Some GOP leaders and conservative columnists are expressing frustration with John McCain’s campaign. Is there chaos within the Republican Party? Rachel Maddow is joined by former Bush speechwriter and author of “An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror,” David Frum.
Add Matthew Dowd to the growing list of senior Republican advisers rebuking Sen. John McCain.Dowd, chief strategist for President George W. Bush’s reelection, fingered Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s nomination as a turning point in McCain’s slide.
“They didn’t allow John McCain to pick the person he wanted for Vice President,” Dowd said, referring to Sen. Joe Lieberman, which undercut his experience argument and tethered McCain to the GOP base.
“He knows in his gut he put somebody unqualified on the ballot,” Dowd stressed, “and put the country at risk.”
Dowd also said the Palin pick, in contrast to Sen. Barack Obama’s choice of Sen. Joe Biden as his running mate, showed voters which candidate was “serious” about governing.
The sharp assessment was issued at a Tuesday panel at the TimeWarner summit, a two-day gathering of politicos and reporters in Manhattan. (I also spoke at the conference.)
Dowd was rebutted by Mark McKinnon, a former strategist for Bush and McCain, who said no one knows what is in McCain’s head regarding his V.P. pick.
Dowd also knocked McCain’s strategic acumen, arguing that the campaign is “very tactical and not strategic,” flatly saying, “I don’t get the narrative.”
Since his time campaigning for Bush, Dowd went public with his opposition to the Bush administration’s record and the Iraq war.
Foo Fighters joined the ranks of Ann & Nancy Wilson of Heart this morning by not-so-discreetly asking Sen. John McCain to stop using their music to rally his troops. The Vietnam Veteran's anthem of choice, it turns out, has been "My Hero."H/t to Chris Kornelis."The saddest thing about this is that 'My Hero' was written as a celebration of the common man and his extraordinary potential," Foo Fighters said in a press release. "To have it appropriated without our knowledge and used in a manner that perverts the original sentiment of the lyric just tarnishes the song. We hope that the McCain campaign will do the right thing and stop using our song—and start asking artists' permission in general!"
Today, we'd like to call on the McCain camp to do the right thing as well, and pick a more appropriate Foo Fighters tune on the stump. Here are a few recommendations.
8. “Hey, Johnny Park”I've taken all and I've endured/One day it all will fade, I'm sure.See, they already wrote a song for you.
Everything fades in time, it's true.
7. “Wind Up”
Sen. Temper, if you ever had a theme song, this is it.
Maybe I'll fall behind, but I don't mind because I'll catch up ... Spare me your questions because you know me so well/Someday you'll realize I get shy and choke up.
6. “The Pretender”
Maverick? Please. Straight Talk Express? COME ON!
In time, or so I'm told/I'm just another soul for sale.
5. “Oh, George”
Kinda speaks for itself, doesn't it?
4. “My Poor Brain'
You're right, probably better suited for Gov. Palin.
3. “Exhausted”
Of course you are. YOU'RE OLD!
2. “Alone + Easy Target”
So many members of the liberal media with so much to say. Must be tough. Plus, YOU'RE OLD!
1. “I'll Stick Around”
Gotta hand it to ya, fella, your campaign was left for dead, you championed an extremely unpopular military maneuver in Iraq that's often called “The. Surge.” and now you're one heartbeat away from making Sarah Palin the President of the United States of America.
AFTER HEARING THE unleashed Sarah Palin accuse Sen. Barack Obama of "pallin' around with terrorists" -- and Sen. John McCain's brother call northern Virginia "communist country" -- this scribe is moved to a confession.One-time Weathermen leader William Ayers, the target in Palin's day of rage, was once a guest in my kitchen. Not only that, but I brewed him a pot of tea and heated up a bagel.
Ayers consorted with our family's standard poodle, S'Murphy Brown, after she extended a paw to the top of his knee.
Circumstances don't matter in wing nuts' land of guilt-by-association, but I had no choice.
The Hi Spot Cafe, notorious liberal hangout in Madrona -- Seattle's equivalent to Chicago's Hyde Park -- had just closed. We needed to do an interview about Ayers' memoir "Fugitive Days," a timely topic, since the terrorist atrocity of 9/11 had taken place just 16 days earlier.
The 2008 presidential campaign has taken an ugly turn. In tones reminiscent of Joe McCarthy in the 1950s, McCain's campaign seeks to tie Obama to Ayers. (The two men are Hyde Park neighbors.) Media have been targeted: An African-American journalist at a Palin rally was reportedly told by someone in the crowd, "Sit down, boy."
It represents an incredible turnaround for a candidate who denounced guilt-by-association just last March.
Asked about Obama's pastor Jeremiah Wright, McCain said: "I think that when people support you, it doesn't mean that you support everything they say. I know that, for example, I've had endorsements of some people that I didn't share their views, but they endorsed mine. And so I think we've got to be very careful about that."
