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.

A Racist Turn in the McCain Campaign?

The Controversy. Last week, as part of the more intensified attacks that the McCain campaign has launched since Obama's wildly successful overseas trip, McCain campaign manager Rick Davis accused Obama of "playing the race card."

"Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck," said Rick Davis, in a statement issued from the McCain campaign. "It's divisive, negative, shameful and wrong."

What happened was that Obama made a routine reference to the likelihood of GOP racial smears, and warned an audience in Missouri that "what they're going to try to do is make you scared of me . . . You know, he doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills." In fact, the Republicans had been known for engaging in racial smear tactics going back to the Willie Horton ads during the 1988 presidential campaigns and continuing through the Jesse Helms "black hands" ads of 1990, and the Republican Party's portrayal of a white woman cooing for (African-American candidate) Harold Ford during the Tennessee Senate race in 2006.

It isn't like GOP smear artists have been inactive for the 2008 campaign either.

The most active of the Republican Party's smear artists has been Karl Rove who has pictured Obama in terms of being "lazy," "trash-talking," and playing "basketball at Harvard Yard." The only item in that list that is not a racial stereotype is Harvard Yard. GOP spokespeople also have sought to portray Obama as an "angry black nationalist" and have spread rumors about Michelle Obama being a "white hater." Moreover, white and African-American bloggers both believe that the attempt by Republicans to characterize Obama as presumptuous is an attempt to stereotype him in traditional terms as an "uppity" black man. Commentators on the left also view the clips of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears in McCain's "Celeb" ad as playing on white anxieties about black men and white women.

Thus, the Obama campaign, liberal and African-American bloggers, and several figures in the mainstream media believe that McCain is the one "playing the race card" here. Time magazine columnist and former McCain admirer Joe Klein was disgusted enough with McCain that he obliquely referred to McCain and the Republicans as "scum" in a blog posting today. Editors for the New York Times were less pungent, but made the same point when they referred to Davis' comments as "contemptible."

Has the McCain Campaign Taken a Racist Turn? White racism has always been much more complex than racial hostility or a belief that whites are "superior" to African-Americans. Racist statements contain three kinds of componens:

1. A Stereotype of African-Americans as ugly, lazy, irrational, over-sensitive, etc.;
2. An Expression of Contempt for an African-American or African-Americans based on racial stereotypes;
3. An Argument for the Domination of African-Americans by white people that, at least in principle, can extend back to justifying slavery.

Purposefulness. In this sense, a person making a statement would have to purposefully employ all three of these elements for the statement to be racist. Rick Davis' original statement about Obama was definitely purposeful. Obama had been talking about himself as a black person "not looking like" other presidential candidates or presidents for weeks if not months. Given that the McCain camp would have been aware of those statements, the decision to spring their complaint about Obama was purposeful in that they decided to attack Obama for "playing the race card" on Thursday as opposed to all the other days Obama had made similar statements. Bob Herbert observed that the McCain camp complained "with great glee bursting through their feigned outrage." Obama's statement gave them an opportunity they had been looking for.

Racial Stereotyping. But has the McCain campaign been relying on racial stereotypes? That appears to be the case. When Davis referred to Obama "playing the race card," David himself was playing on the white stereotype of African-Americans as "too sensitive" about race, "complaining all the time" about racial profiling or discrimination, and being unable to "take a joke." Like other racial sterotypes, the stereotype about African-Americans being "too sensitive" portrays African-Americans as not really "fitting in," not being "one of us," or as being strange or foreign. The African-American feminist bell hooks tells a story in "Killing Rage" about a white flight attendant who addressed one of her black friends as though the African-American woman didn't know English. Going along with that is the idea among whites (an idea I hear frequently from my students) that African-Americans need to "get over it" in relation to racism but aren't doing so.

