Month: July 2008

Steve Sailer has a theory:

The most reassuring theory I can come up with is that McCain intends to bring back a couple of sixty pound suitcases that the Secret Service will hustle for him through Customs. And soon Obama’s big lead in campaign finance will have vanished. And there won’t be anymore questions about McCain being too old to have the energy for the job as he starts campaigning 96 hours straight.

Heh. Any other ideas? It struck me as one of the weirdest campaign photo-ops I can recall.

From Raoul de Roussy de Sales 1939 article:

An Englishman may have doubts regarding the British Empire, a Frenchman may be discouraged concerning the future of France. There are Germans who are not sure that they represent a superior race. All of them, however, remain thoroughly English, French, or German in spite of everything. The type of American who does not accept America as it is and has misgivings about it—such as Henry James, Edith Wharton, T. S. Eliot, and some others—belongs to a past generation. Today one seldom meets an American skeptic, for the reason that nothing is more assuredly unAmerican than to entertain any doubt concerning the fact that somehow or other this country will come out all right.

There are many who will find such a statement too sweeping, and say, for instance, that President Roosevelt is destroying the national ideal, that he is leading the country to ruin, decadence, anarchy, and so forth. But even those objectors are not skeptical about the future of their country. Even they feel that faith in America is what makes them Americans. All their irritation would be assuaged if Mr. Roosevelt were removed, all their confidence restored. This kind of skepticism is skin-deep. It does not affect the soul of Americanism.

This faith, like all faiths, does not engender a passive attitude towards the rest of the world. Americans are tolerant to all creeds and to all convictions, but few people express their distrust and indignation with more vigor whenever some of their beliefs are offended. Few people are more conscious that ideas may be more destructive than guns. And rightly so, because if any unorthodox creed really implanted itself in America—if the day came when an American citizen could really feel that his country was not following the right course and that a change was due—the political disunion thus produced would have unforetold consequences. The one serious crisis of this kind that America has known, the Civil War, showed the frightful results of a real political conflict. It nearly made two nations out of one. But this experiment in dissension seems to have served as a lasting lesson. It is difficult to believe that it would be repeated. Unity on the fundamental principles of politics is indispensable to the life of this country. The presence of even a small minority who would question the validity of Americanism would attack at the very core the concept of American nationality itself.

"…it looks like the only thing Obama won’t change is his insistence on losing the war," – Hugh "lurches left" Hewitt.

Eric Zimmermann writes:

If the Republican candidate for president has to spend time and money reassuring and energizing delegates to the National Right to Life Convention, he’s not in good shape.

He’s a public face of today’s evangelical movement – and a vastly different one than his father’s. And Franklin Graham’s concerns about Obama reveal more about sectarian bigotry than any concern for the public good:

Franklin Graham, son of the evangelical icon Billy Graham and head of the international Christian aid organization Samaritan’s Purse, was seated next to Obama at the meeting. He peppered Obama with pointed questions, repeatedly demanding to know if the senator believed that "Jesus was the way to God or merely a way." Graham, who once incited an international controversy by calling Islam a "very evil and wicked religion," proceeded to inquire about the Muslim faith of Obama’s father, suggesting that Obama himself may be a Muslim.

"They focused on abortion, gay marriage, and then Franklin Graham tried to get Senator Obama saved," said Rev. Eugene Rivers, an African-American pastor from Boston who attended the meeting. Rivers told the Religion News Service that Graham pointedly questioned Obama’s "father’s connections to Islam." Obama reportedly said of his father, "The least of things he was was Islamic."

Graham’s spokesman, Mark DeMoss, denies that Graham asked Obama about his father’s Muslim faith. DeMoss did, however, confirm that Graham questioned whether the candidate believed Jesus was the only way to Heaven. "Jesus is the only way for me. I’m not in a position to judge other people," Obama responded, according to Rivers.

I have a feeling that Obama’s position is far closer to that of most believing Christians than Graham’s. Which is why the right-wing Christianists are getting as afraid as the neocons.

A majority of Americans think both McCain and Obama have changed positions for purely political reasons. Nate Silver writes:

John McCain is not seen as having the higher ground on the flip-flops issue in the same way that George W. Bush was. Nor is it clear that being labeled as a flip-flopper is necessarily some kind of death-knell for Obama (or McCain for that matter): both candidates were regarded favorably in this poll overall.

Noank, Connecticut, 8.15 pm.

Redstate applauds Obama for "rejecting at least some of the extremism of NARAL, Emily’s List, and other radical abortion organizations." As a long time believer that partial birth abortion should be banned period, I agree.

Jaime Sneider counters me:

Andrew Sullivan says, "Sometimes a flip-flop is a sign of real maturity in a politician responding to new events or facts." That’s only true however, when a candidate acknowledges and explains why he’s changing. Principle plays no role when the pol instead self-righteously asserts that there has been no change at all. Principle doesn’t play a role when a candidate claims that everyone simply misunderstood his previous position–as with the meaning of "negotiate with Iran without precondition"–even when the misperception was widely reported and the candidate did nothing to correct it for many months. Aside from charging the other side with flip-flopping, one other job typically assigned to a campaign’s war-room is correcting media reports that mischaracterize their candidate’s position. That Obama’s staff was apparently sitting on its hands shows Obama either meant what he said or wanted people to believe that he did.

The strategy is to get out of Iraq completely and try and contain Iran diplomatically. The policy is what it was. The tactics shift, as they must. I’m not aware, for example, that the president has described the evolution of his own North Korea policy or his change of counter-insurgency tactics in Iraq as flip-flops. Nor should he. One thing I learned from the Iraq war debacle: we were far too focused on our own ideological positioning than on getting the reality of Iraq right. It’s a good thing that since the last election both Bush and Obama have adjusted. We need more of this, not less.

Obama responds to his critics.