GOP's Low Standards for McCain

GOP spinmeisters are humping the heck out of how great John McCain did at the Saddleback forum on Saturday night. Actually, I also think McCain did well because he hit his usual talking points and stump anecdotes in an effective manner.

But it's not like hitting your talking points is THAT big of a deal for a candidate like John McCain who's been running for president for the last twenty months.

But here's National Review editor Rich Lowry salivating in the New York Sun:

Within the first 15 minutes, McCain had established a moral seriousness stemming from his long experience as a national leader and his conduct in Vietnam as a POW that Obama simply couldn't match. Throughout the night, McCain brought up Iraq, al Qaeda and the Georgia crisis, while Obama was determinedly inward-looking. Asked whether he thinks evil exists, Obama cited Darfur, then street crime in the United States. McCain invoked Osama bin Laden.

Lowry's comments are fundamentally a reflection of the low standards that the right has for presidents. In the 2000 and 2004 campaigns, George Bush was given considerable credit for "beating expectations" any time he got his facts straight and worked his way though his talking points. The media liked Bush even though they didn't think he was knowledgeable and gave him points for showing almost any kind of knowledge.

The same was the case here.

The idea behind the Saddleback forum was for the religious public to get a better idea of how Barack Obama and John McCain what kind of persons they were apart from their talking points and how they thought about issues. That's a lot of what Obama did. He talked about himself as a person, his religious faith, his big controversial decisions, and his weaknesses as a human being. People who listened to Obama came away with a better idea of Obama's capacity for dispassionate evaluation of himself, the people around him, and various kinds of issues. They also came away with a sense of the kind of president he would be.

But McCain changed the game and used the Saddleback forum as a way to present his standard talking points and anecdotes to a national audience. Unless McCain has morphed into a version of his talking points, he didn't give any indication of what kind of person he is or how he thinks about any kinds of issues. McCain toed the conservative party line on every point and expressed no self-doubt about doing so even though he has recently changed his positions on a variety of issues like Bush's tax cuts and immigration.

For a conservative like Rich Lowry, stating the right-wing party line is the most important qualification that anyone could have for president.

But its a very low standard.

To the contrary, Obama showed himself as a whole person rather than an extension of his talking points. That's what gives Obama a chance to serve effectively as president of the whole country instead of just being president of his party.

The Introspective Basis of the McCain Campaign

It's beginning to look more and more like the McCain campaign is using introspection as the basis for the criticisms of Barack Obama.

For example, the McCain campaign knew they were getting into racist territory when they put out their provocative "Celeb" ad with Obama juxtaposed to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. Of course, it didn't bother them much. Republicans have been running race-baiting presidential campaigns since the 1960's.

What differentiates the McCain campaign is that they decided that they would gain a further advantage from Republican traditions of race-baiting by accusing Obama of being the one to play"the race card." But senior McCain staffers like Rick Davis and Steve Schmidt couldn't have pursued the "race-card" theme is they hadn't been aware of their own race-baiting.

There's also the celebrity angle.

There's no politician in American who loves being a celebrity more than John McCain. He's appeared on Saturday Night Live and late-night talk shows as well as cable comedy shows. McCain was also a regular on shout-fests like like Crossfire and appeared more than any other politician on Sunday morning news shows like "Meet the Press."

One of the main reasons why the McCain campaign has ridiculed Obama for being the "no. 1 global celebrity" with so much relish is McCain's awareness of the extent to which he himself values being a celebrity.

In other words, McCain's criticism of Obama for being a celebrity was born out of introspection.

Today, McCain moved on to Obama's foreign policy positions. John McCain has shown a willingness to say almost anything to reassure the conservative base of the Republican Party that he's one of them. Among the many topics on which McCain has reversed himself are Bush tax cuts, the "agents of intolerance" in the religious right, right-wing judges like Samuel Alito, immigration policy, torture, and off-shore drilling.

No doubt McCain's going to change more of his positions as the election campaign becomes more heated.

Given the burning intensity of McCain's ambition, it should be no surprise that McCain is accusing Obama of adopting positions solely to further his presidential ambitions. Speaking about Obama's position on Iraq, McCain claims that:

“Behind all of these claims and positions by Senator Obama lies the ambition to be president . . . What’s less apparent is the judgment to be commander in chief. And in matters of national security, good judgment will be at a premium in the term of the next president.

McCain was criticizing Obama's vote against war funding in 2007. But Obama had opposed the invasion of Iraq from the beginning. Thus, his vote against war funding was perfectly consistent with his views of the war.

When McCain talks about "ambition to be president" as driving Obama's positions on policy issues, he's really talking about himself and projecting onto Obama.

However, if McCain looks at himself closely enough, he'll find that his criticisms of Obama are an extremely good guide to why John McCain himself should not be president.

McCain's Version of the "Winona Ryder Defense"

You know, I was willing to give John McCain a break on the accusations that he knew Rick Warren's questions in advance for Saturday night's Saddleback Forum.

My though was so what if McCain heard some of Obama's answers while he was in his limo on the way to the event? Warren informed both Obama and McCain of his first two questions. McCain probably already knew what his first two responses would be anyway.

But then, I saw the reaction of McCain's spokeswoman Nicole Wallace.

“The insinuation from the Obama campaign that John McCain, a former prisoner of
war, cheated is outrageous.”

Talk about projecting guilt.

That's the POW version of Winona Ryder's defense at her shoplifting trial in 2002. According to Dahlia Lithwick of Slate:

Both the crime and the trial were about looking like a celebrity. The movie star had already dropped $3,000 that day on clothing and accessories, yet still shoplifted a $140 hair band and a $750 thermal shirt (because God knows, she couldn't go pay $16 for them at Target). So her attorney trotted out the people-who-look-like-her-don't-take-stuff defense (emphasis mine), alternating it with the people-who-don't-look-like-her-persecute-people-who-look-like-her-because-they're-jealous defense.

Like Winona Ryder, Wallace was arguing that John McCain didn't cheat because "people like John McCain don't cheat."

That sounds like a confession of guilt to me.

Saddleback: Advantage McCain and His Tribe

A Sense of Relief. Well, I'm certainly glad the Saddleback Civil Forum is over. Wheew!

That's partly because I'm an atheist. In principle, I'm all for holding political events in mega-churches, sports stadiums, the Convention Center in my hometown of Morehead, KY, local diners, television studios, Vegas casinos or any other place where people legally gather. In a democracy, politics needs to be in the places where people gather. Given that people gather in churches, why not churches?

But I also find almost any religious atmosphere to be kind of creepy. So I'm glad that major political events like debates aren't often held in places of worship.

Or casinos for that matter.

I'm also glad the forum is over because I thought John McCain came out ahead.

Why McCain Won. McCain had a simple formula for promoting himself as "the Republican candidate"--take the "conservative" line on every point, get out as many of his conservative talking points as he could, and relate anecdotes designed to make conservative talking points appealing to everyone.

Chuck Todd of NBC correctly emphasizes the extent to which McCain focused on getting out his talking points as opposed to answering Rick Warren's questions. When asked about three wise people he would listen to, McCain listed the conservative hero of the moment Gen. Petraeus as no. 1. When asked about when people acquired rights, McCain said "at conception" without hesitation and didn't bother to explain why. McCain was just as emphatic about wishing that none of the Supreme Court liberals were on the Supreme Court and gave the straight conservative line on "legislating from the bench" to explain why.

McCain also used his stories about being prisoner of war to significant effect in explaining himself as a person and illustrating conservative talking points.

Why was this effective? It was effective primarily because McCain was offering a cohesive conservative world view that he knew a large part of his audience would embrace. Peggy Noonan regrets that McCain and Obama moved around a lot as children and are consequently not grounded in regions. But, the impact of Limbaugh, Hannity, and Ann Coulter has been that conservatives identify themselves more and more as a national movement and less and less as having a Southern, Mountain, rural, or suburban perspective.

Conservative tribalism is a national phenomenon and John McCain was representing the whole conservative tribe in his performance at Saddleback. McCain didn't perform as an individual, he performed as a "conservative."

And he performed conservatism about as well as it can be done.

The Problem with Obama. It's not that Obama performed poorly. Obama was thoughtful and articulate and I'm sure many people in the mega-church audience left with a better appreciation for Obama's intelligence and sincerity. I know I came out of my viewing of the video liking Obama better as a person.

But for all of his intellectual architecture, Barack Obama's answers to Rick Warren's questions were essentially bridges "from nowhere and "to nowhere."

Let me illustrate with the question of abortion. When Obama first was asked about abortion, his response was that abortion was a "serious moral question." I have no problem with nodding to the sincerity of the pro-life position, but Obama also never explained why he took the pro-choice position that abortion is a fundamental matter of a woman's freedom. In fact, he did not articulate a single reason why anybody would be pro-choice or why anybody would think that the right to seek abortions is a fundamental human freedom as articulated in Roe v Wade.

This was a tremendous failing on Obama's part. Because Obama failed to champion his own views about abortion, Obama's response did not have the moral or political clarity of McCain's position and Obama failed to represent the moral integrity of the millions of Americans (like me) who have taken the pro-choice position, the millions of women who have received abortions, and the tens of thousands (at least) of medical personnel who have been involved in performing abortions.

