GOP Fluoride Builds Stronger Democrats

August 30, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Republican Party | Leave a Comment 

A thoughtful Ariel Sabar analysis in the Christian Science Monitor on the GOP’s dim prospects concludes thus:

“What is remarkable about the cautious, unimaginative campaign speeches of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton is how much they bear the stamp of conservative intellectual debates that preceded them,” Daniel Casse wrote in April in the conservative Weekly Standard. “These liberal Democratic presidential aspirants coyly demur on tax increases. Their discussions of foreign policy invoke American credibility. They talk about efficiency in government. Yes, conservatives know these are poll-massaged, manufactured personas; yet surely they reflect how much of the conservative flavoring has seeped into the Democratic drinking water.”

TNN Weekly Weekend Reward

August 30, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Weekly Weekend Reward | Leave a Comment 

Madame Sarkozy’s new day job hasn’t prevented her from continuing her musical career.  (One wag has styled her “Francoise Hardy with diplomatic immunity.”)

Carla Bruni was already a world famous leggy supermodel when her first album of original songs was released in 2003. Based on the fame that preceded her, Quelqu’un m’a dit (someone told me) debuted at number one on the French album charts.  What couldn’t have been predicted was the critical and popular acclaim that kept it in the top ten for the next thirty-four weeks.

One of the album’s tracks was “L’Amour”.

Drawing on four years of college French, I feel at least relatively confident saying that this chanson is a blues and that it has something to do with the subject of love.

Ms. Bruni was nothing if not adventurous, and her second album, last year’s No Promises (no promises), was entirely in English.  And not just any English —  she composed sophisticated and sympathetic pop genre settings of poems by Emily Dickinson, Christina Rossetti,  Walter De La Mare, Dortohy Parker, and W. H. Auden.  My own favorite is her take on William Butler Yeats’ “Those Dancing Days are Gone”.   Happily, a live performance on the French TV music program Taratata is available on YouTube:

Come, let me sing into your ear;
Those dancing days are gone,
All that silk and satin gear;
Crouch upon a stone,
Wrapping that foul body up
In as foul a rag:
I carry the sun in a golden cup.
The moon in a silver bag.

Curse as you may I sing it through;
What matter if the knave
That the most could pleasure you,
The children that he gave,
Are somewhere sleeping like a top
Under a marble flag?
I carry the sun in a golden cup.
The moon in a silver bag.

Last month she released her third album Comme si de rien n’etait (as if nothing happened).  Perhaps her recent distractions account for its charming but generally pedestrian material.  There was inevitably a lot of prurient speculation about the suggestive nature of some of the lyrics. As one British reviewer put it:

A woman, rather breathlessly, sings songs of regret, desire and love’s splendours and obsessions over a vaguely jazzy, acoustic world beat. “Je te donne mon corps, mon ame et mon chrysantheme” (I give you my body, my soul and my chrysanthemum) she huskily declares on a song called Ta Tienne. So far, so Gallic.  But then you remember, this is Carla Bruni, France’s first lady, married to president, Nicolas Sarkozy. Blimey. Is that who we think it is she’s promising her ‘chrysanthemum’ to? Crikey….

Those with more than four years of college French —or who got better grades than I did, which would not have been difficile to do— may want to check out Mr. Bruni’s lyrics for “L’Amour” in the original francais:

L’amour, hum hum, pas pour moi,
Tous ces “toujours”,
C’est pas net, ça joue des tours,
Ca s’approche sans se montrer,
Comme un traître de velours,
Ca me blesse, ou me lasse, selon les jours

L’amour, hum hum, ça ne vaut rien,
Ça m’inquiète de tout,
Et ça se déguise en doux,
Quand ça gronde, quand ça me mord,
Alors oui, c’est pire que tout,
Car j’en veux, hum hum, plus encore,

Pourquoi faire ce tas de plaisirs, de frissons, de caresses, de pauvres promesses ?
A quoi bon se laisser reprendre
Le coeur en chamade,
Ne rien y comprendre,
C’est une embuscade,

L’amour ça ne va pas,
C’est pas du Saint Laurent,
Ca ne tombe pas parfaitement,
Si je ne trouve pas mon style ce n’est pas faute d’essayer,
Et l’amour j’laisse tomber !

