Month: August 2008

Two quotes. One:

“[George W. Bush] doesn’t second-guess himself,” Jim Francis, a longtime friend from Texas, told me. “I second-guess myself all the time — ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have done this or that.’ He just doesn’t have that in him. I have never seen him do that. I think it gives him a comfort level in that office that others have not had.”

And:

The selection [of Palin] was the culmination of a five-month process, described by Mr. McCain’s inner circle and outside advisers in interviews this past weekend, and offers a glimpse into how Mr. McCain might make high-stakes decisions as president.

At the very least, the process reflects Mr. McCain’s history of making fast, instinctive and sometimes risky decisions. “I make them as quickly as I can, quicker than the other fellow, if I can,” Mr. McCain wrote, with his top adviser Mark Salter, in his 2002 book, “Worth the Fighting For.” “Often my haste is a mistake, but I live with the consequences without complaint.”

Tyler Cowen argues Palin is the new Perot:

There is one biographical fact about Palin’s life that the critics (Drum, DeLong, Yglesias, Klein, Sullivan and Kleiman are among the ones I read) are hardly touching upon.  I mean her decision to have a Downs child instead of an abortion.  This is the fact about her life and it will be viewed as such from now through November and perhaps beyond.

If only for this reason, she will be seen as a candidate who stands on principle.  I don’t think the critics are sufficiently appreciating how tired the American people are of candidates who say one thing and do another and who abandon their principles at the first provocation.  This is a deep and very strong current and it runs through virtually every group of American political voters.  Because of her decision to have a Downs child, many voters will not view Sarah Palin in a cynical light, no matter what the critics say.  No story about firing a state trooper will break that seal.

Tyler misses the point. I have no reason to believe that Sarah Palin is a cynical person. She seems like a nice person, with some personal vendettas, intense focus and an inability to understand where her public office starts and her family issues end. The point is not Palin’s cynicism; it’s McCain‘s cynicism.  And his choice is at once a concoction of pure recklessness and dumb cynicism.

Kara Hopkins differs.

"I’m not sure what she brings to the ticket other than she’s a woman and a conservative. Well, she’s a better speaker than McCain," – Faye Palin, Sarah Palin’s mother-in-law, laughing. Faye may vote for Obama.

He posts a reader email that says I am contradicting myself:

I’m a long time reader of both the Corner and Andrew Sullivan’s blog. Sullivan’s blog this weekend has been entertaining, to say the least. In one weekend, he has completed reversed his arguments on experience needed to be President, a candidate’s personal life as an appropriate subject in an election and just about any reason he had to vote for Obama in his analyses of the Palin pick. I’ve watched him twist his arguments to further his causes before, but this has been nothing short of breathtaking.

I haven’t reversed anything. I don’t think experience is irrelevant as an issue for Obama; in fact, I think it’s the major reason to worry about him. From my blog last week, for Pete’s sake, before I had any idea McCain would be unserious enough about national security to pick Palin:

And, yes, experience is an issue. It should be. It is not unreasonable or unfair for the GOP to target Obama’s relative youth and inexperience. Sure: McCain hasn’t had any real executive experience either. But he’s been around a long, long time and he was right about the surge.

But yes, I think Obama is in a simply different league than Palin in terms of seriousness as a candidate, and record on the issues, especially foreign policy. And private life?

If the first thing that the McCain-Palin campaign puts out there is a Down Syndrome baby, and the main argument for Palin is about the authenticity of her lifestyle, are we not allowed to respond? The antics over her sister with nine-children and no live-in dads is relevant because Palin dragged her public office into it. My point has been not so much inexperience, although Palin’s lack is acute, but her lack of even  interest in or awareness of foreign policy. I mean: she’s supposed to learn all this in four months?

Jonah is reduced to wishing her well. We all should. But pointing out her obvious cluelessness about foreign policy, her anti-neocon views when she actually had any, is totally legit and completely of a piece with my arguments for Obama. And, jeez, it doesn’t take a scraming lefty to see this. Has Jonah read Brookhiser, Frum and Ponnuru?

Mike Petrelis discovers that Bill Kristol was for Palin before he was against her before he was for her.

A reader writes:

The argument against any kind of reporting on candidates’ personal lives has always been that private life should remain private. Why should I care if some guy has an affair, etc.

Here’s why this isn’t off-limits. The McCain campaign has made the existence of this child a central part of its PR rollout of Palin, in particular highlighting the fact that Palin chose not to abort the child even though she knew the baby had Down Syndrome.

