New Slogan for Changing "Times"

"All the News That's Fit to Print" : isn't that a lame 20th century slogan for a trendy 21st century content provider like The New York Times? The last time I read the "Paper of Record" most of the articles were about demography ("In Florida, Gefilte Fishermen Face Shrinking Catch"), most of the photos were 98% sky and 2% mud, most of the "news" was deep-sourced speculation about speculation about speculation about whether John McCain was planning to use the White House as a place to meet interns at taxpayer expense.

The self-transformation of this organ of journalism seems to have a method and a goal. I'm hearing a statement about all of us standing together as one, never blaming the victim, and always saying boldly what needs to be said, especially when it's unpopular because it's not the truth. An organ like this needs a new slogan for a new century. Here's a suggestion for the masthead of the Times: "We Are All Jayson Blair".

Doesn't that just about say it all?

Forget "The Aristocrats": The Funniest Joke is "The Democrats"

With Tina Fey fully occupied impersonating an idiot impersonating Sarah Palin, immature Americans wonder who they'll see on SNL this weekend impersonating the "toast" of Washington, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Most often mentioned: guest appearance by standup veteran Joan Rivers!

It must be once in a generation that a Speaker of the House gets to announce a major piece of legislation before a national and international audience anxious with anticipation. Speaker Pelosi's history-making moment came yesterday around 5 pm when she approached the microphone to congratulate herself and fellow Democrats for fixing Bush's bailout bill and saving "Main Street".

Then it turns out that 40% of her own Democratic caucus votes against the bill? Didn't Pelosi know who was and wasn't on board when she made the announcement? Isn't that, like, the most basic job of the caucus leader?

The Democrats should change the lock on Speaker Pelosi's door before she does more damage to their brand. She probably won't notice before the weekend anyway. Maybe if she's lucky she'll find out she's been fired by turning on SNL--nothing softens the blow like a little laughter! And the wit-challenged SNL staff won't have to worry about material for the skit. Pelosi herself is the gag.

Presidential Debate: Losing Audience Share?

Supposedly the TV audiences for the presidential debate Friday night were lower than expected and lower than those for the Bush-Kerry debates four years ago.

Although before the debate I would not have predicted that myself, in retrospect I don't find it surprising. The debates of 2004, like 6 of the nine previous TV presidential-debate series, featured a sitting U.S. president. The other three series featured a sitting vice-president. Part of the appeal of these debates was the spectacle of seeing a political heavyweight titleholder perform extemporaneously and confront a challenger. In Friday night's debate both candidates were non-titleholders. I would imagine that for many Americans (of all ages; not all viewers are actually of voting age) this might have made the debate a less exciting attraction.


Since I thought that McCain acquitted himself better than Obama I would have preferred that he do it for the biggest audience possible. I wouldn't speculate upon how the smaller audience might affect the evolving campaign. But in thinking about its causes, I suspect that they symptomatize something working against Obama. Everybody concedes that Obama outdoes McCain in media star power. People show up in great numbers to see Obama in a stadium, at a monument, or to watch him on TV. Except that this time they didn't. The lower than expected ratings for the Friday debate probably means that Obama's stardom is waning. He's being seen as a regular boring politician rather than the reincarnation of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King.


The smaller than expected audience also suggests that Obama has not been as successful as he'd like in convincing people that John McCain is a surrogate for George Bush. In 2004, many people who were not the least bit undecided about the candidates watched the debates in the hope of seeing Bush humiliated by Kerry. Americans who are still angry at Bush and would like to see his work repudiated by their liberal knight might have been expected to turn on the TV just to see Obama lay into McCain. But apparently McCain isn't enough like Bush to make him a really entertaining target. If so, part of Obama's message isn't working as well as he wants it to.


Even supposing these hypotheses are true, it would be reckless to project their effect on the actual voting. But if true they do indicate a changing dynamic in the campaign. It is clear, just from listening to Obama's stump speeches and his answers in the debate, that he has now decided to make himself heard by talking into the lunchbucket as loud as he can. It's a kind of politics, and elections have been won with it. Also lost. This week Obama seems to be doing all right.

First Debate Winner: U.S.

The presidential debate was the best I've seen. Both candidates articulated their positions clearly and with confidence. Partisans of each candidate will feel that the positions they advocate were presented well. Notwithstanding all the punditry about "winning" and "losing" debates, what each candidate "has to do" to advance his campaign, the two candidates together did something that rarely happens: they laid out their positions and differences for the people to see what they are, and let them decide.

McCain had the steeper task, because he advocates accepting the challenges of leadership, and many citizens see the actual losses more easily than the potential risks and advantages. McCain gave the American people and the world a lecture about Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan that deprived us of the comfort of thinking that we can maintain our safety without work and risk. He did not make false promises, but outlined the seriousness of the problems and his determination to confront them and his ability to do so.

Americans heard this point of view, and they could see that the man explaining it did not just find it in a book, but developed it through extensive experience in government. They saw a real statesman explain what statesmanship is for. I don't think the American voters have ever seen this in a presidential debate, so they might not know what to make of it. They'll have to choose whether it's what they want, but at least McCain has given them a chance to check it out. In that regard, McCain did great. He's a very impressive man.

