campaign that they made clear exactly how and why these two are unfit for high office they can be satisfied they served their country.

I probably don't have enough reason to, but I'm actually feeling a little better this evening than I did this morning.  We'll see in the course of the next week or so if there really is a shift underway in the media's perception of McCain.  So much depends on the conventional wisdom types in the media like Sullivan, Klein, even Mark Halperin,  loudly rejecting this kind of nonsense.

Kindergarten Politics

I was thinking about using the hoary Lucy/Charlie Brown annual football farce as an analogy, but that one is a bit worn out, and it only gets at a part of what the GOP is doing to the American public. 

A better analogy might be that verbal joust we all got into with the pesky guy or  girl in kindergarten. My kindergarten nemesis was a girl named Marcia.  Let's say I caught her doing something she shouldn't be.  And she denies it.  I call her a "liar", and she responds,  "No I'm not; you are".  Then I say, "No, you are." Then she'd say, "No, you are."  And then I'd say . . . and on it goes, and whoever lasts the longest and gets the last word wins. 

Or in some cases the teacher comes over, and from her point of view, it's a he-said, she said deal. Until one of Marcia's cronies comes over and accuses me of doing precisely the thing that you saw Marcia do, and a couple more of her friends come over and say the same thing, and the next thing you know, I'm sitting in the corner--the girls huddled in a pack behind me giggling. My dumb-ass friends, of course, haven't a clue what's going on. The GOP understands that winning depends on this kind of primitive battle of the wills and tribal allegiances, and truth and common sense and fair play and all those other good things we were taught in kindergarten are for suckers. 

We could bring in Orwell here and the whole business of Big Lies, but that's pretty worn out, too. And we could bring in the seven-letter F-word, but that's off limits in polite company. Rewriting history and the psychology of collective denial is one of the things those Fs knew a thing or two about. They understand that truth is simply what the winner says it is. They know that the raw assertion of power will always defeat those who want to dialog and be reasonable. They understand how easy it is to distract and manipulate. And they understand how to use the virtues of democracy against itself--they have a right to prmote their lies in the market place of ideas, and if enough people vote for the lie, the lie rules.

But let's just keep it at this kindergarten level. Isn't it rather awe-inspiring, really,  the brazeness of it, how the Republicans, Lucy-like, do this year after year, and everybody gets tired sooner or later of challenging them, and in the end they win? They understand that incessant repetition of falsehoods works, that browbeating the media works, and that they can create their own version of reality that has little to do with facts, which are slippery things that nobody can ever be completely sure about, anyway. Anybody who disagrees with their version must be a partisan Democrat.  Some people live in the reality-based community, but most don't. We all learned that in 2004.

So here we go again with Palin and the stories about the bridge, the airplane, the cook, and so on.  It's a kindergarten-level battle of the wills as to which version of reality will win--real reality or GOP reality. Are they going to win this round as well? Will the reality based community just eventually shrug its collective shoulders and say I've got better things to do than pursue this inane argument, or will they stop this thing in its tracks, early on, before it grabs hold?  

Of course, the GOP wants the American public to think that real reality is just the Dems twisted version of it, and who's the media to question that?  They have to stay even handed and all.  Or is it really an emperor's new clothes situation in which the media fearful that the GOP will win this thing again better not burn any bridges.  If they treat the Dems badly and Obama wins, they can make nice: "Bygones.  But they know they're in for a world of hurt if McCain wins.

Obama Gameplan: Make It about Issues

Good luck with that. That's how it appears based on what we've seen and on what he said during the interview with Olbermann last night, which I thought in general was pretty weak--he seemed tired and unfocused, too carefully choosing his words, too abstract,  too bogged down in details, struggling to say what he means and not saying it very well. It got a little better toward the end. He just seemed to me to be a little too "Don't worry; we'll be fine."  How he appeared last night doesn't matter because he's preaching to the choir on that show, but he better get his game on when he's speaking in venues in which more undecideds are watching. We need to see that fire and intensity that he flashed during his convention speech whenever he appears to the public.

