I never thought I would see a Fox News anchor go Campbell Brown on a McCainiac. But that is exactly what Shep Smith did to Joe the Iconic Plumber. Take a look for yourself, and see if you can figure out what happened:
I’m guessing that it was this statement from the now famous plumber that most galled Shep: “I’m just going to push it back on your listeners to figure out why I would agree to something like that.” Um, excuse me, did he just get away with that?
In a bizarre twist to the last lap in this presidential election, John McCain has elevated Joe the Plumber to – basically – running mate status. Joe’s out on the stump gladhanding and taking more press questions than Sarah Palin has in the whole general election. The media obediently reports everything this guy says now. But the beauty – or the horror, to a journalist – is that Joe is accountable to no one for what he says on camera (except maybe to his kids, who aren’t old enough to be embarrassed). It’s like he’s Tucker Bounds, except he gets away with it.
It’s all a little surreal. Joe’s now got a publicist (who will keep him from saying such stupid things in the future), and there’s talk of a country music album now. Joe the plumber would be the most famous swing voter in history . . . if he were in fact a swing voter. But, he’s not, and he never was. He made that perfectly clear, even before “endorsing” McCain last week. And now he’s basically become the campaign’s mascot; a formulaic symbol, replicable into Phil the Bricklayer, Rose the Teacher or Tito the Builder (who’s stumpin’ with Sarah the Hunter Palin in Virginia now).
I suppose it was inevitable that someone was gonna knock this guy off the pedestal John McCain has set him on; I just never thought it would happen on the Fox News Network. Well played, Shep. Finally fair and balanced.
Senator Elizabeth “Liddy” Dole (wife of former senator and GOP presidential nominee in 1996, Bob Dole) has just taken a possibly fatal risk to save her sinking hopes of re-election to the U.S. Senate. Dole’s challenger, state senator Kay Hagan, has been gaining on her for months and now leads Dole in the polls. So,I guess that desperate times call for desperate actions:
Dole has been taking a beating in the media for the ad, which ends with a woman’s voice saying, “There is no God!” The voice is not Hagan’s but you certainly would not know it. Hagan, a former Sunday school teacher, has released a powerful response that could do her more good than Dole’s ad did harm. Why? Because Liddy Dole comes off as a desperate liar, and lying about someone’s faith doesn’t go over any better in the Bible belt than would palling around with Godless Americans. Hagan closes the ad on especially strong turf: reminding voters that she is the one working on the real issues of the campaign, not “bearing false witness against fellow Christians.” Hagan comes off as tough, honest and capable in her response below:
If I were Liddy Dole, I’d be praying awfully hard to God tonight.
Are you a Democrat experiencing night sweats? Then you’ve probably seen the report out of Nevada that some groups – young voters and new/lapsed voters – likely to support Obama haven’t yet overwhelmed the early voter rolls this month.
Those are scary revelations, but is there really reason to be worried? Here’s why I don’t think any of these statistics tell us anything useful:
1) New voters are inexperienced, and are also likely somewhat hesitant, at least when it comes to showing up to vote. That means that they may not realize that they can vote early- and will have an easier time just running with the herd on November 4th.
2) Early voting is generally for the enthusiastic voter (that, and the early bird voter who hopes to minimize their wait in line . . . there have already been 2-5 hour waits in Florida).
3) Young voters are famous for not bothering to vote because, well, they are just a tiny bit lazier than the rest of us (they also tend to not be moved by the candidates). They procrastinate. They write their term papers the night before it’s due. So is anyone really all that shocked that they aren’t first in line to vote early?
This is not to say that Democrats don’t still have reason to worry over turnout. New and lapsed voters have old habits to break and new ones to learn. They are easier to sidetrack, confuse and intimidate. Getting them all to the polls will demand continued attention from the Obama campaign and its volunteers until the polls close on November 4th.
Frankly, the most important thing about early voting numbers this time around is that we want to continue seeing record-breaking turnout. The more folks who vote now, the less mischief and waiting the rest of us will encounter when we get to the polls next Tuesday.
