Archive for September 19, 2008

On Economy, John McCain channels George Constanza

September 19, 2008 at 11:23 pm · Filed under Economy, Politics ·Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

How the presidential candidates response to real-life economic crisis is an excellent barometer for the kind of leadership we can expect from them if we elect them in November. 

So, Barack Obama stayed cool.  He has been measured, stern and, frankly nonpartisan in his response.  He has offered to “refrain from laying out a more detailed plan” to deal with the crisis until he has been fully briefed of the response being put together by Treasury Secretary Paulson, Fed Chairman Bernanke and congressional leaders, in an effort to keep highly-charged presidential politics from poisoning the well.  This is “not a time for fear, for panic,” he said today, but a time for “resolve and leadership.”  As I heard Pat Buchanan say tonight on MSNBC’s Race to the White House, Obama “realizes the near catastrophe” that could ensue if a swift and effective government response careens off course.  Buchanan went on to compliment Obama, whom he called a “quasi-statesman” in his handling of the crisis, and added that, having been dealt a good hand (in an accidental and unfortunate way) in the economic news this week, Obama has “played it exceedingly well.”

John McCain’s response to the news out of Wall Street has been slightly more excited:

 

 

McCain has gone from being “fundamentally a de-regulator” of private markets to lashing out against Wall Street, calling for heads to roll, creating new agencies, introducing crisis plans and taking ridiculously cheap potshots at Obama in a rush of negative ads.  On ABC’s This Week, the conservative George Will criticized McCain’s performance as “unpresidential” . . . “substituting vehemence for coherence.”  

This is not to say that the credit crisis is not to be taken very seriously.  But McCain’s political exercises– during a genuinely fragile time for the markets — are transparent and in poor taste. From an L.A. Times story:

McCain did not comment on the administration’s rescue plan Friday. Campaigning in Wisconsin and Minnesota, the GOP nominee instead devoted large sections of his comments to assailing Obama in increasingly personal terms.

McCain repeatedly questioned Obama’s ethics and accused him of putting his own interest ahead of the nation’s. And he issued dire warnings about the consequences of supporting the Democratic nominee. “A vote for Barack Obama will leave this country at risk during one of the most severe challenges to America’s economy since the Great Depression,” McCain told thousands of supporters at a rally in Blaine, Minn.

Obama, who has also grown increasingly combative, fired back at a rally in a sports arena in Coral Gables, Fla.

“This is a guy who spent nearly three decades in Washington, and after spending the entire campaign saying I haven’t been in Washington long enough, he apparently now is willing to assign me responsibility for all of Washington’s failures,” Obama said.

“I think it’s pretty clear that Sen. McCain’s a little panicked right now.”

I think so too.

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McCain rains on Spain mainly in the plains*

September 19, 2008 at 11:54 am · Filed under foreign affairs ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

*UPDATE: I came up with the title for this post before my husband found this.  I think mine’s better.

When John McCain referred to President Putin of Germany (wrong, but I am 100% percent sure Sarah Palin could tell him which country Putin was and kind of still is president of), you kind of said to yourself- whoa, major stumble!  Who confuses Russia’s Putin with Germany’s Angela Merkel, especially since we love Germany under Merkel (especially when she vetoed Obama’s use of the Brandenberg Gate for his Berlin speech earlier this summer).  But still, you know the man was tired, or thinking too fast, and could be forgiven such an error.

But yesterday’s Q and A moment between John McCain and a spanish news wire reporter certainly gave you pause.  Not merely because McCain didn’t seem to know that Spain is in Europe, not in Latin America.  But because he went on to refuse to commit to meeting its Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, now in his second term, referring to Spain as an adversary.  Now, this is the same Spain which suffered the biggest terrorist attack on European soil since the U.S. attacks on September 11, when terrorist set bombs off on commuter trains in Madrid.  Oh, and Spain is NATO ally.

Reporter: Let’s talk about Spain, if you are elected President would you be willing to invite Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero to the White House to meet with you?

McCain: I would be willing to meet with those leaders who are friends and want to work with us in a cooperative fashion. And by the way President Calderon of Mexico is fighting a very very tough fight against the drug cartels… I attend to move forward with relations and invite as many of them as I can, of those leaders, to the White House.

Reporter: Would that invitation be extended to the Zapatero government, to the President, itself.

McCain: Uhh.. I honestly have to look at the relations and the situations and the priorities but I can assure you I will establish closer relations with our friends and I will stand up to those who want to do harm to the United States of America. I know how to do both.