By failing to champion the pro-choice position, Obama also did nothing to make his pro-choice position more appealing to anybody who is an undecided voter.

The same was the case when Obama explained how his decided to oppose the invasion of Iraq despite the fact that he thought it would hurt him politically. He did nothing beyond mentioning his suspicions about WMD to indicate why he opposed the invasion, why he still opposes the invasion, and why he thinks the invasion has been a disaster.

Why Obama decided not to advocate his own positions is "beyond my pay grade" as Obama would say. But Obama failed to represent his own position, failed to represent the "liberal tribe" across America, and failed to convince anyone outside the liberal tribe about the validity of his positions.

At the end of Obama's hour on stage, about all anyone could say about him was that he was a "smart, articulate guy."

That's not enough and it's not nearly as much as John McCain accomplished.

Conclusion. It's been known for some time that Obama is less effective in debate and townhall forums than he should be. One of the reasons why I thought he should take up McCain's challenge to do 10 townhall debates is that I thought Obama would get better at them as he moved along. At this point, Obama needs to improve his "debating" performance dramatically without the benefit of much practice. And he needs it pretty badly.

McCain Faking It on Religion

In certain ways, tonight's "values showdown" between John McCain and Barack Obama is going to be a farce. That's because no one can be a very good Christian and devote their whole souls (as they must) to winning election in a large, contentious country like the United States.

But it's a particular problem for McCain because he's faking it. I'm not saying that McCain's an atheist like I am, but McCain appears "uneasy — even forced" when he is called upon to discuss his Christian beliefs because his faith tank is on "E" and he's unwilling to fill up.

McCain's religion is all about politics.

After killing off his 2000 campaign when he said that Falwell and Robertson were "agents of intolerance," McCain wasn't going to get burned by religion again.

So McCain did a 180 degree turn. Just as George Wallace promised that he wouldn't be "outsegged" after a gubernatorial defeat in Alabama, McCain decided that he wouldn't be "out Jesused" the next time he ran for president.

McCain announced his affiliation with the more evangelical Baptists. He also started to make promises to the Christian right in terms of judicial appointments, made his peace with Falwell, and sought the support of megachurch ministers like John Hagee.

It was all calculated. It was all phony. And it's all been successful so far.

The religious right knew that McCain was not being sincere but McCain showed them enough obeisance that the right also accepted that McCain would not be an enemy.

At that point, they could rally around McCain as the "anybody but a Democrat" choice.

And McCain got bonus points from the national media for his insincere pandering. McCain was so utterly unconvincing in his reconciliation with the Christian right that his media friends viewed McCain's discomfort as a sign of his basic integrity.

In other words, McCain's lying became a symbol of his honesty.

I'm not sure that will work for Rick Warren's made for television event tonight.

Obama is up to his eyeballs in religion and much of his success as a speaker comes from his being so immersed in the traditions of the black church (yes, the creepy Jeremiah Wright's black church).

There's a good chance that McCain's cynicism and insincerity will look poorly in comparison.

The Sport of Kings at the Olympics

Great win by Usain Bolt in the 100 meters.

Too bad about American Tyson Gay flaming out in the semis.

Gay's originally from Lexington, KY (Lafayette High School) and has done and said all the right things during his track career. Having suffered a hamstring injury during the Trials, Gay didn't have the conditioning necessary for the big burst needed to be competitive at the Games.

But the really big event on Friday was the men's shot put which was won by Tomasz Majewski of Poland with a heave of 21.51 meters.

American shotputters were favored to sweep but did poorly. Christian Cantwell got the silver on his last throw, but world champion Reese Hoffa was a full meter behind at 20.53. The best known American shotputter, Adam Nelson, didn't even make the finals because of fouls.

Postscript: RSI's neighbors back in Waverly, NY still have warm memories of RSI grunting away hour after hour as he worked on his form as a high school and college shotputter.

Those were the days.

A Big Surprise for Obama's VP?

Patrick Ruffini claims that Obama might be doing a massive head-fake with his VP pick and might nominate Hillary after all.

I've been wondering about the same thing.

Ruffini emphasizes that nominating Hillary would have a galvanizing effect on the Democratic convention--

"Clinton receiving upwards of 40% on the first ballot and then being chosen as the VP could enhance the "catharsis." Obama would simply be bowing to the will of Democratic Convention-goers."

Ruffini's on the right track. Hillary Clinton has a number of other advantages as well.

Above all, Hillary knows how to be an effective team player from her twenty years as Bill Clinton's first lady in Arkansas and the White House.

That itself is worth its weight in gold.

Hillary is also extremely knowledgeable in both domestic and foreign policy. She would be a knockout as Obama's "prime surrogate" and would represent Obama well in debates.

Finally, Hillary would be a valuable person to have in an Obama administration.

But there's still the Bill problem.

Ruffini suggests that Bill Clinton take an eight-week vacation in Tahiti.

My thought is that Bill should develop an interest in deep sea exploration instead.

American Neo-Cons vs Aggressive Nationalists

There's no end to the prominent figures in the neo-conservative movement who advocate a hardline policy toward Russia. Of course, there's John McCain and Dick Cheney (who's probably growing much more comfortable with the idea of John McCain as president). John Bolton got a long op-ed published in the Telegraph today while other neo-conservatives have been filling up cyber-space with their reflections on Russian aggression and Western appeasement.

But that brings a question to mind?

What would McCain, Cheney, Bolton, William Kristol, Max Boot, Robert Kagan, and Robert Kaplan have done if they were Russians? How would these figures have responded to Georgia's incursian into the territory of South Ossetia if they were working for the Russian version of the American Enterprise and giving advice to Putin and Medvedev instead of Bush and Cheney?

There's a variety of questions that need to be answered here. Would a Russian Bolton have accepted any Georgia had right to invade South Ossetia? Or would he have considered any Russian softness as "appeasement? If a Russian Bolton would he have accepted the dislodging of Russian peacekeepers from their posts, or would he have considered the "molesting" of Russia's "brave men" to be an excellent pretext for retaliation against Georgia.

And finally, would a Russian Bolton be eager to withdraw from Georgia now that there is a cease-fire? Or would he have been eager to demonstrate Russian strength, resolve, and will to the Georgians and their American sponsors?

The answer should be obvious. If the John Bolton, William Kristol, and other neo-conservatives had been on the Russian side of the Russia/Georgia dispute, they would have strongly advocated everything the Russians ended up doing. They would have argued for an armed response to the Georgian incursion into South Ossetia. They also would have backed the expansion of the Russian military advance into Georgia proper. Likewise, the neo-cons would have been reluctant to respond to "Western pressure" withdraw.

The main evidence for this conclusion is that John Bolton himself made it clear that he thought Russian actions were more appropriate than either the European or American response.

Fear was one reaction Russia wanted to provoke, and fear it has achieved, not just in the “Near Abroad” but in the capitals of Western Europe as well. But its main objective was hegemony, a hegemony it demonstrated by pledging to reconstruct Tskhinvali, the capital of its once and no-longer-future possession, South Ossetia. The contrast is stark: a real demonstration of using sticks and carrots, the kind that American and European diplomats only talk about.

From Bolton's point of view, the Russians know how to play the power game of carrots and sticks as John Bolton himself would play the game.

In fairness to Russia, it at least still seems to understand how to exercise power in the Council, which some other Permanent Members often appear to have forgotten.

Matthew Yglesias notes the "deep admiration" ofAmerican hawks for "global bad actors." That's because American hawks are actually like a lot of "global bad actors" in being aggressive nationalists. Indeed, the influence of the neo-cons on American foreign policy has made the United States a "bad actor" which launches unprovoked invasions of other countries, engages in the widespread torture of terrorist suspects, and maintains a complicated system of off-shore prisons (Guantanamo) and torture out-sourcing to countries like Romania.

One of the outcomes of Russia's conduct is that we can get a clear view of the bullying viciousness of our own aggressively nationalistic foreign policy elites in Russia's conduct toward the Georgians.

Needless to say, it's not a pretty sight.

Tippecanoe and Johnny McCain Too

Rich Lowry of the National Review Online worries that McCain's (potential) nomination of Joe Lieberman for VP would be "desperate" and "gimmicky," and compares McCain to William Henry ("Tippecanoe") Harrison in 1840.

I don't think so.

Lieberman's the natural choice because he's a "McCain guy" who's absolutely loyal. Lieberman is also an ideal surrogate who is probably more consistently supportive of John McCain's positions than McCain himself.

Actually, the desperation might have been in McCain's efforts to get comfortable with a potential vice-presidential nominee who isn't a member of the Democratic Party like Lieberman.

But, after trying on Mitt Romney, Bobby Jindal, Sarah Pahlin, Tim Pahlenty, Eric Cantor, Tom Ridge, and other Republican stalwarts, McCain came to the same conclusion as the rest of the country--

McCain just doesn't like Republicans.

I'll Slit My Wrists

Well, maybe not. But if Obama nominates Joe Biden as his Veep, I'll definitely think about it.

The Vitality of Pakistani Democracy

Pakistan certainly has a mountain of problems. But Pakistan's democracy is vital enough that Pakistan's regional government are moving forward with impeachment charges in order to drive President Pervez Musharraf from office.