The other racial stereotypes that the McCain camp has been relying on are black men having a special sexual interest in white women and Obama as an "uppity" black man. The stereotype of black men/white women appeared in the Celebrity ad which flashes pictures of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears as it criticizes Obama for being a vapid celebrity. Bob Herbert asks:

Gee, I wonder why, if you have a black man running for high public office — say, Barack Obama or Harold Ford — the opposition feels compelled to run low-life political ads featuring tacky, sexually provocative white women who have no connection whatsoever to the black male candidates.

Calling Obama "presumptuous" is more complex, but relies on racial stereotyping as well. In many ways, Republican criticisms of Obama for being presumptuous have the "Heads I Win/Tails You Lose quality that is common to Republican attacks. The GOP criticized Obama for being "presumptuous" because he did his overseas trip in such a big way--having successful meetings with a long succession of foreign leaders, sinking a three-point shot with troops, and holding a huge rally in Berlin. But if Obama had not made much of a mark, the same observers would have been just as happy to criticize him for "not being ready for prime time" or "not meeting the commander-in-chief test."

The point is to criticize Obama whatever he does.

But, as David Gergen observed yesterday on ABC's This Week, McCain's "Moses" ad lampooning Obama as "The One" and GOP attacks on Obama for being "presumptuous" all assert that Obama is an "uppity" black man who "doesn't know his place."

"There has been a very intentional effort to paint him as somebody outside the mainstream, other, 'he's not one of us,'" said Gergen, who has worked with White Houses, both Republican and Democrat, from Nixon to Clinton. "I think the McCain campaign has been scrupulous about not directly saying it, but it's the subtext of this campaign. Everybody knows that. There are certain kinds of signals. As a native of the south, I can tell you, when you see this Charlton Heston ad, 'The One,' that's code for, 'he's uppity, he ought to stay in his place.' Everybody gets that who is from a southern background. We all understand that. When McCain comes out and starts talking about affirmative action, 'I'm against quotas,' we get what that's about."

In this sense, McCain's messages have a surface message of saying that Obama is not ready to lead the country but a subtext that Obama is aiming for something that is not appropriate for a black man and that Obama doesn't know that his "place" as a black man in American society should be marginalized, at the bottom, in a band, or in jail. When the McCain campaign makes fun of Obama for being "presumptuous" or being a "celebrity," they're also saying that he's acting in ways that are inappropriate for a black man in American society.

The McCain campaign and Republican media figures like Karl Rove are relying on several kinds of racial stereotypes to make their criticisms of Barack Obama. Such reliance on stereotypes gives a powerful dimension of racism to the McCain campaign.

A Broad Circle of Contempt. In addition, Davis' statement expresses contempt for Obama. "It's divisive, negative, shameful and wrong" is very much an expression of contempt. Given that Davis' contempt is articulated in relation to the stereotype of African-Americans as "complaining too much" or "being too sensitive," it is not unreasonable to conclude that Davis is also implying that other African-Americans who "play the race card" by "unfairly" complaining about racism are also "divisive, negative, shameful, and wrong." Because he is relying on a stereotype of Obama as an African-American, Rick Davis is also tarring African-Americans as a group. The New York Times also notices that Davis' formulation concerning dealing the race card "from the bottom of the deck" was also used in relation to the O. J. Simpson trial which is still a hot-button issue among whites.

It also — and we wish this were coincidence, but we doubt it — conjurs up another loaded racial image. The phrase dealing the race card “from the bottom of the deck” entered the national lexicon during the O.J. Simpson saga. Robert Shapiro, one of Mr. Simpson’s lawyers, famously declared of himself, Johnny Cochran and the rest of the Simpson defense team, “Not only did we play the race card, we dealt it from the bottom of the deck.”

In fact, all of the stereotypes employed by the McCain campaign and Republicans express contempt for black people in general, especially for black men. For example, the McCain campaign's juxtaposing of Obama against images of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton relies on the stereotypical idea of black sexual interest in white women as "unnatural" because black men are "less than fully human." In this context, the element of contempt is in the assumption that black men aren't really human.