McCain has since put his soul in blind trust.
Breathlessly, Tuesday, the McCain-Palin campaign put out a "damning" release confirming that Obama "continued to serve on a charitable board" with Ayers even while knowing he participated in such Vietnam-era actions as the "Days of Rage."
What they were doing was deciding how to spend an educational grant from Walter Annenberg, a Republican and Richard Nixon intimate who served as ambassador to Great Britain.
Of Ayers, I am reminded of an old quip by the Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, longtime University of Notre Dame president. He reversed the adage about giving people enough rope and they'll hang themselves.
"If you give student dissenters enough time, they'll redeem themselves," Hesburgh said.
America is a forgiving place. It allows people to redeem, remake and repackage themselves.
A remaking example comes to mind, William F. Buckley's National Review, the magazine that revived conservatism in the 1960s. Its masthead was loaded with right-thinking folk who were Communist Party members in their youth.
David Horowitz, once editor of the radical magazine Ramparts, has been reborn as a conservative polemicist who campaigns against political correctness and compiles enemies' lists of liberal professors.
Ayers' father was president of Commonwealth Edison, Chicago's big electrical utility. When a federal appeals court threw out federal charges against the Weathermen, William Ayers and his wife, Bernadine Dohrn, ended 10 years of life on the lam and made productive lives in the Windy City.
Ayers is distinguished professor of education at the University of Illinois-Chicago. Dohrn is a Chicago lawyer and director of Northwestern University's Children and Family Justice Center.
The couple's work has won the praise of Mayor Richard Daley, whose father, Mayor Richard J. Daley, sent police after window-smashing Weathermen.
The stuff being hurled at Obama isn't new. Far-right Web sites, and Fox News, have spent months on the smear beat.
Again, in March, McCain campaign manager Rick Davis declared, "Throughout his life, John McCain has held himself to the highest standards, and
he will continue to run a respectful campaign based on the issues."
What do such folk as ex-Gov. Dan Evans and ex-Secretary of State Ralph Munro -- who signed up with McCain of 2000 -- think of today's character assassin?
Is Evans going to break out his hip boots, used in a 1988 TV spot to damn dirty Democrats, so as to wade through the dirt of McCain 2008?
Of course, those who throw mud often have clay feet.
McCain once "attended meetings" at which (later-imprisoned) savings-and-loan mogul Charles Keating asked senators to pressure federal regulators to lay off.
Palin has been associated with -- as recently as a February speech to its state convention -- the Alaska Independence Party. The party advocates that the 49th state become a commonwealth or independent state.
The AIP's founder, Joe Vogler, famously declared: "I'm an Alaskan, not an American. I've got no use for America and her damned institutions."
In our long-ago conversation, Ayers acknowledged the Weathermen's "stupidity" and "wrongness." "We were not terrorists," he argued. "We flirted with it. We toyed with it. We killed ourselves."
Is that so different from Palin toying with the AIP, or McCain flirting with a crook who cost the taxpayers billions?
Still, my life is stained by that pot of tea. S'Murphy Brown is no longer with us, but I half-expect to hear some mouth on Fox News describe her as a "notorious terrorist bitch."
Barack Obama
John McCain did not have the debate he needed on Tuesday night.Howie P.S.: I was at work, so thanks to SusanG who linked to Ari's piece in her post on the front page of Kos tonight,"Reaction begins." I guess this means my pal Ari is now a major pundit. He wrote this, I believe, before the first post debate polling had come out and as you have seen (or will see) CNN and CBS are both pointing to an Obama win.McCain's style was aggressive, disciplined and occasionally punchy. He heaped criticism on Barack Obama, blasting his record on taxes, health care and earmarks, and at one point derisively called the Democratic nominee "That One." McCain made over 14 references to the candidates' "records," pleading with voters to put aside Obama's words and inspect his history.Before the debate had even ended, the Republican National Committee was already spinning a disappointing night for McCain. In the 10pm hour, an RNC spokesperson sent reporters a post by Politico's Ben Smith, "Not really a town hall," complaining about the format.McCain's policy rhetoric was populist, reformist and sometimes contrarian. He floated the name of Obama backer Warren Buffet as a potential Treasury Secretary, and pledged that his administration would swiftly "buy up" all "the bad home loan mortgages in America and renegotiate at the new value of those homes." (Obama's rapid response team immediately noted that the bailout bill already includes "authority" for the Treasury to buy residential and commercial mortgages.) After all the audience questions and Brokaw quips piled up, however, McCain still failed to upend the narrative. It's a major setback in a race that is trending towards Obama and running out of time.
While McCain attacked most of the night -- in spite of the intimate, town hall setting -- Obama stuck to a crisper, measured tone. He still returned fire when necessary, counter-punching a financial attack by noting that "McCain's campaign chairman's firm was a lobbyist on behalf of Fannie Mae." Obama swiftly pivoted, however, to addressing the economy from a regular voter's perspective. "But, look, you're not interested in hearing politicians pointing fingers. What you're interested in is trying to figure out, how is this going to impact you?" Then he touted his plans to "strengthen" home buyers and advance regulation instead of the free market fundamentalism that ruled over the past "eight years."
