Category Archives: McCain-Palin

Teh Stupid, It Runs Our Country

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In “Making America Stupid,” Tom Friedman writes of the GOP’s “Drill Baby Drill” mantra:

Why would Republicans, the party of business, want to focus our country on breathing life into a 19th-century technology — fossil fuels — rather than giving birth to a 21st-century technology — renewable energy? As I have argued before, it reminds me of someone who, on the eve of the I.T. revolution — on the eve of PCs and the Internet — is pounding the table for America to make more I.B.M. typewriters and carbon paper. “Typewriters, baby, typewriters.”

He goes on to say that McCain is running on nothing but cultural wedge issues to hide the fact that he has no more clue what to do about the economy than George W. Bush did.

Steve Benen says Friedman’s new membership in the “enough” club is significant, because Friedman is a major conventional-wisdom shaper.

And if you want to read a defense of McCain that’s bleeping hilarious, go here. Begin with the sentence. “Let us look at what oil is. It replaced whaling in provided fuel for lamps. This saved the whale,” and keep reading. If this guy were a satirist he’d be brilliant. Unfortunately, he isn’t.

Kevin Drum asks why McCain is running such a sleazy campaign.

So why is McCain doing this? Obvious answer #1: he’s just running a standard Republican campaign. Nobody should really be surprised by this. Obvious answer #2: This is hardly the first time McCain has sold his soul. He’ll regret it later, of course, but this is just who he is, despite the layers of maverickiness he’s managed to cover himself in over the years.

Kevin also suggests McCain genuinely believes Obama would be a bad president, and thus McCain feels morally justified in doing whatever it takes to stop him. I can think of one other possibility, which is that McCain is too mentally impaired to make his own decisions, and Karl Rove or a clone therof is actually running the campaign behind the scenes.

I don’t know what went down on the Sunday bobblehead shows, but some parts of America’s news media seem to be doing some real journalism for a change. This is the kind of reporting they should have done when Bush was running in 2000, and didn’t.

New York Times: “Once Elected, Palin Hired Friends and Lashed Foes”

Washington Post: “As Mayor of Wasilla, Palin Cut Own Duties, Left Trail of Bad Blood”

MSNBC: “Palin’s ‘Bridge to Nowhere’ Line Returns”

Boston Globe: “As governor and mayor, Palin hired friends for public posts”

San Francisco Chronicle: “Campaign check: Lies and half-truths outed.” This article analyzes six campaign commercials and finds them deceptive. Five of the six are McCain’s ads. It also found three statements made by McCain and Palin in speeches or interviews that were, um, wrong. One other item it found deceptive was an anti-Palin email, but there’s no evidence it originated with the Obama campaign. So — 8 McCain deceptions, 1 Obama deception, 1 source unknown deception.

Now, on to serious issues — a number of rightie bloggers are complaining that a “lib” photographer deliberately made McCain look sinister for a photo used on the cover of The Atlantic. Except I’ve got the bleeping issue of the Atlanic right in front of me, and there’s nothing the least bit sinister about the photo. If anything, McCain looks slightly noble and wise, if way wrinkled, in the photo. Apparently the photographer had some fun with “outtakes” — not the photo actually used — and bragged about it on a personal blog. Some rightie bloggers have twisted this into a claim that The Atlantic used one of the “sinister” photos on the cover, which one look at the cover reveals is not true.

This is not a press bias issue; it’s a personal expression issue. Once again, we see that righties hate freedom of expression, and if they had their way they’d ban any speech with which they don’t agree. And they’d do it in the name of “liberty.”

WTF?

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I’m seeing McCain-Palin television ads in the New York City media market. This reaches into southern New York state, maybe a piece of Connecticut, Long Island, and New Jersey, as well as NYC. Does McCain think he’s got a shot at New Jersey?

