Prior to the conventions in 2004 John Kerry had a lead against George Bush but made three errors. He made a poor vice presidential pick, he failed to respond adequately to the Swift Boat Liars, and he failed to take advantage of his convention to make the case against Bush. Obama is unlikely to repeat these errors.
We will probably know who the vice presidential pick is any day now. Without knowing the answer it is premature to say he will do better than Kerry, but at least it is safe to predict he will not make the same mistake. Both Kerry and Obama have learned an important lesson from the Swift Boat attacks and any Democratic candidate will be better prepared this time. Kerry wanted a positive convention without criticism of Bush, but Obama plans to take on McCain:
Barack Obama’s campaign plans to use the four-day Democratic National Convention next week to relentlessly portray John McCain as a carbon copy of President Bush, in a strategic shift foreshadowed by two days of tougher attacks on his GOP rival.
The criticism itself, which will focus on the Arizona senator’s economic policies, ties to lobbyists and decades-long tenure in Washington, is not new. But the intensity of the attacks is — and it is meant to minimize the heavy emphasis on Obama’s charisma-driven campaign.
McCain has hammered the theme in recent weeks that Obama is an aloof “celebrity” unprepared to be commander in chief.
“The convention will offer a series of contrasts and comparisions of the McCain record so voters can see how clearly the choice will be in November,” Obama spokesman Bill Burton told FOX News. “The convention will also introduce Senator Obama to the country, but it will make sure to convey strongly the differences and choices Obama’s campaign presents over McCain’s.”
The move is a rejection of John Kerry’s decree in 2004 that his convention would project a positive message about Kerry and the Democratic Party while minimizing attacks on President Bush and the GOP.
Obama strategists believe Kerry’s convention was too passive and gave Bush and the Republicans space to create their own message without having to respond to Democratic criticisms. Advisers say the convention contrasts will not be personal, but will cast a harsh light on McCain’s record, lobbyist relationships and similarities with Bush. Aides say the campaign is setting out to offer a stark contrast between McCain and Obama.
Right wingers, who are generally more interested in distorting the positions of their opponents as opposed to serious discussion of real issues, have been attacking Obama over a vote in Illinois which they dishonestly cite as evidence he supports the killing of live babies. The Politico sorts through this.
I had already known that the attacks on Obama were bogus. What I did not know was exactly how extreme one of his major critics on this issue is. While it is dishonest to portray Obama’s votes as favoring baby killing, it would not be incorrect to say that Jill Stanek is actively trying to bring about increased deaths from AIDS in Africa. Ben Smith writes:
Since long before Obama entered the presidential contest, Illinois conservatives have cited his opposition to a state bill called the Born Alive Infant Protection Act. But while the cause seems rather hard to oppose — the bill nominally aims to prevent the murder of children who have been born — the debate is firmed up around the old, familiar and utterly polarized lines of the abortion debate, a fact the identity of his long-time critic on the issue makes clear.
The bill, which Obama opposed in various iterations in the Illinois state Senate, aims to bar killing infants who have already been born, an utterly uncontroversial stance. Obama opposed it in Illinois, as did women’s groups there, because they thought it was a backdoor way to regulate abortion. (It was an Alan Keyes favorite in 2004.) The newest twist on the story is that he opposed one version identical to a version passed by Congress (on the grounds, again, that it has no effect), arguing that it would have different implications under state than federal law.
The New York Sun has the clearest coverage of the argument, and David Freddoso dwells on it in his book. But given that the bottom line is that the bill has only passed when its critics are satisfied that it’s utterly meaningless, this doesn’t seem like a particularly substantive debate over whether or not he wants to kill living infants.
The notion that this fight is actually about killing live babies, rather than regulating abortion, seems a bit absurd; however, the website of the Illinois activist who championed the legislation, Jill Stanek, bears that out.
It turns out she doesn’t just oppose child-murder. Or late-term abortion. Or abortion. She’s also against condoms — in Africa. She’s raising money for more billboards in Tanzania with the message: “Faithful condom users die.”
Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan, who also has a previous post pointing out differences between the Illinois bill and the bill Obama voted for in the Senate.
Why does everyone assume that this assessment of Joe Lieberman in this AP report on vice presidential prospects was a typo? (Hat tip to Crooks and Liars for the screen grab.)
