Month: September 2008

Jeffrey Goldberg wants to know.

Weigel on Ron Paul endorsing Constitution Party nominee Chuck Baldwin for president:

I would eagerly read an essay on this topic: "The best thing Ron Paul could have done for his 1.2 million voters was wait until September to make an endorsement, endorse four third party candidates, then change his mind and endorse Chuck Baldwin."

John Schwenkler, a Barr supporter assesses the damage:

Chuck Baldwin, as Dave Weigel has been doing yeoman’s work in making clear, may be right on a number of important issues but is nevertheless a weirdly theocratic candidate with very little apparent sense of the distinctions between divine and positive law.

Bob Barr, meanwhile, for all his defects as a politician and a campaigner, is still the closest thing there is in this race to someone who represents the sort of trans-partisan coalition that is so dreadfully needed in the wake of the last seven years: a federalist and civil libertarian who is in favor of fiscal responsibility and sharply limited government at home and strongly opposed to irresponsible intervention abroad. Chuck Baldwin may well be all of that, too, but the thick layer of “Christian nation” icing that he and his party tend like to spread across the top is a bit too much, even for a committedly non-secularist Christian like me.

Poulos has more reax. It’s deeply depressing and dumb. Ron Paul’s message turned out to be far superior to Ron Paul’s candidacy.

I don’t approve of this message:

Jim Manzi re-visits the financial mess:

I can make the arguments as loudly as anyone, and I believe them, that the causes of this problem that can be laid at the feet of government are ill-advised market interventions and poor regulation, rather than insufficient controls on the market. The best long-term solutions, in my view, all involve less government intervention. It will be important to make these arguments. But the patient has been hit by a car, and is lying on the ground bleeding.

It’s all well and good to discuss how irresponsible he was to wander drunk into the street, how we should better design our traffic control systems, and so on. But first we need to stabilize the patient and stop the blood loss.

It seems to me that the crucial prudential judgment to be made right now is this: How much time and freedom of action does the political process have to improve the bail-out before the time and/or complexity of the process serves to undermine the confidence-building impact of the bail-out? My view is, unfortunately, “not much”. We need to pick our battles, and focus more on trying to make the bail-out as flexible and temporary as practicable, than on trying to get a well-designed regulatory reform in the time and policy space available to us.

A man takes a picture of himself every day for 17 years:

Ross compares Palin to another more qualified and intelligent and accessible Christianist:

…the fact remains that she has given one fine speech, and two lackluster interviews, and has otherwise dodged the sort of rough-and-tumble venues and conversations that Huckabee welcomed, and which he used to make his candidacy for president seem more plausible than it initially appeared. Palin needs to at least approach the standard Huckabee set; she hasn’t yet; and that failure is showing up in her approval ratings. There’s still time for her to turn it around, and as you might expect, I’m pulling for her to do it. But at this point, there’s an awful lot riding on that one vice-presidential debate.

After three weeks, no press conference and two measly interviews, one of which might as well have been an infomercial. Why should anyone wish such a person success? She’s a joke.

The final two paragraphs from George Will’s column today are worth highlighting again:

Conservatives who insist that electing McCain is crucial usually start, and increasingly end, by saying he would make excellent judicial selections. But the more one sees of his impulsive, intensely personal reactions to people and events, the less confidence one has that he would select judges by calm reflection and clear principles, having neither patience nor aptitude for either.

It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?

We forget that McCain has no executive experience, just as Obama has no executive experience. But in terms of judgment, of selection of a running mate, of calm in crisis, of a smooth operation, it is McCain who is revealing his total inexperience and unreadiness for the job, not Obama. In fact, there is no comparison. One campaign is chaotic, secretive, impulsive, unpredictable and losing. The other is supremely well-run, as transparent as a campaign can be, unflappable, very predictable, and winning. I know which man I’d prefer to be runing the country in a crisis. Not hotheaded, mercurial, impulsive, gambling McCain.

(Photo: Mario Tama/Getty.)

Ken Silverstein poses the question to Nate Silver:

McCain doesn’t get enough credit. This is the guy Kerry almost picked as his running mate in 2004. He has a lot of crossover appeal; he’s perceived as a maverick and a moderate; and he has a good story–he’s a war hero. A lot of Democrats kind of like him. All along he was the only Republican candidate who was in range of Obama or Clinton. Any other Republican would have been running ten or fifteen points behind at this point.

Agreed. But precisely because of that, McCain’s disgraceful lies and smears and his selection of Sarah Palin are a huge risk. The very independents he used to appeal to cannot be enamored of Rove-politics and the most far-right, blank slate Christianist ever selected for the White House.

This cheered me up.

Alaska State Senate president, Lyda Green, a longtime foe of Palin’s, is not going gently into the Rovian night:

Calling herself a "raging Republican," Green says, she is "absolutely disgusted, embarrassed, and ashamed" by the McCain-Palin campaign’s intervention in the Troopergate probe. Green is alarmed by the McCain squad’s use of hardball tactics and "the length to which they’re going to impede and delay" the investigation.

The local press conferences held by McCain-Palin aides, she adds, "are vile. They’re attacking nice people, saying things that are not true. Walt Monegan has been respected in all circles. To see him used as a scapegoat is very disheartening."

Saying things that aren’t true? Palin? You don’t say.