Thinking Out Loud

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I am gloomy about the election campaign, but I keep reminding myself that previous election seasons have had dramatic shifts in the polls. For example, in the Reagan-Carter contest of 1980, until a week before the election the polls were very tight, and some showed Carter slightly ahead. And, of course, Reagan won by a landslide.

The shift was caused by the candidates’ performances in their last debate, held one week before the election. Internal tracking polls showed there was almost an immediate shift after the debate, when huge numbers of Americans decided to vote for Reagan.

Debates don’t always count. I thought Kerry absolutely clobbered Bush in their 2004 debates, especially the first one, but it doesn’t seem to have made much difference. I suspect people had been too well conditioned to like Bush and dislike Kerry to trust their own eyes.

The point remains that much can happen between now and election day that could push the results decisively one way or the other.

I think Joe Biden has it in him to put away Sarah Palin in their debate, and he can do it by being courtly to her while gently and patiently pointing out what she doesn’t understand about the world. If he plays it right, she will look shrill and ditzy in comparison. I know some of you will disagree with that, but if he beats her up too much, so to speak, it could backfire and grow sympathy for Palin even if she reveals she doesn’t know China from cheese.

It’s outrageous that we have to play mind games like that, but that’s where the last several years of scorched-earth politics have brought us.

More than anything else, in their debates Obama will have to be more likable than McCain. And he can do that. But he also has to take care not to seem to be showing off his intellect, and everyone fears he will actually answer questions intelligently rather than spout the “crisp” but empty prepackaged rhetoric bits that the pundits always prefer to real answers.

In both cases I think the Dems should keep a principle of martial arts in mind — using your opponent’s momentum and force against him. Unless McCain is allowed to bring Joe Lieberman on stage with him to whisper the correct answers in his ear — or obtain the mysterious “back box” that Bush sported in a debate against Kerry — McCain will be confused about many things. Since the McCain campaign has declared war on news media, I think news media are in less of a mood to let such things slip by these days. The shills on Faux News excepted, of course. Anyway, at such times, Obama should step back and let McCain be McCain.

Now that it has become conventional wisdom that Palin didn’t exactly cover herself in glory in her first interview, the excuses are coming out. One excuse is that ABC News deliberately edited the tape to make Palin look stupid. However, I’ve looked at the transcript of the complete first interview, and the stuff edited out doesn’t seem to me to make her any less frivolous that the stuff left in. See what you think.

Another excuse is that there are many versions of the “Bush Doctrine,” and Palin couldn’t be expected to know which one Charles Gibson referred to — except that he deliberately and clearly defined the precise version he was inquiring about. And while there are many fine points, if fine is the right word, about the Bush Doctrine that can be interpreted in diverse ways, Palin clearly didn’t know any of those points, nor did she seem to know there was such a thing as a “Bush Doctrine.”

Shorter Steven Hayward: If we don’t elect idiots, we’re betraying democracy.

Maybe it’s because I live in New York and nobody’s campaigning here, but I never see the candidates. He see news about the candidates and brief clips showing some little slice of the candidates’ day, but I keep feeling that I’m not seeing the actual candidates anywhere. How is it where you live?

Palin’s First Interview

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I didn’t watch Sarah Palin’s interview last night because, frankly, I wasn’t in the mood. I watched “House” reruns instead. Hugh Laurie is a hoot.

So what’d I miss? I’m catching up with the reviews now. The consensus on the Right is that Charles Gibson asked unfair trick questions, like “What is your favorite color?” The consensus on the Left is that Palin was unaware there were such things as “foreign countries” until last week.

Seriously, Jack Shafer found this exchange, um, unworthy of a serious candidate for national office:

Gibson: Do you agree with the Bush Doctrine?

Palin: In what respect, Charlie?

Gibson (refusing to give her a hint): What do you interpret it to be?

Palin: His worldview?

Gibson: No, the Bush Doctrine, enunciated in September 2002, before the Iraq War.

Palin attempts to fake it for 25 seconds with a swirl of generalities before Gibson, showing all the gentleness of a remedial social studies teacher, interjects.