So, the Obama infomercial has just aired. Unlike Ross Perot’s ground-breaking infomercial sixteen years ago, there were no charts or graphs. Thankfully.
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow thinks it was a success: “He had me at the waving wheat.” It certainly wasn’t the over-the-top catastrophe that the McCain campaign would have hoped for. I think that it was a net positive, and possibly very, very helpful to increase his margin of victory. That is because this very polished program hit ten important bases just six days before the election. In no particular order:
1. Reach key fence-sitters like sub-urban women, latinos, and white families in financial distress.
2. Rev up the Obama base to get out and vote, and to help get that vote out.
3. Portray Obama as presidential, standing and sitting by an Oval Office-like desk.
4. Hit all of the key themes of this election: economic survival and opportunity (including affordable healthcare), energy independence, national security, patriotism, and offer up specific actions Obama would take (he had been accused of offering only vague proposals).
5. Draw out viewers’ empathy for and identification with ordinary Americans’ troubles (whose lip didn’t tremble to see that retiree cheated out of his pension?); show Obama as the candidate who cares about everyday Americans.
6. Represent and reach swing state voters (Ohio, New Mexico) and cultural groups spanning swing and non-swing (Kentucky, Kansas), with family portraits, endorsements and the live rally at the end (in Florida).
7. Own up to 24 hours of just 150 hours left in this campaign’s news cycle. We won’t know until tomorrow how many Americans watched the infomercial, but it will be in the millions, sort of like a debate, except without McCain.
8. Spend more up-close time with uncertain voters who might have been susceptible to Republican and fringe internet attacks on Obama’s character.
9. Force McCain to respond with more attacks on Obama (he is calling it a gauzy ad “paid for with broken promises”), which never sits well with swing voters.
10. Increase voters’ comfort with Obama, by showing him as a dedicated family man.
If you are John McCain, the last thing you need is your brother to make an ass of himself in the homestretch before the election, in the one state you must bring back into your column. Because, let’s face it, if Pennsylvania picked John Kerry the windsurfer four years ago when the economy was doing just fine, John McCain cannot win it. Virginia, on the other hand, hasn’t voted Democratic for president in decades. Virginia, like Florida, is one of those toss-up states that you just don’t believe will go blue, no matter what the polls say at the moment.
Perhaps that is what Joe McCain was thinking when he removed his thinking cap and made a monumentally idiotic phonecall that was recorded and released for public consumption. Joe McCain was sitting in traffic for about 15 minutes and called 911 to find out why traffic on his side of the highway was stalled. After cursing at the operator, and then getting a message back from the operator admonishing him from using that line for a non-emergency, hot-headed (Joe) McCain calls back. True story.
Now, maybe there are some Virginians who will never hear this story. But I can tell you which ones surely will. They are the Virginians in the northern half of the state who, resigned to one of the most horrible commutes in the country, resist the urge to call 911 and turn on their local radio news to get them through their several hours-long commute every day.
You can almost hear the giant sucking sound of fence-sitting northern Virginia voters writing off the other McCain as they fume all the way slowly home for the day.
During my two week absence from this blog, I’ve been able to do a slight bit of poking around on the internet. The sense I got from what I have been reading about the US presidential election is that there are those who feel pretty confident of an Obama win, and those who are still on the fence, believing that one can not fully trust the polling data. I find myself jumping back and forth between the two categories.
In the Washington Post, Michael Abramowitz addresses this question: are the polls really accurate? And considering that the national polls right now swing between a 2-point margin and a 15 point margin for Obama. How can that possibly be? And how do we know which polls are closest to reality?
The latest ABC-Washington Post poll might be one. This poll, which gives Obama the edge at 52-45, does not increase African American or under-30 voter turn out over the 2004 level, even though we have reason to believe that both groups are unusually motivated to get out and vote this year. We also have reason to believe that Republican leaning voters are less likely to turnout, due both to lack of interest in the ticket and also perhaps due to a sense that the election is already over.
(The sense that the race is over could also cause some Obama leaners to stay home, which might explain why Obama has been barnstorming pretty safe territory like the state of Pennsylvania and the NBC/MSNBC network, where he will sit for several interviews this week.)