Obama performed theatrically better than I expected him to. Now that he's been running for president for almost two years, Obama's begun to believe that the phrases he repeats are actually "positions" he thought up himself. To anyone who didn't know better, he sounded and looked like a leader. Those who already supported Obama and his positions probably felt entirely encouraged (except maybe when he mentioned missile defense), and many of those who supported his positions but weren't sure about the man probably feel more secure with him now.

The ultimate effect of the debate will not be in the instantaneous evaluations, but in the material it provides for continuing discussion in the campaign. Of the two candidates I think that McCain was the only one who could change minds--which I hasten to add is not the same thing as winning votes. McCain has changed even Obama's mind on a number of points, to go from what Obama himself said. Any conscientious citizens watching the debate could not fail to see that McCain was more thoughtful and knowledgeable about American statesmanship than they are themselves, and more thoughtful and knowledgeable than Obama; and that even someone who disagreed with McCain's positions could and did learn something from him. McCain won more attention. Now as the campaign continues he will have to work to persuade the voters whose attention he has gotten. (Ads attacking Obama's sex-ed bill in the Illinois legislature will squander the attention that McCain has focused upon his own leadership.)

Obama won some respect, but he didn't win attention, and he didn't demand it. Obama said things about taxation, spending, and diplomacy that you like if you agree with them, and if you don't believe too much intellectual work is necessary to reach the right conclusion. No minds can be changed by this.

Ultimately it is the voters' wisdom that will be tested in the election. The Democratic ticket has many advantages over the Republican; but virtually none of these advantages has to do with the candidates. Dissatisfaction with the economy and the Bush administration have put the Republicans at a huge handicap. But the Democrats have been unable to exploit it decisively, because they nominated a man who as a presidential candidate does not stand comparison to the Republican nominee. If Obama could not rely upon the voters' assumption, or their wish to believe, that they are suffering from Republican problems that Obama can fix just because he's a Democrat, his presence on a debate platform with John McCain would make even Democrats cringe. Barack Obama is no John McCain.

In his conclusion Obama talked about the diminished image of America in the world. I think that viewers of the debate abroad saw a country choosing its new president from between two men both of whom would be considered very highly qualified to lead the viewer's own nation. Indeed, many viewers will have had to admit--however reluctantly--that both candidates are far superior to the leaders they now have (and that would include many viewers in the U.S.).

Viewers abroad will also have seen--I know this sounds like elementary school civics--a open exchange of competing perspectives conducted with civility and intellectual respect. The debate displayed America very well. Obama contributed to that display, but he didn't have to get elected to do it, so in that important sense the debate as a whole undermined his final point about how an Obama presidency would improve America's image. Both candidates have improved America's image, but McCain's performance in the debate improved it more, not by offering a promise of what an American president might be, but by showing what a distinguished American senator already actually is.

The U.S. would have to be rich in talent indeed to decide that we could find a better president than John McCain.

Betting Long: Obama and Other Bubbles

The meltdown of the financial markets has led to a lot of fingers pointed in the direction of Wall Street, not least of all by the presidential candidates. No doubt about it, the investment community has broken all boundaries in inventing new derivatives so mathematically abstract that even economists cannot understand them. But is Wall Street really unique in placing big bets on fantasies of the future? A lot of Americans have been in on the game, most obviously those who were tempted into borrowing money to buy homes they couldn't afford.

But not all the blind hope involved finance. Who is Barack Obama to decry the imprudence of investment bankers? Obama himself was nominated for president without ever accomplishing anything of substance in his brief public career--or even trying to. What is Barack Obama's candidacy if not a speculation bubble? A man with no record and no plan "wins" the Iowa caucuses and gets proclaimed a viable presidential candidate by the media? Are Americans supposed to think that Barack Obama can actually serve them as president because several million college students and their vintage '68 grandparents think he's the reincarnation of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King rolled into one? Even Sarah Palin knows that reincarnation is a fib.

Right now Obama still occupies the role of "frontrunner," but what is that? Just a device of journalistic accounting. It doesn't mean that he's qualified to be president, or even that many people really think he is. The polls and newspaper analyses that support the credibility of Obama's candidacy are as fictitious and manipulated as the balance sheet of Enron. Sure Obama won millions of "votes" in the Democratic primaries, but primaries are not real elections, because the voting does not result in anybody taking office. Primary elections are basically fancy polls that use voting machines instead of telephones. Caucuses are even further from real elections.

The political capital won in primary elections is also deceptive because the opponents as well as the voters are all of the same party. All the speaking essentially addresses the already converted, so that a candidate like Obama never had to persuade voters to change their minds. Since in Democratic presidential primaries the candidates all conform closely to a single formula, a candidate is never fundamentally challenged: indeed, his positions are actually confirmed and strengthened by his rivals. So what's the cash value of the millions of "votes" that Barack Obama got? Nobody knows.

