| August 27, 2008 |
| Working in a word mine |
Joe Biden addresses the Democratic convention tonight as Barack Obama's running mate. Senator Biden's 1988 candidacy for the Democratic nomination collapsed as the result of a plagiarism scandal on which few observers have reflected since his selection. Rutgers history professor David Greenberg was the villain of my Standard column "Wielding the hatchet" as well as my subsequent post "Professor Greenberg regrets," but he does a good job recounting Biden's plagiarism fiasco in "The write stuff?" Greenberg recalls:
Biden's downfall began when his aides alerted him to a videotape of the British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock, who had run unsuccessfully against Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The tape showed Kinnock delivering a powerful speech about his rise from humble roots. Taken by the performance, Biden adapted it for his own stump speech. Biden, after all, was the son of a car salesman, a working-class kid made good. Kinnock's material fit with the story he was trying to sell.
At first Biden would credit Kinnock when he quoted him. But at some point he failed to offer the attribution. Biden maintained that he lapsed only once-at a debate at the Iowa State Fair, on Aug. 23, when cameras recorded it-but Maureen Dowd of the New York Times reported two incidents of nonattribution, and no one kept track exactly of every time Biden used the Kinnock bit. (Click here for examples of Biden's lifting.) What is certain is that Biden didn't simply borrow the sort of boilerplate that counts as common currency in political discourse-phrases like "fighting for working families." What he borrowed was Kinnock's life.
Biden lifted Kinnock's precise turns of phrase and his sequences of ideas-a degree of plagiarism that would qualify any student for failure, if not expulsion from school. But the even greater sin was to borrow biographical facts from Kinnock that, although true about Kinnock, didn't apply to Biden. Unlike Kinnock, Biden wasn't the first person in his family history to attend college, as he asserted; nor were his ancestors coal miners, as he claimed when he used Kinnock's words. Once exposed, Biden's campaign team managed to come up with a great-grandfather who had been a mining engineer, but he hardly fit the candidate's description of one who "would come up [from the mines] after 12 hours and play football." At any rate, Biden had delivered his offending remarks with an introduction that clearly implied he had come up with them himself and that they pertained to his own life.
Greenberg comments:
The sheer number and extent of Biden's fibs, distortions, and plagiarisms struck many observers at the time as worrisome, to say the least. While a media feeding frenzy (a term popularized in the 1988 campaign) always creates an unseemly air of hysteria, Biden deserved the scrutiny he received. Quitting the race was the right thing to do.
Greenberg then asks how much should Biden's past behavior matter. "In and of itself," he asserts, "the plagiarism episode shouldn't automatically disqualify Biden from regaining favor and credibility, especially if in the intervening two decades he's not done more of the same, as seems to be the case." Greenberg nevertheless leaves open the possibility that the episode may be indicative of a man with a deeply troubled soul.
Jack Shafer also revisited Biden's weird appropriation of the life of Neil Kinnock in "The wacky plagiarism of Joe Biden." Shafer considers the forethought that went into Biden's theft:
The only practical explanation for Biden's plagiarism is he guessed that being Kinnock on the stump would be more compelling for his audience than merely citing him. And he was probably right. Anecdotes about how a British politician made a success of himself thanks to Labor Party policies would hardly encourage an American voter to pull the lever for Joe Biden. Biden plagiarized because, like most plagiarists, he was unsatisfied with his own, honest material and decided that the payoff was worth the risk.
Like Greenberg, Shafer thinks it likely that the episode is significant:
The Biden episode merits revisiting because as acts of plagiarism go, it was spectacular, and because it points to other dicey chapters in his life. To know Biden in full, you must appreciate his parts.
In light of the previous incident of egregious plagiarism that had caused Biden to fail a first-year law school course, Shafer concludes:
If you give Biden the benefit of the doubt-and I don't-you'd expect that such a calamitous "mistake" from his youth would have seared into his mind the importance of keeping his mitts off of other people's words. That it didn't speaks terabytes about his character.
How did Biden survive this disgraceful episode? I don't have the answer. I am quite sure that it helps to be a Democrat, in more ways than one. As Greenberg observes, "[t]he incidents of plagiarism and fabrication that forced Joe Biden to quit the 1988 presidential race have drawn little comment[.]" Biden's survival may be part of the phenomenon that Paul Mirengoff considered in "The cheating heart of the Democratic Party." Nevertheless, as Greenberg and Shafer argue, Biden's past plagiarism warrants a close second look now that Biden stands before us as a candidate for the office that would place him "a heartbeat away."
Courtesy of Power Line |
| Posted by Scott Johnson at 5:15 AM - Link to this entry
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| August 26, 2008 |
| Hillary scores for Obama |
Here's my (faux) live-blog of Hillary Clinton's speech to the convention:
10:30 I turn on the television expecting to see HRC being introduced. Instead, some beefy, clownish governor is speaking.
10:33 The beefy, clownish governor (Brian Schweitzer of Montana) is talking about energy. He's for alternative sources like wind. He's preaching that we can't drill our way out of the current crisis, and that "the most important barrel of oil is the one you don't use."
10:35 How clever of the Democrats to give part of Hillary's prime time slot to a buffoon whose views on the importance of drilling are contrary to those of most Americans.
