Month: September 2008

His notion that leaders in the US should actually engage the leaders of other powers in order to negotiate is, according to the vice-presidential candidate for the Republicans:

That’s beyond naïve. And it’s beyond bad judgment.

She also denied that Kissinger even believed such a thing:

I’ve never heard Henry Kissinger say, "Yeah, I’ll meet with these leaders without preconditions being met."

Ilan Goldenberg has. What must Kissinger and Baker and Scowcroft think about their party now?

Someone who before her selection had only one single, semi-coherent thing to say about foreign policy in her entire career, could now become president at a moment’s notice in one of the most perilous times in world history.

The days when Republicanism meant actual responsibility and judgment and experience and realism have been replaced by gimmicks, pure politics, Fox fem-bots, and constant, random gambling with the most dangerous things imaginable.

A pretty revealing exchange with Anderson:

"At the end of the day, there’s a lot of people thinking about how to rebuild this party," said GOP strategist Ed Rollins on CNN, "and do we want to rebuild it with John McCain, who’s always kind of questionable on the basic facts of fiscal control, all the rest of it, immigration. And I think to a certain extent this 110, 115 members of this study group are saying, here’s the time to draw the line in the sand."

"That’s pretty scary stuff that they’re thinking about party right now and not country, is that what you’re saying?" responded host Anderson Cooper.

"I think they’re, yes, they’re thinking about themselves," said Rollins. "I think they don’t think that the threat is as great as a lot of other people do."

 

McCain is now at war with the Democrats, with the press, with Iran, with Russia, and with his own party. Just as he likes it. Even in a crisis like this.

Slate predicts. With McCain, anything can happen at any moment. Now imagine him dealing with a nuclear Iran.

Judah Grunstein weighs in:

Is the mission a nation-building/counterinsurgency operation? If so, we’re propping up a government that is widely perceived as corrupt from top to bottom not only by the general population, but also by its vice president in an on the record quote. We’re also trying to instill 21st century governance in what one questioner referred to as a 17th century society.

An edited version:

Americans still want one.

How on earth does one make sense of it? The last week, he has plunged from one gimmick to another, finally landing on this transparently cynical bid to "suspend" his campaign until a bailout deal – then returning to Washington to actually say nothing while the deal collapsed:

At the bipartisan White House meeting that Mr. McCain had called for a day earlier, he sat silently for more than 40 minutes, more observer than leader, and then offered only a vague sense of where he stood, said people in the meeting.

In rode the man on the white horse, whom no one really needed. And when he got there, he didn’t resolve the impasse, and he didn’t propose a plan. He just sat there, er, blinking. Now he’s tied himself into the comic position that if this deal isn’t made by tonight, he won’t show up at the debate, so there.

It’s like a seventeen year old going to their room and slamming the door when he can’t be the center of attention. Matt Cooper notes:

McCain certainly hasn’t helped and now we’re at a point where a deal seems unlikely tomorrow in time for the debate which means McCain will have to make another decision–whether to swallow his pride and show up for the Meeting in Mississippi or be the biggest no-show in the history of American politics. Since he doesn’t seem to have added anything to the negotiations in Washington, it’s hard to see why on earth he should show up for the debate with Barack Obama.

If he shows up with no deal, he’ll look beyond lame. If he shows up after the deal, he will not be able to say truthfully he had anything to do with it, especially if he now leads opposition to the bailout. All in all: it’s very hard to know what is going on in his head, what stunt he’s going to pull next, what new drama he wants to unveil. Calming, isn’t it, to think what a McCain presidency would look like. Not boring, anyway.

Ezra Klein wonders why Palin is getting less coherent:

The fact that Palin’s responses to questions are becoming increasingly incoherent rather than rapidly more polished is interesting. Rote memorization should have all but eliminated the overlay of nonsense in her answers by now. Matt Yglesias offers a decent hypothesis, saying, "It’s possible that all this cramming is causing Palin to become less coherent — instead of just parrying questions she knows she doesn’t have good answers to, she’s trying to remember canned lines but it’s too much all at once to actually get right."

This is the person John McCain believes could take over as president in an instant and cope with three wars – in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan – and a potential reprise of the Great Depression. Unbelievable.

I wonder if she knows who general Petraeus is. He has another view, I think.

Sarah Silverman has a proposal.