The campaign has made the entire story of this pregnancy and birth a part of its narrative to portray Palin as a morally superior being who is therefore deserving of the second-highest office in the land. 

There is a serious possibility that this narrative is completely false, that, in fact, Palin’s daughter became pregnant, and that she decided to take the following steps:  first, hide the pregnancy by withdrawing her daughter from school; and second, pretend that the child was hers, in the process lying to everyone around her, including the public and her staff.  If she did this, one must then ask, why? Certainly, it was preferable to an abortion.  But why couldn’t she simply admit that her daughter got pregnant at sixteen?  Palin could have served as a wonderful role model of family support for a pregnant teen, and obviously she would have helped to raise the child.  Instead, Palin sent a message that her daughter was shameful, and that lying is better than the truth.

Even if one could excuse this behavior as a misguided effort to protect her family, what happened next is beyond the pale. Knowing full well the truth, Palin allowed the false version of this story to be used as part of a PR campaign to dupe voters into viewing her in a completely false light.

What this says about her is that she believes that when you get into a situation where there might be public embarrassment, the best thing to do is lie (apparently, the same thing she did with Troopergate). That, to me, seems relevant to voters making a decision in November. 

Joe Klein knows McCain:

…the Palin pick reflects the most dangerous tendencies in McCain’s foreign policy–the tendency to react, to overreact, to crises, without thinking it through. It also reflects a defiant, adolescent "screw you" attitude toward governance. I always thought McCain’s best choice for vice president was Rob Portman–the former Congressman and Office of Management and Budget director from Ohio. Portman is smooth, attractive, extremely smart, reliably conservative, but he also knows how the federal government works. His experience as OMB director would have enabled McCain to say, "I’ve picked a guy who knows where all the bodies are buried, where all the waste is." The Ohio part of the program wouldn’t have hurt McCain in locking down that crucial state, either. But the pick would have been seen as safe, unexciting–and John McCain doesn’t like safe. Which is a real problem in a President.

We have had two big presidential decisions from both candidates – the first time we can clearly judge their decision-making skills. Obama’s was prudent, cautious, thoroughly vetted, and serious about governing. McCain’s was impulsive, rash, barely vetted and decided at the last minute by a small coterie that left everyone else gasping.

We are at war. Another 9/11 is possible. Israel may attack Iran. Pakistan may go up in smoke. Putin may invade another country. Who would you rather have as president?

(Photo: Mario Tama/Getty.)

A reader writes:

I support you raising the questions. Had the McCain campaign vetted this candidate, they probably would have found these rumors long ago. They apparently have been swirling in AK for a while now. The story of her flying back to AK from TX while in labor is just very odd. In fact, as a woman, I find it totally not credible, but if true, it was reckless. Her pregnancy, given her age, is high-risk even if she wasn’t birthing a baby with special needs.

Shame on McCain for not having done his homework. I can’t imagine any candidate for POTUS selecting someone with an open corruption investigation especially when the final report is due a few days before the election.

If McCain had vetted her, the Internet wouldn’t have to. And this would be a private matter if the McCain-Palin campaign hadn’t made the baby a key campaign point. Once they made it a reason to vote for someone, it’s reasonable for bloggers to ask questions about it, especially when there are so many strange twists to the story. But, look: I hope this isn’t true, and it can easily be disproved quickly. I’ll immediately post any evidence that answers the questions.

A reader writes:

Your hammering on this story is simply despicable.  Your limp justifications have no merit.  You obviously don’t feel it now, but I hope someday you reflect back on these posts with the appropriate — significant — amount of shame.

What really, deeply distresses me is that I’ve spent the last few years vehemently defending you to my conservative and moderate friends.  I’d always respected what I thought was your deep integrity — your willingness to view issues honestly and openly, reevaluating as circumstances changed.  Now I see how incredibly wrong I’ve been, and I’m embarrassed that I’ve ever spoken a good word on your behalf.

You’re disgusting. You’ve become an ugly, horrible person.

All I can say is: anyone who wanted to play safe would just wait for this to emerge, as it surely will. But I just want to know the truth about this – which can be easily provided. And I stand by my view that the facts as they currently stand – all from mainstream media sources – are very strange. So have at it – make me look like a fool for even bringing this up. And then we can move on. But the job of a blogger is to get facts straight.