Once the public begins to get serious about the election, a lot of people who wish they could vote Democratic are going to realize that their party unfortunately forgot to nominate a candidate. It won't require a gaffe. Obama isn't unqualified because he's unintelligent; he's unqualified because he has a record of zero accomplishment, and un-childish voters are not indifferent to that in a potential president. Nothing that Obama does from here on can change the record he brings to the election. It's a fact that hangs over the guy's head like a bowling ball about to drop. It's there; a few people who have been hoping and not looking just have to look. Once that happens a panic will set in as Democrats realize that they will lose with Obama even if he wins the election. It may happen tomorrow, or November 4, or November 5 if the country is unlucky. But it will happen, to the embarrassment and consternation of many.

Obama's Most Unexploited Weakness

As the Obama campaign apoplectically tries to smear John McCain's outstanding record of public service, The Maverick has responded by running ads that inform the voters of unpleasant things they don't know about the Democratic nominee. I found it useful to hear about the Illinois sex-ed bill, although I thought the critical weakness it exposed was not that Obama had a perverted plan to teach sex-ed (I don't think he did), but rather that he didn't even know what was in the bill he supported, and was content to leave details to teachers. ("Does Barack Obama know what's in the legislation he supports?")

Nevertheless I feel that attack ads like these run a risk of alienating voters who may suspect that if they didn't hear about the sex-ed bill before, it probably wasn't important. But I also think that Obama has a weak spot voters know about but haven't gotten in focus: the Democratic primary campaign that won Obama his party's nomination. How did he do it? This is an important question for the McCain campaign and for voters, because if Obama is to be considered unworthy of election to the presidency (because of inexperience, bad judgment, or suspicious associations) then he should also be considered unworthy of the Democratic nomination. Correspondingly, if it is conceded that Obama was worthy of nomination, then it is also conceded that he is worthy to serve. For this reason Hillary Clinton's attacks on Obama in the spring were more powerful than McCain's now, even when McCain raises the same issues, for the simple reason that Clinton was arguing that Obama did not even deserve to be nominated.

In that vein it should be noted that the attacks on Sarah Palin are extremely strong because they insist that the Governor of Alaska is not qualified even to be the Republican nominee. Responding that Obama is even less qualified does not return the volley unless the response states or strongly implies that the Democrats insulted the voters' intelligence in awarding Obama their party's nomination.

There is one imporant difference between Palin's nomination and Obama's that I have not yet heard mentioned. Palin did not campaign for the vice-presidential nomination: she was serving as governor of Alaska when McCain selected her as his choice of the right VP in a McCain administration. A first-term governor of Alaska would indeed have been rash to oppose John McCain and Mitt Romney for the Republican presidential nomination. But among all the crazy charges that have been thrown at Sarah Palin, nobody has tried that one.

Yet Barack Obama did decide to run for president when he had served hardly more than the first year of his first term in the U.S. Senate. Moreover in doing so he decided to oppose members of his own party--one in particular--whose records of public accomplishment and service far exceeded his. What did Barack Obama think about the presidency and its requirements when he picked himself as the best person to lead the Democratic ticket? And how did he bring it off?

Much has been said about Obama's "charisma" and the promise that he would Make History just by standing on a platform and running. One could observe that Obama has no charisma and that "First (race, gender, state of origin) Nominee" is material for the Guinness Book of World Records and not history (which Obama could have made as a legislator in the Senate if he was serious). But attributing Obama's success to charisma or Faking History gives the Democratic nominee far too much credit. This junior senator with no record of accomplishment, no signature issue, no wealth, no family, and no important political alliances needed a lot of help in gaining funding and legitimacy before he could make a credible run for the Democratic nomination. Those who possessed the fuel Obama needed could have told him to serve in the Senate before running for president--or destroyed him if he didn't. So why did so unsentimental a pol as Ted Kennedy support Barack Obama in 2008? Belief in reincarnation? Even supposing that Obama offered the promise of inaugurating a blissful postracial America, wouldn't Obama have done it better when he was ready, and with the whole Democratic Party behind him?

Why Obama in 2008? Why was it even thinkable?

There's no big secret behind this. Obama was useful to insiders as a tool to stop Hill and Bill from establishing a Clinton dynasty. Even Obama's appeal to his childish groupies was largely due to the fact that Hillary was too much of a real politician and therefore had "baggage," while Obama was a screen onto which they could project their fantasies, precisely because he wasn't real. But for the insiders in the Party and the media who got behind Obama, the Obama campaign was never about anything other than stopping Hillary Clinton. Because there was no other reason to support a rookie like Obama whose every policy idea came straight from the Democratic discount rack.

Now stopping Hillary Clinton may have been a good idea, or it may not have been. But what was definitely a bad idea, for America, was putting up a pawn to do the job. Because a pawn cannot serve as president. He doesn't have the independent base he needs, and Barack Obama wouldn't have it even he had served three years as governor of Hawaii and topped Sarah Palin in executive experience. A President Obama will be tied to the strings of all the backers, advisors, and media pundits who have maneuvered him into the position he is in. That's a prescription for one of the worst presidencies in history, no matter what Obama himself thinks or what he'd like to do.