I think Obama's best moment came when he reprised McCain's attack from the last debate. "Sen. McCain, in the last debate and today, again, suggested that I don't understand. It's true. There are some things I don't understand," he said firmly. "I don't understand how we ended up invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, while Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda are setting up base camps and safe havens to train terrorists to attack us. That was Sen. McCain's judgment and it was the wrong judgment. When Sen. McCain was cheerleading the president to go into Iraq, he suggested it was going to be quick and easy, we'd be greeted as liberators," he explained, concluding, "That was the wrong judgment, and it's been costly to us."
Barack Obama
Politico's Mike Allen reports that Barack Obama will unveil a 13 minute documentary tomorrow at noon eastern time on John McCain's role in the Keating Five scandal. The video will be hosted at keatingeconomics.com.In the meantime, here's a 97-second summary of the issue I put together for HuffPost:
Obama's coming out with a new ad Monday, and playing nice and reaching across the aisle won't be the themes of the day.Howie P.S.: Ari Melber tracks another Obama ad from earlier this week, "Color by Numbers: Bush-McCain Tax Plan," video (00:35). This one is flying low, somewhere.
Discussion of this ad and the Obama campaign's promise of a harder hitting stategy is underway in mysticlaker's diary.Obama pulled no punches in Asheville, North Carolina, today either. He went directly for the jugular on the McCain campaign's desire to turn the page from focusing on the dismal economy. Excerpts from his speech today as provided by the Obama campaign.
Barack Obama
On Meet the Press, Democratic strategist Paul Begala warns McCain of the dangers of playing guilt by association.Howie P.S.: There is also the matter of Mr. and Mrs. Palin's relationship to the Alaska Independence Party. As Greg Sargent(TPM) notes:
If Palin is going to say this, it is now perfectly legitimate to point out that she repeatedly courted a secessionist group founded by someone who openly professed hatred of the American government, cursed our flag, and wanted to secede from the Union. Sarah's husband, Todd Palin, was a member of this group, which continues to venerate that founder to this day, for years.H/t to Ben Smith.
Gov. Sarah Palin’s candidacy is clearly deteriorating. The only question is whether the decline is more like Lehman Bros or a polar ice cap.Andrew Sullivan:Palin’s initial popularity could turn out to be a bubble – a delusional valuation that crashes the moment that reality reasserts itself. Critics are watching Thursday’s debate for such a moment. That’s when raw, unfiltered information about Palin will finally hit the political markets.If there are more memorable mistakes piling up this week, Palin will have even less room for error at Thursday’s debate.Palin’s shortcomings, however, could take much longer to break through. Couple the scripted strategy of the McCain campaign with an A.D.D. press corps – distracted by everything from lipstick on a pig to the pigs on Wall Street – and Palin’s looming vice presidency may bother the public about as much as global warming. Yes, some people see the inevitable disaster, but the majority thinks the problem is distant enough to be ignored.
On the Obama plane en route from Chicago to Denver today, I tried asking Obama’s staff about the possible routes for Palin’s further demise. A normally chatty spokesperson turned taciturn – no comments on Palin at all. During that exchange, Sen. Obama himself briefly walked through the aisle, clutching an open laptop, but he was not taking questions.
Back in Chicago, the closest Obama staffers come to touching Palin is clicking the forward button – they emailed reporters today with a scathing new column by Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria. The normally measured columnist, former editor of Foreign Affairs and one of the cooler Sunday pundits, rips into Palin as a novice disaster, a talking-point-dispensing robot full of “nonsense” and “gibberish” who is “utterly unqualified to be vice president.” Amplifying that low rumble among conservative critics, he called for her early exit: “Will someone please put Sarah Palin out of her agony?”
Palin’s favorable ratings have been slowly melting, and today’s Washington Post reports that more heat is on the way. “The worst may be yet to come for Palin,” writes Howie Kurtz, “sources say CBS has two more responses on tape that will likely prove embarrassing.”
George Stephanopoulos says the stakes are high — and he knows, since network anchors help decide who “wins” debates.
“A major mistake on foreign policy would be absolutely fatal to her candidacy,” he said on “Good Morning America.” “She’s become a problem for Senator McCain, no question about it,” he explained. “When you become a punch line in politics, it is one of the worst things that can happen, and that is what’s happening to Sarah Palin now.”
Obama is attacking McCain in Colorado today for his gambling ties, and while no one here is saying it, the biggest bet of McCain’s career is about to get called on Thursday.
Nate Silver says dropping Palin doesn't make electoral sense for McCain:Not only would this hurt McCain, but it would also harm downballot candidates; the odds of Democrats finishing with 60+ Senate seats or 260+ House seats would increase markedly.