10:38 The Hillary intro tape begins.
10:39 The music sounds pretty "raw." Did her handlers borrow the concept of this tape from TV wrestling?
10:40 Hillary says (on the tape) "you don't want to hear me sing." I don't even want to hear her talk.
10:42 We're told that Hillary couldn't shatter the highest glass ceiling. But it was the second highest ceiling (at best) that she couldn't shatter. Barack Obama shattered the highest one.
10:43 Chelsea Clinton is narrating. She keeps saying how proud she and her grandmother are of HRC. Bill hasn't been mentioned at all. It's a female thing; I wouldn't understand.
10:44 HRC is finally introduced. The Dems are running about 10 minutes behind where, surely, they wanted to be.
10:46 The audience is applauding. Bill looks pleased as punch -- almost as pleased as when the beefy, clownish governor was ripping John McCain.
10:48 Hillary begins speaking and almost immediately says the magic words -- she's "a proud supporter of Barack Obama." Now the duck can come down and Groucho Marx can give her $100.
10:49 Hillary has promptly called for party unity in order to take back the White House.
10:50 She's very strong and effective on Obama's behalf. We haven't worked so hard, etc. to suffer four more years of failed leadership, she tells the crowd. I think this speech is going to be a big plus for Obama.
10:51 "No way, no how, no McCain." It's gibberish, but sounds good. At least the crowd loves it.
10:52 Michelle Obama is smirking. She and her husband have to be very pleased at this point.
10:53 Now she talking about herself and her campaign. It's little more than five minutes into the speech. She exceeded the over-under.
10:55 HRC gives a nice tribute to Stephanie Tubbs Jones, the recently deceased black Congresswoman. She doesn't mention it, but most at the convention are surely aware that Jones bucked the black political establishment and fought for Clinton throughout the campaign.
10:58 Now she's touching the usual bases -- unions, gays, etc. She'll probably lose a lot of her audience at 11:00 if she doesn't move away from the boilerplate. She may lose it anyway.
10:59 She's circling back to Obama after about six minutes. This time she came in under the over-under.
11:00 HRC is very effective at this point. She asks her supporters whether they were in the campaign for her personally or in it for the paraplegic with cancer (or whatever) she met on the campaign trail. The answer is, they were in it for Hillary and for themselves (and, of course, their daughters). However, it's a great way to pitch the case for getting behind Obama while making herself sound humble.
11:02 She's still pitching for Obama, though she hasn't yet said anything good about him personally. The entire pitch is he's not a Republican.
11:03 Finally she puts in a good word for Obama as a person, saluting his time as a "community organizer." It's tepid, but better than nothing and all Obama could really expect. In any case, she's not going to persuade her supporters that Obama is a star. The best argument is the one she's making -- we need to get the White House back.
11:04 Having put in a good word for Obama, she finally puts in a good one for Bill, or at least for his administration. Now Bill is smirking.
11:05 Hillary says she can't wait for "President Obama" to sign into law a bill guaranteeing health care for every American. I may be wrong, but as I recall Obama didn't favor such a bill during his campaign against Hillary. They debated this at length, or did I just imagine it?
11:06 Now comes the hat tip to Michelle Obama and Joe Biden. According to HRC, Biden is "pragmatic, tough, and wise." According to me, one out of three's not bad.
11:07 She turns to McCain next. He's her "colleague and friend" but "we don't need four more years of the past eight years." She says that McCain and Bush will be "twins" in the Twin Cities. The line is a bit lame, and she doesn't make much of a case that the two are joined at the hip.
11:09 Now she's talking about Seneca Falls where the first big women's right conference was held. From there she spills over to Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad. I guess she's tying the women's right struggle to the civil rights struggle. In any event, the rhetoric sounds inspiring. It's a very good conclusion.
11:10 She finishes. The time of the speech was probably perfect (no Bill Clinton, she), but the Dems will regret that she started a bit late.
The bottom line? I think she did as much for Obama as he could have hoped for. Clinton's core feminist supports (the "sisterhood of the traveling pants suits," as she called them tonight) will very likely fall into line, barring some major misstep by Obama (my guess is that they would have eventually gotten behind Obama even with a lesser speech, they really have no place else to go). The folks who voted for Clinton because they don't like Obama will continue to consider their options, but not because there was anything Clinton could have said, but didn't say, to win them over.
UNDERSTATEMENT OF THE YEAR: Crazed former sports highlights presenter Keith Olbermann apparently said "I would have been proud to have delivered that speech."
His tribute, and that of other Obama cheerleaders in the MSM, tends to confirm my view that this speech was at the high end of what Obama reasonably could have hoped for.
Courtesy of Power Line |
| Posted by Paul Mirengoff at 10:09 PM - Link to this entry
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| August 26, 2008 |
| About Hillary |
Hillary Clinton's speech tonight prompted just two thoughts.
First, her ignorance of economics is cosmic. Thank God this woman will never be President.
Second, her speech was a vivid reminder of why she lost. She was intensely annoying. You could just about hear the sound of television sets clicking off all across America. Good night, Hillary.