A quoi bon ce tas de plaisirs, de frissons, de caresses, de pauvres promesses ?
Pourquoi faire se laisser reprendre,
Le coeur en chamade,
Ne rien y comprendre,
C’est une embuscade,

L’amour, hum hum, j’en veux pas
J’préfère de temps de temps
Je préfère le goût du vent
Le goût étrange et doux de la peau de mes amants,
Mais l’amour, hum hum, pas vraiment !

Whiff-Whaff By Any Other Name

August 30, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under China, Sports, UK Politics | Leave a Comment 

It’s always fun —and sometimes even informative— to keep track of the doings of London’s recently-elected Mayor Boris Johnson.

At a “Handover Party” in Beijing last week, he remarked on the completion of the Olympics there and the beginning of the countdown to London 2012.

In typically exuberant and deceptively disheveled fashion, he covered a number of topics and indulged in a little facetious jingoism.

Because we here at TNN have a highly raised consciousness where ping pong is concerned, Mayor Johnson’s remarks concerning the history of the game caught my eye. (You may enjoy his entire brief remarks or go directly to 2:49. But if you do, you will miss his reasons for not regretting the absence of the Pancreateon from Olympic competition.)

Featured Articles — August 30, 2008

August 30, 2008 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Featured Articles | Leave a Comment 

Interesting Takes from Home and Abroad:

Let Palin Be Palin by William Kristol
Why the left is scared to death of McCain’s running mate.

Drug war bodies are piling up in Mexico By Ken Ellingwood
A police officer guards the scene in the Mexican state of Yucatan where 11 headless bodies were found piled. The nearby city of Merida is normally tranquil and touristy.
The heap of 11 decapitated bodies found in Yucatan shows that the battle to control the multibillion-dollar drug trade knows no boundaries.

A Turbulent Youth Under a Strong Father’s Shadow By Michael Leahy
McCain’s Maverick Nature Would Fuel His Political Climb.

McCain’s ‘Hail Sarah’ Pass By Jonathan Alter
His choice for veep is all but set up for failure in the fall.

McCain’s Baked Alaska By Gail Collins
The idea that women are going to race off to vote for any candidate with the same internal plumbing is both offensive and historically wrong.

Champagne and Tears By Bob Herbert
For black residents in and around Detroit, Barack Obama’s nomination helped to redeem some of the grief of many years of racial humiliation and oppression.

Star wars, tsar bright Austin Bay
As the Russo-Georgian War’s August gunfire slips into a murky September cease-fire, the Pentagon reports that the Russians “are still not living up to the terms of the cease-fire agreement.”

A Brilliant Trap Makes Dems Look Like Male Chauvinists By Kirsten Powers
SHE’S just a beauty queen., She’s another Dan Quayle., And ironically, the biggest criticism of Sarah Palin, John McCain’s veep choice, is she has no experience. Funny, coming from the Barack Obama camp.

Palin Fought for Reform in Alaska By Fred Barnes
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, John McCain’s pick as his running mate, is the boldest selection of a vice presidential candidate since Walter Mondale chose Geraldine Ferraro in 1984. Actually, it’s even bolder, and thus riskier. Mrs. Ferraro was a member of Congress and reasonably well-known in the national political community. Mrs. Palin is known only by faint reputation outside her home state, where she is enormously popular.

Drive Like the Wind By Lester R. Brown
How wind power could soon be powering your car instead of oil.

A Reform Ticket By Wall Street Journal Editors
If any doubt remained that former fighter pilot John McCain loves to take unconventional risks, he put them to bed Friday by picking Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. Introduced in Dayton by Mr. McCain, Governor Palin swung the bat pretty well. We’ll now see if she can hit curve balls.

Palin In Comparison

August 29, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Democratic Party, Election 2008 | 15 Comments 

Obamians may be getting worried about Gov. Palin, because they’re getting things exactly backwards. Joe Conason:

[A] focus group must have told McCain and his handlers that the experience argument wasn’t cutting against Barack Obama, that the nomination of Joe Biden as Obama’s running mate had eviscerated it completely — and that instead he and his consultants had better find a way to corral disgruntled Hillary Clinton supporters, or forget about winning come November.

(1) The experience argument was definitely cutting against Sen. Obama. That’s why Sen. McCain was able to pull even with him before the DNC. Obama picked Sen. Biden in part to try to limit further damage.