Gibson: The Bush Doctrine as I understand it is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense. That we have the right of a preemptive strike against any other country that we think is going to attack us. Do you agree with that?

Of course Palin agrees with the Bush Doctrine, but she can’t come out and say so, having just admitted that she doesn’t know it by name. At every point in the Q&A, Gibson had the right follow-up questions to elicit more from Palin, including after he asked the Bush Doctrine cringe-maker. He asks her to give thumbs up or down to the U.S. military’s recent forays into Pakistan from Afghanistan. He asks her several ways. But she can’t answer the question, and she won’t dismiss it. Instead she slows the interview to a crawl again, dribbling and dribbling the ball but refusing to take the shot.

James Fallows rightfully points out that Gibson should have used the word preventive rather than preemptive. But he also said that anyone who understood the doctrinal underpinnings of the invasion of Iraq would have known this and would have asked Gibson to clarify.

I don’t know that this interview would have changed anyone’s minds. Non-Palin supporters were underwhelmed, but Palin’s fans think she shouldn’t be expected to bother her pretty little head with boring foreign policy issues, and Gibson was a meanie to ask such hard questions. After all — Palin has never had an abortion!

If elected, maybe Palin could send just her righteous and holy uterus to Washington, and the rest of her can stay in Alaska.

Elsewhere, in another context, I got into a discussion of whether Palin or Palin supporters can be called “feminists.” I say it’s absurd; Palin is to feminism what the invasion of Iraq was to spreading peace and democracy.

See also Steve Benen, John Cole, and Greg Sargent.

They Must Really Be Mad

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Howard Kurtz did something remarkable in his column today. Here are the first few paragraphs; see if you can spot what it is.

The media are getting mad.

Whether it’s the latest back-and-forth over attack ads, the silly lipstick flap or the continuing debate over Sarah and sexism, you can just feel the tension level rising several notches.

Maybe it’s a sense that this is crunch time, that the election is on the line, that the press is being manipulated (not that there’s anything new about that).

News outlets are increasingly challenging false or questionable claims by the McCain campaign, whether it’s the ad accusing Obama of supporting sex-ed for kindergartners (the Illinois legislation clearly describes “age-appropriate” programs) or Palin’s repeated boast that she stopped the Bridge to Nowhere (after she had supported it, and after Congress had effectively killed the specific earmark).

The McCain camp has already accused the MSM of trying to “destroy” the governor of Alaska. So any challenge to her record or her veracity can now be cast as the product of an oh-so-unfair press. Which, needless to say, doesn’t exactly please reporters, and makes the whole hanging-with-McCain-on-the-Straight-Talk era seem 100 years ago.

It goes on like that. I kept scanning the paragraphs for the “balance” section — You know, the part that says “The Obama campaign likewise accused Governor Palin of [some trivial thing taken out of context and blown up into a controversy], so it’s just as bad, blah blah blah.”

It turned up, finally, in the 14th paragraph, and even there Kurtz was quoting someone else. The point is that the first 13 paragraphs are about the lies coming from the McCain campaign, and only the McCain campaign. This is extremely unusual behavior coming from Kurtz, long a reliable tool for the Right. Usually, when the Republicans do something outrageously bad, the first 13 paragraphs of his column are about why it’s the Democrats’ fault.

The media must really be mad.

The wingnuts are calling Kurtz’s column a “descent into madness” and an example of “rabid partisanship for Obama.” That Kurtz, for once, is just plain telling the straight-up truth is not considered, nor have I found any rightie blogger who could refute the facts damning McCain in Kurtz’s column. Some things don’t change.

Honor

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I was reading a diary on DKos from “Sgt Major Meyers” on the subject of honor. It gave me an understanding of a word we often hear, but typically gloss over – an understanding from a career military perspective:

Throughout my life growing up in a military family and in my military career, one predominate trait or quality was emphasized and driven home by both my family and every leader I have ever met. That trait or quality was honor. Just to refresh your memory the dictionary defines honor as: honesty, fairness, or integrity in one’s beliefs and actions – a man of honor.

