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My Main Takeaway from the Vice Presidential Debate
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Tag Archives: 2008 Election
Playing Politics by Suspending Campaign? Of Course.
Is McCain’s call to suspend the campaign over the financial crisis an example of leadership? Is it a political ploy?
Yes.
Neo-neocon (I like her blog, but I LOVE her blog’s name) sums it up pretty well:
Just because there is some political posturing does not mean there’s not also some sincerity. Each candidate is revealing something about himself even as he jockeys for position, and they are running true to type.
McCain is an action man who doesn’t like to dither. He’s been in the Senate for a long time and has done a great deal of hammering out of deals, and he is comfortable in that arena. …
Obama is not a decision-maker, nor does he really feel comfortable in the Senate, having spent very little time there. He likes to sit back and study all the angles, and even then would prefer to let things emerge rather than taking a leadership role.
Update: Now McCain has said he’ll participate in the debate (about 150 minutes from now as I write this at 6:30), and this is being reported as a cave-in and an embarrassment for McCain. Maybe. But blogger Nate Silver made the point a day ago (hat tip: Taranto) that McCain’s gambit has served to focus attention on a debate that nobody was talking about much.
If McCain does much better than Obama tonight, that will swamp the effect of the flip-flop on suspending the campaign. And while Obama is dramatically better with a teleprompter than McCain, there will be no teleprompter tonight. In a give-and-take discussion, my money’s on McCain.
Gay Republicans Make Their Peace With Palin
This article is a response to gay friends who have taken issue, quite civilly, with my support of John McCain for President. (Disclaimer: there is a comment on the article from someone named “Kirk,” who is not me.)
While John McCain’s “selection of the Alaska governor has energized the GOP’s socially conservative wing,†it has also inspired a lot of gay and lesbian Republicans. It has brought together left-leaning lesbians and Hillary-supporting gay men concerned about Barack Obama’s qualifications with gay conservatives unhappy with McCain’s frequent departures from party orthodoxy.
We see in Sarah Palin John McCain’s real commitment to reform. That is why, despite her mixed record on gay issues, we are excited by her nomination.
The article is by a co-author of GayPatriot, which has been my favorite gay conservative blog ever since Andrew Sullivan let his Bush Derangement Syndrome morph into McCain Derangement Syndrome.
The reference to Sarah Palin’s “mixed record” is a euphemism at best — the only things on the positive side of the ledger are that she vetoed an anti-gay law (because she believed it was unconstitutional), and apparently she interacts respectfully with openly gay individuals. But there’s nothing really “mixed” about her stand on gay issues — she’s simply on the wrong side.
For me, and for some gay voters, national security is a more pressing issue in selecting a president. I think Palin was a bad choice on the basis of experience (although she is better qualified on that basis than Obama). But I think her reform record is admirable, and since for now at least she clearly is helping the ticket, I’ll take my chances on McCain’s continued good health.
Along the same lines, I also want to note estimates that nearly one out of every four gay voters pulled the lever for Bush in 2004 (as did I), despite Bush’s odious support for the proposed constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. (As for this year’s GOP nominee: “In the Senate, McCain has been an ardent opponent of a federal constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, arguing his case on federalist grounds.”)
McCain Rides the Palin Tide
For the first time since Obama effectively clinched the Democratic nomination in February, the pay-to-play Intrade prediction market is narrowly predicting a McCain victory.
Never Forget
Some day soon I need to write more extensively about the name of this blog. It comes from something that English statesman Edmund Burke apparently did not actually say, so I’ve felt free to modernize the language:
“All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.”
Regardless of who said it first, that sentence is the purest possible distillation of my worldview, and today is a powerful annual reminder of why I regard it as an enduring truth.
The events of 9/11 were the legacy of more than two decades of doing nothing, or next to nothing, in response to attacks from fascists in Islamic guise.
Militant Islamists declared war on America in November 1979 by taking hostages at the U.S. embassy in Tehran. This was followed by 1983 attacks on the U.S. embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut; the Pan Am 103 bombing over Lockerbie in 1988; the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993; the Khobar Towers bombing in 1996; the simultaneous 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania; and the attack on the U.S.S. Cole in 2000; along with smaller atrocities too numerous to list.
Only after 9/11 did America, led by a President who despite his substantial flaws was resolute enough to call evil by its name, finally mount a sustained response and take the battle to the enemy. And no, Saddam was not behind the 9/11 attacks — but liberating Iraq and planting a (still-fragile) democracy in the heart of the Islamic Middle East is an essential part of the broader war.
All of this is why, despite profound disagreements with the Republican Party on social issues, despite voting for Bill Clinton three times (including 2000), I can no longer vote for Democrats for President. Not until the party has a standard-bearer who understands the cost of meekness in the face of fascism, and who is prepared to stay on the offensive against people for whom “death to America” is not a metaphor.