Courtesy of Power Line |
| Posted by John Hinderaker at 10:05 PM - Link to this entry
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| August 26, 2008 |
| Peddling Ignorance |
The Democratic Convention is waiting for Hillary Clinton to appear, so I'm not sure whether anyone is listening to the Governor of Montana, Brian Schweizer, who is warming up the crowd. Schweizer just retailed one of the Dems' favorite anti-energy myths: the U.S. uses 25% of the world's energy, but has only 3% of the world's energy reserves. This statement is true only insofar as the U.S. (but not other countries) uses a restrictive definition of "reserves" that does not include the vast majority of the petroleum we have in the ground. The oil that Republicans are talking about developing--offshore, in ANWR, shale oil in the Rockies--does not count toward the country's "reserves." That petroleum is considered "oil in the ground." In fact, the U.S. has more petroleum in the ground than the entire world has consumed since it started burning gasoline in the 19th century.
Schweizer says that the most important barrel of oil is "the one you don't use." In other words, reduce your standard of living. As I've said before, a reduced standard of living isn't the cure for our energy problem, it is our energy problem.
Courtesy of Power Line |
| Posted by John Hinderaker at 9:31 PM - Link to this entry
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| August 26, 2008 |
| Daughter, sister, wife, mother |
Michelle Obama is an accomplished woman. She graduated from Princeton and from Harvard Law School. She became a member of the bar and practiced law at a high-power Chicago law firm. She has much to be proud of.
Yet last night, at least according to the transcript of her speech, she mentioned none of these accomplishments. Instead, her speech portrayed her as the daughter of her "rock" of a father, the sister of Craig Robinson, the wife of Barack, and the mother of small, cute daughters.
It was a pre-feminist speech.
For the Obamas, the need to impress voters with Michelle's "ordinariness" (a counter-intuitive notion) clearly trumped the need to adhere to the feminist narrative so dear to the heart of Hillary Clinton's core supporters.
Courtesy of Power Line |
| Posted by Paul Mirengoff at 8:25 AM - Link to this entry
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| August 26, 2008 |
| Make Room For Daddy |
The Democrats excel at bathos. Their quadrennial conventions have become exercises in bathos, superbly well done. In one of his letters, Saul Bellow's Herzog explains Eisenhower's victory over Stevenson with the proposition that "the general gave us low-grade universal potato love." The bathetic stories on display at the convention provide the objective correlative to "low-grade universal potato love."
The bathos facilitates populist rhetoric and socialist economics. In his remarks last night, Teddy Kennedy made a powerful appeal on behalf of Obama to a "a newer world," though he and his party are offering nothing failed nostrums or failure itself. And seeking to inject poetry into the politics, Kennedy gives us doggerel.
Michelle Obama, on the other hand, was assigned the task of refashioning the poetry of Barack Obama's life to more understandable prose. Her speech all but shouted: We are normal! We are like you! Yet Mrs. Obama too sought to inject a little of the "newer world" poetry into the prose:
All of us driven by a simple belief that the world as it is just won't do - that we have an obligation to fight for the world as it should be.
That is the thread that connects our hearts. That is the thread that runs through my journey and Barack's journey and so many other improbable journeys that have brought us here tonight, where the current of history meets this new tide of hope.
That is why I love this country.
What is Mrs. Obama saying? Why does she love our country? Is it because of a simple belief that the world as it is just won't do? That makes no sense at all. Is it because of a simple belief that we have an obligation to fight for the world as it should be? That makes no sense either.
Or is it because "improable journeys" have brought Senator and Mrs. Obama to their place at the convention -- where the current of history meets the new tide of hope -- that Mrs. Obama loves our country? Despite the refconstruction and concealment in her speech, Mrs. Obama has apparently found a slightly higher toned way of explaining why, as she said in Milwaukee earlier this year, she is "really proud of [our] country for the first time in [her] adult lifetime."
Courtesy of Power Line |
| Posted by Scott Johnson at 5:25 AM - Link to this entry
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| August 25, 2008 |
| Michelle Obama: How Did She Do? |
Beats me. She needed to say she loves America, to talk about our servicemen and to praise Hillary Clinton. She did those things. The style wasn't smooth; she often seemed rushed and edgy, but I don't think many people will hold that against her.
What mostly struck me was how over the top the finish was, with Barack appearing on video and talking to his very cute daughters. I doubt whether any Republican could get away with such a cloying scene, but everyone seems to accept that the Obamas need to convince voters that they are normal Americans. Did it work? No doubt by morning we'll see polls that at least purport to give us the answer.
PAUL adds: Stuck as I am working in what she would call corporate America, I was unable to listen to Michelle Obama's speech to the convention tonight. From the transcript, though, Ms. Obama seems to have undergone a partial make-over. Previously, she has said that, as an adult, she was never proud of America until the "blue" portion of it elevated her husband to the verge of the presidency. Substantively, she didn't really abandon that position tonight. Her husband's ascension (or "journey," as she would have it) and "so many other improbable journeys that have brought us here tonight" is still "why I love this country," she said.
Expressed this way, it's unlikely that many viewers picked up on Ms. Obama's self-referential regard for America. But even when carefully scripted, she remains decidedly of the "ask what your country can do for you" persuasion.