When McCain and the Republicans who criticize Obama for being "presumptuous"or "uppity," they are expressing a similar kind of contempt. The stereotypical criticism of blacks as "uppity" relies on the assumption that blacks should "naturally" be at the bottom of society however one characterizes "the bottom." Indeed, like most stereotypes, the idea of blacks as "uppity" is ultimately goes back to slavery and is rooted in the conviction that blacks should really be slaves. In that context, it would be "arrogant," "presumptuous," or otherwise "unnatural" for a black person like Obama to assume that he could be president--i. e., be the man.

In this sense, the racial stereotypes employed by the McCain campaign are racist because they express enormous contempt for African-Americans as human beings.

Domination. Finally, the McCain campaign wants to dominate the Obama campaign in that they are seeking to silence the Obama campaign on issues of race. What McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt has to say is interesting in this regard:

"McCain aides say their goal is to pre-empt what they believe is Obama's effort to paint any conventional campaign attacks as race-based. Obama’s aim, in the view of the McCain camp: ‘to delegitimize any line of attack against him,’ said McCain aide Steve Schmidt… ‘I don't [care] whether it helps or hurts us,’ Schmidt said. ‘A lie unresponded to becomes the truth.’

If taken at face value, this is a ridiculous statement. The Obama camp hasn't criticized any of McCain's attacks as being racially motivated even though the McCain campaign has launched a dizzying array of attacks on Obama's Iraq policy proposals, inexperience, flip-flopping, rigidity, celebrity status, "presumptuousness," and supposed willingness to "lose the war to win the election. Nor has the Obama camp shown any inclination to criticize McCain on racial or other ground. In fact, most Obama ads don't even mention McCain.

So what is the McCain camp worried about?

The key word is "pre-empt." The leaders of the McCain campaign does not want the Obama to be able to criticize McCain attacks as "racially-tinged" in the future. So they're attacking Obama for playing the "race card" now with the expectation that the "controversy" will scare off Obama from criticizing the "racially-tinged" attacks that the McCain people expect to make.

Here, however, there is reason to question whether the McCain campaign and Republicans are trying to establish any form of "racial domination" over the Obama campaign. Republican presidential campaigns have been known for hitting Democratic presidential candidates with a barrage of innuendo, stereotyping, and ridicule since 1988 and the objective has always been for the Republican presidential candidate to keep the Democratic presidential candidate on the defensive. In other words, the Republican presidential campaign organizations can be seen as striving to dominate the Obama campaign in the same way they sought to dominate the Dukakis, Clinton, Gore, and Kerry campaigns.

However, it is also possible to see the efforts of the McCain campaign and Republicans to attach racial stereotypes to Obama as raising the specter of a non-white, racial "outsider" like Obama taking over the summit of American society as something "unnatural," "unseemly," and "wrong" because it inverts the "natural order" of American society. In this sense, the McCain campaign's use of racial stereotyping could be seen as an appeal to whites to maintain the "natural" racial order of white domination.

At this point, I believe that the former option is more correct. Despite the McCain/Republican use of racial stereotypes, I have yet to see any evidence that the Republicans have directly or indirectly introduced "maintaining the natural racial order" as a campaign theme. Until they do so, it is impossible to view them in terms of pursuing racial domination.

Conclusion. Recent McCain ads and McCain strategist Rick Davis' comments have been racist because they employed racial stereotypes in a way that conveyed contempt for Barack Obama as an African-American. But they do not appear (at least at present) as seeking to establish or protect a relationship of racial domination. Thus, the racism has limits and I wouldn't claim that recent Republican attacks have been racist in the full sense of the word.

Does that make Rick Davis or John McCain a racist? Not necessarily. They may be worse. White racism is bad enough but there are many cases in which a person becomes a racist out of ignorance, family socialization, or some sort of cultural imperative. Such people are not exactly innocent, but they are not nearly as bad as those who seek to manipulate the racism in American society for financial or political gain. Given that the McCain campaign has embarked on an effort to manipulate the racism in American society for their political benefit, they strike me as being significantly more immoral than most racists.

And that's why it was appropriate for the New York Times to refer to what the McCain campaign is doing as "contemptible."

