As polls show pushy Palinism hurting McCain’s chances, the struggle for the Republican future is reflected by two traditional conservatives, Peggy Noonan and George Will.
In the Wall Street Journal today, Noonan, who wrote speeches for Reagan and Bush I, makes “the case for Obama” this way:
“He has within him the possibility to change the direction and tone of American foreign policy, which need changing; his rise will serve as a practical rebuke to the past five years, which need rebuking; his victory would provide a fresh start in a nation in which a fresh start would come as a national relief. He climbed steep stairs, born off the continent with no father to guide, a dreamy, abandoning mother, mixed race, no connections. He rose with guts and gifts. He is steady, calm, and, in terms of the execution of his political ascent, still the primary and almost only area in which his executive abilities can be discerned, he shows good judgment in terms of whom to hire and consult, what steps to take and moves to make. We witnessed from him this year something unique in American politics: He took down a political machine without raising his voice.
“A great moment: When the press was hitting hard on the pregnancy of Sarah Palin’s 17-year-old daughter, he did not respond with a politically shrewd ‘I have no comment,’ or ‘We shouldn’t judge.’ Instead he said, ‘My mother had me when she was 18,” which shamed the press and others into silence. He showed grace when he didn’t have to.”
In the Washington Post, Pultizer-Prize columnist George Will, under a heading of “Call Him John the Careless,” makes the conservative case against McCain:
The presidential campaign peaked on prime-time TV with Barack Obama’s 30-minute, $5 million valentine to the American middle class, followed by John McCain on Larry King, free of charge, expressing pride and confidence in Sarah Palin, while admitting their maverickosity leads to an occasional difference of opinion.
Later, Obama upstaged himself on the Daily Show by simultaneously appearing live in Florida to embrace and be embraced by Bill Clinton. In contrast, George W. Bush seemed to be in a presidential protection program as far as McCain was concerned.
Every campaign season brings promises of change. What are the chances, in an election cycle more based on these promises than any in recent memory, that the next President will actually change anything? I speak to well-informed friends and they harp on the nuances of the Parties’ positions. The news media frets over the absence of specifics. It is ludicrous to think that the details matter in the slightest.
Decisions in this country are made by hundreds of egotistical and self-centered men and women trying to keep their well-paying jobs in Washington. The president is of course but one of them. We have layers upon layers of laws and regulations on our books. Both candidates have pledged to take some form of sharp object to these programs and the bloated budget that they create and get them under control.
Who do they think they’re fooling?
These are the pet projects of their constituents, donors and of the other hundreds of legislators, judges, regulators and lobbyists that make the real decisions in this country.
We will have an African American president or a female Vice President after having African American and female Secretaries of State, Congressmen, Senators, Supreme Court Justices and business people all through our country. Will either president declare victory over prejudice and ceremoniously slice all race and sex-related laws from the books? We would save tens of millions at least. No Way!
Everyone receives Social Security; even those with millions. Will either president come out and make a change to a means-tested payment of this benefit? We would save tens of millions. Do not hold your breath.
Does anyone really think that either president will eliminate earmarks? Two to three percent of a several hundred billion dollar budget is a lot of money. Not gonna happen!
These are the laws and regulations we all know about. The laws of the US are contained in hundreds of volumes. Regulations cover just about everything that exists in our economy and cost taxpayers and businesses billions. Is there any chance that we will make any real dent in these laws and programs? Special interest groups have paid entrenched Congresspeople great sums to get their beneficial laws enacted and they will not go quietly. We could not even get a critically important emergency bail-out package through Congress without the addition of billions in wasteful special-interest add-ons.
It is probably time for a complete do-over. Pass a first law eliminating all other laws. Then start over from scratch. Good luck with that. Good luck making any real change to the laws of this country. Washington is set in its ways. No one man is going to change that. God knows many have tried. But go ahead and vote for the candidate of Change, which is both and every candidate in history. I am sure it will work this time.
As far as people in the ‘Old Continent’ are concerned, part of the narrative behind the U.S. election campaign is about how an Obama victory is likely to trigger a sea change in the the way Europeans address the race issue - and perhaps more importantly - its burgeoning immigrant population.
“What happens in the U.S. on November 4 is all-important. If Barack Obama were to win, many things would change in those European countries which are tempted to close themselves off to foreigners, not only in the realm of politics but in terms of the habits and conversations of average citizens. The debate about the mixing of cultures will inevitably incorporate the shock from across the Atlantic. … Isolating classes of foreign children or segregating Gypsies are emotional reactions that are not only dangerous, they are futile. … The speech on race that Obama gave in Philadelphia on March 18 was decisive for Italy.”
As Barack Obama was promising voters “We’re not going to let George Bush pass the torch to John McCain,” the GOP candidate himself was in, of all places, Waterloo (Iowa), trying to persuade Tom Brokaw and himself that, on the 41st anniversary of being shot down in Vietnam, his campaign for president was not going down in flames now.
As Brokaw fired off poll numbers, quotes about Sarah Palin’s shortcomings and McCain’s own words about Bush that evoked the answer, “So do we share a common philosophy of the Republican Party? Of course,” the old warrior resolutely insisted on his own version of reality, often using air quotes to denote sarcasm about those who say otherwise and consider Obama preferable.
In this hermetically sealed world, the polls are all wrong except for Zogby (which insists on using a model that forces equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats into an outdated mold) and voters will wake up on November 4th and elect the maverick McCain of 2000.
Whether you’re voting for McCain or Obama, stories like this have got to make you proud of what this election represents for those Americans who fought and died for civil rights not that long ago. A story from an African-American early voter:
For me the most moving moment came when the family in front of me, comprising probably 4 generations of voters (including an 18 year old girl voting for her first time and a 90-something hunched-over grandmother), got their turn to vote. When the old woman left the voting booth she made it about halfway to the door before collapsing in a nearby chair, where she began weeping uncontrollably. When we rushed over to help we realized that she wasn’t in trouble at all but she had not truly believed, until she left the booth, that she would ever live long enough to cast a vote for an African-American for president.
