Month: August 2008

Jake Weisberg argues that only race can explain why Obama’s still neck and neck with McCain. I don’t want to deny that race may play a role in this election – particularly among older, white voters. But the reason for the close race is surely over-determined. Yes, this is a change election – 80 percent believe the country is on the wrong track. But McCain is not an incumbent vice-president, and rightly boasts a record that isn’t – at least until the past few years – a Bush-Cheney Republican wet dream. He’s in favor of tackling climate change, for example, something the Bushies have adamantly resisted. He opposed the Medicare prescription drug coverage and the first Bush tax cuts. His campaign has not mentioned these – but they’re there and people remember them. He was Bush’s nemesis in 2000. That helps in trying to distance himself from the Bush legacy. In fact how the campaign uses Bush and Cheney at next week’s convention will be far trickier than Obama’s dealings with the Clintons this week.

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. America is a center-right country and doesn’t like to face defeat or failure (even when, as in Iraq, it has to). McCain’s appeal not to see Iraq as a failure appeals to Americans’ sense of pride and optimism, even as reality still nags at their psyches. For all these reasons, it’s perfectly predictable that this should be a close race for president. It may well not be for the Congress. But that too undercuts Obama’s change theme: with Democrats in the Congress, voters won’t have a repeat of 2002 or 2004.

What Obama has to do is pretty simple: he has to explain that he alone will cut middle class taxes while raising them on the wealthy to Clinton era levels; that he alone will give everyone who wants it access to health insurance; and that he alone will extricate the US from Iraq and that McCain is itching for a deeper longer war in the Middle East and another Cold War with Russia and China.

If you believe that we can tackle domestic problems and the rising debt without raising any taxes, then vote for McCain. If you believe that the problem with the last eight years has been an insufficient use of military force and an insufficiently aggressive hostility to other great powers, McCain is your man. If not, Obama is the right choice. In the end, there’s a big question domestically and a big question internationally. Both matter. And Obama’s argument will have to be more than usually persuasive if he is to overcome the experience question.

(Photo: Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty.)

He hasn’t always despised "bon mots from Balzac." From a 2002 Jonah Goldberg article titled "In Defense Of Elitism: We Need It":

In America, "elitist," "snobbish," and "aristocratic" have become largely synonymous. That’s a shame. "Elite" derives from the Latin for "elect," though not necessarily in the democratic "electoral" sense. It means those who — through efforts and talent — self-select themselves as qualified to lead, and teach, by example.

Wait, there’s more:

We talk of elite athletes, elite scientists, elite craftsmen, or elite soldiers, and everyone understands that these people are simply better, more expert at what they do than the rest of us. It is only when we get closer to those realms where experts have decided to bend every fact and twist every standard — in an effort to mend the bruised egos of backward nations and boutique domestic victim groups — that "elite" becomes pejorative. This is a tragedy, because conservatism will become meaningless if, in an effort to displace the current elite from its perch, we embrace the notion that nobody has a right to that perch.

But he’s a Democrat.

(Hat tip: John).

Max Boot thrills to the idea of re-arming Eastern Europe:

The U.S. can help, as we helped the Afghans in the 1980s and as the French helped the Poles in 1920. That will require a readjustment in our military assistance strategy, which has been to create in Eastern Europe miniature copies of our own armed forces. Our hope, largely realized, has been that these states will help us in our own military commitments in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. But in addition to developing NATO-style expeditionary capacity, these states need to be able to conduct a defense in depth.

That means having large reserves ready for fast call-up and plenty of defensive weapons — in particular portable missile systems such as the Stinger and Javelin capable of inflicting great damage on Russia’s lumbering air and armor forces. That’s more important than fielding their own tanks or fighter aircraft. We should offer to sell them these relatively inexpensive defensive systems, and to provide the advisory services to make the best use of them. But the first step has to be for the Eastern Europeans to make a larger commitment to their own defense.

"Thank you, Senator Obama. You’ve defeated Senator Clinton in Iowa. It looks as if you’re about to beat her in New Hampshire. There will be no Clinton Restoration. A nation turns its grateful eyes to you," – William Kristol, January 7, 2008.

McCain’s other Hillary ad features Debra Bartoshevich:

Nate Silver wonders about a backlash backlash:

I could see the ad being very effective. But it also tosses a big softball to Hillary Clinton, who will speak to a national audience on Tuesday. The risk to the Republicans can be summarized in five words: "Shame on You, John McCain". A finger-wagging, how-dare-you moment by either of the Clintons at the convention — but especially Hillary — could be both effective and therapeutic, especially when coupled with a reminder that McCain voted against measures like SCHIP (and voted to impeach her husband).

A reader points out something that had occurred to me too:

So I was wondering when people were going to start to take notice of the brazen contradiction in the latest ads released by McCain re: Biden. Ad #1 says that Joe Biden was a harsh critic of Barack Obama during the primaries. Ad #2 says that the reason Hillary Clinton was not tapped was because she was a harsh critic of Barack Obama during the primaries. Um… HUH? Whatever works I guess.

A lot of the McCain hyper-activity at this points strikes me as trying to out-psyche and rattle the Obama campaign, rather than to make coherent points.

Alishan Township, Chiayi County, Taiwan, 9.56 am.

The Federalist Society hosted a debate about marriage equality with four law professors (two opposed, two for). Amy Wax argued that "we should be wary of extending marriage to a community with influential people who believe that sexual monogamy isn’t that important." Dale Carpenter’s response:

…there’s no reason to believe that heterosexual couples model their sexual lives on gay men. Against this, Professor Wax suggests that gays have some unusually large influence. For historical reasons alone, we should be wary and skeptical of claims that a small minority wields inordinate and insidious power.

Consider the numerical obstacle to such influence.

Male couples will be about 1% of all marriages. Some will commit to monogamy; others will be discreet about their non-monogamy. So we’re really talking about much less than 1% of marriages. That paltry number will undermine heterosexual morals? Undermine them more than our super-monogamous lesbian role models will reinforce them? Which is more likely: that the 0.5% of openly non-monogamous male couples will exert an irresistible gravitational pull on the morals of the 99.5%? Or that the 99.5% will put tremendous social pressure on the recalcitrant 0.5%?

My article on ‘My Big Fat Straight Wedding’ is here.

A blog.

The McCain campaign has only just begun:

   They will be prepared to show McCain’s "home" in Hanoi by using images of his cell. They claim they have not overused the POW element and insist they have "underused it."