That's why one of Obama's critical weaknesses is just the very fact that he is the Democratic nominee. The party and media power brokers nominated a facade. McCain's campaign should find more ways to remind the voters of that.

Hostage Alert: Roe v. Wade v. Women Voters

During every presidential election cycle, and any time a sitting president must fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court, American women report anxiety lest a step be taken toward a five-to-four majority on the Court that would overturn Roe v. Wade and, according to what many of these women say, illegalize abortion in the United States and abolish a woman's "right to choose." In the current presidential campaign we are hearing again that women are "afraid" of McCain and Palin, and in discussions that The Postliberal has had with women friends and family, concern about protecting Roe v. Wade almost invariably surfaces as the bottom-line issue that forbids consideration of the Republican nominees.

The concerns of these women are very deeply felt, and I should think they would merit sympathy not only from those Americans who support legal abortion, but even from fellow-citizens who don't. Anybody who believed that a civil freedom of importance rested in the hands of only five people--five people unelected and serving for life--would have to feel that the situation was intolerable. The women's frustration is made all the more urgent by the conviction of many--the almost certainly correct conviction--that the legality of abortion is supported by the majority of voters, male and female. So why should it be possible for five judges appointed for life to overrule the views of millions of Americans? Who gave five judges the right to decide whether women can or can't have legal abortions?

In my discussions with women about the legality of abortion I am struck by something the women are silent about, almost as struck as I am by their vigilant defense of Roe v. Wade. It is invariably left to me to point out that the legality of abortion in America does not actually depend upon Roe v. Wade, and that even if Roe v. Wade were overturned it would not necessarily mean that abortion would become illegal in the U.S. Usually this observation of mine is met with surprise and disbelief, although occasionally (since some women of my acquaintance are lawyers) with a certain reluctant acknowledgement. Why are American women, American women who are so concerned about the legality of abortion, also so predominantly unaware that abortion was legal in several states before the Roe v. Wade ruling, that other states were in process of considering making it legal, and that all states were constitutionally empowered to make abortion legal within their borders if their citizens decided it should be? With all the money we have invested in schools, with all our women's magazines and television talk-shows, with all the money that is contributed to the National Abortion Rights Action League and other organizations purportedly devoted to advancing the rights of women, one would think that someone in the business of speaking with good will to girls and women would take the trouble to inform them that the legality of abortion in the U.S. cannot be abridged by five votes on the Supreme Court as so many of them wrongly believe.

If somehow Roe v. Wade were overturned, the American men and women who favor legalized abortion would simply have to pursue the political task of making abortion legal in each of the fifty states. They are certainly up to it. So everybody can just relax about the composition of the Supreme Court. It will not, and cannot, "take over women's bodies," no matter who is elected president and no matter whom the president appoints. There's nothing for women who favor legal abortion to be afraid of in this election. In fact, should Roe v. Wade ever be overturned, it is the opponents of legal abortion who would have the most to fear. Why? Because by all indications their numbers are fewer than those of the advocates, and as a matter of both principle and general practice in our country, majorities rule.

So who was it that gave five judges the power to decide the abortion issue for tens of millions of voters, women and men? Nobody other than the "women's advocates" who financed the plaintiffs in Roe v. Wade, and the seven Supreme Court justices who ruled in their favor.

When "women's advocates" and their supporters chose to put the legality of abortion in the hands of the Court instead of leaving it in the voters', they also simultaneously gave the Court the power to take the legalization away, and deprived the voters of the power to keep it. That is the only reason why anybody would be worried about a Supreme Court that might declare abortion illegal just by overturning Roe.

It should be obvious to any supporter of legalized abortion that if today, more than thirty-five years after the Roe decision, American women still have to worry every time they think about the White House or vote for president, the "women's advocates" who won the freedom to have legal abortion for American women established that freedom on a very flimsy basis. That's not because they did the best anyone could in a backward country still alarmingly dominated by white Christian ignoramuses who believe in creationism and want to enslave women--because few if any people who fit that description actually exist, even in Alaska. Legalized abortion is established on a flimsy basis because the "advocates for women" didn't do their job well. They took a short cut. "Haste makes waste": that's something all our wise grandmothers and great-grandmothers knew, but the "advocates for women" today do not. In deciding that the justices of the Supreme Court were more to be trusted than the millions of American voters, women and men, working to establish their common laws through processes of democratic dialogue and legislation, the "advocates for women" chose convenience over thoroughness. American women have been paying the price for their impatience ever since, in their unending anxiety over the possibility that abortion might be illegalized by the Court.

Since Roe v. Wade thirty-five years have been wasted while citizens who could have voted for legalized abortion have been forced to sit on their hands. If millions of American voters, men and women, state by state, fought democratically to legalize abortion in our land, there is no power under our constitution that could frustrate the consensus of their voices. Millions of determined women voters do not have to worry about what five judges think of their bodies and beliefs. American voters, men and women, have always had the power under our constitution not only to legalize abortion, but to give that legalization all the force and stability of their determination and numbers. The only thing standing in their way now is...Roe v. Wade.