The ABC-Wash Post poll does include a random sample of cell phone-only voters, which gives it a leg up on other polls that do not. And, of course, this poll falls basically in the middle of the latest poll findings. And, while the polls’ margins may be all over the map, the fact is that in more than 50 national polls taken over the last six weeks, Barack Obama has been up in all but one of them (in the first of the six weeks I examined). Shouldn’t such a long and consistent run mean this election is over?
Maybe. But, as Abramowitz notes, the New Hampshire primary really traumatized the Obama campaign and its pollsters. Obama was clearly polling ahead in that state and Hillary Clinton defeated him easily. It is hard to say what really happened. A whole new set of principles and schools of thought on polling will be minted after this year’s election is finally over. Until then, the Obama campaign is probably going to be preoccupied trying to handicap the race very conservatively.
For starters, they have to be worried about the voters who have yet to swing to Obama. If you haven’t gone over to Obama despite the Republican brand being so in the toilet, and John McCain having stumbled and bumbled for nearly eight straight weeks, then I am guessing you must really have a healthy (as in ‘a lot of’) amount of skepticism about the Democratic alternative. The campaign should brace itself for 70% or more of undecideds in these polls to either swing to McCain or stay home. Plus, there are a lot of slightly committed voters out there who are still vacillating, despite having told pollsters and friends that they think they’re going to vote for candidate X.
Of course, ask yourself how much the national polls count anyway, since the race will be won in states like Virginia, Iowa, Michigan and New Mexico.
I agree with Simon Rosenberg at the Huffington Post, who counsels election watchers not to mistake a tightening race this week for a McCain comeback.
My sense now is that McCain is likely to gain 4-5 points in this these final few weeks and return to a respectable level for a credible GOP candidate. Part of what may drive this movement in the next few weeks is McCain bouncing back up from his current below-the-floor position. I mean 43 percent for a major GOP candidate in a two-way race? No way we are going to end up there.
McCain’s gains these coming weeks will be because he had been so dramatically underperforming since his successful convention. His erratic performance in the debates, his very public confusion during that first week of the financial crisis, the cratering of Sarah Palin, have all combined to leave him several points below where he should be at this point. In these next few weeks he will in all likelihood regain ground he should have been occupying all along but lost due to his disappointing campaign. So in many ways, McCain’s likely uptick is more a sign of his current weakness than any newfound strength.
Getting back up to 46, 47, 48 is not the same as winning. My guess is there will be a lot of confusion about this in the chattering classes in the next few weeks.
Remember to factor in a couple of points for Bob Barr and perennial candidate Ralph Nader, and keep in mind that George Bush won in 2004 with just 49 percent of the popular vote. So long as Obama’s national poll numbers hover around and above the 50% mark, he’s in a good position.
Then take into account possible factors like the cell phone vote (who are not really accounted for in most polls) and of course the fabled Bradley effect. Some analysts have also referred to a possible reverse Bradley effect, suggesting that some people who live in communities less likely to vote for a black man may not feel comfortable expressing support for Obama in a phone interview, but might actually vote for Obama once inside the booth. This hypothesis originates in a study done on the 2008 Democratic primary results found that Obama outperformed poll spreads by an average of 7%.
The researchers attributed the inaccuracy of the polls to social influences. For instance, Greenwald said many women told pollsters they were voting for Hillary Clinton but ultimately cast their ballots for Obama.
“I don’t think they’re lying to pollsters,” Greenwald said, explaining that pollsters are contacting people who are undecided and may feel pressure to say they’re voting for the candidate who most closely identifies with them socially.
Greenwald said he expects to see the reverse effect in the general election, but mostly among older voters who say they’re supporting John McCain. He expects many will pull the lever for Obama based, on multiple reasons, including the financial crisis. This trend could determine the outcome of the election, Greenwald said, if Obama’s lead shrinks in some state polls.
Races always tighten toward the end. We are nearing the final sprint in the race, and as Rosenburg points out, McCain’s poll numbers over the last month reflect how badly he and Palin damaged their numbers. Absent further missteps, McCain could get back into the mid to upper 40’s. But he will have to watch out for the “Why bother?” effect on his side: if he looks sure to lose in the final days, some McCain leaning voters may just stay home.