(2) The Biden choice didn’t eviscerate the experience argument. It proved it. My other favorite argument of Gov. Palin’s critics is that her inexperience takes it away as an issue for Obama. Their very criticism of the potential VP’s inexperience lends new credence to Republicans’ criticism of Obama’s. Those who laughingly compare Palin to Dan Quayle should remember that Quayle’s 1988 opponent, Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, whose gravitas exceeded Biden’s, didn’t help Michael Dukakis win. Strength at the bottom of the ticket can highlight the perception of weakness at the top, while a less experienced VP candidate can make a strong Presidential candidate look magesterial. People are saying approvingly about Palin, “McCain will groom her.” People are saying hopefully about Biden, “He’ll help Obama.”

(3) Since he didn’t need a VP pick who would make him a complete candidate,  McCain used it to help in other ways. Conason misses this point, too. By his choice, McCain has reinforced his experience advantage, tied up his base (not my favorite part of Republican politics, I admit), and gone hunting for undecided independents.

The Return Of Barefoot And Pregnant

August 29, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Democratic Party, Hackosphere, News media | 2 Comments 

More early-20th century gender politics from the pro-Obama side, this time offered up by Andrew Sullivan in the form of a reader e-mail which Sullivan headlines “Did McCain Just Blow It?”:

[T]o be the 2nd most important person in the United States in our post-911 world is not the place for a very nice, young mother.

But OK for a very nice, young father to be President? Are these people even listening to themselves? I’m beginning to think that this is a spasm of temporary insanity by a cohort of Obamaphiles who can’t get used to the fact that their man’s VP choice was pedestrian while Sen. McCain’s was inspired. McCain should pray that they keep writing and saying this stuff. If I were he, I’d put the quote above on a commercial.

Yoffe Laughs At Breast-Feeding President

August 29, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Democratic Party, News media | Leave a Comment 

Here’s an actual woman, “Slate’s” Emily Yoffe, saying…Actually, I can’t quite believe what she’s saying:

Not that I wish him ill, but wouldn’t the most surreal outcome of McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate be that McCain gets elected, shortly afterward he dies in office, and the president of the United States becomes a 44 year-old breast-feeding, moose-eating mother of five?

What a joke, huh? Geraldine Ferraro is on Fox right now predicting that many undecided women will wait to see how Gov. Palin is treated by the media. If today is any indication, McCain-Palin will win in a landslide.

The Democrats just spent a week turning Michelle Obama, an eloquent, opinionated cultural critic and highly compensated professional woman, into a non-offensive, soft-edged mother of two. Meanwhile critics are making fun of of a woman who has integrated substantial political success with motherhood and has just been chosen to run for Vice President. The DNC was a reality TV makeover show, while the Republicans are emerging as the party of authenticity and true progressive politics.

Palintologists

August 29, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Election 2008, News media | 1 Comment 

Reading through a variety of liberal or Obama-leaning outlets, I’m astonished by the outpouring of viciousness directed at Gov. Palin. It makes me wonder why Sen. McCain and his friends let Sen. Biden off so easy the day he was chosen. Judging by the general quality of the left’s Palin commentary, Republicans should’ve denounced Biden as a lying plagiarist.

Palin’s critics are paying special attention to her lack of experience in general and foreign policy experience in particular. Some of the same commentators seemed less concerned when Obama said he knew about foreign policy because he’d studied international affairs in college and failed to be able to name the new president of Russia in February.

It seems pretty clear that some people are willing to cut a smart inexperienced man some slack but not a smart inexperienced woman. Obama’s right: We really do need to be a better country.

The Post Cheney Vice-Presidency

August 29, 2008 by Jim Gallen | Filed Under American Politics | Leave a Comment 

Throughout our history the vice-presidency has been an evolving institution. For many years the vice-president served merely as the presiding officer of the Senate with little or no involvement with the Administration. Calvin Coolidge (1921-23) was the first vice-president to regularly attend cabinet meetings. Richard Nixon (1953-61) began a tradition of playing a more active role in the executive branch. His successors continued the tradition, although the progress has been marked by fits and starts.