Why don't American women know this? Why are they needlessly afraid? Why aren't their "advocates" telling them how powerful they are under the principles and laws of our democracy?

At the national Democratic Party convention last month we heard a lot of praise for the work that an earlier generation of women did in establishing suffrage for women by amendment of the U.S. Constitution. We did not, however, hear anybody say that women should have the right to vote on the question of legalizing abortion. Did the Nineteenth Amendment somehow grant women the right to vote on every issue of community concern except the one that matters most to millions of them? Was it the vision of the suffrage movement that women voters would be kept in the dark about the real power of their votes in our democracy? Kept in constant fear of authoritarianism lurking both on their courts and within the homes of their own neighbors and fellow-citizens? And bullied into voting for one party, election after election, regardless of how they judged the particular candidates and issues in any particular election? Did women win the vote so that their strength could be held hostage and controlled by the self-proclaimed advocates for women?

The Postliberal thinks it is about time American women took back the right to vote in its entirety, so that they can establish legal abortion on the foundation of millions of votes instead of five or seven. To do this, however, they will have to join those who ask for Supreme Court appointments who are conscientious in their respect for the U.S. Constitution, the document they are sworn to uphold. It doesn't seem like much to ask for. Justices like that may well some day overturn Roe v. Wade, but if and when they do the effect of their decision, and in all likelihood its intent, will be to return the power of legislative choice to the citizens. In the present presidential election it is the Republican candidates who are most likely to support a Court that gets out of the voters' way, but there is no particular reason why the Constitution should not be championed by both parties. Women who support Democrats and legal abortion should realize that these ends are ultimately compatible with opposition to Roe v. Wade, and may even be better pursued without the intrusion of a patronizing Supreme Court. A movement for Choice without Roe would be neither progressive nor conservative, Democratic nor Republican. I'll call it Post-Liberal.

There is a pro-choice, anti-Roe position. Women should be speaking up for it, because in the long run it is the position that offers women the most empowerment, not only as biological childbearers, but as citizens of a democracy.

The Donkey in the Room Kicks Obama

When Barack Obama characterized his opponents' campaign for change as "lipstick on a pig," was he implying that Sarah Palin, the world's most famous Pit Bull in Lipstick, was a pig? When the McCain campaign, and some observers in the public and the media, take umbrage at Obama for insulting Palin's gender, are they for real? Both questions admit of multiple, provisional, and even contradictory answers, because the entire situation condenses so many "subtexts" it could have been written for the stage by David Mamet or Philip Roth (that is if Philip Roth wrote for the stage).

Whatever Barack Obama's indiscretion may have been, it was a one-billionth fraction of zero compared to the assaults directed against Sarah Palin by the mob of stone-throwing TV scandal-baiters, newspaper opinionators, and Beverly Hills bloviators, not to mention the ugly world of the web, where any high school sophomore can outslime Rupert Murdoch. Stoning Sarah Palin has become an American liberal pastime. But Governor Palin has dealt with the attacks so professionally she might as well be, I don't know, Johnny Podres pitching in Yankee Stadium. No screaming fan ever got a hit off her, and from the looks of things they never will. Sarah Palin neither needs defenders nor has sought them; she's too busy attacking, because at the moment that's a big part of her job, she's good at it, and her opponent Obama seems unable to open his mouth without providing her with more opportunities. John McCain knows that Sarah Barracuda requires no "special treatment" to protect her against sexism, because she's more than a match for anyone or any mob that might try to harass her; and undoubtedly he selected her as his campaign running mate, and as a potential vice-president, for that very reason. So yes, I think there is something quite disingenuous about Team McCain giving Obama grief over his clumsy "pig" joke.

If Team McCain just wanted to talk Straight Talk about Obama's joke, these are some of the things they could have said.
-----They could have said that "lipstick on a pig" was a stupid cliche Obama parroted from the despised Dick Cheney.
-----They could have said that Obama has for weeks been robotically repeating a single empty mantra--excuse me, message--and that the Democratic candidate clearly has nothing in the tank.
-----Finally, they could have said that Obama's so-called message is a blatant lie, because what "lipstick on a pig" means is that McCain = Bush, and everyone--including Obama himself if we want to speak about disingenuousness--everyone knows that McCain isn't Bush. These responses, which are all true, are much more serious indictments of Obama's insipid joke and what it symptomatizes than the disingenuous complaint that it is offensive to women.

So why then would the McCain campaign make a defensive, whiny, and transparently disingenuous attack on Obama, when they could have decked him, or treated the joke itself as merely the trivial one-liner it is?