It’s a good thing Obama didn’t announce his VP choice today as there is even bigger news which would have eclipsed it. (Ok, maybe not.) Michael Ausiello reports that a Veronica Mars movie might be made:
The impromptu powwow took place last week in the offices of Thomas’ Hollywood-based production company, which just so happens to be located on the same lot where Bell is shooting Heroes. “Kristen and I ran into each other, and we did discuss a Veronica movie,” confirms Thomas, who says he has also had “a few conversations” with Mars executive producer Joel Silver…
For her part, Bell considers it a “major compliment” that people are still interested in Mars. “[Fans] still ask me all the time if the show’s coming back. Emotionally, I don’t want to think about Veronica Mars every day because it really does make me sad.”
Regarding her recent chat with Thomas about a Mars feature, the star of Forgetting Sarah Marshall, perhaps not wanting to jinx things, flashes a Cheshire cat grin and says, “We’ll see.”
Translation: We’re halfway there to getting this thing greenlit!
There seem to be an awful lot of blog posts regarding whether John McCain altered his personal history and plagiarized the cross in the dirt story from a story in Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago. The Jed Report summarizes the argument against McCain, but it turns out that the story wasn’t even from Solzhenitsyn. Andrew Sullivan argues for its significance and denies that he is Swift Boating John McCain. Regardless of whether this argument is valid, I wonder if this argument is really worthwhile.
If we are to make revision of one’s biography a matter for voting upon, we must keep in mind the fact that Barack Obama did take some liberties with his own biography in Dreams From My Father. Should the rumors be true and Obama choose Biden as his running mate, there’s also the problem that Biden has had his own problems with plagiarism in the past.
Even if the charges against McCain are true here, all this does is to keep discussion going of McCain’s experience as a POW, which will ultimately work to his benefit. The questions of whether he embellished his biography with this story are not even what anyone will ever vote on. There are considerable differences between Obama and McCain on the issues which matter. These are what we should be concentrating on.
One frustration in seeing reports on medical literature in the mainstream media is that the reporters generally oversimplify medical articles leaving readers with a misleading account. Yesterday there were news stories such as this AP report on this article in Archives of Surgery. The articles headline states that “1 in 2 believe prayer saves the dying.” This headline can be supported from the article with the abstract stating, “More of the public (57.4%) than the professionals (19.5%) believe that divine intervention could save a person when physicians believe treatment is futile.” It also goes on to say that, “Other findings suggest further important insights.”
The article is more significant when evaluated beyond the provocative line quoted which formed the basis of many newspaper headlines. Orac does a good job of summarizing the full study at Respectful Insolence.
The pubic does come out looking better in reading the full article than in only looking at this one aspect. As the question of prayer changing hopeless medical outcomes has been the section discussed the most, it is worth pointing out that a closely related topic of prayer influencing other medical outcomes has actually been studied scientifically, as I have previously discussed here and here. It turned out that 1) prayer did not affect medical outcomes and 2) there appears to have been fraud practiced in some papers which did suggest that a benefit could be seen from prayer.
I recently quoted one report speculating on John Kerry as Obama’s running mate. While I still doubt it will happen, here’s another blog post in favor of choosing Kerry from The California Majority Report:
Over the course of a prolonged Rovian attack, Kerry got “swift-boated.” His decorated war service became a liability (although Kerry’s goofy “Reporting for duty” entry at the 2004 Democratic convention certainly didn’t help matters), and the campaign seemed far too unwilling to light the fire.
But that was then and this is now, and with President Bush’s approval rating now well lodged in the low 20s, there’s a bit of buyer’s remorse out on the campaign trail. Kerry can wear being slimed in the Swift Boat ads as something of a badge of honor these days. Here’s the man that should be president but for everything you hate about the Republican party, electorate! More importantly, Kerry has been an effective Obama surrogate, willing to go on the offensive at a time when, quite frankly, that seems to be Obama’s biggest weakness.
Kerry has moved on from his 2004 defeat to continue his work as a distinguished 20-year veteran Senator on the Foreign Relations Committee (where he chairs the obviously relevant Subcommittee on Near East and South and Central Asian Affairs), so if the Obama folks have deemed international experience to be their liability, Kerry’s easily fits the mold. Kerry also chairs the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, and sits on the Finance and Commerce, Science and Transportation committees, providing some helpful economic resume points to boot. And if Obama is destined to be eternally compared to Camelot, wouldn’t having a Senator JFK from Massachusetts, at a minimum, make the narrative just a little less attenuated?