Ms. Obama's make-over was more extreme when it came to her account of her life. We saw her growing up on the South Side of Chicago with her family (including Princeton basketball legend "Super Craig" Robinson, now the basketball coach at Oregon State); we saw her fleeing corporate America to "serve her community;" and we saw her and Barack with their small children. We did not see her at the Ivy League institutions where she spent seven years of her life (four at Princeton and three at Harvard Law School). In tonight's account, she was merely "able to go on to college." Nor, of course, do we learn just how well Ms. Obama is doing financially by "doing good" in her community.
Plainly, Ms. Obama wishes to be viewed as an "ordinary" American. To the extent that her real biography is known, or emerges over the course of the campaign, some voters may conclude she was a bit phony tonight.
Ms. Obama also took liberties with her husband's biography when she asserted that his grandparents "were working class folks just like my parents." In the Robinson family, the father was the "rock," working despite illness, while the mother stayed home with the children. By contrast, as Obama tells it in his autobiography, grandma was the main breadwinner in his family, traveling by bus every day to the bank where she worked. When grandma asked grandpa for a ride after being hassled by a vagrant at the bus stop, grandpa became upset, sensing racism on her part because the bum was black.
Yup, just ordinary working class Americans, those Obamas.
Courtesy of Power Line |
| Posted by John Hinderaker at 10:05 PM - Link to this entry
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| August 25, 2008 |
| Phillippe Sands' distortions exposed |
We wrote here about the testimony of former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith before the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, chaired by Rep. Jerry Nadler. Feith testified along with Phillippe Sand, the author of a book which accuses the administration (especially Feith) of hostility towards the Geneva Convention and of devising the argument that detainees at GTMO should not receive any protections under that convention - in particular, any protections under common Article 3. At the hearing, Feith powerfully refuted Sands' charges. And he requested that Sands, who insisted he was relying on his interview with Feith, make the full transcript of the interview publicly available.
At Red State, Academic Elephant brings us up to date on this story. The full transcript is now available at the Vanity Fair website (this being the magazine where Sands published excerpts from his book). It fails to support Sands' "torture narrative." As Academic Elephant observes, "there is no mention of Article 3 [and] the "gotcha" statements that were the foundation of Sands' case against Feith are so obviously doctored and recast to fit his case as to be laughable."
In response, Feith has written a letter to Rep. Nadler, asking him "to acknowledge formally that Mr. Sands gave an untrue account of that interview, an account on which he built a false accusation against me of a war crime." Feith documents for Nadler the discrepancies between the transcript and Sands' story. Any fair reading of the transcript and of Feith's letter will confirm that Sands distorted and misrepresented Feith's words. In so doing, Sands thoroughly discredited himself as a scholar and commentator.
Nadler should provide the requested acknowledgment. In Academic Elephant's words: "Demonizing public service with careless, ill-founded accusations of "torture" to hawk books and magazines is a dangerous game -- and Chairman Nadler and his subcommittee owe it to all of us to hold those who play it to the highest standard."
Courtesy of Power Line |
| Posted by Paul Mirengoff at 9:28 PM - Link to this entry
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| August 22, 2008 |
| Obama's "lost" law review note revealed |
While serving as vice president in 1978, Walter Mondale contributed an autographed copy of his unsigned 1956 law review note criticizing Minnesota's campaign finance law for auction by the student council at the University of Minnesota Law School. In his law review note, Mondale made the kind of argument that conservatives make against campaign finance law today. Mondale's contribution of an autographed copy of his law review note was an act of good-humored generosity, and I became its proud owner for a remarkablely low price.
In his law review note Mondale criticized the Minnesota Corrupt Practices Act as arbitrary, ineffectual and counterproductive if not destructive. Mondale urged that removal of expenditure limits be considered and that primary emphasis be given to public disclosure of campaign financing. As a precocious law student, Mondale persuasively rejected the rationale of what became liberal orthodoxy and one of the signature issues of his public life. John Hinderaker and I wrote about Mondale's law review note when was appointed by President Clinton to co-chair Clinton's campaign finance reform commission here.
It turns out that, reports to the contrary notwithstanding, Barack Obama also wrote an unsigned 1990 law review note as a student member of the Harvard Law Review. Ben Smith and Jeffrey Ressner report on Obama's lost law review article. Obama's note approves of an Illinois Supreme Court decision holding that the unborn cannot sue their parents for negligence. Smith and Ressner's article suggests that the Obama campaign was not reluctant to disclose Obama's authorship of the note:
The Obama campaign swiftly confirmed Obama's authorship of the fetal rights article Thursday after a source told Politico he'd written it. The campaign also provided a statement on Harvard Law Review letterhead confirming that the unsigned piece was Obama's - the only record of the anonymous authors is kept in the office of the Review president - and that records showed it was the only piece he'd written for the Review.
Smith and Ressner mention the note's possible connection to the abortion debate. So far as one can determine from Smith and Ressner's account, Obama did not observe the inconsistency of a contrary outcome in the Illinois Supreme Court case with the abortion right in the first place. The purported constitutional right to abortion provides the mother a right to kill her fetus intentionally. A contrary outcome in the Illinois Supreme Court case would have provided the unborn a right to sue the mother for injuries caused by the mother's negligence. It wouldn't make much sense, though Obama offered that "the state may...have a more compelling interest in ensuring that fetuses carried to term do not suffer from debilitating injuries than it does in ensuring that any particular fetus is born." Obama also opined that imposing "civil liability on mothers may be as likely to deter the carrying of pregnancies to term as to deter maternal negligence during pregnancy."