At the same time, Obama needs to make sure his supporters don’t get complacent, and he has warned as much. Obama’s numbers will also be affected by whether his campaign has been able to get out the early vote, when voters were comforted by his calm demeanor through the financial crisis and McCain was cratering. This year is an important test, as well, of whether the Democrats can get their new and less-likely-to-show-up voters to the polls. For all their disadvantages this year, the Republican party is typically quite effective at turning out its vote through churches and neighbor-to-neighbor contacts.
Obviously, the election doesn’t come down to the national popular vote tallies. In my opinion, Obama’s clearest path to the White House runs through Virginia. If he can hold this state, it is nearly impossible for McCain to win (Obama stands at 286 electoral votes with the Virginia, New Mexico, Iowa and New Hampshire battlegrounds in his column). The Obama campaign’s effort to court a host of red and newly purple state voters – North Carolina, Indiana, Florida, Ohio, Colorado, Nevada – is smart because it forces McCain and Palin to spend precious time in these states. Plus, if these states do actually swing to Obama, then he’ll walk into the White House with not just a Democratic Congress but with a mandate.
This excellent editorial from the Chicago Tribune, endorsing a Democrat for the first time in the newspaper’s history, Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential race, is worth a read. The Tribine has known Senator Obama for more than a dozen years. They have watched him and come to know him. It is all the more credible and sound an endorsement:
On Dec. 6, 2006, this page encouraged Obama to join the presidential campaign. We wrote that he would celebrate our common values instead of exaggerate our differences. We said he would raise the tone of the campaign. We said his intellectual depth would sharpen the policy debate. In the ensuing 22 months he has done just that.
Many Americans say they’re uneasy about Obama. He’s pretty new to them.
We can provide some assurance. We have known Obama since he entered politics a dozen years ago. We have watched him, worked with him, argued with him as he rose from an effective state senator to an inspiring U.S. senator to the Democratic Party’s nominee for president.
We have tremendous confidence in his intellectual rigor, his moral compass and his ability to make sound, thoughtful, careful decisions. He is ready.
. . . We know first-hand that Obama seeks out and listens carefully and respectfully to people who disagree with him. He builds consensus. He was most effective in the Illinois legislature when he worked with Republicans on welfare, ethics and criminal justice reform.
The Trib has admired John McCain in the past, but like some others, finds the man much changed, for worse, since his last run for president. It will certainly be worth reading what John McCain’s home state newspaper, The Arizona Sun, will have to say about his hand at the tiller.
When the subject of hate speech at McCain and Palin rallies over the last few weeks came up in the final presidential debate, McCain had this to say:
Let me just say categorically I’m proud of the people that come to our rallies.
But to somehow say that group of young women who said “Military wives for McCain” are somehow saying anything derogatory about you, but anything — and those veterans that wear those hats that say “World War II, Vietnam, Korea, Iraq,” I’m not going to stand for people saying that the people that come to my rallies are anything but the most dedicated, patriotic men and women that are in this nation and they’re great citizens.
McCain has shrugged off some of the worst hate peddlers as “fringe” people. Now, you’d certainly think that by far most people at these rallies are there because they are proud of their nominees. And yet, if you were to watch a video such as this one below, you don’t hear anyone yelling out things like “Military wives for McCain!” or “Proud of Palin!”
This video gives you the impression that the phantom fringe is all there is (which I know cannot be true; of course there are dignified, thoughtful people who support McCain). Why are these people more audible, why does their energy seem to dominate the mood? Perhaps the media is just feeding off of and amplifying them? But this video captured the vitroil without any filter at all.
Many Americans found themselves repelled by the ignorant, divisive and rascist tilt of Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s sermons. It strikes me as only logical that people should be just as disgusted with the ignorant, rascist venom countless “fringe” people have expressed at McCain Palin rallies. In fact, the rallies seem to be the place to go and vent their hate.
