TDB | Obama (stupidly) starts the name game

I don't quite understand why the Obama campaign decided to link McCain to Rush Limbaugh. First of all, it was pretty clear to anyone paying attention as McCain closed in on the Republican nomination that Limbaugh was not happy. In fact, he was livid.

Moreover, Limbaugh is very, very well liked by the Republican base, which McCain has been courting since before he beat Romney. McCain has a fairly legitimate concern that, when the chips are down, 'conservatives' won't embrace him. They are more likely to now that Obama has essentially given McCain the 'genuine' Limbaugh endorsement that he's hitherto failed to get from the man himself (a normally enthusiastic Limbaugh has fallen well short of enthusiasm about nominee McCain).

But most importantly, by attacking McCain via Limbaugh, Obama opened up the guilt-by-association game, the one game that Obama does not want to play. He had all but avoided the issue of his very real ties to Rev. Wright and Bill Ayers, and of his less credible but still very real tie to Tony Rezko. Sure, these names have been mentioned by McCain surrogates; but a real attack along such lines has been (noticeably) lacking. Sadly, it will be an all-too-noticeable part of the campaign from now on.

TDB | An Obama Foreign Policy Coup

Senator Obama has an opportunity for a foreign policy coup of sorts.

When Russia went to war with Georgia nearly six weeks ago, neither candidate was particularly impressive in their response. McCain continued to toe his long standing hard line with Russia, while Obama said very little and continued his vacation in Hawaii - about as far away from the action as could be.

The man who became Obama's running mate, on the other hand, was intimately involved - as he has long been - in the Caucuses situation. He's surely knowledgeable enough about the events - and the American response - to inform Obama that the Bush administration has made a serious and dangerous mistake.

Bush decided to punish Russia by essentially 'freezing' all American/Russian relations.

We rely on Russia to help keep the world safe. We especially need their help in preventing the development and spread of WMDs. But, as the LA Times reported yesterday, the congressionally appointed Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism has been asked to not go on its upcoming Moscow fact-finding mission. This is part of the Bush administration's 'Russia freeze'. But the freeze couldn't come at a worse time.

Yes, something needs to be done in response to Russia's aggression in Georgia - and, more recently, their support for Venezuela. But it needs to be done intelligently. Recent intelligence has shown that the Caucasus are increasingly becoming a 'crossroads for Islamic extremists, criminal mafias, black market traffickers and corrupt government officials'. These are basically the four sorts of people who threaten the world - and especially America - by their interest - financial or ideological - in WMDs.

It seems to me that Obama could profit by making this an issue in the upcoming debate over foreign policy. He could use it to highlight the difference between smart foreign policy and 'strong' foreign policy. He could give Americans a real reason to support the former - and thus Obama. McCain is very likely, in response, to continue his long-held anti-Russia position and to criticize Obama as being soft on Russia, to which Obama could respond that he's being hard on WMDs and smart about Russia.

ike/Quote of the Day 2

"She doesn't have any foreign policy credentials. You get a passport for the first time in your life last year? I mean, I don't know what you can say. You can't say anything. I think they ought to be just honest about it and stop the nonsense about, 'I look out my window and I see Russia and so therefore I know something about Russia.' That kind of thing is insulting to the American people."

--Chuck Hagel

ike/Inside Beisbol

Wick Allison, who joined the board of National Review at the request of one William F. Buckley, and served as its publisher, endorsed Obama today.

If you read the endorsement, which I highly recommend, you'll learn that Allison gave the maximum allowable donation to John McCain during the primary.

He is a tried and true conservative.

He, like a great number of the intellectual class of his party, including the co-founder of this blog, will vote for Barack Obama in November.

John McCain, with his mendacious and cynical campaign, has become a fringe candidate.

If Obama can just garner the Colin Powell endorsement, we could all go home.

ike/Quote of the Day

"And since McCain’s willingness to make speeches that have nothing to do with his actual beliefs is not matched by an ability to give them, he wound up sounding like Bob Dole impersonating Huey Long."

--Gail Collins

ike/A Swiftly Tilting Planet

The incumbent president's scarcity on the campaign trail should not come as much of a surprise. Even his annotated convention speech in St. Paul lacked a certain bluster to which we have become accustomed. Approval ratings in the low 30's certainly will take the spurs off a cowboy.

But something else is happening too. The Bush administration, over the past few months, has begun to fall in line with the recommendations and initiatives articulated by the Obama campaign.

I posted about the amazing convergence on Iraq withdrawal among the Iraqi administration, the Obama campaign and the Bush White House months ago.

Yesterday, in an under the radar story, we witnessed another shift towards national public acceptance of Obama's foreign policy.

Five former secretaries of state, Henry Kissinger and James Baker among them, agreed that the United States should have dialogue with Iran.

So while foreign relations neophyte Sarah Palin was busy saber-rattling on the potential need for war with Russia, some of the most experienced policy minds in the country were agreeing with Obama's core, foreign policy belief: that talking solves problems.

I have never seen, on any level, a campaign as separated from reality as the McCain bunch.

TDB | The gist of the grist...