The Obama Bump is Really Over

Today, the Gallup and Rasmussen tracking polls have Obama and McCain tied and Obama up by 1 respectively.

That means that the Obama overseas bump from last weekend is officially over.

But it also means something else.

Given that the tracking polls are three night surveys, the fact that Obama and McCain are tied today means that McCain pulled ahead in Gallup for at least one night and the same might be the case for Rasmussen.

McCain hasn't been ahead in the tracking pollls for sometime. If he moves ahead tomorrow and stays ahead, that could shake up the expectation that Obama is going to win the election.

Interesting.

The Ship of Race Has Landed

It appears that the Ship of Race has landed in the 2008 presidential campaign. The McCain campaign came out with both guns blazing as it accused Obama of playing "the race card" when he mentioned that the Republicans would try to make (white) people afraid of voting for someone who looked like him.

As if Obama wasn't speaking the most obvious truth in the world.

Given that we'll probably be staring race in the face for the rest of the campaign, I'll save my own comments for later. Here I'll just quote from one of the African-American blogs--The Field Negro--about the Republicans. After all, I'm pretty sure that conservative Shelby Steele will be the only African-American allowed to participate in the upcoming debate:

And another thing . . . [k]eep trying to paint his "O" ness as an uppity Negro. Here in A-merry-ca there is nothing we hate more than uppity Negroes. If you are going to be an uppity Negro you had better not be running for political office. You better have your own business and you damn sure better not depend on folks in the majority to keep your business afloat. A-merry-cans did not like the "O" man's European Vacation (boy what the hell do you mean you are a "world citizen"? You are an A-merry-can damn it, start acting like one) and the polls show that. Hell, even so called respected reporters over at the Washington Post are starting to cast the "O" man as an egomaniacal uppity Negro. (They took the quote out of context to fit their story, but that's a whole different issue) So keep playing on that, and watch how the polls tighten.

The Barefoot/Pregnant Regulation

The Bush administration's Department of Health and Human Services is proposing a new regulation that would treat birth control pills as abortion devices.

A draft regulation, still being revised and debated, treats most birth-control pills and intrauterine devices as abortion because they can work by preventing fertilized eggs from implanting in the uterus. The regulation considers that destroying "the life of a human being."

Maybe the Bush Administration and their supporters on the religious right should just call this the "Barefoot/Pregnant" regulation.

Because that's the way they want to keep American women.

The McCain Campaign--A Typical Scooby Villain

As the father of a typical American "tween," I've watched more episodes of Scooby Doo than any one person should be allowed to see. I've been with Scooby Doo in Egypt, Scooby Doo in cyber-space, Scooby Doo on mystery cruises, and Scooby Doo at Ghoul School. I've viewed so much Scooby Doo that I find myself craving Scooby Snacks at the weirdest times. I see the Scooby gang more often than I see my own brothers and sisters. Scooby Doo is a friend of mine and "Senator McCain, you're no Scooby Doo."

Oops, mixing metaphors there.

Anyway, I know better than most people that the monsters chasing Scooby and the gang almost always turn out to be all-too-human villains in "monster suits."

That's what I see in the John McCain campaign right now--a typical Scooby villain.

Over the last two weeks, McCain has unveiled not one, not two, not three, but four--count 'em, four--attack lines on Obama. McCain himself launched the idea that Obama was willing to "lose the war in order to win the election." The McCain campaign also came out with video ads about Obama supposedly canceling a visit with wounded American troops in order to "play basketball," and being a "celebrity" like Britney Spears or Paris Hilton. Just as they put out the "celebrity" ad, the McCain campaign also sent out surrogates yesterday to talk about Obama's "presumptuousness."

All of this is supposed to come out of the "very scary" Karl Rove playbook of attacking opponents at their strongest point. In this case, the strongest points are Obama's charismatic presence and his opposition to the unpopular war. By going "negative" in this way, the McCain campaign is trying to "define" Barack Obama as someone who is too unprincipled, too strange, and too popular to be president. He hopes to drive up Obama's negatives and prevent Obama from getting above 50%.