The push for Musharraf's removal gained steam this month, with three of Pakistan's four provincial assemblies calling for him to step down or face impeachment. Lawmakers in a fourth province, Balochistan, have indicated they'll vote soon on a similar resolution. The resolutions are non-binding, but they signal a growing drumbeat by Pakistani lawmakers to pressure the politically embattled president to leave office.

Can American democracy claim a comparable accomplishment in relation to the Bush administration?

I don't believe so.

How to Handle Right-Wing Smearing

Right-wing sludge merchant Jerome R. Corsi has finally come out with his hit book on Barack Obama entitled The Case Against Barack Obama.

Media accounts suggest that Corsi's assault on Obama rests primarily on the old right-wing stand-by of "murder by innuendo." For example, Corsi suggests that Obama has

“yet to answer” whether he “stopped using marijuana and cocaine completely in college, or whether his drug usage extended to his law school days or beyond.” “How about in the U.S. Senate?”

When Corsi's critics point out that Obama has stated flatly that he did not use illegal drugs after the age of 20, Corsi just blow them off by saying that “self-reporting, by people who have used drugs, as to when they stopped is inherently unreliable.”

To be perfectly honest, I've always admired the way that chronic liars like Corsi can make stuff up like that on the spot.

But it's still garbage. Corsi wants us to believe that he is speaking truthfully even though he has no evidence to support his claims. Then, on top of that, Corsi refuses to allow Obama's own evidence to count. Who said being a smear artist didn't take a lot of brass.

The classic question then comes up concerning how Obama should respond. Should the Obama campaign stay quiet in order to avoid giving Corsi publicity? Or should they respond forcefully to make sure that large numbers of voters don't start believing what Corsi says?

One of the reasons why the Kerry campaign foundered is that they waited too long to respond to the Swift Boat smears. As a result, the Obama campaign has launched an energetic counter-attack, demanding that an Obama surrogate be given air time to rebut Corsi's charges every time Corsi appears on television and distributing a lengthy point by point rebuttal.

Yuval Levin of the National Review Online responds that Corsi's case might be so lame that Obama doesn't really need to respond.

However, the fact that Corsi's book is being published by former Cheney staffer Mary Matalin in her current role as an editor for Regnery Press is an indication that the Republicans are going to use Corsi's smears as a cornerstone of their fall media campaign.

In this context, the Obama campaign is not only right to insist on rebutting those charges, but would also be within their rights to portray Corsi as part of a broader Republican Party that has little to offer but campaign stunts and vicious smear campaigns. Whether Corsi's effective or not, Corsi's writing is part of a broader tradition of Republican smear campaigns and an integral part of Republican strategy for presidential elections.

Juan Cole on Bush/Putin Analogies

Juan Cole has an article in Salon about how the Bush administration's gutting of international law provided cover for Russia's attack on Georgia.

Amen to that.

But the next question concerns what to do about a situation in which the bigger powers recognize no authority higher than the aspirations of their neo-cons/aggressive nationalists.

The starting point for solutions to the U. S. invasion of Iraq, Georgia's attack on South Ossetia, and Russian invasion of Georgia should be increasing the costs for the aggressive parties.

One way to deter aggressive nationalists is to stress the high costs and humiliating failures of adventures like Serbia's attack on Bosnia, the U. S. invasion of Iraq, and Georgia's assault on South Ossetia. "Iraq" needs to replace "Munich" as the key analogy for thinking about foreign policy.

A second strategy is to strengthen the international legal framework in ways that make unsanctioned attacks like the American invasion of Iraq into war crimes and provide a system of penalties for the nations involved.

There's also a need to emphasize is the value of "entangling bureaucratic process" over "decisive action" in foreign policy. Events of the last twenty years have highlighted the need for more bureaucracy, more negotiations, more compromise, and a lot less eagerness to "go it alone." The EU has become the best model for getting things done and we need to adjust our values accordingly.

Flunkies to Georgia: McCain's Latest Campaign Stunt

John McCain's latest campaign stunt is sending deputies Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham to Georgia. In a way, it's pretty weird. McCain wants to show himself as a "man of action," but Lieberman and Graham aren't actually going to be doing anything.

Unless one considers pulling another campaign stunt as "doing something."

But, McCain's Georgia gambit is also very revealing.

If McCain wins, he might end up deciding that pulling off a perpetual string of campaign stunts might be the only way he can govern. Where Clinton and George W. governed through the "permanent campaign," McCain might have to govern through "endless campaign stunts."

That's because the U. S. has few options in situations like Georgia. The U. S. doesn't want to settle the war on terms favorable to Russia because we don't want to look like we're appeasing Russia. At the same time, we don't have the military capacity to either force the Russians to change their course or punish them.

In other words, all we can do is make "symbolic gestures" to signal our disapproval to the Russians.

McCain seems to view the need to make "symbolic gestures" as an opportunity to pull a campaign stunt. Given that McCain would be reduced to making symbolic gestures on Iraq, the economy, health, energy, and other issues if he were elected president, he would probably end up pulling a lot of these stunts.

Colin Powell Speaks for All Americans

At least Colin Powell speaks for all Americans when he says that he does not "have time to waste on Bill Kristol’s musings.”

The Solution to Georgia--Use the Kosovo Precedent

The solution to the gathering Georgia impasse is popular sovereignty for South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Nobody in the Georgian government, the U. S., or the EU likes that solution because it probably favors the Russians.

But popular sovereignty for South Ossetia and Abkhazia is inevitable. Internationally monitored elections should be held so that the populations of these two enclaves can decide whether they want to be independent, remain a part of Georgia, or become part of Russia.

And everyone should respect their decisions.

After all, this is what the U. S. and its allies did in Kosovo. The U. S. recently recognized Kosovo as an independent nation because the population of Kosovo rejected affiliation with Serbia. Given that the populations of South Ossetia and Abkhazia reject affiliation with Georgia, they should be allowed to go their own way as well.

The EU and American government want to conduct negotiations under the assumption that Georgia should maintain its current territorial boundaries.

But its too late for that.

Georgia has never exercised sovereign control over South Ossetia and Abkhazia and its certain that the two enclaves aren't ever going to acknowledge Georgian sovereignty now.

Neither will the Russians.

The proper way to facilitate the legitimate withdrawal of South Ossetia and Abkhazia from Georgia is to hold elections to determine what the populations of these countries want.

The U. S. and the E.U. will initially resist elections and secession because it appears to reward the Russians. But rewarding or punishing the Russians is a secondary matter. The primary issue is finding a stable solution to the problems of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Holding elections provides the best hope for a stable solution.

The Shoot People Reflex

Too bad about the murder of Bill Gwatney, the Democratic Party chairman in Arkansas. Although Gwatney was a political figure, the murder doesn't seem to be political in any liberal vs conservative or Democrats vs Republicans way. After shooting Gwatney, it appears that the shooter went to Arkansas Baptist Headquarters (likely a conservative venue) and pointed a gun "at the building manager." He also reportedly said that he "lost his job." It will be interesting to see what was actually going on with the shooter, but what worries me is the number of people who are dealing with personal crisis by shooting strangers.

The Barna Group Poll and the McCain Campaign

The Barna Group, which focuses on polling religious voters, came out with the results of a new survey tonight.

Here are some of the highlights:

1. Obama's Lead is Not That Much Less Than Expected. As is the case with every other poll, the Barna group shows Obama ahead--this time by 43-34. But their last poll two months ago had Obama up 50-35. So, the Barna group views the race as "tightening." What's significant is that Obama's ahead by 9. The "tightening" may be completely a result of Obama losing the post-clinching "bump" he had early in June. Moreover, the 9 point margin is pretty close to the 11.8 lead the Democrats have in the generic Congressional ballot. Obama might be closing the gap on the generic Democrat.

There's more good news for Obama in the breakdown between "likely" and "registered" voters. The Barna group shows Obama with a 9 point lead among "likely" voters. The lead expands to 14 (43-29%) if registered voters are included and the Obama campaign has been working overtime to register new voters.

2. McCain Not Gaining. The big movement in the poll was from Obama to undecided with the proportion of "undecideds" increasing from 15% to 21%. The problem for McCain is that he has not been able to increase his own support even though his negative advertising has been effective in creating doubts about Obama. So far, John McCain has not defined a compelling reason for undecided voters to switch their votes to him.

3. The McCain Embarrassment Hidden in the Numbers. The Barna group breaks down its sample into nineteen different religious groups. Being 9 points behind, it's not surprising that McCain is behind in most of the religious groups. Obama leads among

non-evangelical born again Christians (43% to 31%); notional Christians (44% to 28%); people aligned with faiths other than Christianity (56% to 24%); atheists and agnostics (55% to 17%); Catholics (39% vs. 29%); and Protestants (43% to 34%).

McCain only leads among evangelical voters (61-17%) but that's only an 8% slice of the total electorate and McCain's lead has been falling even among that group.

The embarrassment for McCain is that his lead among evangelicals has nothing to do with his own campaigning which has not been reaching out to evangelicals since he denounced Rev. John Hagee in June. For all the good that John McCain's presidential campaign is doing in attracting votes, McCain might as well not be campaigning at all.