Reporter: So you have to wait and see if he’s willing to meet with you…will you be able to do it in the White House?

McCain: All I can tell you is that I have a clear record of working with leaders in the Hemisphere that are friends with us and standing up to those who are not and that’s judged on the basis of the importance of our relationship with Latin America and the entire region.

Reporter: Okay what about Eur… I am talking about the President of Spain.

McCain: What about me what?

Reporter: Are you willing to meet with him if you are elected President?

McCain: I am willing to meet with any leader who is dedicated to the same principles and philosophy that we are for human rights democracy and freedom and I will stand up to those that do not.  

You would think that McCain would remember Zapatero since he withdrew Spanish troops from Iraq after being elected on that promise.  Perhaps he still holds a grudge (something he is known to do). I wonder if prodded, would he remember that when Zapatero pulled Spanish troops out of Iraq, he moved them to Afghanistan, where he thought they were really needed.  Isn’t that the sort of thing that a prominent American politician, now running for president against John McCain, has been suggesting for quite some time?  No wonder Spain is an adversary.

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Palin’s energy supply claims were true — in the 1980’s

September 19, 2008 at 2:40 am · Filed under domestic policy, Politics ·Tagged , , , , , , ,

I’m beginning to think there must be some standard rounding error over in the McCain-Palin camp that they use to calculate the size of each exaggerated claim they make.  For example, when Senator McCain went on the View last week, he insisted that Governor Palin had made no earmark requests from the federal budget, he ended up being off the mark by, according to conservative estimates, a couple hundred million dollars in 2007 alone.

And then there is McCain’s claim that Obama would raise taxes on 100 million Americans (it actually only raises the taxes of the top 1% of wage earners, those who make more than $250,000; everyone else actually gets a tax cut).  But McCain advisor Carly Fiorina said it best, well, actually, worst, when she made made the wildly inaccurate claim that Obama had not proposed “a single tax cut,” and that he would raise “every tax in the book.”  If you would like to get the facts on both of the candidate’s tax plans, the Washington Post has posted a great graphical summary that is easy to digest.

So, it comes as no surprise, then, that when Sarah Palin sat down to her interview with Charlie Gibson that she would claim that “produces nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy.”  So, it turns out not to be true.  More like two standard deviations from the truth.  The actual number is 3%.  

The Associated Press, in reporting on Palin’s “inflated” energy claim, contacted the Alaska Resource Development Council and confirmed that its 20 percent figure is badly out of date. It quoted Carl Portman, the group’s deputy director, as saying that the figure is an average for the decades of the 1980s and 1990s, which The AP noted was “long before Palin became governor at the end of 2006.”

So, does that still make Sarah “the person who probably knows more than anyone about energy?”

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Two wrongs don’t make it right

September 19, 2008 at 1:52 am · Filed under Politics ·Tagged , , , , , ,

Ever since John McCain’s campaign began to hit Barack Obama hard, and more often below the belt with slimy ads about lipstick and sex ed, Democrats have been calling for Obama to hit back- hard. The campaign seems to have gotten the memo, and has made very effective use of John McCain’s ties to lobbyists, zeroing in one seven lobbyists among his top advisors in a new ad.  And on the stump, Obama quipped that rounding up the old boy network in Washington is akin to calling a staff meeting over at team McCain.  And then there is this excellent ad which feels more like a trailer for the action thriller series 24 than another mind-numbingly predictable political ad.
 


But let’s hope this other ad, directed at Latino voters mainly in the Southwest, is the exception and not the norm.  Trying to tie John McCain to Rush Limbaugh and his brand of anti-immigrant vitriol is unfair and untrue.  While it may not make for such a punchy ad, the truth is that McCain initially fought for immigration reform.  But then he hit a brick wall- the party that has given him its nomination to be president- on immigration reform, he backed off his well-intentioned path-to-citizenship agenda and embraced the base on this one.  And it’s lucky for him he did, intoning a new agenda “secure the border first” to appease the anti-immigrant wing of his party and eventually win his long-shot race to the top of the Republican ticket.  Securing the border is just a fancy way of saying, “Immigrants, go home!”  Still, John McCain has never sought to inflame anti-immigrant sentiment, he just caved to it.   

The Obama campaign would do far better to talk to Latinos about the same issues the rest of the nation wants to hear about: jobs, wages, healthcare and the wilting economy.

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