If he drops her or she quits, it's devastating. Why? Because it's all about his judgment and executive skills. He did no vetting and made his pick in an instant of insanity. This was his first serious presidential-level decision. It makes Bush's decision-making look Solomonic. If McCain is forced to acknowledge this, his own campaign is over too. So they cannot give in; they have to double-down; they will train her to do something crazy and polarizing in the debate. They will pray that Biden is sexist or condescending and, given Biden, that may not be too big a gamble. There will be more fireworks and more gambits and more nuttiness: just to prevent Americans from thinking through the real decision before them.
But Americans will still have to ask themselves: could we trust Palin as leader of the free world at a moment's notice? And: why did McCain present us with this option? Unlike the pundits, the voters have to check reality. And the Palin reality is objectively horrifying.
Barack Obama
David Horsey, Seattle P-I (image).Barack Obama
Ari Melber (Washington Independent):That didn’t take long. Within hours of Sen. John McCain’s effort to scuttle Friday’s presidential debate, a group of liberal activists launched a sleek online petition for Americans to “demand the debate” goes on. The site currently shows Sen. Barack Obama behind a lectern — thoughtful, poised, in command — squaring off against a floating question mark — in bright red — representing Sen. John McCain’s mystery status.
The site declares it represents a group of “concerned citizens” who are not “affiliated with anybody.” It does appear independent of any campaign or political organization. But, the effort is pro-Obama, obviously, and was created by Michael Whitney, a self-described “progressive… interwebologist” in D.C. who helped found Generation Dean.If a carefully negotiated agreement and public promise don’t make Sen. John McCain feel that he has to keep his word to debate, a progressive web petition isn’t going to make the difference. But the site sill provides a focused portal for all kinds of voters to track and speak out on the debate over the debate. At this point, the Commission on Presidential Debates can surely use any public attention it can get to hold McCain to his commitment.
Finally, Congressional leaders just announced a fundamental agreement on the bailout, so McCain may be the only one who thinks his presence is needed in Washington at 9pm Friday.
Barack Obama
Arun Gupta was enraged as he learned the details of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's plan to fix the U.S. banking system with $700 billion in taxpayer funds. The 43-year-old copy editor and freelance journalist, who publishes his own alternative newspaper, The Indypendent, needed to channel his angst but couldn't find a live protest to attend. So on Sept. 22, he sent an e-mail to some politically active friends in New York. Within days, they'd planned a protest against the bailout in New York and at 80 other locations in the U.S. on Sept. 25."David Letterman Reacts to John McCain Suspending Campaign" video, (09:11):
When John McCain held an unexpected news conference mid-Wednesday afternoon he addressed the current economic crisis with direness previously unseen. His campaign would be suspended, he told reporters, in order to work on the bailout legislation in Congress. The debate scheduled with Barack Obama on Friday night, he added, could be postponed."Paulson, Senate Dems reach tentative bailout deal" (The Hill):
Observers, critics, even fellow Republicans, were left wondering: where did this sense of urgency come from? After all, it was this past Sunday that McCain hinted on 60 Minutes that he would support the bailout -- "we have to stop the bleeding" -- only to express deep criticisms on Monday and then admit he hadn't even read the three-page proposal on Tuesday.
Senate Democrats emerged from a meeting Wednesday with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to report a general, conceptual — but fragile — agreement on a $700 billion plan to rescue the U.S. financial markets.Senators said Paulson and the Democrats struck very tentative deals on Democratic demands on oversight and transparency, executive pay limits, and equity interest on taxpayers’ behalf as part of the massive plan. A hard-fought Democratic provision to allow bankruptcy judges to revise mortgage terms was not likely to survive the horse-trading, however, as Paulson would not agree to the provision that is already in the House and Senate versions.
Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said a bill could be produced as early as Thursday, with debate and a vote likely over the weekend. Ideally, Durbin said the Senate would finish the bill before Wall Street opens on Monday.
“There is high anxiety about the opening of the markets on Monday,” Durbin said. “It’s good to have a deadline, and we have a deadline now, with the Jewish holiday and the opening of the market. Frankly, I want us to stick to that. If we start talking about another week or two, it will take another week or two.”
Senators cautioned that the package’s fragile framework could very easily fall apart as more specific definitions and details begin to be ironed out.
“We can have these broad agreements in principle, but it’s got to translate into details,” said Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.). “And there’s a lot of work to be done.”
Senators described a very somber, serious meeting, with Paulson describing the risk of inaction and working hard to sell the plan to skeptical Democrats during the closed-door caucus meeting. Paulson said unemployment rates could approach 10 percent if the plan was not adopted, senators said, although he did indicate possible receptiveness to the idea of implementing it in stages. Such a plan, Paulson told senators, has worked in countries like Japan, where financial rescue plans were done in stages.
“He talked about the risks in the markets, the risk of the financial system locking up, the risk of companies not being able to borrow money, the risk of major firms failing, the risk of a substantial increase in unemployment,” said Conrad.