If McCain wants to be president, he has get a lot better at being something besides the "un-Obama."

A Place for the Pumpkin Papers

This is a notification for anyone seeking to hide top secret documents. The RSI family now has a pumpkin growing in its backyard. In another month, it will be ready for the next generation of "Pumpkin Papers."

Why Not Invite Russia Into NATO?

According to MSNBC, the Bush administration, NATO, and the G-8 are considering what they all can do to "punish" for their actions in Georgia.

But we don't really have any leverage for punishing the Russians. Boycotting scheduled joint NATO/Russia military exercises or booting Russia out of the G-8 won't work. The boost that Russia's nationalists get from "standing up to the U. S." easily trumps the petty embarrassments we can dish out. More important, these kinds of minor punishments don't make any progress on resolving the tensions between Russia and the former Soviet bloc states along its borders.

Let's try something different then.

Why not invite Russia to apply for membership in NATO along with Ukraine, Georgia, and other former Soviet bloc states that want to get in?

Letting the Russians and other former Soviet bloc states into NATO has significant advantages that should not be overlooked. Most importantly, bringing Russia and the former Soviet bloc states into NATO gives them all a common organizational framework within which they can work out their issues with democratization, minority populations, and natural resources. NATO isn't strong enough to provide the military protection Ukraine and Georgia want. But, NATO can give the parties a framework for working on their problems in a productive way. After the wars in the Balkans, Chechnya, and Georgia, everybody should recognize the depth of the problems in the former Soviet bloc states and be willing to start a long-term effort to develop solutions. A NATO framework with regular meetings, joint military exercises, and requirements for democratization can provide an organizational basis for dealing with short-term flare-ups and engaging in the long-term negotiations necessary to develop solutions.

It could be argued that letting Russia into NATO would be rewarding them for bad behavior or appeasing them. The neo-cons already view the Bush administration's failure to militarily confront Russia as a form of appeasement that is just as cowardly as Neville Chamberlain ceding the Sudentenland to Hitler in 1938.

But the American public should have learned something about aggressive nationalism from our own neo-cons. In particular, neo-cons like Dick Cheney or John Bolton detest the constraints put on the U. S. by international organizations like the U.N. or NATO. They also have an intense dislike of negotiations, compromise, and cooperation with other countries on any terms other than those dictated by the U. S. In other words, they hate anything that ends up constraining our ability to do anything we want. They don't like the ICC, the Geneva conventions against war crimes, or the constraints that our NATO allies have put on our military operations. They get the creeps every time they think that France has a say in the ability of the U. S. to wage wars.

Russian nationalists are the same way--suspicious of alliances, negotiations, or anything else that constraints the ability of Russia to "recapture its rightful place in the world." The same is the case with aggressive nationalists everywhere. They think they should be able to do whatever they want and get enormously frustrated by any kind of constraint.

From this perspective, offering Russia membership in NATO would be the ultimate punishment that we could inflict on the aggressive nationalists in Russia's political and military elite. NATO membership would place the Russians in a huge bureaucracy with large numbers of boring meetings, seemingly useless rules and requirements, and a tremendous bias against quick action. Just think of it. Hot-blooded Russian nationalists would have to spend whole careers listening to French, German, and Dutch diplomats, being "actively engaged" in committees, and attending any number of NATO ceremonies and commemorations.

Far from rewarding Russia's most aggressive policy-makers, NATO membership will give them the boredom that they deserve almost as much as they dread.

In the meantime, NATO will provide a basis for gradually working out the difficulties that Russian nationalists and American neo-cons wanted to go to war over.

Putin: The New Neo-Con Ideal

Perhaps some neo-conservatives are getting ready to shift their loyalties from Israeli Likud to Russia's Vladimir Putin.

If Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin were president of the United States, would Iran try to build a nuclear bomb? Would Pakistan provide covert aid to al-Qaeda? Would Hugo Chavez train terrorists in Venezuela? Would leftover nationalities with delusions of grandeur provoke the great powers? Just ask Georgia's President Mikheil Saakashvili, who now wishes he never tried to put his 4 million countrymen into strategic play.

In January I urged Americans to draft the Russian leader to succeed George W Bush (Putin for president of the United States, January 8, 2008). Putin's swift and decisive action in Georgia reflects precisely the sort of decisiveness that America requires

Of course, neo-cons always have the option of moving to countries they admire.

New Elections for Georgia!

Russian President Dimitry Medvedev announced a halt to military operations inside Georgia.

"I have reached a decision to halt the operation to force the Georgian authorities to peace . . . The aggressor has been punished and has incurred very significant losses. Its armed forces are disorganized."

Of course, "announcing a halt to military operations" and actually "halting" could turn out to be different things. But taking the Russians at their word, then what?

From CNN's announcement, Russia wants three things:

1. A demilitarized zone around South Ossetia to deter future attacks;

2. That Georgian peacekeepers be removed from the previously joint Russian/ Georgian peacekeeping force in South Ossetia;

3. That President Saakashvili be removed from office.

The point about removing President Saakashvili is something the U. S. should insist on as well.

Saakashvili's decision to attack South Ossetia was a monumental blunder that brought enormous harm to Georgia and risked creating a military confrontation between the U. S. and Russia.

At the very least, we should suggest to our Georgian friends that they hold new elections.

Getting the Georgia Story Straight

Neo-conservative stalwart Robert Kagan (of the Kagan family of neo-conservatives that includes his father Donald Kagan, brother Frederick Kagan and sister-in-law Kimberly Kagan) writes that we should ignore the circumstances behind the current Russian invasion of Georgia.

The details of who did what to precipitate Russia's war against Georgia are not very important. Do you recall the precise details of the Sudeten Crisis that led to Nazi Germany's invasion of Czechoslovakia? Of course not, because that morally ambiguous dispute is rightly remembered as a minor part of a much bigger drama.

But what are the details that precipitated "Russia's war against Georgia?" This is an extremely important question for American policy-makers and public opinion. The top priority is to get the Russian military to end their invasion and retreat to their initial positions in South Ossetia and Russia proper. But after that nailing down the details of what precipitated the war is extremely important to evaluating the role of our own government in this fiasco, evaluating our stance toward Georgia as a potential ally and client state, and determining the stance that the U. S. should take toward Russia as a possible long-term rival.

Obviously, the problem of how to deal with Russia is going to be the most important issue. But before we decide about Russia, we need to evaluate the role of the Georgian government and possibly our own government in precipitating the war.

Some Details. It is well-known is that the Georgian military attacked the breakaway enclave of South Ossetia and moved into the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali. It is almost as well known that the South Ossetians are much more favorably disposed toward Russia than they are toward Georgia and that Russian peacekeepers were stationed in South Ossetia.

It is apparent that Georgia attacked Russian peacekeepers as part of their offensive into South Ossetia. The Russians also accuse the Georgians of ethnic cleansing and war crimes (and the Georgians should be prosecuted for those war crimes if they occurred).

It was only after the Georgians took control of Tskhinvali that the Russians attacked.

Far from considering these details to be unimportant, they should be examined closely.

The U. S. Government. The first detail that an "incompetence weary" American nation needs to consider is the performance of the Bush administration. To what extent did the Bush administration know of the Georgia government's plans to invade South Ossetia? If Bush's people did know of Georgia's plans, did they do anything to approve of those plans? Was there any quid pro quo agreement that the U. S. would back Georgia on South Ossetia if Georgia sent troops to Iraq (Georgia had 2,000 troops in Iraq)? Even worse, did the U. S. government do anything to encourage the Georgia government in their thinking or goad them to attack?

In other words, was the U. S. government seeking to "test" or "provoke" the Russians by encouraging our proxy Georgia to move against the Russian proxy of South Ossetia.

Given the Bush administration's record of recklessness, the possibility has to be acknowledged and investigated.

Georgia. It is also important to understand the thinking of the Georgian government of President Mikhail Saakashvili as it decided to attack South Ossetia. Why did Georgia think it would be able to succeed in their attack and reintegrate South Ossetia into Georgia despite the opposition of the South Ossetian population and the Russians? Given that Russia is much larger and much more militarily powerful than Georgia, why did the Georgian government believe that the Russians would be either inclined or able to effectively retaliate.

These are important questions because it appears on the surface that the Georgian government was incredibly stupid and reckless in deciding to invade South Ossetia.

Some quick comparisons to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait illustrate the point because Georgia is in a much worse position compared to Iraq when Iraq challenged the U. S.

When Saddam Hussein launched his invasion of Kuwait, he thought he had an implicit go-ahead from U. S. ambassador April Glaspie. Georgia had no such implicit gesture from Russia. The Iraqis also had more than 500,000 troops who had been battle-tested in a long war with Iran and could see itself as a real challenge for the American military. Georgia's army has 26,000 soldiers and outdated Soviet-era weapons to boot. Finally, Kuwait was thousands of miles away from the territory of the United States and it would take months for the U. S. to move sufficient forces into the theater to dislodge the Iraqis. South Ossetia is on Russia's border and it didn't even take one day for the Russians to generate an overwhelming response.

So why did Georgia think they could win?