In any event, Obama found the Illinois Supreme Court case an apt vehicle to promote the welfare state: "Expanded access to prenatal education and heath care facilities will far more likely serve the very real state interest in preventing increasing numbers of children from being born in to lives of pain and despair." Unlike Mondale in his student law review note, Obama already had the liberal lingo and the line line down pat.
Obama's law review note also tends to belie Obama's statement to Rick Warren this past Saturday that the question of when the unborn acquire rights is "above [his] pay grade." His law review note suggests that he's been thinking about the issue for a long time and that he's not usually so reticent, as Andrew McCarthy explains in "Why Obama really voted for infanticide."
Courtesy of Power Line |
| Posted by Scott Johnson at 6:33 AM - Link to this entry
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| August 21, 2008 |
| Has the Gaffe Machine Gone Too Far? |
Barack Obama without a teleprompter is an accident waiting to happen. Sometimes he reveals his ignorance of history, sometimes he stumbles incoherently, and sometimes he blurts out what he really believes. That's what happened today when Obama tried to talk about Georgia, a topic that has embarrassed him more than once already, beginning when, in the first hours after the invasion, he parroted the Russian line.
Today Obama equated Russia's invasion of Georgia with our toppling of Saddam Hussein:
Democrat Barack Obama scolded Russia again on Wednesday for invading another country's sovereign territory while adding a new twist: the United States, he said, should set a better example on that front, too.
The Illinois senator's opposition to the Iraq war, which his comment clearly referenced, is well known. But this was the first time the Democratic presidential candidate has made a comparison between the U.S. invasion of Iraq and Russia's recent military activity in Georgia.
"We've got to send a clear message to Russia and unify our allies," Obama told a crowd of supporters in Virginia. "They can't charge into other countries. Of course it helps if we are leading by example on that point."
So our "charging into" Iraq--with dozens of allies, supported by a U.N. resolution, as a last resort after six months of build-up and negotiations, to unseat one of the cruelest dictators of modern times who had twice invaded neighboring states, was in violation of more than a dozen U.N. resolutions and was responsible for the deaths of something like two million people, who was shooting at American aircraft and had tried to assassinate a former President of the United States, in Obama's childish mind, was just like Russia's "charging into" Georgia, which resembles Saddam's Iraq in no respect. And, of course, we invaded a horrifying charnel-house so as to establish a democracy, whereas Russia invaded a peaceful democracy that it wants to re-incorporate into its empire.
Is Obama an idiot? I don't think so, really. But one of the many problems with being a leftist is that it leads you to say lots of stupid things. Today, the Obama gaffe machine went into overdrive. By November, I suspect that most voters will have heard enough to know that Barack Obama is unqualified to be a middle-manager in a well-run company, let alone President of the United States.
Via Gateway Pundit and InstaPundit.
Courtesy of Power Line |
| Posted by John Hinderaker at 9:04 PM - Link to this entry
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| August 21, 2008 |
| It Ain't Easy Being Green |
Even in California. A survey of Californians released today suggests that support for anti-global warming measures is shallow at best.
Sixty-three percent of the 1,000 Californians surveyed said that they support the goal of reducing carbon emissions. But when they were asked to assume that cutting carbon would mean higher energy prices--which it obviously will--that support fell to 47 percent.
This is not surprising. Reducing carbon emissions will be popular until someone actually tries to do it, and the consequences become apparent. It's a bit shocking that, as this survey suggests, a considerable number of people don't understand that reducing carbon consumption means higher energy costs. Equally shocking is another of the survey's findings: an astonishing 80 percent had not heard about California's "landmark legislation," enacted in 2006, that that requires a decline in global warming gases to 1990 levels by 2020.
More evidence that the idea of a groundswell of public support for radical environmental measures is a myth.
Courtesy of Power Line |
| Posted by John Hinderaker at 8:06 PM - Link to this entry
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| August 21, 2008 |
| No More Mister Nice Guy |
The latest campaign kerfuffle is Obama's effort to make hay out of John McCain's inability to tell a reporter how many houses he owns. McCain mumbled something about condos and said the reporter should talk to his wife. Predictably, Obama is trying to spin this exchange as showing that McCain is "out of touch."
I can relate, though. For example, if a reporter asked me how many ties I own, there's no way I could answer. Just like McCain, I'd tell him he has to ask my wife. Likewise if someone wants to know how many Wii games my kids have.
McCain's campaign, though, took it amiss and struck back hard. Brian Rogers, McCain's spokesman, said:
Does a guy who made more than $4 million last year, just got back from vacation on a private beach in Hawaii and bought his own million-dollar mansion with the help of a convicted felon really want to get into a debate about houses? Does a guy who worries about the price of arugula and thinks regular people "cling" to guns and religion in the face of economic hardship really want to have a debate about who's in touch with regular Americans? "The reality is that Barack Obama's plans to raise taxes and opposition to producing more energy here at home as gas prices skyrocket show he's completely out of touch with the concerns of average Americans."