And do the Obama people really think this focus on the issues and everything will work out strategy will be enough?  I'm all for not taking the polls over the last few days too seriously.  I'm all for hoping that the contrasts during the debates will favor Obama. I'm all for trusting that enough of the American electorate gets it that electing McCain means four more years of Bush. But apparently it's not so obvious to Americans now, or if it is, they don't care. So they better have an aggressive strategy for making their case because they will lose if they don't.  Here's Drew Westen saying at Huffpost what I've been thinking:

But McCain shouldn't have gotten a 10-point bump from his uncivil convention, and this election shouldn't be close. What happened in one short week was both completely predictable and completely avoidable. Just hours after a Democratic Convention that reignited Democratic enthusiasm and started to swing those swing voters who just weren't sure about Obama, the Obama campaign had forgotten everything it should have learned from its success of Denver--most importantly that you never drop your gloves, and that you never let the other side control the narratives--and had returned to the same failed strategies that gave us Presidents Dukakis, Gore, and Kerry, strategies Democratic consultants have passed from generation to generation like a family heirloom laced with hemlock.

I keep telling myself that the Obama people are too smart to follow in the footsteps of Dukakis, Gore, and Kerry, but they clearly have been outmaneuvered in the last two weeks.  Maybe in the long run it won't matter.  But surely based on the Dems recent history or running presidential campaigns we all have good reason to be concerned. 

Westen on Palin:

The only statement the Obama campaign issued after McCain announced his choice--and the only real statement it has made until yesterday's "No Maverick" ad--was a laudatory statement of congratulations. When George Stephanopoulos posed a question to Obama about her qualifications this weekend and Keith Olbermann did the same on Monday, Obama evaded it both times, as if it were Obama, not McCain, who should be on the defensive about having chosen an unqualified person who is under the cloud of an ethics investigation and who has proven herself, like McCain, unable to get along with even members of her own party in Alaska, and, like Bush, to have an uneasy relationship with the truth.

Ok.  Maybe that's not Obama's job to attack Palin, but the Dems have to have a plan for the worst when it comes to Palin, and they just can't sit around hoping she'll self-destruct.  She might, but she probably won't. They should know by now that facts don't matter; she's a symbol, and all those negative facts about her that are coming to light will be made to appear as though it's just Democrats' negative spin about her. She'll survive or come out stronger unless something really truly bad comes to light.

The media will not do to Palin or McCain what they did to Gore or Kerry. It's up to the Dems to create and sustain a narrative that organizes the facts in a compelling way that will penetrate the American collective psyche. They cannot be so complacent to let the facts speak for themselves.  Once again, I don't think you have to get into the mudslinging to attack her. Be clever about it. Be nimble. But play some offense. Too much is at stake here. They've got to bring their A-game 24/7.  The Republicans so far have brought their A-game, at least since Schmidt tood over, and as usual they appear to have the ability to run circles around the Dems with a distinctly inferior product.

I Hope Obama Is Reading Joe Bageant

Better yet, he should hire him as a consultant. He's author of Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War. He's in England now and is making something of a media splash explaining to Brits "redneck" culture and of its influence in American politics.  An interesting piece here appeared on BBC website, and this column in the Guardian. An excerpt:

I am an Appalachian native who grew up dirt-eating poor. Yet I have managed to live a couple of decades in the middle class as a news reporter, magazine editor and publishing executive. I know the liberal middle class is condescending to working-class redneck culture - which is insulting, but not a crime. The real crime is the way corporate conservatives lie to my people, screw us blind, kill us in wars and keep us in economic serfdom.