From the time I had what I believe was probably my very first logical thought about the subject I do not believe that there was ever any doubt in my mind of what the meaning of honor was, nor was there ever any doubt of what actions honor required. There was a second thing that I never had any doubt about, and that was that once one’s honor was compromised it was a permanent and oft never fading blemish. I know this from personal experience and from my own personal failures against which I struggle to this very day. I point this out because I believe that even the most honorable and well intentioned people with the most hard earned sense of honor can fail and that they can be guilty of being dishonorable, and I believe that this has happened in the presidential race.

This is what Obama should challenge McCain on – his honor, or lack thereof.

A parallel challenge could be made to Sarah Palin, and to her inch-deep Christianity, along the same lines, but this is a much more difficult tack in the current climate, with the current players. And Sarah, like George Bush, is a much more devious and skilled manipulator, able to turn back any such attack with ease.

Most of us during these last few days are once again, awakening to the sad realization that good ideas and good character are not enough to win an election – otherwise we’d probably be wrapping up the final years of the Gore Administration. Lying and bullying behavior has to be confronted and effectively rebuffed. If it isn’t, no one will respect Obama, no matter how great his ideas or his character.

For someone as high minded as Obama, and who is operating with a distinct handicap – “Jackie Robinson rules” – this is his greatest challenge: to move past “merely” being able to bring people together over good ideas, and to boldly confront the white establishment about its shameful lack of honor, and to make it stick. This is the next level, the next step in his growth as a leader and as a human being. And I think the Republicans know this – they know they’re dealing with a squeaky clean class nerd, who, for many reasons has difficulty fighting them effectively. They found his weakness.

I’m reminded of what it was like in high school to be a nerd. I may have been good at various scholastic subjects, but in the larger scheme of things, the jocks ruled. Had I known then what I know today, I never would have tolerated the bullying and abusive behavior of these jealous boors. And as Kurt Vonnegut so aptly pointed out, life is nothing but high school:

When you get to be our age, you all of a sudden realize you are being ruled by people you went to high school with. You all of a sudden catch on that life is nothing BUT high school. You make a fool of yourself in high school, then go to college to learn how you should have acted in high school, then you get into real life and that turns out to be high school again – class officers, cheerleaders, and all.

“Honor” and “Shame” are emotionally laden words, that Republicans, including John McCain are sensitive to, even if they don’t fully get their meanings. They’re powerful weapons waiting to be used, to turn back the far right’s wall of bullshit. Will Obama understand the challenge he faces right now, that good ideas and good character aren’t enough by themselves to get through this high school kind of world we’re in?

Circus Nation

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I stayed quiet when the National Enquirer broke the Edwards story and didn’t comment on it until Edwards confessed. This I will submit without comment, except to ask, could this cover swing an election?

I think this is the damnedest presidential election campaign I have ever seen, and I’ve seen a few of ’em, buckaroos. E.J. Dionne is stunned for the same reasons, and he’s seen at least as many campaigns as I have.

Meanwhile — as goes the Palin family, so goes the Department of the Interior.

As Congress prepares to debate expansion of drilling in taxpayer-owned coastal waters, the Interior Department agency that collects oil and gas royalties has been caught up in a wide-ranging ethics scandal — including allegations of financial self-dealing, accepting gifts from energy companies, cocaine use and sexual misconduct.

In three reports delivered to Congress on Wednesday, the department’s inspector general, Earl E. Devaney, found wrongdoing by a dozen current and former employees of the Minerals Management Service, which collects about $10 billion in royalties annually and is one of the government’s largest sources of revenue other than taxes.

“A culture of ethical failure” besets the agency, Mr. Devaney wrote in a cover memo.

The reports portray a dysfunctional organization that has been riddled with conflicts of interest, unprofessional behavior and a free-for-all atmosphere for much of the Bush administration’s watch.