The reason Team McCain went whiny this week, I believe, is that they saw in Obama's "pig" remark an opportunity to smoke out an issue that is very important to the Obama campaign and indeed to the nation at this time. The issue is neither sexism nor offensive speech. The issue is Political Correctness. Political Correctness is the Donkey In The Room in the 2008 Presidential campaign, because Political Correctness is both the sole rationale for Barack Obama's candidacy (as an alternative to, say, Hillary Clinton's) and an issue that he alone of the candidates can claim. So from the standpoint of Team Obama PC is their candidate's WMD, not simply a game-changer but a rule-maker. The endlessly repeated pseudo-news that Obama's nomination is a "historical achievement" solely because the candidate is African-American, with the implication that his election would be an even greater "historical achievement" for the same reason, constitutes a blatant effort to coerce citizens into voting for Obama and to inhibit and discredit any criticism of Obama's qualifications. According to the Democrats, Americans face a monumental choice in 2008: for History or against it. Well, if you put it that way.....

All throughout the spring, as political operatives and experts who had declared Obama inevitable tried to deny that Hillary Clinton had put him on the ropes, we heard in interviews about the supposed "difficulty" of running against Barack Obama. For most citizens this commentary was "analysis," but for John McCain it was business of the most practical sort, because unlike the rest of us John McCain is in the unique position of actually running against Obama, and if there is a difficulty involved in running against Obama one of McCain's fundamental tasks is to overcome it. If he doesn't, he will lose.

So what was the difficulty of running against Obama supposed to be? What it amounted to was this: the public, or anyway all of it living in cafes instead of caves, allegedly felt a certain adoration of Obama that had nothing in particular to do with "issues"; and therefore the public did not want to hear Obama criticized on the issues, not to mention on other grounds. The basis for the public's alleged love affair with Obama was not exclusively his ethnicity, but more importantly his charm, seriousness, and potential to inaugurate an era of racial harmony devoutly to be wished. Obama was, in short, No Ordinary Candidate, and an ordinary opponent foolish enough to treat Obama like an ordinary candidate would find--or so the experts predicted--that all arguments against Obama would rebound fatally upon the opponents, because the public did not want to hear Obama brought down to the level of ordinary politicians. If anyone tried it, the public would think--indeed, the public would realize--that the opponent was opposing not just a candidate but the bright future of racial harmony itself. And anyone who would do that might well be a racist, especially since the candidate they were so unfairly opposing was African-American.

Hence, according to the commentators, campaigning against Obama would be "difficult" for a politician to do. What they really meant is that it would be impossible, and that they would make it so, because in "doing their jobs" as journalists and expert commentators they would have the solemn responsibility of enforcing rules of discourse that would fix the campaigning in Obama's favor and deprive the American voters of an open democratic discussion and freely made decision.

The fundamental task confronting a candidate running against Obama, therefore, is simply that of asserting the people's right to have a campaign, instead of the parade the Obamacrats had concluded was their entitlement. Obama's opponent must establish the democratic right to say out loud that the Emperor has no clothes, and to establish the right of the people to hear it, whether they want to or not; because that, Norman Lear, is the American Way. Moreover some voters do want to hear it, and others who think they don't will be glad to have the alternative perspective once they have the chance. McCain has already changed minds in this election, but to do it he had to violate the speech code. The offensive words that sounded like drills in the ears of liberals were these: "Sarah Palin." Among the other things liberals said about her, they said that McCain had offended women merely by putting her on the ticket. Now that's what I would call hypersensitivity, if I didn't know how disingenuous it really was.


Yes, Team McCain is disingenuous in slamming Obama over sexism, but precisely this transparent disingenuousnesss makes their real charge against Obama stronger instead of weaker, because the charge is that of trying to win the Presidency by imposing upon the campaigns a speech code that would shield Obama from legitimate and tough criticism. McCain's issue here is not sexism but Political Correctess, and disingenuousness is constitutive of Political Correctness, which could be defined as disingenuous allegations that feelings have been injured by insensitive (i.e. unintentionally offensive) speech or conduct. Team McCain's whining is a caricature of PC, but it will stick to Obama and not McCain, because everybody already knows that Obama's campaign has been powered by PC since day one and would ride it to the White House if allowed. The Obamacrats don't like finger pointing? Look who's talking!


Is this analysis too subtle for John McCain? No. McCain is a man who thinks. Not even Sarah Palin's worst enemies could deny, if they were honest, that McCain's selection of her was a stroke of political genius if nothing else. Comparing McCain to Karl Rove is far too complimentary to Rove: Rove might have picked Palin (though I doubt it), but he wouldn't have picked McCain. Only McCain had the insight and guts to realize that Palin could be his complement. If voters want change they can believe in, that's the kind of creative leader who can give it to them. And no liberal can ever provide that kind of change, not because liberals aren't quantitatively smart (high SATs, multiple degrees), but because ideologically liberals don't believe that any such thing as intellectual creativity even exists, so they expend their energies denying it rather than cultivating it. That's what it means to be an expert, and why experts are always ready to say that something surprising and not already approved must be stupid. But The Post Liberal will address the ideology of liberalism (i.e. the Progressive, not the classical type) at length at another time.