Touche, I guess. The truth is that McCain isn't out of touch with "ordinary people" because he's rich, he's out of touch with his own domestic arrangements because he cares little about material things, and for many years has devoted his extraordinary energies not to enjoying his wife's money, but to serving the American people. Given the number of nights he's spent in hotels or on military bases over the last few years, it's no wonder he hasn't seen much of his wife's condos.
Courtesy of Power Line |
| Posted by John Hinderaker at 4:25 PM - Link to this entry
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| August 20, 2008 |
| The Unbearable Lightness of Biden |
Some time in the next 48 hours, Barack Obama will announce his running mate. The current favorite seems to be Joe Biden. I hope it's true: if Obama chooses Biden, it will be more evidence that he, and the Democrats generally, are living in a bubble.
Personally, I kind of like Biden. He can be disarming at times, and occasionally borders on the moderate. But how can he possibly help Obama? Throughout his long career, Biden has been anything but a powerhouse. His several Presidential runs have gone nowhere. On the national scene he is, frankly, a bit of a joke. What is he going to do, help Obama carry Delaware?
You can see the logic behind choosing Biden. Obama is young, so he wants an old Veep. Obama knows little about American history, diplomacy, foreign affairs or military matters, and Biden is the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Superficially, it seems to make sense.
The problem is that, whereas Obama is a young lightweight, Biden is an old lightweight--Obama with a hair transplant. While Obama has only been a lightweight for 47 years, Biden has been one for 65. Is this a big plus? I doubt it. If you put Biden on a stage next to Tim Pawlenty and ask voters which one is the serious candidate, two-thirds will say Pawlenty.
So: Slow Joe Biden for Vice-President? Absolutely! It's one more sign that Obama, the supposed harbinger of change, is running an unimaginative, paint-by-numbers campaign.
Courtesy of Power Line |
| Posted by John Hinderaker at 9:24 PM - Link to this entry
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| August 20, 2008 |
| Pawlenty For Veep? |
Based on information about the schedule for speakers at the Republican convention, I believe that McCain's choice for Vice-President has come down to Tim Pawlenty or Tom Ridge. Or possibly Charlie Crist, but I'm pretty sure he's out of the picture.
If my inference is right--and it's only an inference--I'm pretty sure Pawlenty will be the choice. Things are going well for McCain right now and he should be optimistic about his prospects in November. If he chooses Ridge, it will cause a huge uproar within the Republican base that will derail, at least temporarily, his surge. Pawlenty, conversely, is a safe choice, and in my opinion a far better one. Given the current economic climate and the unfair attacks on that issue that Obama is launching against McCain, who better than the blue-collar, "Sam's Club" Tim Pawlenty as a running mate?
Beyond that, Tim has superb political skills. When the country sees him, it will like him.
I believe we'll see Pawlenty accept the Veep nomination on September 3.
Courtesy of Power Line |
| Posted by John Hinderaker at 1:05 PM - Link to this entry
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| August 19, 2008 |
| The price of the ticket |
It's a shame James Baldwin isn't here to add a new chapter to his nonfiction collection The Price of the Ticket. According to the Denver Post, Invesco Field's premier seats for Barack Obama's big convention speech will be sold to top fundraisers for $1,000. The Obama campaign and the DNCC have advertised the change of venue from the Pepsi Center to Invesco as a way of "making room for grassroots supporters," but it also turns out to be a handy way to supplement the campaign's August coffers.
By how much? Mum's the word: "[A} senior adviser to the campaign, Jenny Backus, said not all club-level seats will go to donors. Backus declined to say how many will be available to the public." The Post quotes Backus on the donor package including the seats: "This is a very small number of seats." But it's a big package!
Courtesy of Power Line |
| Posted by Scott Johnson at 7:57 AM - Link to this entry
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| August 19, 2008 |
| A tale of two McDonald's |
Among the interesting contrasts presented at the Saddleback Civil Forum was the one elicited by Rick Warren's question on how each candidate had bucked his party. The question was of course right up McCain's alley, but he gave a surprising and powerful answer:
Climate change, out of control spending, torture, the list goes on, on a large number of issues that I have put my country first and I've reached across the aisle. but I'd probably have to say that one of the times that probably was one of the most trying was, when I was first a member of Congress, and I'm a new freshman in the House of Representatives and very loyal and dedicated to President Reagan, whom I still think is one of the great, great presidents in American history - (APPLAUSE) - who won the cold war without firing a shot, in the words of Margaret Thatcher. He wanted to send troops to Beirut for a peacekeeping mission.
My knowledge and my background told me that a few hundred Marines in a situation like that could not successfully carry out any kind of peacekeeping mission. And I thought they were going into harm's way. Tragically, as many of you recall, there was a bombing in the Marine barracks and well over 100 brave Marines gave their lives. But it was tough, that vote, because I went against the president I believed in, and the party that believed that maybe I was disloyal very early in my political career.
Like McCain, Obama holds himself out as the kind of politician who can reach across party lines to get things done. Given the partisanship and thinness of Obama's legislative record, however, Warren's question presented a challenge for Obama. Here is what he came up with:
Well, I'll give you an example that in fact I worked with John McCain on, and that was the issue of campaign ethics reform and finance reform. That wasn't probably in my interest or his for that matter because the truth was both Democrats and Republicans sort of like the status quo and I was new to the Senate and it didn't necessarily engender a lot of popularity when I started saying, you know, we are going to eliminate meals and gifts from corporate lobbyists. I remember one of my colleagues whose name will be unmentioned who said, "Well, where do you expect us to eat, McDonald's?" and I thought, well, actually, a lot of our constituents probably do eat at McDonald's so that wouldn't be such a bad thing. I think we were able to get a bill passed that hasn't made Washington perfect but at least it [is] moving things forward.