And if the McCain campaign really were a scary monster, all of this would be working. But Shaggy is the only one who looks scared and Shaggy's always scared.

In the final analysis, McCain's campaign manager and Rove protege Steve Schmidt is much more of a "guy in monster suit" than a "scary monster." The McCain campaign is splattering attacks right and left, but every time they take up a new line of attack, they undercut their previous attacks. How can any of these attack lines have much impact if they're only pursued exclusively for two or three days at most and McCain is cluttering up the airwaves with other kinds of attacks? The assault on Obama's presumptuousness on the same day they released the "celebrity" ad was dumb in the extreme. I'm not sure the McCain people even knew which line of attack they wanted the media to feature?

Harvard sociologist and TPM blogger Theda Skocpol suggests that Obama create ads of ordinary people sitting at a table talking about the weaknesses of McCain's proposals on cutting corporate taxes, social security, contraception, and other domestic issues.

That's a great idea and much of the reason why it's a great idea is because it would provide such a strong contrast to the ineffectiveness of McCain's bumbling attempts to be a scary attack monster.

Is Dog Whistling Just for Racists?

Popular liberal blogger Digby suspects that a lot of the recent McCain talk about Obama being presumptuous or ads portraying Obama with young white women like Britney Spears or Paris Hilton is a form of "dog whistling" to white racists.

This is what Digby means by dog whistling.

I think we need to have a little discussion of what "racist dogwhistle" means. It is a word or phrase that conjures up certain subliminal images in those who are predisposed to see things in racial terms. It doesn't mean that everyone who hears the word as a criticism sees it in that way --- only those who get "the code." So, when Karl Rove sends out McCain's minions to spread the word "presumptuous" all over the place, the idea is to signal to the racists among us that Obama is "uppity." It doesn't mean that if you think Obama is presumptuous that you are a racist. You might just think, "yeah, he's acting like it's in the bag already." But racists hear that Obama is an uppity black man. See, it works on two levels. That's why it's called a dogwhistle --- only the racists can hear the racism in it.

Digby writes that she gets complaints from liberals about focusing too much on racism. But the thing that strikes me about the idea of racial dogwhistling is that it's overly optimistic. I can see where talking about Obama being presumptuous would be more easily translated into Obama being "uppity" by an overt racist than the average moderate or independent voter. So, dogwhistling there is.

But I think that the main racial effect of these kinds of dogwhistling manuevers would be to raise the anxiety level of moderate and independent whites concerning Obama as a black man. There may be less hard core, overt, racism in the United States than there was in the seventies, but American society is saturated with racial stereotyping of black people and one of those stereotypes is about the "arrogance" and "conceit" of black athletes like Terrell Owens of the Dallas Cowboys vs the ideal of humility to which all athletes are expected to subscribe. The same kinds of stereotypes apply to black musicians, actors, and celebrities as well.

Thus, the efforts of the McCain campaign to portray Obama as "presumptuous" seek to induce racial anxieties about Obama by associating him with "T.O," Chad Johnson of the Cincinnati Bengals, or a variety of hip hop artists that I'm too uncool to be aware of. The idea isn't to stimulate racial hostility but to make white moderates nervous and uncertain enough about Obama that they would be susceptible to other forms of negative advertising.

The other non-dogwhistling aspect of McCain's tactics is that white moderates and independent are subject to cross-currents that hard-core racists ignore. White moderates may become nervous about Obama but they also might find Obama's positions, image, and advertising appealing in ways that counter-act their racial anxieties. In this sense, pushing the "presumptuous" meme either introduces or reinforces racial anxieties as an element that is "in play" for this election. But the working of the "presumptuous" theme on moderate voters would be much more fluid than racial dogwhistling is with hardcore racists.

Pushing Obama's "presumptuousness" does have a racist effect but it's more a matter of raising anxieties in moderate whites than dogwhistling the determined attitudes of marginal racists.

Joe Klein and Conservative Loyalties

Joe Klein of Time poses the possibility that Jewish neo-conservatives have divided loyalties between the United States and Israel.