I can already hear Keith Olbermann comparing this to that classic Department of the Interior scandal — Teapot Dome.

People used to speak of Teapot Dome in hushed, shocked tones, stunned that such a thing could have happened in the United States. Now it seems rather mild. Just business as usual in the Bush Administration.

(Singing)

You never turned around to see the frowns on the jugglers and the clowns
When they all come down and did tricks for you
You never understood that it ain’t no good
You shouldn’t let other people get your kicks for you
You used to ride on the chrome horse with your diplomat
Who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat
Ain’t it hard when you discover that
He really wasn’t where it’s at
After he took from you everything he could steal.
How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

Sorta fits my mood.

The Children’s Hour

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The future of humanity, and possibly of our planet, may hinge on the results of the November election. And this being America, the campaign has devolved into adolescent accusations that one candidate called another candidate a “pig.”

I can pretty much guarantee that many hours of television programming today will be dedicated to serious discussion of whether Barack Obama intentionally called Sarah Palin a “pig” — a phony controversy generated by the McCain campaign that could be dismissed in a few seconds with a simple review of what Barack Obama actually said.

I can pretty much guarantee that at no time today will any of the major cable news networks dedicate even a few seconds to substantive discussion of the candidates’ positions on health care, even though Americans place health care very high on their list of concerns.

The McCain campaign consists mostly of frantically throwing red herrings in all directions, hoping no one notices that John McCain and his moose-shootin’ sidekick have no idea how they might govern. And this is working very well for them, it seems. The American public has gotten so used to content-free campaigns they think this is normal.

Over the years Americans have been conditioned to respect utter nonsense, because they see our national leaders and the “pundits” in mass media respecting utter nonsense. If by some miracle we woke up tomorrow morning in a world where our leaders were engaged in sincere, factual, and substantive discussion of issues, most Americans would be dumbfounded.

Because of the way Americans hold elections and declare winners, it is impossible for a third party to challenge the Big Two. And one of the Big Two has become more of a social pathology than a party. The American Right has taken over the Republican Party, and the American Right does not want to govern. It wants to destroy. Years of cheap political demagoguery have filled a large part of the American public with a seething resentment of just about everything — other nations, racial minorities, religious diversity, cultural diversity, intellectuals, the poor. And on and on.

Most of all, they resent American liberalism, which these days seems to be defined as “any doctrine that calls for running the government responsibly and in a way that addresses the real-world needs of American citizens.” Can’t have that.

Many Democrats have contributed to this sorry mess, of course. But, basically, we’re looking at America’s extreme Right; the descendants of Richard Hofstadter’s pseudo-conservatives. These are the people of whom Hofstadter wrote back in the early 1960s,

The difference between conservatism as a set of doctrines whose validity is established by polemics, and conservatism as a set of rules whose validity is to be established by their usability in government, is not a difference in nuance, but of fundamental substance.

Today’s Republican Party is entirely about polemics. It has nothing to offer in the way of responsible government, either in domestic programs or foreign policy, but fantasy narratives, tired slogans and ideas that have already failed. No amount of real-world examples showing why their ideology is inapplicable to governing can sway them.

Hofstadter continued, quoting Theodore W. Adorno:

“The pseudo conservative is a man who, in the name of upholding traditional American values and institutions and defending them against more or less fictitious dangers, consciously or unconsciously aims at their abolition.”

And finally,

Writing in 1954, at the peak of the McCarthyist period, I suggested that the American right wing could best be understood not as a neo-fascist movement girding itself for the conquest of power but as a persistent and effective minority whose main threat was in its power to create “a political climate in which the rational pursuit of our well-being and safety would become impossible.”

Back in 1954, Hofstadter didn’t believe pseudo-conservatives would ever win elections. Here his vision failed him. Because once they had created “a political climate in which the rational pursuit of our well-being and safety would become impossible,” they were able to win elections.