There are other people out there who would make fine vice presidential nominees, to be sure, but since the moment of speculation will soon be over, it doesn’t hurt to remember that we could do much worse than a widely-known standard bearer of our party — the man with more Democratic votes than any other candidate in history.
I was quite surprised upon looking at a copy of the Mackinac Island Town Crier which arrived today. There is a half page ad for a fund raiser for Barack Obama which includes the names of some people who I would not expect to be supporting a Democrat for president. The Mussers, owners of Grand Hotel, have even contributed the use of The Gate House restaurant for the event. (For the benefit of those who have been to the island in the past but not recently, this was the French Outpost until purchased by Grand Hotel in 2005).
The event is to be held on Monday, August 25 from 4-6 pm (which unfortunately is a couple of days before I will be arriving for the Labor Day Jazz Weekend at Grand Hotel). Further contact information is available in the ad.
Maybe I overestimated how Republican some of the people on the island are. Perhaps the backers of the event include former Republicans who, like much of the country, are now disenchanted with GOP rule. I also wonder if some are opposing McCain due to his role in blocking the renewal of the H2B visa exemptions which resulted in preventing many people who have worked on the island for years from returning to work this summer. If this is the case and Michigan business owners are considering this issue, perhaps Michigan is not in play to the extent that many Republicans believe this year.
The more that comes out about John Edwards, the worse he looks. The editor of The Raleigh News and Observer writes that Edwards pleaded with him not to run a story about his affair when the initial accusations came out last October. He cited his wife’s health as a reason for the newspaper not to publish this in the local paper. The paper had actually already decided against going ahead with the story, but Edwards did not know this.
Edwards was sure playing on the sympathies of the newspaper when he begged them not to print the story due to Elizabeth’s health considering that during his confession he stated that she already knew about the affair.
While the media was initially reluctant to cover the story, the dishonest manner in which Edwards responded seems to have many journalists determined to investigate this further. At the paper’s Editors’ Blog the coverage of the story is discussed further, concluding:
Questions remain about who is the father of Hunter’s baby and whether Edwards knew about payments to Hunter and Young. We’ll continue reporting.
In a failed campaign characterized by far more nonsense than substance, perhaps the most ridiculous attack from the Clintonistas was that Obama is elitist. Anybody who has a shot at the presidency is a member of an elite in this country, making the charge rather meaningless. It was even more ridiculous coming from supporters of Hillary Clinton, who by any meaningful measure is far more of an elitist than Obama.
That is not to say that Hillary Clinton is the most elitist person in the country. Clinton’s elitism is surpassed by many, such as Lynn Forester, Lady de Rothschild. Just the name places her well ahead of Clinton-level elitism, and light years ahead of Obama on the elitism scale. Despite this, the Lady de Rothschild once again accuses Obama of elitism as she continues to push for the Clinton elite to return to power:
“We’re not going to win by pretending problems with Barack Obama don’t exist. He has a huge problem connecting with ordinary Americans, who think, ‘He doesn’t understand me.’ He is not modest; he is arrogant. He radiates elitism.”
At least Obama’s type of elitism, based upon his own abilities and success is preferable to elitism based upon who Forester and Hillary Clinton happened to marry. Incidentally, the article also reports that “The Rothschilds spent the night of their wedding dinner in the Lincoln bedroom at the White House when Bill Clinton was president.” Yes, they are such common folk.
The Lady de Rothschild also complains that, “He started running for president before he even set foot in the US Senate.” Obama’s hardly the first politician to dream of running for president. Anyone doubt that this was also Hillary’s goal before running for her Senate seat?
Leon Panetta explains the problem:
Leon Panetta, Bill Clinton’s former White House chief of staff, was tasked by the Obama campaign this summer with soothing ruffled feelings and helping Hillary loyalists to get over their sense of loss. It has been a demanding assignment.
“There is a sense of entitlement that almost seems to be inbred,” Panetta said. “They are convinced Hillary is the one who should be assuming the mantle and it’s tough to crack that.”
Here are two clear measures that one is an elitist: having the title of Lady and having a belief that one is entitled to be president, even after losing a primary battle (which so many of her supporters are in denial about).
Voters in Virginia just might get a chance to vote for a Michael Bloomberg/Ron Paul ticket. Sam Stein reports that the Independent Green Party of Virginia collected enough signatures to get this ticket on the ballot without the knowledge of the potential candidates. A representative of the state board of elections did state that they would not be placed on the ballot if they request to have their names taken off.