The good news is that many lower working-class people are starting to figure that out. If we bothered to cover redneck culture we'd be surprised to find how many progressive rednecks, what I call leftnecks, are out there. America's media caste, however, is put off by the way these folks look and sound, and by their unpredictable opinions. It's happy to deal with the rural red-state working class as long as it remains out there somewhere in "the heartland", a place to be polled and surveyed by Gallup to fuel self-absorbed political punditry.

Whatever the media thinks of this group, the Democrats better figure out a way to make more rednecks into leftnecks. Perhaps only people like Bageant or Jim Webb--people who self-identify with redneck culture--would have the credibility to do that.  But the point is that it's not going to happen until one way or another cultural and economic issues can be detached when trying to get things done in the political sphere.

Once again, I have to point out that the stupidity of the way the abortion issue was handled in '72 has created the single largest stumbling block in that regard. It's not going away, and it will continue to be a wedge issue that separates cultural and religious conservatives from the Democrats.

Many of the commenters to this article are worth reading, and Bageant himself adds a comment way down the thread that picks up on this theme of redneck political relevance/irrelevance, so I'll excerpt a part of it here:

The redneck culture in which I was born and from which I write is as complex as any other. It has strong connotations of class, and thus is prone to generalizations and negative reaction from more advantaged classes, both liberal and conservative.

But whatever one calls us, our class represents the majority of Americans in many, maybe most, respects. We are part of the America in which 75% never get a higher education, never pass through a college door in the lifetimes. Of this 75%, three quarters never even complete the sixth form. Rednecks are indeed part of the American majority class, the working class. It is a majority you will never see on television except as the bumbling characters in situation comedies. But more importantly, it is a majority that has no effective political voice or political representation other than the pretense of one offered by the two dominant parties of our political class, both of which are faces of Americas only true political party – the business-financial party.

Having grasped that voting for either party had no direct effect on their practical everyday lives (unless it is beneficial to business) about one half of this class gave up on voting a couple of generations ago. Yet, because of their sheer numbers no president can be elected without their support. Infamously, they have legitimately elected George Bush at least once. And most of them will probably support John McCain next election, in the absence of any Democratic outreach attempt, other than the token working class people displayed as specimens at this year's convention, then promptly forgotten. Whatever the case, my people will make another stupid choice ... once again pull the voting lever and shoot off some remaining appendage of their own.

Everywhere I travel outside the United States, people ask me the same thing: Why do so many working class people over there consistently vote against their own interests? Its a darned good question, but one that makes me flinch because they are talking about the people from which I sprang – the white working class Scots Irish.

I think the answer to the question is implied in what he wrote above: As he points out, Bageant's Scots Irish are largely uneducated and poorly informed, and it follows from that they are  prone to manipulation by political elites. And, it's true, the Democrats don't do anything for them because the Dems don't see them as their constituency.  Rednecks won't get real attention from any politicians, Dem or GOP,  until they get organized and demand it, but they're not likely to do that through the Democratic party because they see the Democrats as the party of abortion and gay rights. And the Republicans are not going to help them because all they'll get from the GOP is a lecture about how they have to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and that they themselves are to blame for their own economic failures. 

So they're stuck, politically powerless and voiceless, and vote GOP by default on traditional cultural-values basis. And they at least get some joy in seeing one of their own--Sarah Palin--who did pull herself up by her own bootstraps, get some success and recognition and give elites some sass. And the GOP elites get a lot of joy from this as well, because the con is so perfect.  They get the support of this group without having to do anything except say they're against abortion and gay marriage.

The Dems better figure out how to convert rednecks into leftnecks soon, and the key is to neutralize, somehow someway, the cultural issues as tribal identifiers.  I'm not sure how, but they have to.  And in this Mike McG and I are in complete agreement, you're not going to do it by telling these folks they're stupid; they're not. But they are poorly informed or misinformed and on some important issues terribly mistaken, and you overcome that by education and effective communication. Obama has the podium; he better use it to do some intense outreach and educational work--or get people like Webb to do it for him.

 

Why Is It OK for Republicans to Be Negative?