So far, liberal writers are the ones most willing to speculate. Fred Kaplan of Slate reports that the Georgians believed that the U. S. would ride to their rescue because of the Bush administration's eagerness to promote Georgia entry into NATO and beef up the Georgia military. But how was the U. S. going to get enough of an army into isolated Georgia to fully engage the Russians who are in neighboring territory?

Matthew Yglesias speculates that the Georgians believed that the Russians did not want to invade Georgia proper or that the Georgians thought they could close the only road from Russia to South Ossetia. But why would the Georgians think the Russians would not want to punish them given that Georgia has been a consistent thorn in the Russian's side--unless they thought the U. S. would rescue them?

What all of this gets down to is that the Georgia government was not capable of making even the most elementary calculations of self-interest as they were launching a war that was likely to draw in a powerful neighbor.

That's bad enough for Georgia and it looks like the Georgians will spend several years rebuilding from the damage caused by the war.

But there's more to it. In its thoughtlessness, the Georgian government also thought it would drag the United States into a confrontation with Russia.

Thanks but no thanks. That's inexcusable in an ally and client state. As the major partner in any U. S./Georgia alliance, the U. S. should be the ones dictating the terms of any actions of Georgia in relation to a major U. S. rival like the Russians.

The fact that Georgia did this on their own is an indication that the Georgian government does not have the savvy and maturity needed to be a long-term American ally.

After this confrontation is resolved, the U. S. should drop its connection with Georgia. It's bad enough that we have a recklessly dumb government of our own. The last thing we need is dumb allies.

More Roads to Iraq, Less to Munich

For American neo-conservatives, all foreign policy roads lead back to Neville Chamberlain's "appeasement" of Hitler at Munich. Saddam Hussein was about Munich, Iran is about Munich, North Korea is about Munich, and Hamas and Hezbollah are all about Munich as well. Thus, it's no surprise that neo-cons like Robert Kagan and William Kristol responded to Russia's invasion of Georgia with well-worn "Munich analogies."

But now there's a rival analogy--the "Iraq analogy" that threatens to make Munich even less valid as a historical analogy than ever.

Let me explain.

Part of the reason Hitler's Germany could invade nation after nation was that the Nazis could not imagine that a "successful invasion" would entail so many costs that it would be a disaster for the invader.

After the American experience in Iraq, that's no longer possible.

Invading and taking over Iraq was easy. But occupying Iraq has been enormously costly to the U. S. in terms of military resources, domestic unity, and international prestige. Bogged down in Iraq, the Bush people had to give up their ambitions to invade Iran, Syria, and other Muslim nations and ended up barely being able to carry the Iraq occupation forward over domestic opposition.

The U. S. has been so weakened by the Iraq occupation that there has been no idea of responding to the Russian invasion of Georgia with military force. Or penalyzing the Russians at all.

However, the Iraq analogy applies to Russia as well. If the Russian government actually tries to enact a full take-over in Georgia, it's easy to imagine that the Russians will be the ones badly weakened by all the effort it takes to sustain the occupation.

In other words, if the United States really learns from the lessons of Iraq, we won't really mind if our big-power rivals like Russia and China to invade annoying little countries like Georgia.

That way, they'll end up bleeding themselves dry.

The Depth of McCain Incompetence

It appears that John McCain cribbed a couple of passages from today's speech on the situation in Georgia from Wikipedia.

Here's the passages (from Political Insider):

First instance:

"one of the first countries in the world to adopt Christianity as an official religion (Wikipedia)

vs.

one of the world's first nations to adopt Christianity as an official religion" (McCain)

Second instance:

After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Georgia had a brief period of independence as a Democratic Republic (1918-1921), which was terminated by the Red Army invasion of Georgia. Georgia became part of the Soviet Union in 1922 and regained its independence in 1991. Early post-Soviet years was marked by a civil unrest and economic crisis. (Wikipedia)

vs.

After a brief period of independence following the Russian revolution, the Red Army forced Georgia to join the Soviet Union in 1922. As the Soviet Union crumbled at the end of the Cold War, Georgia regained its independence in 1991, but its early years were marked by instability, corruption, and economic crises. (McCain)

We know John McCain didn't do this plagiarism himself because McCain doesn't know how to use a computer.

But McCain's speechwriter (probably Mark Salter) appears to know so little about Georgia that he had to go to an online encyclopedia for information and is such a poor writer that he had to plagiarize.

The problem for McCain here is that the only expertise his campaign appears to have access to is his own.

What happens if McCain's elected president?

The End of Civilization as We Know It

The End of the World is at Hand. No, not because Obama is the anti-christ. It's worse than that. Miss Teen RSI and her friends actually have Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" on their Ipods. What's next--Duran Duran?

The Russians Can Be Neo-Cons Too

The Russians seem to have adopted the "Ledeen Doctrine" from American neo-conservative Michael Ledeen.

"Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business."

Substitute "Russia" for the United States and that's pretty much what Russia's doing to Georgia right now--throwing a "crappy little country against the wall" to "show the world they mean business."

Russia/Georgia: The Political Entrepreneur's War

The Russian attack on the Georgia is all about political entrepreneurs seizing their opportunities to make a very bad situation worse.

How bad is the situation in Georgia?

First a Little History.

Georgia was formed out of the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991.

But South Ossetia didn't want to be part of Georgia any more than Georgia wanted to be part of the Russian Confederation.

As a result, South Ossetia rebelled in 1992 and established itself as an autonomous "breakaway republics" with Russian help.

Eventually, Russian peacekeepers were introduced into South Ossetia to keep the two sides apart.

The Four-Cornered Mess.

Side 1. South Ossetia seeks independence and has allied itself with the Russians against Georgia's authority.

Side 2. The Russians have been eager to help South Ossetia because they want to be the predominate power in the Caucasus region. They also have a grudge against Georgia for their original secession.

Side 3. Georgia wants to re-establish its authority in South and has sought an alliance with the United States as a counter-weight to the South Ossetian alliance with Russia. Georgia has been trying to join NATO as a way to make their problems with Russia into America's and Europe's problems with Russia.

Side 4. American neo-conservatives have welcomed Georgia with open arms because they want to extend American influence around Russia's borders and because they want to block the Russians as often as they can.

The Action Commences.

For some reason, President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia decided that he had an opportunity to attack South Ossetia militarily and re-establish Georgian sovereignty. So, Georgia attacked and at least temporarily seized the capital of South Ossetia. But Georgia has a tough calculation to make. The Russians have a peacekeeping force in South Ossetia and could be expected to react to an attack on their peacekeepers if nothing else. President Saakashvili must have calculated that "international pressure" would keep the Russian counter-attack from being very effective.

But Saakashvili was very mistaken.

It turns out that the Russians viewed the Georgian attack on South Ossetia as a golden opportunity to take "a miserable country like Georgian and throw them up against the wall" as a way to demonstrate Russian power.

And that's what Russia's been doing as they've not only repulsed the Georgian offensive against South Ossetia but launched wider attacks inside Georgia. They've been showing Georgia and everybody else who wants to see that defying Russia carries a big price.

What about the United States?

I imagine that most Americans don't care about Georgia and South Ossetia any more than they care about Inner Mongolia. For neo-conservatives however, the Russian attack on Georgia is a golden opportunity to create a permanent Cold War kind of state between the United States and Russia. In general, neo-cons do not want to see countries like Russia and China emerge as "regional powers" with "spheres of influence" around their borders. They view that as a threat to America's status as the only global super-power. As a result, the neo-cons want to treat Russia as an enemy state and view Russian moves against countries like Georgia as equivalent to Russia attacking Canada or France. This is what John McCain is doing with his belligerent statements about the Russians. He's using the South Ossetia situation as an opportunity to define Russia as an enemy and show how tough he would be in the face of that enemy.

And how tough can the U. S. be concerning Russia?

Not very.

The bottom line is that there's no support in the U. S. for a military confrontation with Russia over Georgia and South Ossetia. Besides our military is tied up in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But McCain's not worried about being tough. He wants to establish "talking tough" as the core of American policy with Russia.

Just what we need.

McCain Catches Break with War

Presumptive Republican nominee John McCain is lucky a war broke out yesterday. Otherwise, more people would have noticed that he took a couple of hits from the media today.

In a real surprise, the Wall Street Journal's MarketWatch published a tough opinion piece on how mediocre McCain would be as a president. Author Rex Nutting ripped McCain for his Naval Academy career, fighter pilot performance, running for Congress as a carpetbagger, legislative record, economic ignorance, and relentless self-promotion.

Here's a sample:

McCain says he doesn't understand the economy. He's demonstrated that he doesn't understand the workings of Social Security, or the political history of the Middle East. He doesn't know who our enemies are. He says he wants to reduce global warming, but then proposes ideas that would stimulate -- not reduce -- demand for fossil fuels.

McCain has done one thing well -- self promotion. Instead of working on legislation or boning up on the issues, he's been on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" more than any other guest. He's been on the Sunday talk shows more than any other guest in the past 10 years. He's hosted "Saturday Night Live" and even announced his candidacy in 2007 on "The Late Show with David Letterman."