Ron Paul is quirky enough that I wouldn’t attempt to guess what he will do, but I doubt he would have any interest in this. I certainly don’t see Michael Bloomberg keeping his name on the ballot. If he was really interested in an independent run he would have no chance of winning this year but he could do respectable by third party standards. I can’t see any reason why he’d allow his name to be on a ballot without actively trying and wind up with a negligible number of votes.
If they should remain on the ballot it is difficult to be certain how it would impact the election this year when Virginia is actually in play. Ron Paul has more fanatic supporters who might vote even if neither is campaigning. The conventional wisdom is that Ron Paul would take more votes from a Republican, but it is also possible that a Bloomberg/Paul ticket could take anti-war votes away from Obama and help McCain.
It is unlikely a third party candidate would win under any situation, but it is even less likely Bloomberg could win against Obama and McCain due to their support form independents. Earlier in the year when a Bloomberg candidacy was being discussed I suggested that his best chance would be if John Edwards won the Democratic nomination and Mike Huckabee won the Republican nomination. With a candidate as weak as Edwards there would be an outside chance of Bloomberg moving ahead of Edwards and then create a coalition including Democrats and country club Republicans who would find Bloomberg preferable to Huckabee. Considering how things turned out, this scenario of Bloomberg becoming the de facto Democratic candidate looks even more plausible today if Edwards had somehow won the nomination. (Of course this was never really plausible as the same weaknesses which would prevent Edwards from being competitive in a general election campaign would also prevent him from becoming the nominee.)
Who would have guessed that the “cone of silence” would become a subject of conversation in political coverage? The New York Times reports that John McCain was not in a “cone of silence” while Barack Obama was answering questions prior to him at the Saddleback Church as Rick Warren had earlier stated. This has raised speculation as to whether McCain cheated and listening in, allowing him more time to prepare answers to the questions. The McCain campaign denied that he cheated:
Nicolle Wallace, a spokeswoman for Mr. McCain, said on Sunday night that Mr. McCain had not heard the broadcast of the event while in his motorcade and heard none of the questions.
“The insinuation from the Obama campaign that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, cheated is outrageous,” Ms. Wallace said.
I have no idea whether John McCain cheated and am making no accusations, but I do find something unseemly in this response. We are to take for granted that McCain could not have possibly cheated because he was a prisoner of war. Will that excuse be used to cover up any misdeed McCain might commit? It has already been established this year that John McCain is an unethical liar by the manner in which he has run a Rove/Clinton style dirty campaign in which he has repeatedly lied about Obama’s positions and record. He may or may not have cheated in this case, but having already demonstrated that he is a dishonest person he cannot expect to use having been a prisoner of war as evidence of honesty in other situations.
Mike Allen reports that both candidates actually knew some of the questions in advance:
A source close to Warren tells Playbook that the candidates knew in advance they would be asked their own greatest moral failure, America’s greatest moral failure, and the three wisest people in their lives.
The source said Obama also knew he would be asked if he’d be willing to commit to an emergency plan for orphans, like President Bush has for AIDS. GIVE OBAMA CREDIT FOR ANSWERING CANDIDLY: “I cheated a little bit. I actually looked at this idea ahead of time, and I think it is a great idea.”
I think it was a good idea to allow the candidates a chance to consider some of these questions ahead of time. There are some questions where we would expect a candidate to be prepared to answer any time. Other questions, such as these, do require some thought and we could learn more about the candidate based upon an answer they have had time to consider rather than hearing the first thing that comes to mind.
Naturally much of the media has been looking at this from the perspective of who won. Such horse race coverage means little here. John McCain should have won as this forum was held before people who agreed with him on most of the issues and have voted heavily Republican in the past. McCain’s goal was simply to reduce reservations about him so that people who already agree with him will vote for him. Obama had to convince people who disagree with him to vote for him. Obama might convince a handful to look beyond issues such as abortion and vote for him, but this event was McCain’s to win or lose. That is partially why Chuck Todd’s evaluation of the event was so wrong.