Hugh Hewitt draws on David Freddoso's reportage to demonstrate the factitious quality of Obama's account:
Obama cited McCain here as his cover for acting in a bipartisan or non-partisan fashion. The detailed account of this "teamwork" from David Freddoso's new book [The Case Against Barack Obama, pp. 97-99] puts the lie to Obama's account. In fact Obama approached McCain and "promised to work with him seriously on a bipartisan lobbying and ethics reform package," in February 2006. After some work "McCain thought they had an agreement." Freddoso continues: "Then Obama's party leaders took him aside and set him straight. They had an election plan, and they weren't about to have [Obama] ruin that by working on both sides of the aisle to accomplish something substantive in 2006."
Freddoso then reprints the account of the Obama double-cross reported by Marc Ambinder, then working for the highly respect National Journal. Obama sent McCain a letter backing out of the effort.. McCain responded with a blistering rebuke. "I concluded your professed concern for the institution and the public interest was genuine and admirable," McCain responded. "[T]hank you for disabusing me of such notions."
No matter what one thinks of the merits of the Obama flip-flop, for him to cite his work with John McCain on Senate reform as the best example of his willingness to work against party and self-interest is more than just oily. It is deeply deceptive.
In his column on the Saddleback forum, Charles Adler exposes one other layer of deception in Obama's response. Adler quotes an earlier version of this story provided by Obama to New Hampshire voters nine months ago:
It was a campaign stop in Manchester, New Hampshire, where ABC reported that Obama was addressing voters, discussing his work on ethics reform legislation. It included a meal ban. Obama said that a fellow senator was giving him a hard time about the bill, and said to Obama, "What do you expect me to just start eating at McDonalds all the time?" According to Obama, he told the unhappy senator, "You get paid $160,000, you can afford Applebee's. You don't even have to stoop so low as to eat at McDonalds."
ABC News reported "Some in the crowd were seen raising their eyebrows as Obama, the man who touts himself from the South Side of Chicago, critiqued the popular food chain."
(The cited ABC News story from this past December is accessible here). Upon further inspection, the real story of Obama's bipartisan moment dissolves, and carries an arugala footnote.
Courtesy of Power Line |
| Posted by Scott Johnson at 7:03 AM - Link to this entry
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| August 19, 2008 |
| Joel Mowbray reports: Keen ideas for party-building |
Our occasional correspondent Joel Mowbray (jdmowbra@erols.com) reports:
In an election cycle that likely will leave the GOP in an even worse position than 2006, many party faithful will be using November and beyond to figure out how to recapture Republican dominance-or at least relevance.
From Washington westward, the Republican Party is battered-and its prognosis might actually be dimmer should McCain win, as a President Obama would the at least provide a powerful foil.
While grassroots and movement conservatives correctly point to the GOP Congress scuttling principle in favor of expediency, finding philosophical backbone will not alone be enough to resuscitate the party.
Even with advances of modern technology, what cannot be overlooked are the virtues of old-fashioned electioneering. And that is where the backbone of the party matters most. Local leaders who can inspire and organize, town-by-town, county-by-county, will be key to recruiting and mobilizing for the massive effort of rebuilding the Republican Party.
Of all places, the GOP should look to Northern California for an example worth emulating. In just three years in the Democratic stronghold of Santa Clara county-home to Silicon Valley-county chairman Keen Butcher has energized local Republicans and translated that into local victories.
Enthusiasm does not come naturally to Santa Clara GOPers. Bush didn't crack 35% here in either 2000 or 2004. Making matters worse, the big political money even more disproportionately favors the Democrats.
In just three years, Keen Butcher has given the local party a pulse. When he came in, as just one example, there was no e-mail list for the Santa Clara GOP. Now he's got 40,000 folks on his list-or roughly one-fifth of county Republicans. According to several local party activists, he has a knack for getting people to turn out, whether for door-knocking or other election-related activities.
This was on display when, late last month, Butcher helped spearhead the Rising Tide festival (along with Lisa Cohen, Charles Marsala and Michael Schwab). Nearly 400 lively Republicans spent a Saturday evening listening to political pep talks-none eliciting a more passionate response than Butcher's. Not bad in a county where Republicans say that they're used to feeling isolated and maligned.
Coming from the world of investment banking, Butcher likes to stress the power of leverage. In his political world, this means getting the small handful of folks who are passionate about a particular candidate-whether for a school board or city council seat-goes door-to-door with a slate card, thus promoting all Republican candidates on the ticket.
Out of three county-wide seats, two in Santa Clara are now held by Republicans: sheriff and district attorney. As Butcher loves to note, the Democrats only hold the office of tax assessor. This has already helped at least one statewide candidate: when Arnold ran for re-election in 2006, he got more than double the improvement in Santa Clara than his average elsewhere.
