Greenwald on Obama,Palin and Bush

Greenwald finds similarities between the President, the former President, and the would-be President. Or at any rate, among their fans. He's been watching a video of interviews with Palin supporters:

Most of them profess their deep respect and admiration for Palin even though they're barely able to defend a single substantive position she holds. The video is clearly intended to depict Palin supporters as some sort of uniquely ignorant and vacuous fan club devotees more appropriate for a movie star than a politician.

Indeed, at first, I was mesmerized by the video. After all, these were not just random, politically apathetic people selected off the street. They are politically interested and engaged enough to spend hours waiting to see Sarah Palin. They have deep convictions about politics and overwhelming faith in her judgment and abilities. And yet they have virtually no ability to justify any of her specific views on issues. They don't really care about those. What they know is that she's a culturally familiar and admirable person. They share her values and know she's a good person, and thus trust that she will "do the right thing" on specific issues regardless of whether they agree or even understand what she's doing. They have a personal connection with her that makes them place their faith in her.

After watching slack-jawed for a few minutes, I quickly realized that there was nothing unusual at all about their reaction to Palin. This was exactly what led so many Bush followers to defend him no matter what he did -- as he tortured and invaded without cause and chronically broke the law. He was, like most of them, a "good Christian" who had a nice family and meant well, and thus, while he might err, he was not capable of any truly bad or evil acts. Anyone who criticized him too harshly or too viciously was, by definition, revealing something flawed about themselves. None of the specific arguments mattered. None of it had to do with reason. Like Palin's admirers, Bush's were convinced of the core goodness of his character, and they thus loved him and hated those who suggested that there was something deeply wrong in what he was doing.

The similarity between that mentality and the one driving the Obama defenses ... is too self-evident to require any elaboration. Those who venerated Bush because he was a morally upright and strong evangelical-warrior-family man and revere Palin as a common-sense Christian hockey mom see Obama as an inspiring, kind, sophisticated, soothing and mature intellectual. These are personality types bolstered with sophisticated marketing techniques, not policies, governing approaches or ideologies. But for those looking for some emotional attachment to a leader, rather than policies they believe are right, personality attachments are far more important. They're also far more potent. Loyalty grounded in admiration for character will inspire support regardless of policy, and will produce and sustain the fantasy that this is not a mere politician, but a person of deep importance to one's life who -- like a loved one or close friend or religious leader -- must be protected and defended at all costs.

Greenwald's point of departure was a pair of Andrew Sullivan posts; see here and here; cf. here. I haven't quite sorted out what I think of it yet, but I can start with this: I'm not quite as unhappy with Obama substance as Greenwald is, yet I've had to swallow a few shocks along the way. Rattled as I may be, I'd have to say (a) we get only one President at s time and he deserves a decent chance to make it work (in a long-distant time, I even felt this about W); and (b) I haven't seen anything close to the mendacity, cynicism and sheer corrruption in the Obama White House that we came to see in his predecessor--with, of course, feeds back into (a).

I think I have said before that I'm surprised and disappointed at Obama's low level of political skill--his considerable incapacity to sell himself or generally to make it happen. This may sound like sheer nattering over process, but it's more than that: the job of a leader is to lead, which includes being able to explain and justify an agenda, and to convince the Folks tht it is worthwhile.

And in an odd way, this seems to turn the "nice man" argument on its head. I think there is fairly general (certainly not universal) agreement that Carter and Hoover were "nice men" in the sense of being decent and honorable and loyal to their families (though you can get carried away here: Hoover was apparently a pious gasbag, and Carter had a mean streak). Yet in the end, nobody gave a damn: we remember them as prisoners of events, just out of their depth.

Mrs. B, a more charitable soul than I, says I am being to hard on Obama. Yes, he has made rookie mistakes, she concedes, but he is a rookie. He'll learn. Well, I hope he'll learn, is learning. And some people do grow into it. Yet he'll never have as much opportunity as he has had during the last 11 months, and it is a rotten shame how much of it he has thrown away.