An ongoing theme argued about in this blog and its comments section is the counterproductivity of Democrat or liberal intellectual condescension to the folks in red America. And yet Sarah Palin's speech dripping with contempt for Obama and Democrats in general is given an A by 60% of those polled, and she currently sports a 58% approval rating--higher than either of the presidential candidates who present themselves as taking the high road.  It's proven again and again that negativity works for Republicans, but Democrats better not get negative because it's only going to backfire on them. See Greenwald today on this.

So why is it ok for Palin to go negative the way she did? Is it because she's perceived as the scrappy underdog defending herself from a contemptuous establishment that had the gall to question her lack of qualifications?  Or is it because Democrats have for some perverse reason become identified with the establishment that populist Republicans are in an eternal struggle to defeat, and Palin is just their latest champion.  It's both, but I think more the second. But by any objective standard, when you look at all the obstacles he had to overcome, Obama is the genuine scrappy underdog--all Palin did was get picked and then read a speech.  And yet Obama's been successfully branded in the minds of many as the uppity elitist.

So why are Republicans so effective at controlling the narratives?  These narratives are complete nonsense, but they resonate with red America, and this idea of change and reform of Washington was repeated over and over again throughout the convention.  Anybody with a lick of sense sees it for the b.s. it is, but the only media types calling them on it are Stewart and Colbert: The Republicans, pitchforks in hand, are marching to Washington to throw out the Republicans who have made such a mess of things there. And what are they going to do when the get there?  Exactly what Republicans have been doing all along.

Nevertheless, the Republicans own the embattled underdog narrative.  They are the spunky, righteous minority that will save this country from moral ruin, and now they have their Annie Oakley who is going into Washington guns blazing to throw those rascals out. You dare to give her any guff, and  she'll give it back to you and more. Yessir. Are a majority of Americans going to buy this idiocy once again?

So for me the fundamental question is a tactical one.  How do sensible people make the case to Main Street that this GOP/Christianist embattled underdog narrative is complete nonsense?  How do you forcefully, compellingly call it what it is?  Sure,  a positive Democratic narrative has to be offered as an alternative, but you also have to work, as the GOP has no compunction to do, to make the other side look bad.  It shouldn't be that hard to do because it is so really bad.

This election is not going to be won or lost on the issues; it's a war of mentalities, and the side that shows the most toughness will win.  I think Obama has that toughness, and that he and his team are smart enough to develop a strategy to win this thing.  But that doesn't mean I'm not worried about it.

The McCain Speech

Some quick thoughts:  It struck me as schizophrenic, as if he's trying to do two opposite things at the same time--please the base and appear non-partisan to attract independents in the middle.  All the policy stuff was the same-old, same-old Republican litany, but then he says he wants to use Democratic ideas?  Is that believable from somebody who voted with Bush 90+% of the time? I don't believe it--or I believe it as much as I believe George Bush was capable of becoming the compassionate conservative he told us he would be. McCain may want to separate himself from Bush, his party's failures, and its vicious partisanship, but will the party let him?

"And then the bit about how he hates war from a guy who jokes Bomb, bomb, bomb--Bomb-bomb Iran." His sabre-rattling about Russia and Georgia, his aggressive support for the unnecessary invasion of Iraq, his refusal to listen to sense about a timely withdrawal does not represent the thinking of a man who truly, deeply hates war and cares about the soldiers. How can anybody take this seriously?

The delivery, except for the last two minutes or so, was stilted and quite frankly awful.  How can somebody in public service for so long be so bad at reading a teleprompter?  Is he so uncoachable?  He certainly leaves the impression that he isn't very bright, but these days I guess that's a good thing. The fact is that the convention was Palin's, and regardless who John McCain thinks he is, the party belongs to right-wingers like her. Whether she's in over her head or not doesn't matter.  I read somewhere today that the campaign is not letting her do any interviews.  She's going to be a completely packaged commodity. (Update: See here.)