I’m proud to be an American. But I am ashamed of Americans who would embrace this hate. If McCain can’t bring himself to say, “I categorically do not want the support of anyone supporting violence against my opponent,” he has no business running for president. Luckily, that is something on which more than fifty percent of Americans can agree.
October 16, 2008 at 2:55 am · Filed under Uncategorized
For those folks who for some reason keep coming back to inform your consent, you’re going to read less from me over the next ten days or so. I’m hittin’ the road, and can’t be sure how often I’ll be able to get the news and post on the blog while I’m away.
I welcome comments and guest posts . . . and hope you’ll still be here when I get back.
I don’t think there is much doubt that Senator Obama came off a little flat tonight. And John McCain came out fighting, canned attack lines at the ready, and passionate certainty on display.
Obama was professorial tonight. Too many “ums” and “uhs”. But he didn’t make any serious mistakes that change this race. At most, he might have lost a couple points of support in the polls, among people who will likely continue to bounce back and forth for the next two weeks anyway.
McCain was more forceful, armed with more detailed information than he has been in the past debates in a broader array of issues that we’ve seen from him so far on domestic policy. He finally – and literally – distanced himself from President Bush, with a catchy, if overly smug/canned retort: “I am not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago.” But McCain’s forceful, over-long attacks and interruptions also made him appear nasty and juvenile. He also has yet to rein in that horrible sneering smile that I bet gives many other viewers the same willies it gives me — particularly when he flashes it to denigrate women have to get an abortion because their “health” (McCain actually used air quotes for snide emphasis) is at risk.
So, all told, McCain might have gained at most a couple of points with his performance tonight; but I would guess it’s mostly with male fence sitters, not with women.
The most important line I think Senator Obama delivered – one of few memorable one-liners he delivered – was after he explained in plain English his connections to Bill Ayers. Obama then pivoted deftly to point out the vacuum that is McCain’s campaign, given that Ayers recently became the “centerpiece” of their campaign, and that this focus, to the exclusion of the real issues in this election year, says more about John McCain than it does his opponent. (I’d quote directly but don’t have the rush transcript yet)
All in all, I think that Barack Obama did enough, though didn’t dazzle as much as he could have. It’s worth noting though, that because McCain and the media have made this election about Obama, and whether people can truly imagine him ready for the presidency – a threshold Obama has seemingly leapt over in the last few weeks – all he needed was to hold steady. John McCain did the best he could have. It was his strongest showing by far, which doesn’t say much. But I don’t think it was enough.
Over the next few days, keep a close eye not on the national polling data, but on the polls in New Mexico, Colorado and Virginia. If New Mexico and Colorado hold, and no other currently blue states turn purple, Obama’s got a lock on it. Same is true if Obama can hold Virginia and New Mexico. This year, the election doesn’t have to be all about Florida and Ohio.
You’ve probably read that John McCain has literally just one positive general election campaign ad, “Original Mavericks.” Is McCain just a cranky old curmudgeon? Or, has his campaign been fatally been hamstrung by the decision to opt in to public financing, whereas Obama opted to raise his own cash?
For the two weeks that ended last Friday, Obama’s ads aired 66,169 times and McCain’s 32,027, said Evan Tracey of the Campaign Media Analysis Group. “Obama’s just turning up the volume to a level that’s never been seen before,” he said.
McCain’s most frequent 30-second spot — airing 8,490 times — accuses Obama of being “mum on the market crisis” and calls him “a risk your family can’t afford.” In second place, airing 7,904 times, is an ad that calls Obama “dishonorable” for saying that U.S. troops in Afghanistan were “just air-raiding villages and killing civilians.” In fact, Obama said he wanted to avoid such occurrences, which have been confirmed by the Pentagon.
Both commercials were made in partnership with the Republican National Committee, which can underwrite a bigger rollout. But under federal rules, such hybrid ads must be based on issues and cannot feature a candidate asking for support.
“All you can do is basically run a negative campaign” in such hybrid ads, said Tad Devine, a top strategist for Sen. John F. Kerry‘s 2004 presidential campaign, which faced a similar dilemma. “You have McCain, whose content is limited, versus Obama, who can say whatever he wants.”