In my opinion, a McCain presidency would be even worse than that. But I have to wonder why this kind of hit piece is appearing in an outlet of the reliably Republican Wall Street Journal. There's lots of possible explanations and several of them could be applicable at the same time. It may be that the business community is becoming more politically diverse and Market Watch is speaking to the Democrats among its customers. There's also a chance that Nutter's article is payback for McCain's efforts against the tobacco industry, Bush's initial tax cuts, and pork-barrel legislation.

But I wonder if the corporate sector as a whole has decided that the Republicans aren't good for big business. The Bush administration's economic policy was mostly limited to tax cutting and deregulation while they've allowed health costs and oil prices to balloon, the deficit to spiral out of control, the dollar to lose much of its value, and the housing market to become a flimsy speculative bubble.

Business might have decided that the Democrats are likely to do better.

The second hit piece came from Arizona reporter Amy Silverman who views McCain as being more of a dishonorable, lying kind of politician than most office-holders. Silverman's major piece of evidence is the way McCain sandbagged Arizona governor Rose Mofford and then gleefully lied about it afterward.

Now, Mofford had been governor for only eight days . . . She was not familiar with the particulars of federal water law. Nor did her staff think she'd be expected to be — just then. But, apparently, Senator James McClure, a Republican from Idaho, did . . . McClure asked Mofford a series of questions that would leave any water expert's mouth dry. Her staff jumped in to try to answer, but even so, ultimately they had to file an addendum to the testimony . . .

"During lunch, McCain said, almost with mischievous glee, that he had slipped some highly technical questions to [James McClure] to ask Mofford — questions she wouldn't be prepared to answer or expected to answer.

"Flabbergasted, I asked McCain why would he want to sabotage Mofford's testimony, when in fact the CAP was the nonpartisan pet of Republicans and Democrats . . . since its inception.

"His reply, as near as I remember, was, 'I'll embarrass a Democrat any time I get the chance.'

"The lunch continued in strained chit-chat. We then walked back to McCain's office, where a few reporters, all of them from Arizona papers, as I recall, were waiting. One said there was a rumor McCain had tried to sabotage Mofford's testimony, to which he said something like, 'I'd never do anything like that.'"

According to Silverman, it's McCain's ability to adapt a self-righteous posture precisely when he was lying about a bit of his own nasty work that makes him a despicable character. She also writes about McCain's nasty jokes about women, McCain's betrayal of Barry Goldwater, and manipulation of his relationship with the dying Mo Udall for political purposes.

All in all, it's an ugly picture of John McCain as a man and as a politician.

For now, the WSJ Market Watch article and Amy Silverman's profile aren't going to have any impact because of events in South Ossetia.

But they may still come back to haunt McCain as media attention begins to focus on the question of whether John McCain is qualified to be president.

Short-List Joe

According to the Financial Times, Joe Lieberman is on John McCain's VP short list and being vetted.


No surprise there.


In many ways, Joe Lieberman is exactly that McCain wants in a VP candidate. More than anything else, Lieberman is a loyalist who McCain can count on to carry his water. Lieberman also has national name recognition that Tim Pawlenty, Bobby Jindal, and Sarah Palin don't have. He has experience in a national campaign from the 2000 and 2004 campaigns. Finally, Lieberman is very smooth with the mainstream media.


It's easy to envision McCain using Lieberman in an unorthodox way. Instead of Joe campaigning on his own like other VP candidates, McCain could have Lieberman travel with him and serve as chief surrogate, minder, and friend all at once. Like Richard II, McCain "need[s] friends" and needs to have them by his side. McCain tends to get off track with his campaign principles and talking points. But he can count on Lieberman to stick with the McCain line even if he himself can't.

The only reason McCain hesitates with Lieberman is that Joe is a Democrat whose liberal social views (pro-choice on abortion, etc.) would set off a firestorm among social conservatives.

But it's not as if McCain either likes or respects social conservatives.

So, it could be Joe.

Obama's Moving Goalposts

Commentators keep moving the goalposts on Obama.

Newly converted to the Obama cause out of his disgust with McCain, Joe Klein of Time is worried that "the zeitgeist of the race is headed toward sewage and mockery" Obama "has been [too much] on the defensive since he returned from his overseas trip."

Hey, I'm worried about that too.

Klein also wants Obama to do a series of townhall meetings with McCain and claims that "if Obama is going to win, he's got to demonstrate, in the most dramatic forum possible, that he has the brains and disposition to be President."

But all that adds up to is moving the goalpost for Obama.

Most commentators assumed that Obama couldn't beat someone with Hillary Clinton's name recognition, reputation, and organization. But Obama out-organized her, outhustled her, and won.

A lot of people were worried that Obama would be derailed by the revelation of Jeremiah Wright's incendiary sermons. But Obama's landmark Philadelphia speech on race showed that he had tremendous crisis-management skills.

McCain started abusing Obama for not having any experience and not traveling to Iraq for two years. But Obama was so successful with foreign leaders and had such a huge event in Berlin that McCain had to start abusing Obama for being a "global celebrity" instead.

Everytime someone has set up a new goal post, Obama has kicked the ball through. Now Joe Klein's setting up townhall debates as another new goal post and claiming that Obama has to crush McCain if he wants to show that he's got what it takes to be president.

But here's the injustice of it all.

Klein's right. Obama's relatively new, relatively inexperienced, and relatively African-American. If Obama wants to "prove" that he's qualified to be president, he should not only agree to the townhall debates, he should seek out every opportunity possible to prove himself against John McCain.

In other words, Obama has to make up his mind that he's going to kick the political football through the goal post every time McCain and the media move it.

It's not fair and it's not a good way to be chosen president. But it's the only way that Obama is going to make a cautious, aging, majority white nation feel "safe" with him as president.

John Edwards: Sanctimonious To the End

Having lived in North Carolina during the late 70's and early 80's, I always thought that John Edwards reminded me of Jim Bakker, the defrocked PTL (Praise the Lord) minister and television host who ended up in jail. There was just something smarmy about Edwards that gave me the creeps and I never considered supporting him even though I agreed with a lot of his "Two Americas" themes.

With the revelation of his affair with Rielle Hunter, it's becoming obvious that I was right to think of Edwards as a sanctimonious creep. It's not so much the affair itself. That's kind of understandable. Top-level married politicians are exposed to a lot of temptation. They travel constantly, spend a great deal of time in hotel rooms, and meet lots of single women who are smart, attractive, and think guys like them are the most interesting people in the world. I know that the affairs of politicians cause tremendous pain for their families, but there's a way in which I don't particularly blame Edwards and other political figures for taking advantage of romantic opportunity, giving into temptation, or whatever it is that gets them into bed with women they're not married to.

What bothers me about Edwards though is that his confession statement about his affair is full of the righteousness that makes him such a questionable character to begin with.

In 2006, I made a serious error in judgment and conducted myself in a way that was disloyal to my family and to my core beliefs. I recognized my mistake, and I told my wife that I had a liaison with another woman, and I asked for her forgiveness . . .

In the course of several campaigns, I started to believe that I was special and became increasingly egocentric and narcissistic. If you want to beat me up feel free. You cannot beat me up more than I have already beaten up myself. I have been stripped bare and will now work with everything I have to help my family and others who need my help."

I translate this statement as "if you want to beat me up feel free, but I'm going to be just as smug a jerk tomorrow as I was before my tawdry affair blew up in my face."

Thanks John, but I'm rather hoping that you'll just disappear now.

Quarterbacking the Obama Campaign

THE CHATTER. It appears that the Democratic chattering classes are nervous about the Obama's response to last week's barrage of negative advertising from John McCain. It's hard to see why. Obama still has his small lead even though McCain got a short-lived bump in the tracking polls. But psychologist Drew Westen has an article in HuffPost about Obama's need to frame a narrative about McCain. New York Sen. Chuck Shumer is less intellectual but equally emphatic that Obama should "respond to John McCain's personal attacks with an equally personal slap." That also seems to be the opinion of a group of "Democratic strategists" interviewd by the Washington Post.

"Democrats are worried," said Tad Devine, a top strategist for Kerry. . . "We've been through two very tough elections at the national level, and it's very easy to lose confidence." Obama's latest ad may be his toughest yet, using words and images to link McCain to President Bush and concluding: "The original maverick? Or just more of the same?"

But Democratic strategists said that it is nothing like the character attacks by McCain, and that the response could be far nastier, perhaps raising McCain's ethical scrape in the Keating Five savings and loan scandal, mocking his family wealth and designer shoes, or highlighting his age. After McCain economic adviser Phil Gramm suggested that the United States has become "a nation of whiners," Democratic strategists said Obama should have immediately started an ad blitz.

THE OBAMA RESPONSE. The Obama campaign's response to Democratic carping is a great deal more dismissive than their response to McCain.

Consultants close to Obama say the Democrat has good reason not to risk his own campaign by following McCain's lead. Because McCain has accepted public financing for the general-election campaign, he must spend all his primary campaign money before the party conventions. Obama is focusing on turning out voters, while airing a mix of positive ads and responses . . . Because Obama opted out of public financing and the spending limits that come with it, he will be free to swamp McCain with television spots in the fall. If he needs to become more negative at that point, he can -- knowing that McCain would be hard pressed to reply. "This is a classic Washington story, anonymous quotes from armchair quarterbacks with no sense of our strategy, data or plan," [the Obama spokesman said].