A milestone was reached with the selection of Dick Cheney as running mate by George W. Bush. Prior vice-presidential candidates had generally been chosen to placate a wing of the party or to appeal to a segment of the electorate or a region of the country. While Cheney may have appealed to the conservative base, he was mainly chosen as a partner who could help govern. Both fans and foes would likely agree that Cheney has had significant influence over policy in the Bush-Cheney Administration. Cheney’s role has led to questions as to how his role would influence the selection of future vice-presidential candidates. Would a presidential candidate feel free to revert to a selection process which emphasized electability, or would future candidates be compelled to give primary consideration to the role the vice-president would play in his administration?

We have now seen the first two selections of the post-Cheney era. Sen. Obama has opted for a Cheney type selection with the choice of Sen. Joe Biden, a foreign policy expert from a small, reliably blue state. Sen. McCain has chosen Gov. Sarah Palin, who, he hopes, will appeal to women voters and send a message that the McCain Administration will not engage in business as usual, with earmarks, pork barrels and attendant corruption.

So what influence has the Cheney precedent had on these choices? While not raising the bar for all tickets, Cheney has provided a new rationale for vice-presidential choices. The Cheney model provides presidential candidates with a method to fill in deficiencies in their own resumes by permitting them to select running mates with expertise which they are lacking. Slim resumes have been a common characteristic of the campaigns of Gov. Bush and Sen. Obama. George W. Bush ran with a relatively little governmental experience. His foreign policy experience was limited to Tex-Mex border issues and what he picked up from listening to his father and his father’s friends. He used Dick Cheney to assure the voters that the team would have a seasoned veteran of Washington and foreign wars. Sen. Obama’ also lacks experience in foreign affairs. He hopes to convince voters that, if he gets in over his head, he can rely on Joe Biden to help him steer the Ship of State. Sen. McCain has clearly not followed the Cheney model. He has chosen Gov. Palin who has relatively little governmental experience which will be useful for governing, but may who attract key voting blocs.

Perhaps the determinative difference is that Sen. McCain has a record of experience which does not need supplementation by his running mate so he has the luxury of being able to choose a helpful campaigner. Sen. Obama needs to gain the voters confidence by promising to rely on his running mate while governing. At this point in the post Cheney era, it seems that we can expect the experience of running mates to be inversely proportional. The more impressive the resume of the presidential candidate, the more emphasis will be placed on the running mate’s campaign appeal. The sparser the credentials of the presidential candidate, the more likely he is to choose a Cheney type running mate who promises to “help govern.”

Senator McCain’s Selection

August 29, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Election 2008 | Leave a Comment 

An old friend who is a wag as well as an astute political practitioner and observer, passed along what he considers the best line now making its way through the world wide web’s tubes regarding Senator McCain’s running mate.  

Cold State.
Hot Governor.

Frumpy

August 29, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Election 2008, News media, Republican Party | 1 Comment 

David Frum is a national figure thanks to having had the opportunity to write speeches for the man who was elected President in 2000 after serving six years in one of the weakest executive political posts in the country: Governor of Texas. Here’s what he has to say about Gov. Palin:

Here’s I fear the worst harm that may be done by this selection. The McCain campaign’s slogan is “country first.” It’s a good slogan, and it aptly describes John McCain, one of the most self-sacrificing, gallant, and honorable men ever to seek the presidency.

But question: If it were your decision, and you were putting your country first, would you put an untested small-town mayor a heartbeat away from the presidency?

Why call a popular, successful governor an “untested small-town mayor”? After all, Sen. Biden’s prior job, before spending a third of a century voting to spend taxpayers’ money, was county councilman. What makes Palin less qualified to be VP than Frum’s ex-boss was to be President, or less qualified to be President than a four-year senator who’s never run anything except a campus publication? Is Frum really saying that the choice was unpatriotic?

Sen. McCain has made an exciting and apt selection, the Beltway resume elitism of his critics notwithstanding.

Gov. Palin Is Chosen, And The Edwards Zone Cometh

August 29, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Democratic Party, Election 2008, Republican Party | 1 Comment 

Regular readers of TNN will recall that a few weeks ago I suggested that Sen. John McCain select Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running-mate, and do so right away, so as to stampede Sen. Barack Obama into selecting not only a Catholic woman as his running-mate, but a Catholic woman who, in spite of being pro-choice (as both members of the Democratic presidential ticket have had to be since Roe vs. Wade) would have no real problem receiving Communion, which would effectively limit his choice to Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg.