"It's a little scary that the world's largest insurance company hasn't planned for a rainy day." - Tyler Cowen

ike/Quote of the Day

"She doesn't need to know the Bush Doctrine; she is the Bush Doctrine."

--Jon Stewart

TDB | The other feminism

I have nothing particularly positive to say about Sarah Palin. In fact, the idea of her as president scares the stuffing out of me. But statements like the following inspire me to say something about what she represents:

Mrs. Palin is everything that liberal feminists loathe: a gun-toting evangelical, a polar bear-hating former beauty queen, a mother of five who opposes abortion right and celebrates the fact that her pregnant teenage daughter has ‘chosen life’ [who] during her campaign for Alaska’s lieutenant-governorship in 2002 [] called herself as ‘pro-life as any candidate can be’.

Whether or not her opinions and beliefs are right or wrong, they clearly belong to a woman who has never felt that her gender put anything out of reach. There are scores upon scores of ‘feminists’ who do nothing but nit-pick and complain and thereby give feminism (a very worthy cause) a bad name (n.b., anyone ready to accuse me of stereotyping women here can go to hell – men nit pick and complain just as much if not more than women).

I am my mother’s son through and through (for good and bad), and thus a feminist to my very core. And my mother was a feminist in the vain of Sarah Palin – an athlete, a beauty queen, a workingwoman and a mother. Growing up, I heard her cheer deserving women and castigate ‘deserving’ men with a fierceness born of KNOWING that her opinion counted - and that if someone was discounting it, they wouldn't go on doing so. To her credit, mired oftentimes in a swamp of misogyny, she never shy away from calling out every misogynist she met.

Yes, there are many, many ‘feminist’ accomplishments that go far beyond such characteristics. But the strongest thing I’ve ever seen a woman do (or anyone for that matter) was to stand up to the most hard-hearted unfairness – that of biology – and resolve, unflinchingly and without complaint, to wage a battle she knew would never end, against a disease that attacked her in large part because she is a woman; and then to repeat this performance against a cancer that grew in large part from the weakness the disease had caused. It doesn’t get much more unfair than being diagnosed with lupus in your twenties and advanced lymphoma in your forties. But she never stood down – and she beat the hell out of what oppressed her.

No matter how much I dislike Sarah Palin’s politics and worry that she is unqualified to lead the country, I see in her the same kind of feminism that I see in my mother – who, btw, is still very much alive and kicking – a kind of feminism that is just as deserving of praise as the other, better known kind.

ike/Quote of the Day

"McCain, by the way, is the Republican nominee for president. You may remember him from the Sarah Palin convention in St. Paul, where he gave a speech and was congratulated by Sarah Palin."

--Gail Collins

ike/Palin Comparison

Regarding the pick, here are my two cents. My first reaction was to think the pick was incredibly cynical, aimed at women using the lowest common denominator. Through that lens, early indications are that the pick is a failure. Check out these focus groups post speech:

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/09/michigan-indepe.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/04/female-clinton-supporters_n_123794.html

But I think there was more to it. We know now that McCain was dying to pick Lieberman. Apparently, all that convinced him to go in a different direction was the fact that he would face an all out civil war at the convention if he picked someone pro choice. Rove attributes the entirety of Bush’s margin of victory in 2004 to the three million evangelicals they turned out who hadn’t ever voted before. McCain probably came to the conclusion, after watching the Democrats avoid a train wreck in Denver, that his last best chance was to rev up the base and try to pull in the remaining, disaffected Clinton supporters. So yes, I believe the pick was purely political. There’s no way to justify it otherwise.

It seems ironic and somewhat twisted that, running for president during an unfavorable time for the GOP brand, the maverick rebel would have to embrace the fringiest part of said brand. However, they yell the loudest. And while I believe the 2008 presidential election was decided three years ago when Americans witnessed the fundamental incompetence of their federal government while an entire city drowned, picking Palin may prevent McCain from the embarrassment of a landslide in November.

That being said, I think the pick will have some disastrous repercussions. The pick not only undermined his core, articulated rationale for voting for him (judgment, country first, mature and measured leadership), it also undermined his core, articulated rationale for not voting for his opponent (where’s the beef, charisma isn’t everything, youth, inexperience).

While I’m an unabashed liberal Democrat, I tend to be dispassionate and analytical about political races. I don’t mean this in any sort of shrill, partisan way, but watching the Republican Convention was a little sad. I’ve rarely seen so many uninspired, old, fat white people in one place. Their chants sound like dirges. And I can’t help but feel like we are watching the last gasps of this version of the Republican Party. After the massive losses it’ll endure in November, the GOP will no doubt regroup around core principles: fiscal responsibility; low taxes; strong defense. And I don’t doubt, that with Democrats controlling all facets of government, some scandal over the course of the next decade will allow the GOP to re-introduce itself to American voters. But right now, John McCain is cowtowing to a base that believes that abortion shouldn’t be legal in cases of rape or incest, the world was created in seven days and the war in Iraq was ordained by a higher power. Good luck winning those arguments with a pissed off general electorate after eight years of the most incompetent administration in the history or our country.