Special Needs Humor

The Democrats would like to run against George Bush. Unfortunately for them, Bush isn't running for reelection, so regardless of who wins in November, Bush will be out of office by next January. Apart from the purely political difficulties Bush's departure poses for Democrats in the election, it's also a crisis for our culture: with Bush gone, the high IQ-lifestyle demographic will lose one if its richest domestic reserves of entertainment, the "Bush is a Retard" jokes that never run dry. Where will the Bill Mahers and Michael Moores turn to serve working sophomores left hungry by the drop in opportunities for Special Needs Humor?

Those who crave a cheap daily hit of self-esteem can look to senility as a hot new disability issue liberals will include in their Comedy for America policy. For example:

Where did Barack Obama become such an expert on what John McCain doesn't know about American families, or doesn't get about them?

And regarding that deliberately misunderstood and misrepresented remark McCain made about the number of houses he owns--what's that Democratic ad about how McCain says he doesn't know how many houses he owns any more? Where did the any more come from? Not from John McCain. It must have been supplied by someone much more in touch with the special needs of the elderly, some caregiver or community organizer, or maybe a professional publicist in the pay of one.

Well, if any readers of the Post-Liberal missed the humorous insinuations about John McCain's senility, they needn't worry. The fun is just beginning. We'll be hearing plenty of contemptuous allusions to John McCain's cluelessness between now and November. And after November too, if the Democrats once again find that the voters still cling to whatever it is they cling to when they sense they're being patronized.

Will Hillary Work For Low Wages, No Benefits?

According to plausible scuttlebutt, the Obama campaign is hoping that the spearhead of its response to Sarah Palin will be: Hillary Clinton. That's "The Audacity of Hope" for you! A week ago the professional experts were declaring that McCain's unorthodox VP pick had doomed his campaign to a defeat more ridiculous than McGovern's. Now the Democratic ticket's two "Presidential" senators are so intimidated by the former mayor of Wasilla that they're running for shelter under the skirts of the Presidential aspirant they defeated. I think they'll find that Hillary's wearing pants.

Hillary Clinton would probably like to know why Barack Obama didn't support her run for the Presidency. And it certainly wasn't very respectful of Obama's Democratic supporters to declare HRC's candidacy dead-on-arrival as early as mid-January, and then continue to imply, for months afterward, that the Senator from New York had a lot of nerve even to run a campaign against Obama, as if by seeking the Presidency herself she was standing in the way of A Historic Achievement. Hillary's assigned role in History, like theirs, would be to stand aside and salute the parade as it passed.

One has to wonder at the wisdom of politicos who think the best way to win an election is to avoid a campaign. Because in a democracy the important offices usually go to those who win campaigns. The assumption that campaigning shouldn't be necessary if you are supporting the right causes (or "policies"), and correspondingly should be forbidden if you aren't, is actually a chapter in the conceptual poli sci textbook of progressivism, an axiom that almost all progressives (a/k/a liberals) accept to some degree; and Hillary's own acceptance of it did as much to cost her the early Democratic primaries and caucuses as Obama's campaigning. The people who dismissed Hillary Clinton and her campaign for the Presidency--and they did dismiss her, and it--they thought they were doing a very smart thing. But they weren't.

Nine days ago the incomprehensible name "Sarah Palin" stirred the liberals/experts out their torpid complacency into such an uncanny terror you'd think they'd discovered a horse's head in their bed. John McCain was campaigning for President! He was practicing "Karl Rove politics"! Is that the American Way? Is it legal? What do we do? What expert do we call? Who on our side would know something about campaigning for President?

Hmm, what about Bill Clinton's wife, that nasty pit belle who caused "America" such a pain in the ass by winning those primaries against Barack Obama after the real Superdelegates had already decided that History was a done deal. Let's get her to do to McCain what she did to Barack! Ka-ching!

Well here's a news flash for Barackocrats: Hillary Clinton does not want to Make History as the first person, male or female, to be nominated for the ceremonial, part-time position of vice-vice-president of the U.S. The responsibilities, wages and benefits are well below those of the job she has, and if in any way she does agree to do contract work on behalf of her erstwhile rival, she will only embarrass him, because the better she does at campaigning, the more people will wonder why they can't vote for her, i.e, why Hillary Clinton wasn't the nominee in the first place. Barack Obama doesn't want to be seen as a guy who asked the senator from New York to mop the glass ceiling for him. If he needs that kind of help, maybe he can get John Kerry at a reasonable rate.

Pinocchiobama

Barack Obama's acceptance speech at the DNC was so quickly overwhelmed by John McCain's announcement of his running mate and its sensational aftermath that the speech itself has received little discussion. Truth to tell, there wasn't much in it to discuss. But those interested in the integrity of the democratic nominee may wish to consult a fact-check report on the speech, which they can do at factcheck.org, under "FactChecking Obama," 8/29/08.

The article contains the by-now familiar corrections of quantitive assertions to which the speeches of both candidates are subject. Of particular concern to the Post Liberal, however, are the personal claims made by Senator Obama about Senator McCain and the statements Obama attributed to him. These distortions of fact are especially disturbing, at least to me, because they could easily have been avoided, and served no other purpose than to smear Senator McCain's good name as a citizen. I quote a couple of bullet points from the FactCheck report.