The notion that we could just waltz in and inject democracy into an extremely complicated, devout and ancient culture smacked--still smacks--of neocolonialist legerdemain. The fact that a great many Jewish neoconservatives--people like Joe Lieberman and the crowd over at Commentary--plumped for this war, and now for an even more foolish assault on Iran, raised the question of divided loyalties: using U.S. military power, U.S. lives and money, to make the world safe for Israel.

Klein is implying that Jewish neo-conservatives might be trying to employ American power to benefit Israel because they're Jewish.

This strikes me as completely wrong.

Klein's comments would be more to the point if Jewish neo-conservatives were different from non-Jewish neo-conservatives. But I didn't detect any difference between the neo-conservatism of William Bennett, Francis Fukuyama, and Joe Lieberman over Iraq. They all wanted to establish American military hegemony in the Arab world and viewed that hegemony just as much in terms of eliminating Israel's enemies as advancing American interests.

Likewise, conservative blogs like RedState, Powerline, and Confederate Yankee all seem more concerned with Israeli security issues than American.

In other words, it's American conservatism and neo-conservatism in general rather than "Jewish neo-conservatism" in particular that has divided loyalties. The right loves Israel because they've viewed Israel as a "model imperialist" since the raid on Entebbe way back in the 70's. The right idolizes Israel's imperial aggressiveness--Isreal's willingness to maintain military occupation over the Palestinians for so long, the expansion of Israeli settlements in Palestinian territories, the invasion of Lebanon in 1982, the targeted assasination of Palestianian leaders, and so on. For the American right, Israel is the proper model of how the United States should conduct itself as a military power and supporting Israel is a matter of supporting the kind of country they would like America to be.

In other words, conservatives have divided loyalties between Israel and the United States because they think more highly of Israel than they think of America. If Israel was a bigger fish in the world pond, I don't doubt that a number of American conservatives would have moved there in the same way that Canadian conservatives like Charles Krauthammer and David Frum moved to the U. S.

Actually conservative loyalties toward Israel are narrowly gauged as well. They would be completely unconcerned if the Israeli Labor Party, leftists, and anti-war activists were driven into the sea. Just as they identify with conservative America rather than the whole of the country, the American right identifies with the Netanyahu faction of the Likud party, the settler movement, and the ultra-orthodox parties rather than the whole of Israel.

In other words, the American right is loyal to the Israeli right because they admire the militant imperialism of the Israeli right. That doesn't have anything to do with the Jewishness of the Israeli right or the Jewishness of some Jewish neo-cons.

The American right's romance with Israel is all about the ideal of an "aggressively imperialist state." It just happens that Israel is an aggressively imperialist Jewish state. If Australia were an aggressively imperialist state, American conservatives would admire them just as much.

Facing Up to a Friend's Death

Bed at one, awake at six--it's not a good idea if I want to get stuff done, be able to think, or stay health.

But because I have so much dread for today that I just couldn't sleep much.

Today is Nancy Peterson's memorial service (first Baptist Church of Morehead) and I know I'm going to have to face up to something I've been avoiding for the last five days--the fact that Nancy's gone and she's not coming back.

Visitations, funerals, memorial services, and other kinds of death-related events are about many things. They're about warm memories, sharing one's grief with friends and acquaintances, helping the family, thinking about the many ways the deceased person made a difference, and the many ways they're going to live on as well.

But death-related events are also about accepting the fact that relatives, friends, loved ones, colleagues, and acquaintances are really gone. It's about accepting or beginning to accept that we're never going to hear their voice, feel the warmth of their physical presence, react to their touch or think about what they're going to be doing next year again. It's about really knowing the grief and loss even if it's the last thing in the world you want to do.

I don't want to face up to Nancy's death. It's hard and I'm miserable. But I know I have to start doing it today as I think about going to her memorial service.

Who's Going to Back Into the Presidency

There are 100 days to go to the election and neither Barack Obama nor John McCain are gaining any kind of decisive poll advantage in the current "phony war" phase of the presidential campaign.