We certainly haven’t solved all of our problems as a nation, but we have come a long way in a few decades. Even with all the negative campaigning and hostility on the fringes, I’m finding it harder and harder to be cynical these days. I think when we get past this horse-race on November 4, the magnitude of this change, and what it represents in American history, is really going to sink in.
October 22nd, 2008 By JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
Pollster John Zogby reports that Democratic Presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama is now increasing his lead over Republican Sen. John McCain in what could be shaping up as what Zogby calls a “blowout.”
Zogby predicts this could be a politically-transformative landslide like Ronald Reagan’s.
Democrat Barack Obama moved very close to a double–digit lead over Republican John McCain in the national horserace for President, continuing his slow push forward above the 50% mark, gaining 1.3 points in the last day.
McCain is slowly losing ground, having lost another 0.4 points in this latest report on the Reuters/C–SPAN/Zogby daily tracking poll.
John Zogby then writes:
Three big days for Obama. Anything can happen, but time is running short for McCain. These numbers, if they hold, are blowout numbers.
They fit the 1980 model with Reagan’s victory over Carter — but they are happening 12 days before Reagan blasted ahead. If Obama wins like this we can be talking not only victory but realignment: he leads by 27 points among Independents, 27 points among those who have already voted, 16 among newly registered voters, 31 among Hispanics, 93%-2% among African Americans, 16 among women, 27 among those 18-29, 5 among 30-49 year olds, 8 among 50-64s, 4 among those over 65, 25 among Moderates, and 12 among Catholics (which is better than Bill Clinton’s 10-point victory among Catholics in 1996). He leads with men by 2 points, and is down among whites by only 6 points, down 2 in armed forces households, 3 among investors, and is tied among NASCAR fans.
Still, less than two weeks can be a lifetime in politics. But this and other polls suggest that the electorate is coming to some conclusions and it may be less about being zealously pro-Obama than deciding to vote using the Big Broom approach and sweep those who’ve been in charge of the federal government out of office, even if a new manager would be at the helm.
Plus there are these facts: McCain’s campaign has not made the case strong enough in recent weeks FOR John McCain, his policies and specific attributes but kept everything within an increasingly-negative framework of allegations that Obama is a socialist and perhaps even less than patriotic.
All as the biggest horror story continues to be the stock market, banks, world markets and retirement accounts’ plummeting values. The Dow has dropped 280 so far today..
So who’s to blame for the economic mess that could greatly impact Presidential campaign 2008? The conventional news media wisdom is the bulk of the blame should go to the Republicans. In this Guest Voice post, humorist Tom Purcell says that the “blankity blank blank” Ds have played a role as well. Guest Voice posts do not necessarily represent the view of TMV or its writers.
Blankity Blank Blanks
By Tom Purcell
Boy, are my mother and father uncharacteristically agitated lately.
I made the mistake of visiting them while they watched the cable news. Democrat Sen. Chris Dodd was on the tube blaming the market collapse on President Bush. Father jumped out of his recliner and began barking at the TV.
“That is blankity blank blank blank!” said Father, shouting words I never heard him say before — words he never permitted in our Christian home.
Father complained that Dodd, and other Democrats in Congress, pressured lenders to originate subprime mortgages, then pressured Fannie and Freddie — government-sponsored organizations — to buy up packages of the risky mortgages.
“Lots of people are to blame, but Dodd and his friends helped kick off the mess we’re in,” shouted Father, “and now they’re benefiting in the polls from the economy they helped damage!”
There wasn’t much time to discuss the matter, however. An interview with Democrat House Leader Nancy Pelosi came on. She also blamed our current woes on Bush.
“That is blankity blank blank blank!” said my otherwise dear, sweet, classy, church-going mother. She said words I never heard her say before.
Mother cannot understand how the public would want such partisans running the White House, House and Senate.
“Pelosi wants to spend $300 billion on another stimulus package when the last one didn’t work!” said Mother. “Liberal Democrats are going to raise taxes and spend billions more on top of the trillion or more we’re already spending to bail out the financial institutions!”
There was little time to discuss Pelosi, however. Another Democrat congressman was on the tube explaining why taxpayers must bail out people who took on mortgages they cannot afford.
“In economics as in diplomacy, the most ideological administration in America’s modern history is about to end with a dramatic renunciation of the dogma it defended at its debut. … This is a tribute to American pragmatism, which remains their only true religion and allows them to burn the idols they worship before it’s too late.”
The writer of this article from Uruguay mentions the need for a ‘visionary leader’ that will institute a modern - global ‘New Deal.’ Many will surmise that the author, Sebastián Da Silva, is talking about Barack Obama. But perhaps that’s too Democratic and U.S.-centric a view.
“So far, no one knows the depths of the disaster. What is clear is that in the past 30 days, the world has been losing 12 percent of its wealth every week, there is no mechanism for injecting confidence into the markets, and despite the billions that central banks have been pumping out every day, credit is nonexistent … When stock markets crumble, the riches of the world disappear in the blink of an eye … Because of all this, the world is poorer, and for the developing or Third World, the horizon has changed for the worse. The global population has to continue to eat and the stocks of food are nil. People depend on various sources of energy to live and reserves are scarce.”
“We hope then that after the tremor passes, the international technocratic system, comprised of the World Bank, the IMF, the U.N., etc., will find a visionary leader who can propose a balanced way out of this - not to address the Dow Jones or the NASDAQ, but the real flesh and bone human element and all that it entails.”