So, add not-having-cash-on-hand for postive campaign ads to the growing list of reasons why John McCain appears to be losing this election. For the rest of the list, former Clinton campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson has penned this pre-mortem.
This week, I’m having a hard time motivating myself to blog about the election. It just seems like every story just keeps repeating itself. Obama’s still ahead, and by a little bit more every couple of days, in the national and battleground state polls. John McCain still needs to turn his campaign around on a must-win debate performance, only this time it really is his last chance. And, while McCain says “There have been statements made that I’ve had to repudiate by certain GOP operatives or apparatchiks,” in the heat of the campaign, the operatives and apparatchiks just keep throwing logs on the fire.
Nothing really surprises anymore. John McCain continues to say one thing, and then do another. Take his steadfast repudiation of all divisive and unfair personal attacks.
After a straight week of the smarmiest political rallies of this campaign season, when Sarah Palin accused Barack Obama of “palling around with terrorists,” and warm-up speakers referred to their opponent as “Barack Hussein Obama,” the venerable civil rights icon John Lewis (a longtime congressman from Georgia), had had enough.
“George Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who only desired to exercise their constitutional rights,” Lewis said. “Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed one Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama.”
McCain quickly fired back with his own statement, defending his audiences and calling upon Barack Obama to repudiate Lewis: “I am saddened that John Lewis, a man I’ve always admired, would make such a brazen and baseless attack on my character and the character of the thousands of hardworking Americans who come to our events to cheer for the kind of reform that will put America on the right track.”
McCain was unwilling to let the issue go today, today calling Lewis’ comment,”the most outrageous and disgraceful thing that I’ve seen in American politics.” Really?
So, when the head of the Virginia Republican party advised campaign volunteers to connect Obama to Osama Bin Laden when they knocked on doors, McCain naturally repudiated his words in the strongest of terms, right? Wrong.
QUESTION: The chair of the Republican Party in Virginia has said, quote, in Time magazine, “both Barack Obama and Osama Bin Laden have friends that have bombed the Pentagon. That is scary.” Is that appropriate for a state party chair to be saying?
MCCAIN: “I have to look at the context of his remarks. I have always repudiated any comments that have been made that were inappropriate about Senator Obama. The fact is that William Ayers was a terrorist and bomber and unrepentant. I don’t care about that. But Senator Obama ought be the candid and truthful about his relationship with Mr. Ayers in whose living room Senator Obama launched his campaign and Senator Obama said he was just a guy in the neighborhood.”
And then there is this backhanded non-repudiation:
“While Barack Obama is associated with domestic terrorist William Ayers, the McCain campaign disagrees with the comparison that Jeff Frederick made.”
Is this campaign over yet? Because watching John McCain stoop to the same new low is really getting old.
We all knew that Sarah Palin, her husband and a good many of her staff had been pressuring former police commissioner Walt Monegan, literally since she took over as governor, to fire an Alaska State Trooper, Palin’s ex-brother-in-law, Mike Wooten. So, it really comes as no surprise that the bipartisan legislative investigation into the matter found on Friday that Palin improperly used her office to achieve satisfaction of a personal matter.
The real story here, as Nathan Thornburgh writes, is how very “amateurish” the Palin administration was, and so obviously in for a thorough public humiliation over its bullying and cronyist tactics.
The 263 pages of the report show a co-ordinated application of pressure on Monegan so transparent and ham-handed that it was almost certain to end in public embarrassment for the governor . . .
Not only did people at almost every level of the Palin administration engage in repeated inappropriate contact with Walt Monegan and other high-ranking officials at the Department of Public Safety, but Monegan and his peers constantly warned these Palin disciples that the contact was inappropriate and probably unlawful. Still, the emails and calls continued — in at least one instance on recorded state trooper phone lines.
The state’s head of personnel, Annette Kreitzer, called Monegan and had to be warned that personnel issues were confidential. The state’s attorney general, Talis Colberg, called Monegan and had to be reminded that the call was putting both men in legal jeopardy, should Wooten decide to sue. The governor’s chief of staff met with Monegan and had to be reminded by Monegan that, “This conversation is discoverable … You don’t want Wooten to own your house, do you?”