Family issues have forced Butcher to relocate this month to Houston, but the progress he built in Santa Clara hopefully will be maintained. And if Republicans elsewhere are trying to learn lessons about reviving GOP fortunes, they might want to replicate his, ahem, Keen ideas.
Courtesy of Power Line |
| Posted by Scott Johnson at 6:59 AM - Link to this entry
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| August 18, 2008 |
| He's dancing as fast as he can |
At Saddleback Barack Obama responded to the question addressed to him by Rick Warren on abortion as being "above my pay grade." Those who have dug into his record in the Illinois senate, however, have found evidence that Obama is a devout believer in what might be called the sacramental or positive good view of abortion: nothing can be allowed to interfere with the unfettered exercise of the purported right, including the accident of an infant born alive.
David Freddoso considers the evidence in "Life lies.". Russell Berman covers the political fallout in "Obama facing attacks from all sides over abortion record." The attacks from the left that are alluded to in the headline of Berman's article date from the primary season. The attacks now at issue come from the right; they have elicited the charge from Obama that they are lies. As Freddoso shows, it is Obama's defense that appers to fail the cherry tree test.
Courtesy of Power Line |
| Posted by Scott Johnson at 7:15 AM - Link to this entry
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| August 17, 2008 |
| A tortured answer to an easy question |
There were many revealing moments during the candidates' forum in Saddleback yesterday. One of them occurred when Pastor Rick Warren asked McCain and Obama which Supreme Court Justices they would not have nominated.
McCain stated that, "with respect" he would not have nominated Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Souter, and Stevens because they are inclined to "legislate from the bench." A direct answer to a direct question.
Obama's answer was full of misdirection. He first named Clarence Thomas as a Justice he would not have nominated. No one doubts that Obama would not have nominated Thomas. But Obama's reason was disingenuous; he said that Thomas lacked experience at the time of his appointment.
It's true that Thomas had a limited amount of judging experience or other appellate experience at the time the first President Bush nominated him (in this sense, and this sense only, he was the Barack Obama of the Supreme Court). But Thomas had already made a name for himself at the EEOC as an African-American who did not adhere to the narrative of the civil rights establishment. It's plain, therefore, that Obama would not have nominated Thomas for the Supreme Court regardless of how much experience he had as a judge. Obama should have admitted this.
Next Obama named Justice Scalia, citing his disagreement with Scalia's judicial philosophy. Fair enough. Obama also snuck in the fact that both he and Scalia taught law at the University of Chicago. Yeah, and Yogi Berra and Charlie Silvera were both catchers for the New York Yankees.
Obama did not name Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito. This is odd. Obama voted against the confirmation of both men, so clearly he would not have nominated either one. But Obama realizes that Roberts and Alito were popular nominees, which probably explains why he declined to name them.
Only after Warren asked Obama about Roberts did Obama allow that he would not have nominated him. He added that the way Roberts has "operated since he went on the bench confirms the suspicion" that caused him not to vote for the Chief Justice's confirmation. Roberts, of course, does not "operate;" he decides cases. The fact that Roberts doesn't decide some important ones the way Obama likes shouldn't cause the candidate, a law professor after all, to demean the Chief Justice in this way.
In any case, what's most telling here is Obama's unwillingness or inability to do what McCain did -- identify the four (or five) Justices he obviously wouldn't have nominated, and articulate the simple and obvious reason. Instead, Obama gave an incomplete answer coupled with an irrelevant reference to Thomas' level of experience, a plug for his status as a "professor," and (after prompting) a cheap shot at Roberts.
Obama is simply not as comfortable as McCain when it comes to answering questions. This is due in part to the fact that McCain's has been dealing these kinds of questions on the back of his bus for years. But it's also due, I think, to the fact that Obama understands that his liberalism is outside of the mainstream and, if revealed, will cost him votes. Because virtually any question, no matter how simple and straightforward, raises the threat of enabling voters to ascertain who he really is, Obama often can't quite get comfortable. Instead, he feels the need to dance or to withhold information.
Courtesy of Power Line |
| Posted by Paul Mirengoff at 8:57 PM - Link to this entry
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| August 17, 2008 |
| Bounce Wars |
My column in the Sunday Examiner takes a look at the upcoming conventions. I've thought for some time that Barack Obama will receive a considerable bounce from the Democratic convention and that John McCain will receive a smaller one. Now I'm not so sure.
The reason is suggested in the opening paragraphs:
Earlier this month, a Pew Research Center study found that 48 percent of those surveyed - and 51 percent of political independents - said they had heard "too much" about Barack Obama. Only 26 percent (and 28 percent of independents) said they had heard too much about John McCain.
The easy explanation for this phenomenon is "Obama fatigue" - a feeling of overload resulting from the immense amount of coverage lavished on the celebrity-candidate.
A deeper phenomenon may also be at work. With 80 percent of Americans believing that the country is on the "wrong track," the urge to vote for a transformational candidate is powerful. But the more voters hear about (and from) this particular transformational candidate, the harder it may become for them to yield to their desire.
The resulting dissonance may explain why they would prefer to hear less. Obama thus stands for "change we can believe in" provided we are spared from exposure to the agent of that change.
Which brings us to the upcoming national conventions.
Courtesy of Power Line |
| Posted by Paul Mirengoff at 2:52 PM - Link to this entry
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