Presidential politics hung thickly throughout the meeting, held just hours after Republican nominee Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) announced he was suspending his campaign and returning to Washington to participate in the debate. McCain has urged his Democratic rival, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) to do the same and postpone Friday night’s planned debate, but Obama has refused.
Democrats defended that decision Wednesday night, accusing McCain of an attempt to inject presidential politics into the process with his presence, and that the debate should be held.
“The American people need to hear from both candidates,” said Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), the party’s 2004 presidential nominee. “This notion of rushing to Washington and grandstanding, frankly, is I think inserting presidential politics right into it. It’s silly and impulsive and erratic and doesn’t do justice to the process of running for president.”
Kerry noted that McCain doesn’t even sit on the Senate’s Banking or Finance committees.
“To the best of my knowledge, he doesn’t serve on any of those committees,” Kerry said.
But Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., a top McCain supporter, said both nominees can play “very important” roles in shaping the debate.
McCain can help “take what I see as the conceptual agreement and now work out the details, because it’s clear from this discussion that the details are not worked out.”
The Senate has just two more working days before its scheduled Friday adjournment, with an agreement still outstanding on a continuing resolution to fund the government.
Most seemed resigned to the idea of weekend work, especially on the financial bill, and several also said they weren’t convinced that a Monday morning deadline was even feasible or necessary.
“I’m not sure that’s possible,” said Sen. Robert Casey (D-Pa.) “For the life of me, I can’t see the difference from an economic or even a confidence circumstance, the difference between Friday and a day or two days later or Monday.”
Barack Obama
What we are witnessing right now is what a McCain presidency would be like -- herky jerky, bouncing from crisis to crisis, overreacting at every step.Howie P.S.: Obama is now telling a press conference
It's taken him exactly ten days to go from the economy is strong to we're heading into the Great Depression and must stop the campaign.
But nothing has changed other than the polls, and that's why it's impossible to take this gamble seriously.
McCain can see that he cannot win the presidency unless the campaign narrative changes dramatically, so he's decided to roll the dice.
After all his talk of bipartisanship, John McCain has decided to make an intensely political move. He does not have a plan, but he's willing to drag the country through his personal drama, no matter the cost, just so that he might win the presidency.
McCain wants to demonstrate his leadership skills, but instead he's demonstrating beyond any doubt that he is temperamentally unfit to be president.
“It’s my belief that this is exacty the time the American people need to hear from the person who in approximately 40 days will be responsible with dealing with this mess.”
Barack Obama
After calling for debates all summer, John McCain is cutting and running from the first one.Howie P.S.: The AP just put up this response from the Obama campaign. Ben Smith comments:In one of the weirder political ploys of a long campaign season, McCain says he will "suspend" his campaign on Thursday. He is also pushing for a postponement of the first presidential debate. McCain says he is taking these dramatic steps because he wants to focus on congressional negotiations over the bailout. It's not clear how a national presidential debate -- the ultimate bully pulpit in this political season -- would detract from any effort to build national consensus on solutions for the economic crisis.
The debate, scheduled for 9pm EST on Friday, would have provided the first direct, extended exchange between the nominees on foreign policy, and presumably would have included economic discussions as well, given the current crisis. Both candidates could travel to Washington the next morning -- Obama is already scheduled to do so -- so McCain's decision to bail on the debate as his polling slips is odd. Today's Washington Post/ABC poll showed Obama taking a national lead, powered by voters flocking to him on economic issues.
The Obama campaign just released a statement describing their collaboration with McCain, though it did not directly address his debate gambit:
At 8:30 this morning, Senator Obama called Senator McCain to ask him if he would join in issuing a joint statement outlining their shared principles and conditions for the Treasury proposal and urging Congress and the White House to act in a bipartisan manner to pass such a proposal. At 2:30 this afternoon, Senator McCain returned Senator Obama's call and agreed to join him in issuing such a statement. The two campaigns are currently working together on the details.
That's nice. Here's a better idea: Lay out those details in public, in a transparent, free-wheeling televised the debate this Friday, after officially changing the topic from foreign policy to the economy. Good leaders can change course to meet a crisis, but they don't run from public scrutiny. John McCain may hope his Beltway trip looks presidential, but you don't need to be in Washington to rally the American people to a solution to these problems.
The only thing that's changed in the last 48 hours is the public polling.
Barack Obama
As if to quash the emerging news narrative that John McCain is afraid of the press after going a full month without holding a press conference, the Republican nominee's campaign made the candidate available last night to a local television station in Maine.Howie P.S.: The word "buffoon" comes to mind:
If they thought McCain would come under less intensive fire than he would from the national press, however, the campaign was mistaken. Rob Caldwell, a dogged reporter for WCHS, pressed McCain repeatedly on Gov. Sarah Palin's qualifications for the vice presidency. And while answering, McCain made a number of factual misstatements.First, the reporter asked McCain to explain Sarah Palin's foreign policy credentials:
Q: Let 's move on to what you say is the number one issue facing the United States in our time. And that is the challenge of addressing Islamist extremism. What credentials does Gov. Palin have -- in national security, diplomacy, foreign policy -- that qualify her to be your partner in that, on that issue: the fight against Islamic extremism?
