Month: July 2009

The Cheney Syndrome

Michael Goldfarb, with a straight face, says Palin is a natural choice for conservatives focused on national security. Conor is aghast:

As a voter for whom foreign policy is my top priority, I think it is absolutely nutty that Sarah Palin is the top choice for these folks. She doesn’t have any foreign policy experience at all! Nor has she articulated any insights, opinions, or guiding philosophies that would shape her decision-making on these matters. It is deeply irrational to believe that putting Sarah Palin in the White House rather than another Republican would improve America’s national security.

What Goldfarb means, I suspect, is that the neocons could use her, as they used Bush, for more wars, invasions and occupations – for liberty!

Palin, Obama And Preparation

A helpful guide to why Palin is indeed a poison pill for what's left of her party:

These results show that Obama was able to use his campaign to reassure voters about his qualifications for office, but they also show how deep a perceived hole Palin is now in. When Obama began his campaign in early 2007, only a third of voters (32%) considered him "not very" or "not at all qualified" to be president. Compare that to the 55% who say Palin is not "fit" for the presidency now or to the 52% to 59% who said she was not "prepared" or not "qualified" last October.

Inside the cocoon, she's getting bigger and bigger. In the real world, opposition is hardening even further.

The Poison Pill From Wasilla II

Peggy Noonan wakes up as well:

"The media did her in." Her lack of any appropriate modesty did her in. Actually, it's arguable that membership in the self-esteem generation harmed her. For 30 years the self-esteem movement told the young they're perfect in every way. It's yielding something new in history: an entire generation with no proper sense of inadequacy.

"Turning to others means the media won!" No, it means they lose. What the mainstream media wants is not to kill her but to keep her story going forever. She hurts, as they say, the Republican brand, with her mess and her rhetorical jabberwocky and her careless causing of division. Really, she is the most careless sower of discord since George W. Bush, who fractured the party and the movement that made him. Why wouldn't the media want to keep that going?

Obama’s Bloody Wars Of Occupation

Tom Ricks takes note:

June was the bloodiest month of the war in Afghanistan, reports John McCreary, the former DIA analyst who follows the fighting there closely. This seems to be shifting to a war of roadside bombs, very different from the war of a few years ago.

And Iraq edges closer and closer to the violent disintegration that anyone with any sense of history could have predicted. It's important to remember that the surge failed. It failed to provide a political space to forge a new oil law; it failed to integrate the Awakening forces into an Iraqi army; it failed to solve the Kurdish problem; it failed to bring about a durable national government that all Iraqis could trust and participate in.

My fear is that by extending the presence of vast numbers of US troops well into his first term, by caving in to the Pentagon, by not making a clean break with his predecessor, Obama has now begun to own the very war he was nominated to end. If that happens he will lose the revanchist right (like he would ever have won them over) and his Democratic and realist base. I sure hope I'm wrong – that we can get out without an implosion, and that if things return to their baseline chaotic state, Obama won't be blamed, Bush and Cheney will (as they should). But pessimism is the default mode one should have with the basket-case of Iraq. Iran? You know: the country we didn't invade. Much more hopeful.

Who Quits In The First Term?

A Mudflats reader went to work:

On a hunch, I reviewed online lists of all the men and women who’ve been elected governor of their state since the year 1900. Pored over them for a few hours. Over 1200 politicians have taken that first-term oath of office. Some soon died in office. Many resigned to accept other positions in government, including Spiro Agnew who was “tapped” by Nixon after being the Governor of Maryland for about five minutes. On a handful of occasions, a first-termer was dragged off to the slammer or impeached. One was incapacitated by a nervous breakdown and one left just as impeachment came knocking on his door. So—how many out of over 1200 just up and quit before the end of their term?

Three: Jim McGreevy, Eliot Spitzer and Sarah Palin.

Two quit because of a scandal just too big and too indefensible to avoid. The other one? We're still guessing. All we know for sure is that whatever she says isn't true. It never is.