I know conventions are occasions for contrived or manufactured enthusiasm, but there seemed a kind of bizarre disconnect, especially at the beginning, between the blandness of his statements and the enthusiastic response of the crowd--and then other times when he was pausing for applause and didn't get it.  Ninety percent of the speech struck me as a disjointed mess.

I was a little surprised about the POW story, not because I thought he wouldn't push that theme, but because of the way he spoke about it. Talking about being broken, being dependent, being weak and being reborn to serve others.  Those are not your typical GOP talking points.  But the fact remains that he came home, dumped his sick wife, and married a woman almost twenty years younger with a lot of money.  So there's a disconnect there between the story's point that his experience as a POW made him stop being a selfish jerk.  He came home and acted like a selfish jerk.  And in his 1999 book he admitted that he was running for president simply for his own ambition.  All this stuff about serving and fighting for others is cant.  If John McCain is man for others, I need more evidence than his simply asserting he is.

I don't know.  I'll be interested to learn what others think, but the two goals that this speech seemed to set out for itself canceled one another out.  Or maybe people just listen to the part that they agree with and filter out the part they don't.  Not sure.  I think the main thing McCain accomplished in the past week was to energize the base by the Palin pick, but if tonight was his attempt to reach out to the middle, I don't think it worked, and it probably angered the base.  (But will they work energetically for him anyway because it will mean Palin in 2012?) We'll see what kind of bump he'll get, but it wouldn't surprise me if Obama holds onto at least a 6 or 7% lead.  That might be wishful thinking, but time will tell.

Palin Speech (Updated)

Pretty much what I expected. It's clear that the GOP wants to fight this election on its turf, which is personality/character, tribal identity, and cultural values.  But this time around I don't think it's enough.  I agree with Josh Marshall:

take this as a sign that the McCain campaign has abandoned an effort to compete for swing voters and go back to the base energizing strategy that worked for President Bush in 2004. The numbers make that look like a tough proposition. But I think a few months from now, everyone will agree this was a mistake.

Biden will have his hands full in the debate. As a personality, she's far more appealing (IMO) than Hillary, regardless of her stand on women's issues. She's got Annie Oakley spunk and this was her moment--she did as well as she could with it--but is she going to win enough undecideds to get to 270?  She'll get the usual suspects, but I am still optimistic that a majority of Americans are onto this cynical b.s.  2008 is not 2004--even Peggy Noonan is not buying this smelly package. And Obama is not Kerry--I'm optimistic that the Obama campaign will be savvy enough to finesse GOP strategy and tactics.  And there's still all the stuff most people don't know about her yet from her time as mayor and governor.  There could be some real time bombs ticking that will keep her on her heels and diminish her ability to do her barracuda thing.

The GOP understands in a way that the Dems don't that facts don't matter. So much of the speech content, of course, was nonsense. The characterization of Obama's tax policy. This idea that the Republicans and McCain are the party of reform?!  That the party will march into Washington to take on the special interests?  But facts don't matter, so what' the pointless to try to make an issue of it.  

***

UPDATE: And how can anybody defend the kind of nonsense coming from Romney an Giulaian last night?  From Romney's speech:  "We need change all right -- change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington."  Even he can't possibly believe this kind of classic GOP up-is-downism.  It's just one example of just-say-anything demagoguery that calculates there are enough people who don't live in reality but in a fantasy that is realityish. It knows that there are relatively few negative consequences for throwing this kind of nonsense out there.  

Do Democrats do it too?  Not with such over-the-top, big-lie, breathtaking boldness.

Is it condescending to say call people deluded who buy into this?  Or is it just the plain truth? Does anybody believe you can have a sane dialogue with people who live in this kind of fantasy world?  I know people who are deluded don't like to be told they are.  Neither do drunks like to be told they have a problem.  Doesn't mean they don't have a problem. An intervention is called for here.