Barack Obama got a boost when Prime Minister al-Maliki of Iraq agreed with his timetable for withdrawing troops from Iraq. He also looked effective in dealing with foreign leaders. But the fact that Obama only got a "little noodge" of 3% and 8% in the daily tracking polls revived questions about his ability to "close the deal." Novak suggests that McCain might be able to "back his way into the presidency" without doing anything to inspire enthusiasm among voters.

But Obama could "back into" the presidency as well.

Obama would still win if he stayed at 48-49% of the vote, John McCain got 47%, and the rest was split among Bob Barr, Ralph Nader, and the really minor candidates. It may be that all Obama has to do is continue to pursue successful campaign initiatives like his overseas trip, defend himself against McCain's attacks, and protect his lead. That's essentially what happened during the Democratic primaries. Obama never had a big lead after the Iowa caucuses but he made sure that his small lead over Hillary Clinton was decisive.

The conventional wisdom is that McCain might be able to back into the presidency if he runs a harshly negative campaign that depresses Obama's support.

But that hasn't worked so far.

McCain's campaign has been so unorganized, dispirited, and tone deaf that Republicans are just about ready to wave the white flag of surrender. Here's conservative writer Ben Stein:

"Mr. McCain is running the absolute most pathetic campaign I have ever seen in my whole life . . . His campaign is just heartbreakingly pathetic. He is a very impressive guy. He is a brave guy, but he is running the most lackluster campaign I have ever seen in my entire life. I would have thought Bob Dole's campaign would have set a record for poor campaigns, but this one is even worse. I mean it is shocking."

McCain's team was particularly inept while Obama was overseas and produced visuals of McCain riding in a golf cart with George Bush sr. and fumbling over spilled groceries while Obama was effectively posing as a world leader. Moreover, it often seems like McCain and his surrogates are competing with each other to see who can make the most damaging gaffes.

Obama still has to deal with the various questions that the media is raising about his relative youth, inexperience, appearance of arrogance, flip-flopping, and rigidity. The fact that Obama is questioned for both flip-flopping and rigidity is an indication of the self-contradictory character of many media criticisms.

But McCain is still behind. If he stays behind, McCain's going to have to provide reasons for undecided voters and weak Obama supporters to want John McCain to be president. He hasn't succeeded in doing so to date.

The Call of the Wild

Since we moved to the edge of the woods, I've seen possums, raccoons, turkeys, copperheads, foxes, and owls. Of course, deer are everywhere. We also caught a skunk in an trap meant for feral cats and have survived a monumental skunk attack on our house.

Now, I can add coyotes to my list of backyard wildlife. One of the critters appeared at the edge of the woods at about 1:00 this afternoon. It was relatively long-legged and rangy looking with gray and yellow fur and a Red Riding Hood snout. The coyote looked bigger than my 50 pound dog, but coyotes are supposed to have a thin bone structure that makes them weigh less than they look.

When the coyote saw me, it trotted off without looking particularly scared of human beings. But maybe it was just me.

I imagine it was looking for an easy lunchtime treat. One of our neighbors said that a coyote was carrying a pet cat in its mouth before it was forced to drop it.

Personally, I think the possums look better this time of year.

The Visiting Schizophrenic

I remember seeing a cartoon in The New Yorker where a family saw a tweedy man sitting at their dining room table who described himself as "the visiting professor."

I used to think that was very funny.

But not anymore.

That's because a former colleague of mine who's been diagnosed with "schizo affective disorder" has started frequenting our house. Just like a "visiting professor," he likes to use the phone, hook up to the internet, and work on notes for his "book." One time, he was sitting in a chair working over his notes in a way that reminded me of the old New Yorker cartoon.

Oh, I forgot to mention something. He keeps asking if I'm an alien.

My old colleague, I'll call him Josh, characterizes his condition as "schizo affective disorder" which is a "mild form of schizophrenia." Basically, he believes he's become a medium for the aliens who want to communicate with the earth.