In other words, the Obama campaign wants to husband their resources and keep their powder dry. Obama's plan is to let McCain attack for now and limit his responses to blunting little firestorms like the Republican "tiregauge" stunt. Then, they'll roll out their full campaign after the party conventions when they'll have a big financial advantage. From the perspective of this "armchair quarterback," it looks like a "landslide strategy" in that Obama is mostly trying to maintain his small lead now with the goal of increasing their lead substantially in September and October.

THE ARMCHAIR PERSPECTIVE. I can see the campaign's perspective. The Obama people have a lead and that lead might be bigger than the polls say because they have had a lot of success in registering new voters. They're working on introducing Obama to a national audience, registering even more new Democratic voters, and preparing the ground for the big fall push. Why should the Obama campaign be unduly distracted by McCain?

The Obama campaign could also argue that McCain pretty much shot his bolt last week. There wasn't much of an effort to follow up on last week's controversies, no striking new anti-Obama ads, no fresh attacks. The Republican consensus is that the McCain campaign needs to keep up the pressure on Obama. But the pressure seems to have eased.

But the armchair quarterbacks still have a point.

As armchair quarterbacks like Shumer point out, the Obama campaign is largely on the defensive. This hasn't been for the Obama campaign as it was for Kerry and Dukakis because Obama himself is an effective counter-puncher. His response to the GOP tire gauge stunt--"It’s like these guys take pride in being ignorant."--was devastating.

At the same time, being on the defensive means that the Obama campaign has not been able to break through the media clutter to promote their own message about a "new kind of politics," "change," "hope," and "responsibility."

Perhaps the Obama campaign would be able to do better at promoting their own message if they could also find a way to keep McCain on the defensive. This doesn't mean that the Obama people have to carpet bomb McCain with attack ads. That would be the old politics. But the Obama campaign could stick with their political uplift message as the "major theme" of their campaign while also establishing a "minor theme" of criticizing McCain's ideas on the war in Iraq, cutting taxes on corporations, and privatizing social security. Being more specifically critical of McCain might open up some space for Obama's own message.

Another problem for the Obama campaign is their "surrogate deficit." The Obama campaign has a complex surrogate problem. On the one hand, Obama has fewer surrogates than McCain and the deficit shows in that there are fewer people definding him. McCain has campaign surrogates like Carly Fiorina, Joe Lieberman, Lindsey Graham, and Mitt Romney. But the Bush administration and the conservative media are serving as surrogates for McCain as well. The Obama campaign has fewer of its own surrogates and John Kerry and Tom Daschle are relatively weak personalities compared to the McCain surrogates. Obama has also worked to prevent Democratic-allied groups from doing any advertising. Another problem is that the Obama campaign provides their surrogrates with talking points that sound great when they come from Obama but pretty bland when they're coming from Kerry and Daschle. The Obama people could use more aggressive surrogates and they need to give their surrogates more independence.

Finally, this armchair quarterback still thinks that Obama should nominate Hillary Clinton as his VP candidate. I know that the chances of her being nominated are miniscule and that she's hard to associate with the "new politics" and that Bill Clinton is a big problem. But Hillary still strikes me as the best person for the VP job.

In relation to the presidential campaign, there's a lot of roles Hillary could perform. Hillary is very disciplined and measured and could be a highly effective surrogate for Obama. Certainly, she could be Obama's best attack dog on McCain in the sense that Hillary could use her massive policy expertise to advocate Obama positions and her gravitas to dismiss Republican snark. Hillary could also be the lead surrogate in defending Obama against McCain's attacks and be much more effective at it than Obama's current surrogates.

Finally, Hillary would be a big asset in Obama's efforts to reach out to non-Obama democrats and independents. Obama's way of doing things was exciting enough with several constituencies that he beat her in the primaries. Adding Hillary to the ticket would make Obama more universally appealing to Democrats and independents.

Certainly, Obama needs to follow his instincts and not change his core campaign strategy to meed the concerns the Monday morning quarterbacking of Democratic politicians, unnamed strategists, and bloggers.

But perhaps adjusting at the margins wouldn't be a bad idea.

Favre to Jets to Oblivion

It looks like Brett Favre is going to sink into oblivion while playing for the New York Jets. The Jets just don't have the (cue deep voice) Lambeau Field cache of the Green Bay Packers.

They don't have the cache of the Tennessee Titans either.

The Jets are a perennial so-so team. True, the addition of Favre will make them a little less so-so the same way Joe Montana made the Chiefs less mediocre way back in the day.

But Favre won't make the Jets good enough to be interesting.

So what's Favre going to do if he wants to keep up the media attention. And, as his "retirement" shows, Favre really wants to keep up the media attention.

Here's where I can help.

If Favre wants to stay in the limelight, Favre should leave his wife for a famous actress, singer, or model.

Let's see. Madonna's taken by Alex Rodriguez. Mariah Carey's about Brett Favre's age, but she'd have to dump her rapper husband.

What about Christiane Amanpour. She's famous, good looking and kind of exotic in an unkempt way.

JUST LIKE BRETT!

Yeah, Brett Favre could divorce his wife and take up with Christiane Amanpour. That's the only way he could stay vital and interesting even though he's playing for the Jets.

Maybe Brett should call Lance Armstrong for tips.

Tanning--Not Just for Humans Anymore

Maybe they get tired of our bird seed, but the RSI family doesn't see much in the way of robins after the spring months. There's plenty of jays, cardinals, finches, and chickadees bumping each other off the bird feeders, along with the stray woodpecker or two. I almost forgot about the crows flying in and out of the woods. We can hear an owl hooting from in the trees as well.

Our property is a regular little society of birds. But the robins stay pretty much to themselves.

Maybe they just don't like the company.

That's why I've been surprised lately to sometimes see two or three robins with their stomachs on our driveway with their wings spread out over the gravel. It only happens on sunny days and the robins look for all the world like they were trying to catch some rays.

Tanning. It's Not Just for Humans Anymore.

UK Dismisses Quarterback

The University of Kentucky football team dismissed junior quarterback Curtis Pulley from the team yesterday. Pulley had a couple of minor scrapes this summer, getting busted for pot and driving with a suspended license.

But according to UK coach Rich Brooks, "new facts" emerged that made it necessary to give Pulley the boot.

It's too bad.

Pulley reminds me of my nephew Vinnie Soprano in my hometown of Waverly, NY (and yes, I am related to the Sopranos). Vinnie constantly got into little scrapes and my sister had to take endless trips to the high school to work out the consequences of his latest misdeeds.

But people in the family never worried much about Vinny because he was a really nice kid. We all agreed that we had done much worse things than Vinny but that Vinny seemed to get caught every time he did something wrong or illegal.

That seems to be the case with Pulley. From all appearances, he's an ok guy who just gets caught a lot.

GOP: Still Time to Nominate Paris

Paris Hilton has a funny video out about John McCain's "Celeb" ad. Actually, it's mostly funny at John McCain's expense.

But the video raises a question. Now that conservatives have decided that being "funny" and "irreverent" is the most important qualification for being president, shouldn't they think about dumping John McCain and nominating Paris for president?

Entering the 51-49 Zone

"On a clear day you can see forever." Unfortunately, today is a murky day in the presidential race. The McCain campaign seemed to gain the initiative with their flurry of negative ads last week but Obama hit Republicans hard today when he said that "these guys take pride in being ignorant." Who knows whether the McCain punches or the Obama counter-punches will have more effect? Looking at the polls doesn't help either. Of the three polls released today, two have Obama in the lead--one McCain. There don't seem to be any debates, foreign tours, important speeches, or other big events on the horizon either.

But the murkiness is much deeper than that. It's a murkiness in the minds of the growing number of swing voters who will ultimately decide the election.

In other words, it seems that many voters have entered the "51-49 Zone." When political observers use the term "51-49," they mean that the last two American presidential elections have been so close that the U. S. has become a "51-49" country. In many ways, the elections are even closer than that because such a large number of voters have trouble making up their minds about the candidates. In other words, a healthy percentage of voters are "51-49" in their own heads as they head into the booth on election day and still aren't very sure of themselves even after they've voted. That's the "51-49" zone.

Given the general unpopularity of the Republican Party, there was a broad expectation that there would be a swing to the Democrats among voters as a whole.

But it appears that more voters are entering the 51-49 zone instead.

The main evidence for this concerns the attitudes toward Obama among white voters. According to Juan Williams, a recent Washington Post poll shows that:

thirty percent of all voters admitted to racial prejudice, and more than a half of white voters categorized Mr. Obama as "risky" (two-thirds judged Mr. McCain the "safe" choice). Yet about 90% of whites said they would be "comfortable" with a black president. And about a third of white voters acknowledged they would not be "entirely comfortable" with an African-American president. Why the contradictory responses? My guess is that some whites are not telling the truth about their racial attitudes.

The numbers are a mass of self-contradiction. "Thirty percent of voters admit to racial prejudice," 90% of white voters "would be comfortable" with a black president, but a third would "not be entirely comfortable." It's a mess and Williams thinks that white voters are lying about their opinions concerning Obama.