The problem is not that Chuck Todd declared McCain the winner but the manner in which he did so:
Obama spent more time trying to impress Warren (or to put another away) not offend Warren while McCain seemingly ignored Warren and decided he was talking to folks watching on TV. The McCain way of handling this forum is usually the winning way. Obama may have had more authentic moments but McCain was impressively on message…
Take the VERY first question Warren posed to both candidates: who are three people you’ll depend on for wisdom in the presidency. Obama seemed to answer this in a very personal way, talking about his wife and grandmother. McCain went right to this message, checking boxes on Iraq (Patraeus) and the economy (Whitman) for instance. Now, I’m betting Obama’s answer came across as more authentic but McCain’s was probably more effective with undecided swing voters.
The two answered the Supreme Court justice question VERY differently, with Obama seemingly trying to say a nice thing or two about justices he disagreed with, while McCain went right to pander mode in his answer. And yet, McCain’s straightforward answer easily penetrated while Obama’s did not.
Every Obama answer was certainly thoughtful enough but he seemed to want to explain himself too much and went out of his way not to offend folks who disagree with him.
For those who support the views held by most of the evangelical voters, McCain did win, with this being the only possible outcome. For others looking at the overall character of the candidates, we have Obama who was “authentic” and who tried to consider the views of those who disagree with him versus McCain who “went right to pander mode.” Which man has the character to be president based upon these descriptions? Certainly not the guy who panders. Andrew Sullivan agrees:
Chuck basically says that unless you pander in soundbites, you lose. If you show respect for your opponent’s views, you lose. However defensible this is as analysis, it isn’t part of the solution, is it?
Obama loses based upon not being a traditional candidate in the Bush/Clinton mode. That is the whole point of much of Obama’s support. We don’t want another Bush or Clinton.
This week’s installment of SciFi Friday will deal with Doctor Who and some of its spin offs. First let’s get everyone up to date. The video above contains the entire history of Doctor Who in under eight minutes from the first episode in 1963 through this season’s two-part finale, The Stolen Earth and Journey’s End, and even covers the spin offs.
David Tennant has been named the Planet’s greenest star in this year’s Playing for the Planet Awards. The poll was carried out by Playhouse Disney and David was nominated for the award as he drives a hybrid car. Peter Duncan, awards judge and ambassador, said this about David winning the award:
“I am delighted that David Tennant has won the Greenest Star award - he’s a great role model for kids everywhere and clearly is as passionate at saving the planet as his character ‘The Doctor’.
Torchwood will be returning as a radio play on September 10. Here is a description of the planned show:
“Somewhere out there in that chaos of darkness and light, of science and protons, of gods and stars and death… somewhere there’s an answer.”
The Torchwood Institute was founded by Queen Victoria in 1879 to protect the British Empire against the threat of alien invasion. By 2008, all that remains of the organisation is a small team based in Cardiff. And now, following the tragic deaths of two of their colleagues, the remaining three – Captain Jack Harkness, Gwen Cooper and Ianto Jones – have to protect the human race against another unknown force from the darkness.
Martha Jones, ex-time traveller and now working as a doctor for a UN task force, has been called to CERN – the world’s largest particle physics laboratory in Geneva – where they’re about to activate the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
The LHC is a particle accelerator which has been built deep underground in a 27km tunnel under Switzerland and France. Once activated, the collider will fire beams of protons together, recreating conditions a billionth of a second after the Big Bang – and potentially allowing the human race a greater insight into what the Universe is made of.
But so much could go wrong – it could open a gateway to a parallel dimension, or create a black hole – and now voices from the past are calling out to people and scientists have started to disappear…
Where have the missing scientists gone? What is the secret of the glowing man? What is lurking in the underground tunnel? And do the dead ever really stay dead?
Torchwood is a spin-off from the award-winning BBC Wales TV production Torchwood. Written by Joseph Lidster, it stars John Barrowman, Freema Agyeman, Eve Myles, Gareth David-Lloyd, Lucy Montgomery (of Tittybangbang) and Stephen Critchlow.
The television show will be limited to a five-part miniseries next season entitled Torchwood: Children of Earth, but it has been promoted to BBC-1. Hopefully this will give the show greater exposure and perhaps it will be shown for longer periods in future years. While BBC-1 might not allow some of the material from earlier seasons on BBC-2 and BBC-3, fortunately it will air after 9:00 p.m. where some naughtiness is still allowed. The miniseries is rumored to be about the sleeper aliens from the second season.