Now that McCain has indeed gone ahead and chosen Palin, I still think his best time to do so would not have been this morning, but last Friday. Had he announced her name at that point, the Obama campaign would have been thrown into chaos. With mere hours looming until the Democratic convention began, Obama would have scratched Biden and, I’m still willing to bet, would have asked Ms. Schlossberg to assume the mantle of Camelot. And if she had accepted? Well, the vice-presidential debate would be a wrap for the Republicans; as Ms. Schlossberg showed when she appeared on Meet The Press last Sunday, she has a tendency to speak in sentence fragments and a disinclination to make any kind of definite statement. And her almost absolute lack of political experience, beyond organizing fundraisers and shaking hands alongside her cousins, would have finished her as a serious candidate, no matter how starry-eyed the coverage from older journalists.

But even so, I think Gov. Palin will perform pretty strongly in the single planned debate against Sen. Joe Biden. For one thing, she’s well-known for being an aboveboard and honest politician, with no ties to lobbyists. Biden, by contrast, is not only close to a number of lobbyists, but has actually fathered one – his younger son Hunter, whose recent misadventures have been chronicled in articles like this one. Is Obama ready to explain whether his crusade against “fat cats” extends to the one who might be cutting deals by the back door of the Naval Observatory by this time next year?

But the felines Obama may be more concerned about now are PUMAs. Will Sen. Hillary Clinton’s supporters be ready to approve the message McCain is sending with the Palin selection? The next few weeks will provide some answers.

And last night, mere minutes after Obama finished his mighty oration and the last “Yes We Can” escaped the lips of those assembled at Invesco Stadium, the Associated Press sent out an article guaranteed to send chills, not of the pleasurable kind, down the spine of any Obama supporter.

He’s baaaack!

When last heard from, former Senator (and 2004 Democratic vice-presidential nominee) John Edwards had reportedly been thrown out of his house by his wife Elizabeth, and was hidden away in his vacation home on Figure 8 Island in North Carolina’s Outer Banks, phoning his old supporters and, unsuccessfully, begging their forgiveness for his affair with Rielle Hunter. Meanwhile, the former finance chairman of his presidential campaign, Fred Baron, was making the rounds at the convention in Denver, and dodging attempts by ABC’s investigative team to interview him.

(And incredibly, it turns out that, had Hillary not stood up when the convention’s presidential roll-call reached the New York delegation and moved for a unanimous vote, a South Carolinian delegate would have cast his ballot for Edwards, according to the American Spectator’s website.)

But though the Democrats dodged that bullet, yet another projectile is emerging from that strange and dreaded and unpredictable area called…..the Edwards Zone.

This episode begins last spring, when the student union of the University of Illinois booked Edwards, at that time a seemingly respectable ex-candidate, to make a speech on October 14 in a 1400-seat auditorium about “The American Dream.” He was to be paid a $65,000 honorarium.

After the Rielle Hunter scandal reached fever pitch earlier this month the student union, taking note of reports that Edwards was cancelling various scheduled public appearances, contacted his agent and offered, should Edwards wish to do so, to return his fee and scratch the speech from the calendar.

Why do that? replied the agent. He then informed the student union’s rep that Edwards was now not only eager to fulfill his appearance, but was seeking further bookings on campuses and elsewhere and raising his fee. Upon hearing that, the student union kept the booking. (Indeed, Edwards has an appearance booked at Hofstra University on September 8, and so far there has been no indication it will be cancelled.)

How should this news be interpreted? My (perhaps too charitable) guess is that Elizabeth Edwards is finally ready to file for divorce and strip her husband of a substantial portion of his multimillion-dollar fortune, and so he’s seeking to raise as much money as possible, while he still has some shred of notoriety, to finance a halfway comfortable retirement in some faraway locale, say, the Marshall Islands or Tuvalu.

The only other explanation that suggests itself is that the “narcissism” that Edwards confessed to in his ABC interview with Bob Woodruff a few weeks ago has reached such pathological dimensions that he is ready to direct further public attention to himself and his foibles, even if it means endangering Obama’s bid for the White House and the prospects for the Democratic party to retain control of Congress.

Stay tuned this weekend, for there will be some more dispatches from….the Edwards Zone.…just as soon as Rod Serling fetches a fresh pack of cigs.