Palin Backlash Watch, Parts III & IV
From Tammy Bruce, former head of the Los Angeles chapter of NOW and “a registered Democrat her entire life until February”:
In the shadow of the blatant and truly stunning sexism launched against the Hillary Rodham Clinton presidential campaign, and as a pro-choice feminist, I wasn’t the only one thrilled to hear Republican John McCain announce Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate. For the GOP, she bridges for conservatives and independents what I term “the enthusiasm gap” for the ticket. For Democrats, she offers something even more compelling – a chance to vote for a someone who is her own woman, and who represents a party that, while we don’t agree on all the issues, at least respects women enough to take them seriously.
From Phyllis Chesler, feminist psychologist and author of a dozen books on women’s issues:
Ah, the abortion issue, always, only, the abortion issue. We fought hard for that right, and we have been forced to continue fighting for it. I don’t agree with the Right to Life position but I can work with someone whether or not we agree on this hot-button issue. … I have worked with some Christian conservatives who are anti-abortion but who are, nevertheless, pro-woman. Interestingly, they have sometimes taken pro-woman stands that are, in my view, even more radical in certain areas than those taken by secular feminists. Indeed, I have found that religious people can also be profoundly pro-woman. Feminism cannot be defined only by secularists or only by one political party.
Contra Tammy Bruce, I don’t think Obama’s decision to pass over Hillary Clinton had as much to do with sexism as it did with Clinton’s own baggage, as well as Obama’s understandable desire to avoid being saddled with a second-guessing Second Gentleman who used to hold the top job.
I also, frankly, still don’t think Palin is qualified to be president. She would not have been selected if she were a man. However, Democrats are in no position to complain about appeals to identity politics.
Palin joins a long tradition of underqualified VP nominees in both parties, ranging in my lifetime from Spiro Agnew to Sargeant Shriver to Geraldine Ferraro to Dan Quayle to John Edwards. I’ll take my chances with Palin.
Palin’s Key Appeal is Class, Not Gender
Lisa Schiffren makes the case that Palin is on the ticket not so much to appeal to women as to appeal to working-class, Reagan Democrats:
If you were that autoworker or miner — even if you think that Democrats will give you more money, even if you hope that they can solve your pressing health-care issues — it’s hard to see how you’d accept that this Harvard Law grad, who “organized†in the slums of Chicago, has a clue about your three-dimensional life. For instance, you support the military and want to see the U.S. win in Iraq — not just turn tail and leave. And while it’s not your issue, you’ve never been happy with abortion on demand. But you aren’t rich, and you mistrust the party of Wall Street.
Maybe George Bush and his dad never really got you either. Does John McCain? Maybe. Partly. But this Palin babe — she is right on your wavelength. She lives where you live.
So who are the Democrats going to send to fight the Palin dragon? Women? Senator Joe Biden, son of Scranton? Can a vice-presidential candidate really double as the ticket’s foreign-policy expert and it’s emissary to the nation’s blue-collar neighborhoods? That will be quite a trick. Given the electoral votes at stake — Obama’s strategy for victory depends on it.
His & Her Candidates
My lovely wife, the self-taught Web Goddess, supports Obama (as does almost everybody we know in our blue-town/blue-state of Maplewood, New Jersey). I support McCain, primarily on the basis of the Iraq war issue. As I’ve discussed before, this makes for some careful-but-substantive conversations as the election drama unfolds.
Tempting though it may be sometimes to mock the opposing candidate, we know it can easily feel like mocking each other by proxy. Because we have an extraordinary personal bond, there is no worry that political differences might damage the relationship. But out of simple respect, we avoid excessive harshness and look for common ground, even as we state and stand by our opinions.
This model cannot, of course, be replicated in the broader society. Democracy depends upon the clash of ideas, and negative campaigning can be a highly effective way neutralize an opponent’s strength. However, excessive harshness can cause a backlash, as the Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) have found in their initial feeding frenzy over Sarah Palin.
Palin may have gone too far herself in mocking community organizers in her acceptance speech. Less than a day after Palin’s speech, Daily Kos launched the meme of Jesus vs. Pontius Pilate, and it’s gaining a lot of traction. On Facebook, if you search the popular Flair application for “Community Organizer,” you’ll find more than two dozen buttons making this point. The button at left is the one that comes up first, indicating more people have chosen that than any other similarly themed button. I mention this because this button was created by my wife Nina, whose graphic design skills led her to design a button more readable than the alternatives, featuring a red-blue color scheme that helps tell the story.
The Republicans are seeking to buff some of the harsher edges off of the meme — McCain’s acceptance speech made a nod to community organizing without using the term, and then on Face the Nation he explicitly said that community organizing is “very honorable.”
But I think the Jesus-vs-Pontius debate helps the Republicans much more than the Democrats. The downside for Republicans is it helps establish a High School Mean Girl image for Palin that will cost her some sympathy. However, what it does much more powerfully, I think, is emphasize two story lines that cannot help Obama: the experience issue (by all means let’s argue until Election Day about whether Obama has more experience than Palin), and the Obamessiah image that undermines the ability of many voters to feel comfortable with the idea of Obama in the very pragmatic and secular role of leader of the free world.