The final story technically isn’t about a Doctor Who spin off but there is a close connection. Coupling, which I’ve previously posted about here and here, was written by Steven Moffat who will be taking over as producer of Doctor Who in 2010. Moffat had a couple brief references to Doctor Who and Daleks in the first three seasons. In the fourth season Jeff was replaced by a new character named Oliver. In order to demonstrate his geekiness, he was made the owner of a science fiction book store, and in one scene he was seen with a full sized Dalek.
I completed watching the series this morning and then attempted to read a post at a Doctor Who forum mentioned in the shows Wikipedia entry in which Steven Moffat answers a fan’s request for closure by giving a run down of what will happen to the characters. The link given is to a forum which is now closed to new registration and therefore is no longer visible to many people. I finally tracked it down at a newer version of the forum and even found there were some fights at Wikipedia over the post’s inclusion.
As Steven Moffat’s post on the fates of his characters is not easily available I will post it below. It does reference events in episodes of the show which will not mean anything to those who have not seen it. It also contains spoilers which those who plan to watch the show should avoid until they have seen the complete series. Beware the first line contains a major spoiler.
Sally said yes to Patrick, they got married and are very happy. Especially as Sally beat Susan to the altar, and finally did something first. Patrick is now a completely devoted husband, who lives in total denial that he was anything other an upstanding member of the community. Or possibly he’s actually forgotten. He doesn’t like remembering things because it’s a bit like thinking.
Jane and Oliver never actually did have sex, but they did become very good friends. They often rejoice together that their friendship is uncomplicated by any kind of sexual attraction - but they both get murderously jealous when the other is dating. Jane has a job at Oliver’s science fiction book shop now - and since Oliver has that one moment of Naked Jane burnt on the inside of his eyelids, he now loses the place in one in every three sentences. People who know them well think something’s gotta give - and they’re right. Especially as Jane comes to work in a metal bikini.
Steve and Susan have two children now, and have recently completed work on a sitcom about their early lives together. They’re developing a new television project, but it keeps getting delayed as he insists on writing episodes of some old kids show they recently pulled out of mothballs. She gets very cross about this, and if he says “Yeah but check out the season poll!” one more time, he will not live to write another word.
Jeff is still abroad. He lives a life a complete peace and serenity now, having taken the precaution of not learning a word of the local langauge and therefore protecting himself from the consequences of his own special brand of communication. If any English speakers turn up, he pretends he only speaks Hebrew. He is, at this very moment, staring out to sea, and sighing happily every thirty-eight seconds.
What he doesn’t know, of course, is that even now a beautiful Israeli girl he once met in a bar, is heading towards his apartment, having been directed to the only Hebrew speaker on the island. What he also doesn’t know is that she is being driven by a young ex-pat English woman, who is still grieving the loss of a charming, one-legged Welshman she once met on a train. And he cannot possible suspect that (owing to a laundry mix-up, and a stag party the previous night in the same block) he is wearing heat-dissolving trunks.
As the doorbell rings, it is best that we draw a veil.
Clintonistas and right wingers (there I go being redundant again) have been trying to minimize Obama’s political accomplishments by claiming he isn’t leading McCain by as many points as he should. Frank Rich puts Obama’s lead in perspective:
It seems almost churlish to look at some actual facts. No presidential candidate was breaking the 50 percent mark in mid-August polls in 2004 or 2000. Obama’s average lead of three to four points is marginally larger than both John Kerry’s and Al Gore’s leads then (each was winning by one point in Gallupsurveys). Obama is also ahead of Ronald Reagan in mid-August 1980 (40 percent to Jimmy Carter’s 46). At Pollster.com, which aggregates polls and gauges the electoral count, Obama as of Friday stood at 284 electoral votes, McCain at 169. That means McCain could win all 85 electoral votes in current toss-up states and still lose the election.
Yet surely, we keep hearing, Obama should be running away with the thing. Even Michael Dukakis was beating the first George Bush by 17 percentage points in the summer of 1988. Of course, were Obama ahead by 17 points today, the same prognosticators now fussing over his narrow lead would be predicting that the arrogant and presumptuous Obama was destined to squander that landslide on vacation and tank just like his hapless predecessor.
The truth is we have no idea what will happen in November. But for the sake of argument, let’s posit that one thread of the Obama-is-doomed scenario is right: His lead should be huge in a year when the G.O.P. is in such disrepute that at least eight of the party’s own senatorial incumbents are skipping their own convention, the fail-safe way to avoid being caught near the Larry Craig Memorial Men’s Room at the Twin Cities airport.