McCain: Well, obviously the economy is also a major challenge facing America.
Q: No, I'm using your words, Senator McCain, you have said, this summer...
McCain: No, I said...
Q: That the number one challenge of our time is Islamic extremism...
McCain: No, I said the greatest challenge of our time is national security threats. I've also said that jobs and the economy are the number one issue facing America.
Leaving aside McCain's ability to define America's "greatest challenge" as somehow different from its "number one issue," it's just not true that he has never described "Islamic extremism" as the greatest challenge of our time.
From a March 28 speech posted on McCain's website: "It will strengthen us to confront the transcendent challenge of our time: the threat of radical Islamic terrorism. This challenge is transcendent not because it is the only one we face. There are many dangers in today's world, and our foreign policy must be agile and effective at dealing with all of them. But the threat posed by the terrorists is unique."
And in June: "Well, I would think that the absolute gravest threat is the struggle that we're in against Islamic extremism, which can affect, if they prevail, our very existence."
Continuing, McCain brought up an Alaska natural gas pipeline backed by Palin:
McCain: So, ah, but the point is Governor Palin was right on the issues. She understands energy, which is one of the fundamental issues of our national security. She was responsible for a $40 billion pipeline that's gonna bring natural gas to the lower 48.
But as the New York Times reported yesterday, "the pipeline exists only on paper." And though Palin has thus far proved adept at "attracting developers to a project that has eluded Alaska governors for three decades ... Ms. Palin has overstated both the progress that has been made and the certainty of success."
In the interview, McCain continued by saying Palin was "right on Russia" and "right on Iraq" while Senator Obama was "wrong." McCain also falsely suggested that Obama had credited Palin with being "right on Iran," which has never happened. "He [Obama] said that she was right on Iran when he's been wrong on Iran."
Regardless of what one thinks of Barack Obama's positions on Russia, Iraq and Iran, it's hard to see how Palin had much of a track record at all -- on any of these matters.
As Andrew Sullivan has noted, she answered a question on Iraq in 2006 by saying: "I've been so focused on state government, I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq. I heard on the news about the new deployments, and while I support our president, Condoleezza Rice and the administration, I want to know that we have an exit plan in place; I want assurances that we are doing all we can to keep our troops safe. Every life lost is such a tragedy. I am very, very proud of the troops we have in Alaska, those fighting overseas for our freedoms, and the families here who are making so many sacrifices."
When asked again by the interviewer for a specific example of Palin's foreign policy experience, McCain flubbed Palin's talking point on energy.
McCain: She knows more about energy than probably anybody else in the Unites States. She is governor of a state [pause] that 20 percent of America's energy supply comes from there.
Leave aside the wildly overstated assertion that Palin is America's top expert on energy. McCain also claimed that the state produces "20 percent of America's energy supply," which is just wrong.
In 2005, Alaska produced 3.5 percent of America's energy supply. Presumably McCain meant to say that Alaska is responsible for 20 percent of America's domestic energy production (which is true).
Individually, these were perhaps all minor flubs. But taken in total, they suggested McCain may be a bit rocky now that his campaign has mostly closed him off to reporters.
bumbling person: somebody behaving in a silly way.
"Sarah Palin had turbulent first year as mayor of Alaska town" (Seattle Times):Sarah Palin's first year as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, could easily have been her last as she became embroiled in personnel challenges, a thwarted attempt to pack the City Council and a standoff with her local newspaper.--At last week's national convention, Republicans fought to turn a perceived weakness of their vice-presidential nominee — a lack of experience — into a signature strength, saying Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin had more executive experience than both members of the Democratic ticket combined.
Palin's Family Has Always Held a Place in Her Politics (WaPo):WASILLA, Alaska -- One Friday in June, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin joined the chief of the state prison system on a tour of the Point MacKenzie Correctional Farm, a 90-minute drive north of Anchorage. It was a routine visit but for the presence of the governor's infant son, Trig."Palin and McCain’s Shotgun Marriage" (Frank Rich-NY Times):
Palin held her baby in her arms as the warden drove a short distance around the facility, said corrections director Joe Schmidt, who sat next to Palin. A few days later, the governor got a warning from her public safety commissioner that someone had complained that she did not strap Trig into a car seat for the ride.
Palin dismissed the complaint as petty, and the commissioner, whom she appointed, took no formal action. But the incident shows the degree to which family and politics are bound together in Palin's career.