. . . One telling exchange: Deputy Commissioner John Glass, who worked under Monegan, told Branchflower he was “livid” after a Palin staffer, Frank Bailey, went outside the chain of command and called a state trooper in far-off Ketchikan to complain about Wooten. Why had Bailey called the trooper? Because, Bailey said, this trooper had gone to church with Sarah Palin back in Wasilla, so he felt “comfortable” talking to him about Wooten. Glass, too, tried to sound the warning that continuing to pressure anyone and everyone in the matter would end in “an unbelievable amount of embarrassment for the Governor and everybody else”.
. . . Another amateurish sign: Todd Palin’s outsize role in the mess. Branchflower said it was out of his jurisdiction to pass judgment on the First Gentleman, but his report paints an extralegal role for Todd Palin that would have made the Hillary Clinton of 1992 blush. In the report, the head of Gov. Palin’s security detail says that Todd spent about half of his time in the governor’s office — not at a desk (he didn’t have one), but at a long conference table on one side of the office, with his own phone to make and receive calls. It became a shadow office, the informal Department of Getting Mike Wooten Fired.
Shadow office. Todd Palin’s outsize role in his wife’s administration. Quick: what two oft-maligned pols do those characterizations make you think of? Dick Cheney and Hillary Clinton?
Sarah Palin should count herself lucky that she was less directly involved in the harassment of Commissioner Monegan, having outsourced the job to everyone around her instead. But Thornburgh is right that the overwhelming and truly sophomoric intimidation campaign — started within days of her term as Governor — that Sarah Palin tolerated and encouraged is the greater indictment of her short time at the helm in Alaska. Power in office is a privilege and a responsibility, not an advantage to be exploited to settle personal vendettas, no matter how noble the cause.
Sarah Palin has styled herself the outsider who will clean up Washington. In truth, she is no more suited to the task than the Washington insiders she so often bludgeons with her hypocritical Youbetchas.
John McCain has created a monster, one he can no longer control. The increasing virulence of his supporters has finally reached a such a pitch that McCain himself has had to backpedal.
Today, a McCain supporter (an older white woman) told the senator how scared she is of Barack Obama becoming president. He nodded, and could be heard to say, “I hear you!” But what happened next demonstrates the dangerous detour McCain and Palin’s rallies have begun to take. “He’s an Arab,” declared the supporter. And, finally, to his credit, John McCain shook his head, took back the microphone, and said, “No, ma’am, no he’s not.” He went on to say that Obama is a decent family man with whom he deeply disagrees on philosophical and policy grounds.
McCain also found himself having to disassociate himself from a warm-up act in which the speaker repeatedly called the Democratic nominee “Barack Hussein Obama,” and continued an impassionated character attack (taking also a few potshots at the Clintons and the media as well). He’s now several times found himself repeating to frantic, booing supporters that Barack Obama is someone he respects and does not want to attack. Huh?
After his rally, McCain insisted to the press that he has repeatedly expressed “respect” for both Obama and Clinton, and called them both “honorable people.” Such a declaration, of course, has no meaning, after a straight week of these in-person and on the air attacks on Obama, and specifically calling Obama dishonorable (notably, for making the same judgment about air raid civilian casualties caused in Afghanistan that McCain once lamented in the air war over Kosovo).
McCain did the right thing by setting that supporter straight who believed Obama to be an Arab (which regrettably has become a dirty word in parts of America). It is a despicable thing to encourage such hateful ignorance among his supporters. But what else should he expect when he whips up the crowds – asking who is the real Barack Obama, and what do we really know about him? But in fact, this has merely served to raise serious and timely questions abut who John McCain really is.
Just how far backward he and Sarah Palin have taken this country in the last two weeks is deeply unsettling. They’ve encouraged people to hate and fear Barack Obama, never contemplating the ugly consequences of their audience taking them seriously. When was the last time you heard an American yell at a rally, “Terrorist!” or “Traitor” or “Kill him!” or “Off with his head!”
Inform Your Consent 