Update: The Associated Press has just reported that John Edwards has confirmed his appearance at Hofstra University on September 8, just a month after his “confession” on ABC’s Nightline. Elizabeth Edwards, originally scheduled to speak with him, will not appear. The couple had been previously booked for an appearance on September 23 at Salem State University in Massachusetts, and a spokesperson for Elizabeth Edwards has, as of now, confirmed that both will be there.

For John McCain From TNN

August 29, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Election 2008 | Leave a Comment 

For all the conflicting criticism (of the constructive kind of course), critical analysis, and unsolicited advice that we have been offering (and will undoubtedly will continue to offer) in such abundance, here at least is something on which all of us agree.

The Fiasco in Invesco

August 29, 2008 by Joshua Treviño | Filed Under Election 2008 | 4 Comments 

Barack Obama’s acceptance remarks this evening should be a source of relief to every Republican, conservative, and McCain supporter in America. The Democratic nominee for President walked to the podium with every advantage: eloquent, attractive, historic, gifted with a polling advantage, and bathed in the bright lights of one of the great football stadiums of America. He walked away from the podium having squandered every one of them. Barack Obama’s candidacy is not done by a long shot — he’ll have a post-convention polls bounce, and the electoral terrain is still favorable — but he could have put a victory in the bag this evening. He failed.

In assessing Obama’s speech at Invesco, it is useful to compare it to two prior speeches: Reagan’s 1980 convention speech, and Obama’s own 2004 DNC keynote. The former was the last time a self-consciously transformational candidate ran against a party in wholesale control of the national government. (Whether the candidates in question are actually transformational is debatable — but unlike Obama paying homage to Ted Kennedy, Reagan never genuflected before Nelson Rockefeller.) Making this case is more difficult than it may seem, as there is a simultaneous impetus to be appealing and condemnatory. Reagan did it in 1980, mixing the common man’s anger with his natural affability — and Barack Obama did it in 2004, combining sorrowful regret at Republican misgovernment with soaring appeals to America’s better nature. He established himself then as one of the great rhetoricians in an era where they are too few. He also set a high bar that he did not clear today.

Instead of the requisite deft interweaving of righteous indignation and sunny promise that made him a political celebrity in 2004 and propelled him to the nomination in 2008, Barack Obama delivered a surprisingly strident and joyless forty-five minutes of rhetoric. The remarks should have introduced him to the American people, and shown them what the Democratic base sees in him: hope, change, can-itude, or whatever other gauzy quality made him their nominee. What the American people got was less an introduction to Barack Obama than an exposition on what Barack Obama is against. It was fantastic for the base — and especially the left-wing base, which is especially animated by its hate objects — but it was alternately boring and disturbing for everyone else. As Marc Ambinder noted from the stadium, it was basically a primary-season stump speech.

How did Obama come to fail so remarkably, having delivered so often before? The clues lie in the candidate’s character. The remarkable thing about Barack Obama is how much of a cipher he remains: he is excellent at presenting himself as a tabula rasa upon which only virtue may be written, and there should be no doubt that the effort is deliberate. John McCain’s personal flaws are well known, but Obama’s are rather elusive. Still, they exist, and they show most clearly when Obama’s subject is Obama. I first learned of his ego problems when speaking with a former law school classmate of his; and there were glimpses of it for public consumption with things like the “I have become a symbol” incident. It was not till tonight, though, that Obama’s basic internal fragility was put on stark public view. This was the biggest night of his public life, and the defining moment of his historic turn — and what did he talk about?

Barack Obama talked about John McCain.

Take a moment to feed the plain text of Obama’s acceptance speech into a weighted word-cloud generator. You’ll get something that looks like this, and you’ll note that the biggest word — signifying the noun most often invoked — is “promise,” with 32 mentions. Ordinary enough for a political speech. Next is “America,” with 28 mentions, which is also expected. Third, though, is “McCain,” with 21 mentions. It is difficult to overstate how remarkable this is: Reagan in 1980 barely mentioned Jimmy Carter, and Obama in 2004 discussed John Kerry solely because he was keynoting for the man. Set against the light of precedent and the demands of this speech, the relentless focus upon John McCain emerges as profoundly strange.