Josh has been in and out of mental hospitals for the last four or five years as the condition has gotten worse.

One time, he was institutionalized after walking naked into the surf off Santa Cruz and trying to part the waters like Moses. More recently, Josh was hospitalized after collapsing into Tourette's-type symptoms while I was driving him to a house where he was staying.

I've always been "friendly" with Josh but have never been one of his close friends. But after years of severe mental illness, he's gradually worn out his welcome with all his close friends in Morehead. As a result, Josh decided to make the RSI house his first option after his most recent stay in a mental hospital.

Let me tell you, one of the things you don't want to have in your home is a "visiting schizophrenic."

Red Sox: Back to Also-Rans?

My local high school, Rowan County High School, traditionally has a weak football team. But 8 or 9 years ago, a coach got the guys into winning territory behind a high-quality running back and took them to the Kentucky playoffs.

Then the coach was fired for some non-football related reason. I forget what. The coaches response: "I guess they want to go back to 2-7."

Actually, the team went way way back to 0-10 and got so bad that they were booted out of the local district.

This brings us to the Boston Red Sox. Before the arrival of Manny Ramirez, the Red Sox had been bridesmaids to the New York Yankees for more than eighty years. Bill Buckner let one World Series dribble between his legs. Ted Williams couldn't get them over the hump. Neither could Roger Clemens.

But Manny Ramirez helped them win championships with his big bat on the field and anxiety-free attitude in the clubhouse.

So much for the Curse of the Bambino.

The problem is that Ramirez is very tough on management. Manny has a habit of making public demands to be traded that he doesn't really mean. He also takes games off for no apparent reason and recently shoved the Red Sox traveling secretary.

Now, it looks like pressure's building up (again) for a trade. Sportswriters like Ken Rosenthal are demanding that Red Sox executives trade Ramirez for a couple of spare parts while Sox GM Theo Epstein claims that "we'd be open to (a trade) . . . We've called around. We've been open to it for 5 1/2 years now."

Of course, the Red Sox have won two World Series in those 5 1/2 years and Ramirez is a major reason why they can call themselves "The World Champion Boston Red Sox."

But I guess the Sox want to go back to being "The Tragic, Suffering, Also-Ran Red Sox."

Choose Your Poison: The Landstuhl Pseudo-Controversy

Apparently, the Obama campaign did not realize that its scheduled visit to Landstuhl Air Force Base to see wounded soldiers was going to be the stuff of new political pseudo-controversy.

But they should have seen it coming.

Nobody knows all the facts yet. But the issue boils down to this. The pro-Obama story is that "Pentagon officials" derailed Obama's visit because they didn't want Obama using stories of his "visit with wounded troops" as campaign fodder. The anti-Obama story is that the visit got scuttled in a petty dispute over whether Obama could bring in a couple of campaign aides.

In other words, the Obama visiting the troops story is a typical political "pseudo-controversy" in which McCain was able to get out an attack ad and there has been plenty of media blather about an "issue" of no consequence.

This was a "heads I win, tails you lose" moment for the McCain campaign and the conservative blogs. Either way, Obama was going to look bad. Either Obama was going to fall into Trap A and look like a "typical politician" eager to use wounded American troops as a prop for his presidential campaign or Trap B and look like a "cynical politician" who decided not to visit wounded American troops when he couldn't use them as a prop for his campaign.

What should Obama have done? Actually, he should have fallen into Trap A and let himself be accused of using the soldiers as props. That's because a visit to Landstuhl Air Force Base would uld have been a positive thing for the wounded soldiers. Obama and his campaign staff should have had enough of a sense of the soldiers' enthusiasm for Sen. Obama that they would have known that the wounded soldiers would have really wanted to meet him. A visit from a celebrity candidate like Obama would have been a big deal. It would have been a welcome break in the routines of convalescence and it would have been something soldiers could have bragged about to their families.

Sometimes politicians just have to choose which artificial "pseudo-controversy" they're going to be embroiled in. In this case, Obama should have visited the wounded troops.