I imagine some of those voters are lying. But I also think it's more appropriate to conclude that white voters as a whole have not made up their minds about what they think about race or Obama. Voters will admit to racial prejudice but they also don't like to think of themselves as prejudiced. So 2/3rds of those who said they were "prejudiced" also told pollsters they would be comfortable with an African-American president. But they contradicted themselves on that score as well and many of them admitted that they wouldn't be "entirely comfortable."

In other words, they're not entirely comfortable or entirely uncomfortable.

Of course, the murkiness in the Washington Post poll just applied to race. But July polling indicates that the number of undecided voters has been rising. Quinnipiac and CBS/New York times viewed the number of undecided as increasing from 6-8% to 12-14%. Other estimates were much higher. Gallup estimated that the number of swing voters was 23% and David Moore of Pollster.com thinks the number of swing voters might be over 40%.

Perhaps voters will move one way or another after the party conventions at the end of the month. Some gaffe, blow-up, or major event could move voters to swing toward Obama or McCain as well. I don't think anybody knows what's going to happen. My own current guess is that Obama will pull out a close race for two reasons. The first reason is that Obama is running a more controlled and mature campaign than McCain. As a result, Obama has fewer mistakes, gaffes, and self-contradictions to cast him in a negative light. The second reason is that McCain's campaign is vulnerable to bad news out of the Bush administration and there is generally a steady stream of bad news coming out about Bush scandals, torture, large-scale bankruptcies, and general recession. All of that bad news helps Obama and hurts McCain.

Republican Jesus?

Interesting to see what Republicans are all about. Some enterprising person downloaded the Facebook page of University of Dayton college student Justin Shaffer. Young Mr. Shaffer is the 19 year old son of Rep. Bob Shaffer, a Republican candidate for the Senate in Colorado.

Just in case someone didn't think of Republicans as warmongerers, Justin Shaffer has the above poster of Jesus on his Facebook page. Big gun, hand on trigger, plenty of ammo, Confederate flag--Jesus looks like he's ready for battle in Iraq or Afghanistan.

But is he?

Given that Jesus is wearing a white shirt, a tie, and a jacket, it also would be easy to say that Jesus is ready to take a meeting.

Maybe the Republican Jesus is more about looking tough on Facebook than actually contributing to the military.

Is the Republican Jesus a chickenhawk?

What is Revisionist History?

Recently, Mother Jones used a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain a copy of a Pentagon study of four historical empires--"Military Advantage in History".

The studies can't have been very good.

Dartmouth historian Pamela Crossley describes the section on the Mongols as "an accumulation of popularly transmitted misconceptions."

Of course, any history other than "popularly transmitted misconceptions" is usually seen as "revisionist history."

What Republicans Do Best!

Congress has gone home for an August recess so that members can campaign for re-election. But about a dozen House Republicans are staying behind to occupy the House floor so they can score publicity points for their "Drill Here, Drill Now" energy agenda.

Continuing with their guerilla tactics from last week, House Republicans will be back on the floor Monday to talk gas prices, even though Congress is in recess, and they may stay there all week.

This kind of stunt is pretty clever. There's also a cleverness to Republicans using tire gauges as symbols for ridiculing the moralistic dimension of Obama. John McCain's "Celeb" and "Moses" ads are also ingenious in the ways they use racial stereotyping to make fun of Obama.

And, as usual, the Democrats are slow and uncertain in their responses.

But the last couple of weeks have also witnessed the Republicans at their absolute peak. This kind of humorous publicity-seeking stunts, ridicule, and stereotyping is what the Republicans do best.

When it comes to campaigning, the Republicans are always taking the initiative, clever, funny, and nimble.

But Republican campaign skills have not translated well to running the government.

In fact, one of the defining qualities of the Bush administration has been disinterest. The Bush people just weren't very interested in administering departments like the Department of Justice and Department of Agriculture, managing important programs like FEMA, or seeing after the work of government more generally.

That's a big reason why the Bush administration did such a poor job with Katrina.

As a result, one of the big questions of this election is whether the party that runs a really clever campaign is actually capable of governing.

More Taser Torture Toys in Kentucky

Kentucky State Police are budgeting $170,000 for the purchase of new tasers this year.

Kentucky State Police have spent more than $170,000 on Taser devices and cartridges that troopers will be using by September. The purchases come amid a revenue shortfall that has forced the law enforcement agency to implement cuts, including a reduction in highway patrols to save gasoline and the elimination of driver education manuals that have traditionally been provided free to Kentucky teens.

I've guess the Kentucky State Police have heard about how much fun police can have with tasers. Here's an account from The Root of the death of Baron Pikes who was "tased" nine times before dying.

The grisly details of Baron Pikes' violent death are remarkable. There's the fact that Officer Scott Nugent jammed his Taser into the unarmed 21-year-old nine times in 14 minutes. There's the fact that Pikes was handcuffed during each of those 50,000-volt shocks. And there's the fact that witnesses heard Pikes, who was supposedly resisting arrest, plead to Nugent, "You all got me. Please, don't Tase me again . . .

Nugent joined the force not long after his dad's suicide and has been responsible for 10 of Winnfield's 14 Taser incidents in the last year—12 of which involved black residents like Pikes. And there's more: Pikes is first cousin to Mychal Bell, one of the black high school kids in the Jena 6 who were initially prosecuted for attempted murder in a schoolyard fight that started with white students hanging a noose in a tree.

The McCain Attack Ads: What Effect?

Seeking to get a measure response to the latest barrage of McCain attack ads, the McClatchey newspaper organization collected responses from a large focus group of 316 Americans.

The two main findings were interesting and so ambivalent that they seemed contradictory.

The strongest finding was that the group as a whole had negative reactions to the ads.

"We are not sure whether the negative emotions expressed by viewers were related to their feelings about either candidate or about the way in which the message was delivered," said Glenn Kessler, president and CEO of HCD Research. "However, we do know that the ad did not move voters and they expressed negative emotions after viewing the ad."

The emotions most felt by Republicans while watching the ad were "disturbing" (35 percent), "skepticism" (16 percent) and "sadness" (10 percent); Democrats reported "skepticism" (44 percent), "anger" (24 percent) and "disturbing" (14 percent); Independents reported "skepticism" (41 percent), "disturbing" (18 percent) and "anger" (18 percent).

It's best to read these numbers against the background of measures concerning how much voters like the candidates--i.e., their favorability ratings. John McCain has a strong favorability average of 52.3 in the latest RealClearPolitics "poll of polls" and that favorability rating would be resilient because McCain has been a prominent Senator for the last decade.

I've argued in other posts for Red State Impressions and WEKU that McCain's favorability rating is the strongest element in his candidacy and is what allows McCain to be doing as well as he's doing in a rough environment for Republicans. Given the extent of the negative feelings about McCain's recent ads, it appears that McCain is putting his own favorability ratings at a great deal of risk in order to make voters more skeptical of Obama. In other words, McCain may be playing with fire with these negative ads.

The next question is whether McCain is getting any results from his risky ads. The McClatchey study claims that the answer is a "yes," but that claim is highly questionable.

. . . the results that may have been most telling were the changes in whom the participants would vote for and suggested that such advertising could have an impact, especially among independents. Before viewing the ad, 75 percent of the Democrats said they would vote for Obama. After viewing the ad, that percentage was 72, while undecideds rose from 13 to 15 percent and those favoring other candidates rose from 3 to 4 percent. The number who said they would vote for McCain, however, remained unchanged at 9 percent. Similar results were recorded for Republicans and Independents. Republican support for Obama dropped from 8 to 6 percent, while McCain's percentage remained unchanged at 74 percent. Undecideds rose from 16 to 18 percent, however. Only among independents did the drop in Obama's percentage, from 44 to 43 percent, accrue to McCain, whose support went from 33 to 34 percent.

But these numbers are not significant enough to say that there was a change of opinion away from Obama. The survey appears to have a roughly equal number of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents at 106-107, meaning that a swing of 1% pretty much represents one person changing their mind. Of the 320 group members then, only 1 switched their preference from Obama to McCain while 6 switched from Obama to undecided. Given that the survey was not random and that the 2.1% change falls within the margin of error for even the best polls, it is best to say that there was no change in opinion.

Obviously, if McCain's current wave of negative advertising is able to move public opinion by 2%, that will be significant in a close election. But the McClatchey study does not justify that conclusion.

It's somewhat more significant that McCain's ad did not provoke any members of the group into switching away from McCain himself. However, given that large majorities of Democrats, Independents, and Republicans had negative feelings about the ads themselves, McCain is running the risk that negative feelings about McCain's ads will ultimately translate into negative feelings about McCain.

McCain: Cynical or Dishonorable?

Today, Barack Obama refers to the latest McCain smears as cynical rather than racist:

"In no way do I think John McCain's campaign was racist. I think they are cynical," Obama said Saturday. "Their team is good at creating distractions and engaging in negative attacks."

If Obama isn't going to use the term "racist," he should call McCain's latest tactics "dishonorable" rather than "cynical."

If he's going to hit McCain, he should hit him in a way that hurts.

Miss Teen Turns 14

Yesterday was Miss Teen RSI's 14th birthday. It brings a tear to my eye.