The only reasonable conclusion is that Barack Obama has built up a sizable resentment toward John McCain. His remarks are shot through with ripostes to McCain-campaign attacks on him: “I don’t know what kind of lives John McCain thinks that celebrities lead,” or, “If John McCain wants to have a debate about who has the temperament and judgment to serve as the next commander-in-chief, that’s a debate I’m ready to have.” The text also serves up counterattacks that can only be described as deeply dumb: are we truly to believe that McCain’s 26 years in elected office are responsible for the tripling, over that same period, of American oil consumption? The squandering — the sheer waste of political capital here — is epochal. We learned something important and disturbing this evening: Barack Obama believes his own press, and when others do not, he takes it personally.

Thus this speech. Thus this, the single most important address of his entire campaign, reduced to a stump-quality attack piece. How invested was Barack Obama in this one? Watch it again. Go to exactly 45 minutes in, as he closes, and turn off the sound for maximum effect. Note what you see. Barack Obama does not smile. His demeanor is grim, tight-lipped, and stern. His brow is furrowed, his face is taut. Twice, for mere seconds, he bares his teeth in a parody of a grin. He stalks the catwalk looking tired, tense, and joyless. Only when his wife and daughters appear, after an agonizing 80 seconds, does he regain humanity. He is a man who, in his own mind, administered a beating — and knows he cannot show how he enjoyed it.

Meanwhile, most of America’s television audience saw this followup ad, with a genial John McCain congratulating Obama. The contrast is more effective for McCain than any attack piece could be — and Barack Obama made it possible.

I wrote before that John McCain has long odds, and they remain so. This race is not over. But it could have ended this evening, and it did not due to the ego-driven indiscipline of the Democratic nominee. He missed his chance to put this away — and in missing it, showed his tragic flaw. What remains is for the Republicans to make that flaw fatal.

Honesty In Punditry

August 29, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Democratic Party, News media | 3 Comments 

The first sound I heard from NBC News this morning was a pundit questioning whether Sarah Palin, Sen. McCain’s VP pick, has enough experience to be commander-in-chief. Governor of Alaska for two years, senator from Illinois for four? Flip a coin.

Featured Articles — August 29, 2008

August 29, 2008 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Featured Articles | Leave a Comment 

Interesting Takes from Home and Abroad:

The Perfect Stranger By Charles Krauthammer
Barack Obama is an immensely talented man whose talents have been largely devoted to crafting, and chronicling, his own life. Not things. Not ideas. Not institutions. But himself.

A Speech to the Delegates By David Brooks
My fellow Americans, it is an honor to address the Democratic National Convention at this defining moment in history. We stand at a crossroads at a pivot point, near a fork in the road on the edge of a precipice in the midst of the most consequential election since last year’s “American Idol.”

Obama Rekindles the Flame By E. J. Dionne
For months, the magic that once surrounded Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy was lost in a fog of petty politics: the negative ads, the Clinton dramas, the degrading of Obama to the status of a mere “celebrity,” the back and forth with John McCain over who is an elitist and who is a flip-flopper.

Fiscal Conservatism Helped Louisiana Beat Katrina By Bobby Jindal
Three years ago today, Hurricane Katrina battered New Orleans and southeast Louisiana. A few weeks later, Hurricane Rita hit southwest Louisiana, completely demolishing some of our coastal communities. These terrible storms destroyed thousands of small businesses, displaced hundreds of thousands of residents, killed over a thousand people, and caused tens of billions of dollars in property damage.

Feeling No Pain By Paul Krugman
My first reaction to Bill Clinton’s convention speech was sheer professional jealousy: nobody, but nobody, has his ability to translate economic wonkery into plain, forceful English. In effect, Mr. Clinton provided an executive summary of the new Census report on income, poverty and health insurance — but he did it so eloquently, so seamlessly, that there was no sense that he was giving his audience a lecture.

Putin maps the boundaries of greater Russia By Philip Stephens
We need to get this straight. Vladimir Putin’s Russia has invaded a neighbour, annexed territory and put in place a partial military occupation. It seeks to overthrow the president of Georgia and to overturn the global geopolitical order. It has repudiated its signature on a ceasefire negotiated by France’s Nicolas Sarkozy and disowned its frequent affirmations of Georgia’s territorial integrity. Most importantly: all of this is our fault.

