Month: September 2008

Jimmy Kimmel:

"John McCain showed up without running mate Sarah Palin, which is a shame because she actually has a lot of experience with financial matters. You know, she lives right next to a bank."

Rich Lowry:

I’ve been swamped with other stuff, but just for the record: I thought Palin was dreadful. She obviously didn’t have the reaction to the Charlie Gibson interview that I had hoped. She had better be better prepared for next week or she risks damaging her political brand forevermore.

Move over, Borat:

Reihan is saddened by that state of affairs in South Africa:

As Nelson Mandela’s deputy, Mbeki played a central role in shaping post-apartheid South Africa. Once regarded as a man of rare promise, he has been a failure, not least by the lofty standards he set for himself.

Things could be worse in South Africa, as evidenced by the chaos and misery that prevails in neighboring Zimbabwe. But South Africa was once a model of racial reconciliation, a political miracle more remarkable in some respects than the collapse of the Soviet dictatorship. And under Mbeki, South Africa was supposed to spark an African renaissance. Instead, South Africa has grown increasingly violent and poverty-scarred, and even its vaunted tolerance is at risk. From his know-nothing crusade against the scientific consensus on AIDS, which was likely responsible for thousands of deaths, to his embrace of thuggish kleptocrats, Mbeki has endangered all that generations of ANC freedom fighters achieved. Having abandoned Marxist-Leninist economics, Mbeki also abandoned the ANC’s anti-racism, choosing instead to embrace a cynical racial populism to mask the unpopularity of neoliberal reforms. It was a clever political gambit, but one that threatens to poison South African democracy.

Larison gets it:

Maybe I am influenced by how poorly Obama used to do when he debated Clinton, but I thought he did so much better than he has before that it has to be scored as a win for him. McCain was more aggressive, no doubt, but it is my impression that it translated into contempt and condescension, which are the things that everyone has been saying that Biden has to avoid when he debates Palin. He used the word naive how many times? He was scolding him as if he were a school master, but it is far from clear in any of the exchanges that he knew more. Obama was not forceful enough, but he was so much more focused than he was earlier in the year. McCain came off, in my view, as a snide, bitter old man. His comments betrayed the sentiment of, “How dare you even think that you can compete with me.” This is what Clinton thought, and it destroyed her.

A lot of Jeffrey Goldbergs are here to help.

Ed Schultz:

Capitol Hill sources are telling me that senior McCain people are more than concerned about Palin.

The campaign has held a mock debate and a mock press conference; both are being described as “disastrous.” One senior McCain aide was quoted as saying, “What are we going to do?” The McCain people want to move this first debate to some later, undetermined date, possibly never. People on the inside are saying the Alaska Governor is “clueless.”

Larison thinks McCain wants a mulligan.

The one aspect of these events that many seem to ignore is the racial and gender dynamics. Obama’s style against McCain was much tougher and crisper and more forceful than with Clinton. The reason, I think, is that Obama was canny enough not to fall into the Lazio trap with Clinton – with his only slip-up being the "you’re likable enough" quip. With McCain, he could be more alpha male, as he was. But Obama is also a black man against a white man. So he must also be very careful not to get angry and to stay cool and calm. He has to do that to avoid the "angry black man" trap. But then he cannot afford to seem weak either. You realize how hard a balance that is for ninety minutes?

Obama has to walk through a racial minefield all the time.

No one in American political history has ever managed to pull it off as smoothly as he has so far. I know what it’s like in a tiny way having a stereotype hang over you – hence my acceptance that the word "hysterical", for example, will always be more consistently deployed against a gay man than a straight man. But I’m not a pol and don’t mind being defined that way by those more interested in identity than argument. Obama has no such luxury. He needs the votes.

He was respectful to McCain but also more confident looking him in the eye. He was forceful without appearing angry. He was calm without seeming professorial. Because he makes it look relatively easy doesn’t mean it isn’t actually extremely hard.

Nielsen:

·      The combined overall household rating for last night’s presidential debate, in 55 of the 56 local television markets where Nielsen maintains electronic TV meters, was 33.2.  (Local ratings for the Houston market are still unavailable due to the effects of Hurricane Ike.)

·      The St. Louis market had the largest TV audience, with a household rating of 52.1, while the Phoenix/Prescott market had the lowest household rating: 24.8.  (One rating point equals 1% of the total TV audience in a given market.)

National ratings for Friday night’s debate will be available from Nielsen on Monday.

The biggest audiences tended to come from the MidWest. Among critical political markets where ratings were very strong: St Louis, MO; Greensboro and Raleigh-Durham, NC; Columbus, OH; Norfolk and Richmond, VA; Denver, CO; Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and Palm Beach, FL; Detroit, MI; Indianapolis, IN.

It will be interesting to see how the polling looks in those states in a couple of days. Whoever won that debate will have been doing it in front of some critical swing voters. (New Yorkers and Los Angelenos were among the least interested in the debate. But then it was Friday night in the big city, so I don’t blame them.)

Tom Johnson and M. Chris Mason have a very sharp article on Afghanistan in the current Atlantic. Money quote:

Politically and strategically, the most important level of governance in Afghanistan is neither national nor regional nor provincial. Afghan identity is rooted in the woleswali: the districts within each province that are typically home to a single clan or tribe. Historically, unrest has always bubbled up from this stratum-whether against Alexander, the Victorian British, or the Soviet Union. Yet the woleswali are last, not first, in U.S. military and political strategy.

Janine Davidson weighs in.