Obama twisted McCain's words about Afghanistan, incorrectly implying that McCain saw no need for more troops there.
Obama: When John McCain said we could just "muddle through" in Afghanistan, I argued for more resources and more troops to finish the fight against the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11.
Actually, McCain said in 2003 that the U.S. "may' muddle through, not that we could or would. He also said he was very concerned about a rise in al Quaeda activity there. He said then that he was "guardedly optimistic" that the government could handle it.

The FactCheck report then continues with a fuller quotation of McCain's actual words, which I urge readers of the Post-Liberal to examine for themselves.

Here's another observation about Obama's speech from FactCheck:

Obama used a clumsy attempt at humor by McCain as evidence of his supposed insensitivity to middle-class economic realities:
Obama: Now, I don't believe that Senator McCain doesn't care what's going on in the lives of Americans; I just think he doesn't know. Why else would he define middle-class as someone making under five million dollars a year?

What McCain actually said at the Saddleback Church forum on Aug. 16 was that he favors low taxes for all income levels. He drew a laugh, then said, "but seriously" as he struggled to make his point.

The FactCheck report continues on to quote the exchange at greater length, and again I urge readers of the PostLiberal to consult it themselves, because it doesn't reflect badly on John McCain at all. Indeed, after getting a laugh for the $5 million remark, McCain is quoted as saying "But seriously..."and then adding, "I'm sure that comment will be distorted." Again, McCain was right. First the surge and now this!

It would not be unfair to say of Senator Obama that his misleading references to Senator McCain's words represented awfully sloppy work for a man who wants to be our president, particularly on an occasion which, if really "historic" as claimed, will be remembered and studied for more than one day. As Obama himself might say, we can do better than this! And if we elect as our president a man so tone deaf that he can't tell when John McCain is cracking a joke, what will he do in his meetings with Ahmadinejad and Putin if they get sarcastic with him? The fate of the world might depend upon President Barack Obama's sense of tact! (Just kidding.)

But it would be truly patronizing to Senator Obama to suggest that a guy with degrees from Columbia and Harvard doesn't possess the reading and listening skills to understand what McCain actually said. What Obama doesn't possess is the integrity to care about what McCain said. All Barack Obama cares about is getting into office.

I have found it rather shameless of the democrats and their supporters to accuse their opponents of "swiftboating" Obama, using fear tactics, etc. etc. etc. The entire Obama campaign amounts to little more than "They're stupid, they're stupid, they're stupid." And that is capped by an inspiring peroration about bringing America together! How stupid does he think we are? You can run against the Republican Party and its popularly elected officeholders as the embodiment of unmitigated stupidity, and you can run as the candidate who will bring America together, but you can't do both at the same time. And since John McCain is not nearly as stupid as Barack Obama and his supporters would like us to believe, Obama can't do either. It is Obama's campaign that is leading the divisiveness, demagoguery and fear-mongering. What I'm afraid of is that it will get worse and worse as the election approaches. Especially if the voters don't seem to be fearful enough of McCain to vote for his opponent.

Butterfly Stings Eustace Tilly

The September 8 New Yorker has a short "Talk of the Town" piece by Philip Gourevitch about Sarah Palin that the editors must not have vetted. Entitled "Palin on Obama," it reports on a pre-nomination interview that was apparently worthy of Eustace Tilly's amused curiosity because it catches the Governor of Alaska speaking some entirely non-partisan words about Barack Obama's popularity in her state! And the article concludes by quoting Governor Palin as saying "we better have a real clear plan for this war." All this was supposed to embarrass John McCain: look, even the idiot's own running mate supports his opponents and their positions! But what the interview actually shows--read it for yourselves--is that both McCain and Palin are the non-partisan, outside-the-box thinkers they claim to be. Not something anyone could honestly say about The New Yorker : the tidbit on Palin was preceded immediately by editor David Remnick's smug dismissal of Palin as a "baffling rejoinder to the assuring nomination of Joe Biden." Remnick's declaration went to press before Sarah Palin addressed the RNC and the world. Obviously the slow-moving Senator McCain was a few steps ahead of The New Yorker's pompous editor.

The Post-Liberal

The Post-Liberal--moi--is a McCain-Palin supporter who is the kiss of death, because he has voted for the loser in every presidential election since 1972 except three: 1976, 1992, and 1996. The Post-Liberal grew up in New York City, graduated from two Ivy League universities (B.A. and Ph.D) and has been a subscriber to the NY Times, The New Yorker, The New Republic, and the Atlantic. But this university professor and lifelong Democrat--and now post-democrat--is solidly behind John McCain's campaign for the presidency. My fellow "cosmopolitans" would like us to believe that John McCain "doesn't get it" and that only those who don't get it or don't care would support him. In this space I will post occasional essays explaining what I think John McCain gets that Obama, the NY Times and my twentysomething children do not.