 Obama Gets Serious By Peggy Noonan
The famous Greek amphitheatre didn’t look all Alexander the Great if you were there. It looked instead like the big front display window at Macy’s during Presidents Day Sales Weekend. You expected to see “Sofas 40% off!” in a running line on the bottom of the screen. A friend said the columns looked like “a ballroom divider at the Hyatt Hotel.”

Biden Wanted to Break Up Iraq By Dan Senor
The senator’s biggest foreign policy initiative appears to have vanished from his — and Barack Obama’s — memory.

So Many Miles From Selma By Eugene Robinson
It feels as if the role of African Americans in this nation has finally been acknowledged.

Alternative Cal

August 29, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Culture, History, Vietnam | Leave a Comment 

Sproul Plaza at the University of California, Berkeley

A young journalist at UC Berkeley reviews charges that the Democrats stole the 1960 election and then wonders what might have happened at the epicenter of campus radicalism if Richard Nixon had taken office in January 1961:

Had Nixon won, he may very well have quickly won the war in Vietnam, and the anti-war and Free Speech Movements would consequently not have had their resulting magnitude. As a result, Cal wouldn’t have become so prominently known for its anti-war rhetoric, but rather almost solely for its stellar academic achievements in the arts and sciences that are already on par with, if not ahead of, the nation’s most elite private institutions including Harvard, Princeton and Yale among others.

Acquiring Pakistan

August 29, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Democratic Party, Election 2008, International Affairs | Leave a Comment 

This applause line in Sen. Obama’s speech last night –

John McCain likes to say that he’ll follow bin Laden to the Gates of Hell – but he won’t even go to the cave where he lives.

– is a useful reminder of an overlooked element of the Obama foreign policy: His stated willingness to invade and risk destabilizing Pakistan. The proud opponent of the Iraq war has hinted he might start another war a lot like it.

RN’s Tuxedo

August 29, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Book Review, Nixonland Nitpicks, Richard Nixon, The New Nixon | 1 Comment 

Reviewing Lord Black’s Nixon bio and a Rick Perlstein-edited collection of Nixon speeches and writings, TNN’s Frank Gannon, who served as RN’s principal editorial adviser on his memoirs in the late 1970s, takes on the Perlstein-Chris Matthews theory of Nixonian original resentment:

Mr. Perlstein’s thesis is that Nixon’s life was driven by serial resentments of the elites who scorned him. An early manifestation of this pathology is supposed to have occurred when Nixon, a freshman at Whittier College, founded the Orthogonians (“Square Shooters”). In Mr. Perlstein’s view, the new club was intended to be a refuge for those who had been snubbed by the fancy Franklin Society. He makes much of the fact that Franklins donned tuxedos for their yearbook photos while Orthogonians sported open-necked shirts. “Franklins were well-rounded, graceful; they moved smoothly, talked slickly,” he writes. “Nixon’s new club, the Orthogonians, was for the strivers, the commuter students, those not to the manor born.”

But Whittier College in 1930 was a culturally homogeneous Quaker-based community that reflected the middle-class towns from which the majority of its students were drawn. Whittier was a commuter campus. In any case, Nixon was from one of Whittier’s “better” families; he owned a tuxedo. The Orthogonians were in fact jocks or would-be jocks (like Nixon), hardly bitter outcasts with their noses pressed resentfully against the glass. Nixon was elected president of every freshman and senior class from eighth grade through law school. If he later resented political and academic “elites,” it was because they kept screwing him over, not because he wanted to be one of them.

Corsi Can

August 29, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Book Review, News media | 1 Comment 

Bloggers are supposed to have an advantage over the MSM because they can go back and fix their work. But the old media get do-overs, too. Just compare the back-to-back articles in the Aug. 25 and Sept. 1 issues of “The New Yorker” about the most loved and despised author in America, Jerome R. Corsi, author of the unworthy but bestselling Obama Nation.

Last week, Ben McGrath had a teasing but not-unfriendly article in Talk of the Town about Corsi’s media whirl:

Many of Corsi’s convictions about [Sen.] Obama, as with [Sen.] Kerry, grew out of post-graduate research on race riots and the Vietnam War opposition. “My wife always says I wrote that book from the attic, because I had kept all my research,” he said of “Unfit For Command.”

Way too whimsical, apparently, because this week Hendrik Hertzberg filed his own article on the same subject for Talk of the Town:

Corsi himself is a crackpot, a boor, and a bigot.

There!

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