SARAH PALIN makes John McCain look even older than he is. And he seemed more than willing to play that part on Thursday night. By the time he slogged through his nearly 50-minute acceptance speech — longer even than Barack Obama’s — you half-expected some brazen younger Republican (Mitt Romney, perhaps?) to dash onstage to give him a gold watch and the bum’s rush.Howie P.S.: I couldn't manage to just post an excerpt from Rich's column.Still, attention must be paid. McCain’s address, though largely a repetitive slew of stump-speech lines and worn G.O.P. orthodoxy, reminded us of what we once liked about the guy: his aspirations to bipartisanship, his heroic service in Vietnam, his twinkle. He took his (often inaccurate) swipes at Obama, but, in winning contrast to Palin and Rudy Giuliani, he wasn’t smug or nasty.
The only problem, of course, is that the entire thing was a sham.
As is nakedly evident, the speech’s central argument, that the 72-year-old McCain will magically morph into a powerful change agent as president, is a non sequitur.
In his 26 years in Washington, most of it with a Republican in the White House and roughly half of it with Republicans in charge of Congress, he was better at lecturing his party about reform than leading a reform movement. G.O.P. corruption and governmental dysfunction only grew. So did his cynical flip-flops on the most destructive policies of the president who remained nameless Thursday night. (In the G.O.P., Bush love is now the second most popular love that dare not speak its name.)Even more fraudulent, if that’s possible, is the contrast between McCain’s platonic presentation of his personal code of honor and the man he has become. He always puts his country first, he told us: “I’ve been called a maverick.” If there was any doubt that that McCain has fled, confirmation arrived with his last-minute embrace of Sarah Palin.
We still don’t know a lot about Palin except that she’s better at delivering a speech than McCain and that she defends her own pregnant daughter’s right to privacy even as she would have the government intrude to police the reproductive choices of all other women. Most of the rest of the biography supplied by her and the McCain camp is fiction.
She didn’t say “no thanks” to the “Bridge to Nowhere” until after Congress had already abandoned it but given Alaska a blank check for $223 million in taxpayers’ money anyway. Far from rejecting federal pork, she hired lobbyists to secure her town a disproportionate share of earmarks ($1,000 per resident in 2002, 20 times the per capita average in other states). Though McCain claimed “she has had national security as one of her primary responsibilities,” she has never issued a single command as head of the Alaska National Guard. As for her “executive experience” as mayor, she told her hometown paper in Wasilla, Alaska, in 1996, the year of her election: “It’s not rocket science. It’s $6 million and 53 employees.” Her much-advertised crusade against officials abusing their office is now compromised by a bipartisan ethics investigation into charges that she did the same.
How long before we learn she never shot a moose?
Given the actuarial odds that could make Palin our 45th president, it would be helpful to know who this mystery woman actually is. Meanwhile, two eternal axioms of our politics remain in place. Americans vote for the top of the ticket, not the bottom. And in judging the top of the ticket, voters look first at the candidates’ maiden executive decision, their selection of running mates. Whatever we do and don’t know about Palin’s character at this point, there is no ambiguity in what her ascent tells us about McCain’s character and potential presidency.
He wanted to choose the pro-abortion-rights Joe Lieberman as his vice president. If he were still a true maverick, he would have done so. But instead he chose partisanship and politics over country. “God only made one John McCain, and he is his own man,” said the shafted Lieberman in his own tedious convention speech last week. What a pathetic dupe. McCain is now the man of James Dobson and Tony Perkins. The “no surrender” warrior surrendered to the agents of intolerance not just by dumping his pal for Palin but by moving so far to the right on abortion that even Cindy McCain seemed unaware of his radical shift when being interviewed by Katie Couric last week.
That ideological sellout, unfortunately, was not the worst leadership trait the last-minute vice presidential pick revealed about McCain. His speed-dating of Palin reaffirmed a more dangerous personality tic that has dogged his entire career. His decision-making process is impetuous and, in its Bush-like preference for gut instinct over facts, potentially reckless.
As The New York Times reported last Tuesday, Palin was sloppily vetted, at best. McCain operatives and some of their press surrogates responded to this revelation by trying to discredit The Times article. After all, The Washington Post had cited McCain aides (including his campaign manager, Rick Davis) last weekend to assure us that Palin had a “full vetting process.” She had been subjected to “an F.B.I. background check,” we were told, and “the McCain camp had reviewed everything it could find on her.”
The Times had it right. The McCain campaign’s claims of a “full vetting process” for Palin were as much a lie as the biographical details they’ve invented for her. There was no F.B.I. background check. The Times found no evidence that a McCain representative spoke to anyone in the State Legislature or business community. Nor did anyone talk to the fired state public safety commissioner at the center of the Palin ethics investigation. No McCain researcher even bothered to consult the relevant back issues of the Wasilla paper. Apparently when McCain said in June that his vice presidential vetting process was basically “a Google,” he wasn’t joking.