McCain: Nine-and-a-Half Extraordinary Minutes
I had an event to attend in New York City last night, so I didn’t watch McCain’s speech. On the brief drive home from the train, I heard snippets of it live on the radio, and I wasn’t impressed.
It was the section in the first half that started, “I fight for Bill and Sue Nebe from Farmington Hills, Michigan, who lost their real estate investments in the bad housing market.” He went on to name other couples from other states, and of course the state delegations broke out in applause when he named their state. It seemed formulaic and tired — and I was tired, after staying up way too late the prior night writing about Palin. When I got home, I left the TV off and went to bed.
I didn’t want to sit through the entire video, so today I found the full text online and read it. I was glad to see him say ” I hate war. It is terrible beyond imagination. I’m running for President to keep the country I love safe, and prevent other families from risking their loved ones in war as my family has.” The Democrats will try to pin a warmonger label on him, but among all the presidential hopefuls this year, he is uniquely qualified to hate war.
As a former speechwriter myself, I look for the craft as much as the content, and as I read along I thought it generally was a solid speech. Then I got to the section on his experience in Vietnam… and I found myself in tears, right about here:
I always liked to strut a little after I’d been roughed up to show the other guys I was tough enough to take it. But after I turned down their offer, they worked me over harder than they ever had before. For a long time. And they broke me.
When they brought me back to my cell, I was hurt and ashamed, and I didn’t know how I could face my fellow prisoners. The good man in the cell next door, my friend, Bob Craner, saved me. Through taps on a wall he told me I had fought as hard as I could. No man can always stand alone. And then he told me to get back up and fight again for our country and for the men I had the honor to serve with. Because every day they fought for me.
I found myself thinking that this may be a rare example of a speech that is more moving when you read on paper than when you hear it delivered. Then I realized I had to listen to him deliver that section. And I was blown away.
In the video on the GOP Convention site, that section starts precisely at minute 42. The speech ends at 51:30, everything after that is applause and balloons. Obama is still the better orator, but for nine-and-a-half minutes, McCain more than held his own. I loved the way he talked over the applause at the close, so the ovation lent energy to the words.
Obama supporters say that just because McCain was a POW doesn’t mean he should be President, and that’s certainly true. Keep on supporting Obama, if that’s your inclination — he’s a good man too. But if you didn’t watch the speech last night, give Mr. McCain nine-and-a-half minutes of your time. Vote against him if you will, but take the measure of the man.
So THAT’S Why He Picked Her – What a Speaker!
I take back everything I said or hinted or even thought about Sarah Palin being a drag on the ticket.
She did several things she had to do in her speech tonight:
- She established that her record of actual office-holding achievement compares very favorably with Obama’s. (Obama’s achievement of winning his party’s nomination for president is extraordinary and admirable. But as Palin said tonight, “this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform – not even in the state senate.”)
- She demonstrated the combination of combativeness and populist appeal that have given her an 80% approval rating from her fellow Alaskans.
- She showed she was ready — more than ready — to fill the customary VP role of attack dog on the stump. She even claimed the dog imagery for her own. I had already read the line, which she has apparently been saying for years, that the main difference between a Hockey Mom and a pit bull is lipstick. It seemed a little contrived when I was reading it on the screen, but when she said it, she owned it.
She took lots of hard shots at Obama, but by my count only one cheap shot. I wish she had left out the snipe that Obama’s worry about Al Qaeda terrorists is “that someone won’t read them their rights.” I don’t think that’s fair even as an exaggeration of anything I’ve ever heard Obama say.
But I loved the line that “Victory in Iraq is finally in sight … he wants to forfeit.” The “wants to forfeit” part isn’t literally true either, of course — but it’s certainly true that Obama’s pre-surge proposal to retreat-no-matter-what would have forfeited any chance at a positive outcome in Iraq.
My Obama-supporting wife — whom I love with a love that transcends space and time, let alone politics — didn’t like the speech. We both reacted negatively to the cheap shot on Miranda rights. But Nina was clearly pained to hear a man she admires attacked again and again, first by Giuliani and then by Palin. We watched the speech through different filters. Because I want McCain to win, I felt good about the effective, substantive, sarcastic hard punches being thrown at Obama — a man whom, as I’ve written before, in many ways I admire also.
Nina and I have virtually identical views on social issues. We both think the Republicans are on the wrong side of the abortion issue. Even more strongly, we both think they’re on the wrong side of marriage equality for same-sex couples. She was as angered and appalled as I was by the attacks of 9/11, and she knows the danger isn’t over. But we’ve reached opposite conclusions about which candidate to support. We respect each other’s decision, and we respect each other. We have in-depth, substantive discussions on the issues, but we’re careful not to mock each other’s candidate when we talk. That’s the way it should be in a marriage
But that’s not the way it’s going to be on the campaign trail. Unfortunately, negative campaigning works. Because it works, both sides have to do it. I wish it were otherwise — but no candidate has ever won a major election by staying entirely on the high road.
And so to bed.