So why isn’t Obama romping? The obvious answer — and both the excessively genteel Obama campaign and a too-compliant press bear responsibility for it — is that the public doesn’t know who on earth John McCain is. The most revealing poll this month by far is the Pew Research Center survey finding that 48 percent of Americans feel they’re “hearing too much” about Obama. Pew found that only 26 percent feel that way about McCain, and that nearly 4 in 10 Americans feel they hear too little about him. It’s past time for that pressing educational need to be met.
What is widely known is the skin-deep, out-of-date McCain image. As this fairy tale has it, the hero who survived the Hanoi Hilton has stood up as rebelliously in Washington as he did to his Vietnamese captors. He strenuously opposed the execution of the Iraq war; he slammed the president’s response to Katrina; he fought the “agents of intolerance” of the religious right; he crusaded against the G.O.P. House leader Tom DeLay, the criminal lobbyist Jack Abramoff and their coterie of influence-peddlers.
With the exception of McCain’s imprisonment in Vietnam, every aspect of this profile in courage is inaccurate or defunct.
McCain never called for Donald Rumsfeld to be fired and didn’t start criticizing the war plan until late August 2003, nearly four months after “Mission Accomplished.” By then the growing insurgency was undeniable. On the day Hurricane Katrina hit, McCain laughed it up with the oblivious president at a birthday photo-op in Arizona. McCain didn’t get to New Orleans for another six months and didn’t sharply express public criticism of the Bush response to the calamity until this April, when he traveled to the Gulf Coast in desperate search of election-year pageantry surrounding him with black extras.
McCain long ago embraced the right’s agents of intolerance, even spending months courting the Rev. John Hagee, whose fringe views about Roman Catholics and the Holocaust were known to anyone who can use the Internet. (Once the McCain campaign discovered YouTube, it ditched Hagee.) On Monday McCain is scheduled to appear at an Atlanta fund-raiser being promoted by Ralph Reed, who is not only the former aide de camp to one of the agents of intolerance McCain once vilified (Pat Robertson) but is also the former Abramoff acolyte showcased in McCain’s own Senate investigation of Indian casino lobbying.
While reporters at The Post and The New York Times have been vetting McCain, many others give him a free pass. Their default cliché is to present him as the Old Faithful everyone already knows. They routinely salute his “independence,” his “maverick image” and his “renegade reputation” — as the hackneyed script was reiterated by Karl Rove in a Wall Street Journal op-ed column last week. At Talking Points Memo, the essential blog vigilantly pursuing the McCain revelations often ignored elsewhere, Josh Marshall accurately observes that the Republican candidate is “graded on a curve.”
Most Americans still don’t know, as Marshall writes, that on the campaign trail “McCain frequently forgets key elements of policies, gets countries’ names wrong, forgets things he’s said only hours or days before and is frequently just confused.” Most Americans still don’t know it is precisely for this reason that the McCain campaign has now shut down the press’s previously unfettered access to the candidate on the Straight Talk Express.
Rich has even more to say but I think this makes the point. Obama already has a lead, and McCain risks falling further as voters get a closer look at him. There is no need for Obama to fire all his ammunition at McCain yet. With any luck he will self-destruct on his own, and possibly look even worse in the debates against Obama than Bush looked against Kerry, if that is even possible. Obama can afford to take the high road now and maintain a small but significant lead. He can always finish McCain off in October, when it really matters, if McCain is even still in contention at that point.
Think Progress comments on how Bobby Jindal, appearing on Meet the Press, was unable to cite any big ideas which John McCain has had. It is actually unfair to say that John McCain has no big ideas. Making people pay even more of their health care costs out of their pocket might not be a good idea, but it is a big idea. Staying in Iraq for one hundred years is insane, but also might qualify as a big idea. Perhaps giving even bigger tax cuts to the top one tenth of one percent than George Bush gave them might also be considered a big idea. It must be tough acting as a surrogate for a candidate who has nothing but bad ideas.
I was actually bothered far more by another one of Jindal’s answers. He attacked Obama by repeating all the same lies about Obama’s tax plans which have been repeatedly debunked, including twice by Factcheck (here and here.) Host David Gregory let this go by without a follow up question. Instead he asked Tim Kaine a different question. As Obama’s surrogate, I wish that Kaine had responded to Jindal’s untrue statements as opposed to only responding to the question he was asked.