This is a roll of the dice beyond even Bill Clinton’s imagination. “Often my haste is a mistake,” McCain conceded in his 2002 memoir, “but I live with the consequences without complaint.” Well, maybe it’s fine if he wants to live with the consequences, but what about his country? Should the unexamined Palin prove unfit to serve at the pinnacle of American power, it will be too late for the rest of us to complain.
We’ve already seen where such visceral decision-making by McCain can lead. In October 2001, he speculated that Saddam Hussein might have been behind the anthrax attacks in America. That same month he out-Cheneyed Cheney in his repeated public insistence that Iraq had a role in 9/11 — even after both American and foreign intelligence services found that unlikely. He was similarly rash in his reading of the supposed evidence of Saddam’s W.M.D. and in his estimate of the number of troops needed to occupy Iraq. (McCain told MSNBC in late 2001 that we could do with fewer than 100,000.) It wasn’t until months after “Mission Accomplished” that he called for more American forces to be tossed into the bloodbath. The whole fiasco might have been prevented had he listened to those like Gen. Eric Shinseki who faulted the Rumsfeld war plan from the start.
In other words, McCain’s hasty vetting of Palin was all too reminiscent of his grave dereliction of due diligence on the war. He has been no less hasty in implying that we might somehow ride to the military rescue of Georgia (“Today, we are all Georgians”) or in reaffirming as late as December 2007 that the crumbling anti-democratic regime of Pervez Musharraf deserved “the benefit of the doubt” even as it was enabling the resurgence of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. McCain’s blanket endorsement of Bush administration policy in Pakistan could have consequences for years to come.
“This election is not about issues” so much as the candidates’ images, said the McCain campaign manager, Davis, in one of the season’s most notable pronouncements. Going into the Republican convention, we thought we knew what he meant: the McCain strategy is about tearing down Obama. But last week made clear that the McCain campaign will be equally ruthless about deflecting attention from its own candidate’s deterioration.
What was most striking about McCain’s acceptance speech is that it had almost nothing in common with the strident right-wing convention that preceded it. We were pointedly given a rerun of McCain 2000 — cobbled together from scraps of the old Straight Talk repertory. The ensuing tedium was in all likelihood intentional. It’s in the campaign’s interest that we nod off and assume McCain is unchanged in 2008.
That’s why the Palin choice was brilliant politics — not because it rallied the G.O.P.’s shrinking religious-right base. America loves nothing more than a new celebrity face, and the talking heads marched in lock step last week to proclaim her a star. Palin is a high-energy distraction from the top of the ticket, even if the provenance of her stardom is in itself a reflection of exactly what’s frightening about the top of the ticket.
By hurling charges of sexism and elitism at any easily cowed journalist who raises a question about Palin, McCain operatives are hoping to ensure that whatever happened in Alaska with Sarah Palin stays in Alaska. Given how little vetting McCain himself has received this year — and that only 58 days remain until Nov. 4 — they just might pull it off.
The Post's Dana Milbank offers a behind-the-scenes look at the one group that unifies members of the Republican Party.Howie P.S.: I'm still adjusting to my new best friends, the hardworking men and women of this embattled group. I don't know if they consider Jon Stewart to be a member of this group, but Jed Lewison asks is this "The Best Daily Show Episode Ever?"(video). Pressed for time? Can't watch all three segments? Check out this one: "John McCain: Reformed Maverick" (04:32).
Booman:It isn't much of a secret that John McCain has always enjoyed excellent relations with the national media. McCain once referred to the media as 'My base', and he wasn't joking.It was important that McCain nurture a good relationship with the media because he is hated by most of his senate colleagues on both sides of the aisle. He's also hated by most members of the Bush administration. And he's hated by the Republican base of volunteers and activists. No politician can be very effective if everyone they have to work with actively hates their guts. But John McCain found a way to work around that by making sure that he got glowing media coverage. It wasn't enough to win him the nomination in 2000, but it was enough for him to win a few primaries and make himself into a household name. John McCain, the Maverick.Now, I see that McCain and Palin are going to make war on the national media a central part of tonight's speech and of the fall campaign. And I see that Al Giordano is wringing his hands about the potential effectiveness of this strategy. For once I get to tell Al that he is being a chicken little. Giordano makes many excellent points in his post, but what he is neglecting to consider is that John McCain is literally nothing without his entourage of sycophants in the national media.
With even party loyalists and personal friends like Peggy Noonan and Mike Murphy blasting his choice of vice-president, McCain can forget about a message advantage (or even parity). And making war on the press will turn them into even harsher critics. Giordano is correct that people hate and distrust the media, but they are nonetheless heavily influenced by them. Republicans are masters at gaming the national dialogue in their favor. But, in order to do that, they rely on the media to parrot their talking points and repeat their lies and distortions without correction or skepticism.
John McCain has ceded his two biggest advantages in this race in two short weeks.
First he tossed aside the experience argument when he selected a running mate with no experience. Then he declared war on the only institution in the country that doesn't hate his guts. There is nothing to worry about, Al. McCain just shot his last ally.
