Month: November 2008

More evidence of how much work John McCain has done in the past to support, defend and promote the Middle East scholar. Someone really ought to tell Michael Goldfarb.

Sail on, sail on
O mighty Ship of State!
To the Shores of Need
Past the Reefs of Greed
Through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on.

It’s coming to America first,
the cradle of the best and of the worst.
It’s here they got the range
and the machinery for change
and it’s here they got the spiritual thirst.
It’s here the family’s broken
and it’s here the lonely say
that the heart has got to open
in a fundamental way.

Yes: the heart has got to open in a fundamental way. And you can feel it happening. Because this is America. And the world has never needed her more.

Should he win, Robert Kaplan thinks Iraq will test Obama’s mettle immediately:

I fear a measurable uptick in violence in Iraq if Obama wins on Tuesday. The uptick will be significant enough to muddy the results of the surge, and the president-elect, rather than respond vigorously, will be tempted to say "I told you so" and thus win the Iraq debate with his Republican critics. The upturn in violence, he will be tempted to argue, only means we need to get out of Iraq even faster.

But that would be a mistake.

It would quietly telegraph weakness to our adversaries around the world, even as it would be deniable as an overt crisis that the incoming administration needs to respond to. The last thing the incoming administration should want is to be seen as retreating in the face of adversity. That would embolden adversaries. And also, to retreat quickly in the face of rising casualties and human suffering in Iraq would be irresponsible.

I don’t mean to argue that we have to stay in Iraq to see the thing through, a la John McCain. I mean only to suggest that Obama and Biden, if elected, will — on the morning of Nov. 5 — immediately have to act like leaders rather than like candidates. And that means emphasizing what Obama mentioned only in passing in the second debate: that our withdrawal from Iraq must, of course, be responsible and as events permit. For as former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage has said, we as a nation will be judged by the way we leave Iraq to the same degree that we were judged by how we entered it.

They PA GOP plays it:

"Listen, I am not a poll conspiracy theorist. At least I don’t want to be. But what the heck? McCain was leading last night suddenly [in one night of Zogby tracking]. Now he’s most definitely not. What’s up with that? I’ll tell you what’s up with that. I promise you I am not delusional, but: The only poll that matters is real votes. See you on Election Day," –K-Lo, NRO.

Thomas P.M. Barnett sees the danger of one-party rule.

Interesting:

The cellphone polls have Obama ahead by an average of 9.4 points; the landline-only polls, 5.1 points.

Freddie tackles McCain:

I think we could have an election that involves a major debate about the progressive income tax, but in order to have it, we’d have to have a candidate who is actually opposed to progressive taxation. The alternative to progressive taxation is a flat tax, and John McCain is not a flat tax supporter.

If this "spread the wealth around" argument is an argument with actual substance, instead of pure political opportunism, it has to be waged by people who are actually opposed to progressive taxation, in favor of a flat tax. John McCain, as much as he may want to limit the slope of the tax line, isn’t in favor of a flat tax; it’s not in his policy proposals at all. Could you have a simple "let’s have a more regressive tax scheme than we currently do" argument? Sure. But that can’t be this scorched-earth, progressive taxation equals socialism argument the McCain campaign is making. It just doesn’t make sense to have this extremist argument when the candidate making it isn’t on one of the extremes.

Ya think? It’s a distraction – a debate about an argument that isn’t even being had.

Gallup’s latest:

Obama’s favorable rating is 62% — the highest that any presidential candidate has registered in Gallup’s final pre-election polls going back to 1992.

Those negative ads were well worth the money, weren’t they?

A reader writes:

I think it is very simple.  I was with a woman this week who is in her sixties.  She told me that she has voted Republican her entire life and this year she is voting for Obama.  Her reason; John McCain is too erratic and too much of a hot head and Sarah Palin is completely unqualified.  I think many "Obamacons" simply love this country more than they do their ideology.

Another adds:

Larison suggests that Obama is an unthinkable option for a real conservative. This is simply wrong. Many of the Obamacons are not just deciding it’s more important to punish McCain; they actually believe Obama will result in a government as small or smaller than that of McCain, that he will pursue a more conservative agenda in foreign affairs, and that his social policy, based on a combination of libertarian values and personal morality will also be more conservative overall.

Part of the Obamacon phenomenon is certainly a rejection of McCain. But this is missing something. Some pro-lifers, for example, are beginning to embrace the idea that the best way to reduce abortions is to flood society with life-positive options, including more money for low-income health care. This has especially taken hold among Catholic pro-lifers as opposed to evangelicals because there is a deep and strong tradition for social welfare in the Catholic world.

Obama embodies this type of thinking to his soul. I think, and I could be projecting here a bit, that the reason for the size of the Obamacon phenomenon is that some conservatives in the libertarian, realist, and religious categories are acting on the sense that Obama is one of them. It’s not about any one policy. It’s that when they hear him talk, they recognize their own kind of thinking. He is reasoned, thoughtful, temperate, ethical. While they may worry about this policy or that, they have a gut feeling that they trust him to be making the decisions.

That certainly captures his appeal to me.