What Hofstadter didn’t foresee was that in the 1970s pseudo-conservatism would join forces with old money — right-wing family foundations and wealthy individuals — to build a media message machine that would utterly confound rational political discourse in America.

Thus, in November, Americans will march to the polls without having once had the candidates’ stands on issues clearly and factually and un-hysterically explained to them.

It’s true that citizens can learn a lot by reading candidates’ web sites and party platforms, if they bothered to go there. But most won’t. And many have bought into America’s whackjob political culture and don’t see why it should change.

Worst of all, after more than 25 years of nonstop right-wing demagoguery coming at them from every media outlet, Americans have been conditioned into a kind of learned helplessness. Government doesn’t work. We mustn’t even think about using government to solve national problems, because it won’t. We’re on our own. That’s the American way.

See also: Read Jonathan Freedland, then take a glance at some of the typically adolescent wingnut reaction to Freedland. I don’t need to comment; it all speaks for itself.

Update: See Glenn Greenwald.

Update: The wingnuts are in such a state of hysteria they twist obvious compliments into insults.

Update: Joe Klein is disgusted. A miracle.

The Novelty Candidate

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Yes, there’s a Sarah Palin action figure doll. Those of you who still have your George W. Bush fighter pilot action figure doll will want one. Just don’t tell me what you do with them.

I don’t know if Gary Kamiya saw the Palin action figure before he wrote “The dominatrix” for Salon. Readers are complaining that the article is sexist. Personally, I think Kamiya has a point.

At a conscious level, the Republican duo are masquerading as reformers who will “clean up Washington.” But their unconscious appeal may be more important. By choosing Palin, McCain and the GOP have elbowed the Democrats off the dance floor. In a bizarre turnaround, the uptight Republicans are suddenly the party of sex, women, fun. They’re all about spontaneity, bucking convention, letting their freak flags fly. If it feels good, do it! Let Mr. Dignified, Obama, drone on about the economy or the resurgence of the Taliban or whatever boring downer of a subject he wants to lecture us on. Let that long-winded Joe Biden carry us back to that Poli Sci 201 class we fell asleep in. Hey, did you check out Palin’s rack? It’s party time in America!

Kamiya also suggests that “Drill, drill, drill” has a subtext I hadn’t thought of.

McCain’s rise in the polls appears to be almost entirely a reaction to Sarah Palin. As everyone keeps saying, she has “energized the base.” That’s another phrase that’s taken on new meaning for me after reading Kamiya’s article, but never mind. There is disagreement over how much bounce McCain got, and whether it will last. (For discussion see this and this.)

I have no doubt that the wingnuts will love Sarah Palin forever. After all, we’re talking about people who are still angry that the Senate bounced Robert Bork’s SCOTUS nomination more than 20 years ago. If the Palin-McCain ticket loses, the loss will be added to their Grievance Hall of Fame.

What remains to be seen is whether Palin can keep the affection of those swing voters who have swung in her direction. Maybe, but I think it’s more likely she’ll end up being a novelty toy that amuses for a few days but quickly ends up in that box of random junk in the basement.

As Josh Marshall points out, Palin’s “reformer/maverick” persona is built entirely on lies. And, for a change, the MSM actually is reporting on some of these lies. Current headlines:

“Palin Billed State for Nights Spent at Home: Taxpayers Also Funded Family’s Travel” (Washington Post)

“Record Contradicts Palin’s ‘Bridge’ Claims” (the bleeping Wall Street Journal, believe it or not)

I like the Obama campaign’s response ad. It even uses the “L” word — lying. Whoa!

The McCain campaign’s issue-free ads tout the ticket as a pair of “reformers” and “mavericks” who will bring “change.” All image, no substance. Will that work? I’ve seen similar campaigns fail in the past, and I’ve also seen them succeed. I think a lot depends on what mood the electorate is in.

The GOP marketing strategy is essentially the same one they used to sell Dubya in 2000. Al Gore is a bore. George Bush is fun. Hey, America — are we having fun yet?