Privacy and the Palins

Hilzoy has a characteristically sane take on Bristol's pregnancy. Hilzoy observes that the Palins have asked that the media respect the childrens' privacy. Hilzoy observes (link):

I plan to honor that request. It's easy, in the midst of a political campaign, to forget that the people involved are, after all, people. Some of them -- Sarah Palin, for instance -- place themselves under a media spotlight of their own free will. Others -- her daughter, for instance -- wind up there through no fault of their own. Imagine yourself in her position: there you are, seventeen years old, pregnant, unmarried. Maybe you understand what happened and why; and maybe your parents and friends do as well. But zillions of bloggers and reporters and pundits are about to make the most personal details of your life into a political issue, and they don't understand it at all. And yet, despite that, they are about to use you and your unborn child to score points on one another, without any regard whatsoever for you and your actual situation.

I want no part of this. None at all. To those of you who think otherwise: that's your right. But ask yourself how you felt when Republicans scored points using Chelsea Clinton, who didn't ask to be dragged into the spotlight either.

As far as I'm concerned, it's fair game to consider Sarah Palin's statements about her daughter's decision, and to compare them to her own views about abortion. That's a story about whether or not Sarah Palin sticks to her beliefs when they affect her own family, not about her daughter. But it is not fair game to use her daughter, or any of her kids, as pawns in a political argument. To my mind, this extends to using her daughter as evidence that abstinence-only education doesn't work: presumably, no one thinks that it works 100% of the time, and that's the only claim to which this one counterexample could possibly be relevant. (That's why God created large-scale studies.) Likewise, I think that arguing about whether Sarah Palin is a good mother is out of line: we have no idea at all what arrangements she and her husband have made for child care, how their relationship works, and so forth. Assuming that Sarah Palin would have to be her children's primary caregiver is just sexist.

Comment: That last "to my mind" seems true enough, but somewhat beside the point: it doesn't argue against invasion, it just argues that this case is not good evidence. I think any thinking person would have to agree--as they say about the Virgin Mary, it happens in the best of families.

As to the rest, I somewhat-teeth-gnashingly agree. Be nice if pigs fly we got a little cooperation on this one, though. For example, isn't time to stop trotting that poor Down's-syndrome child out at every possible media opportunity.

Update: Jonathan Zasloff fulminates:

Can you imagine ... what would be the right-wing's reaction if this had been Barack Obama's 17-year-old daughter? It would take racial coding to a whole new level. For that matter, can you imagine what their reaction would be if the Democratic Presidential candidate had cheated on his first wife, who was disabled, in order to marry a younger, prettier heiress? And if the Vice-Presidential candidate's teenaged daughter had had sex and a child out of wedlock? Or if the Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate chose to run for national office while attempting to raise a six-month-old infant with Down's Syndrome? ...

Translation: he's reduced to impotent rage. Right on, bro, me too.

Update II: Robert Stacy McCain (sic? The evil twin?) takes a different view:

Since the McCain campaign has released a statement declaring that 17-year-old Bristol Palin now faces "the responsibilities of adulthood," might I be so bold as to suggest that they arrange a press conference where Bristol can attempt to address the horrible embarrassment she's caused her parents?

Excuse my paternal (and political) indignation but I am in no mood for pleas that the media respect anyone's privacy at this point. I don't think it an exaggeration to say that this girl (and her boyfriend) have caused a crisis of global significance, and if her parents are serious about "the responsibilities of adulthood," Bristol ought to face the consequences, including about 45 minutes in front of the klieg lights while reporters shout stupid questions.

It's not Bristol's fault her mother was picked as the GOP running mate, but she certainly should have understood how her personal behavior would reflect on her family.

Source: The fire-breathing wingnut-lefty -- um, American Spectator. I guess this makes me more persuaded that Hilzoy is right.

Nostalgia Note: You know, this is one (albeit secondary) reason why I left the newspaper biz. I simply did not enjoy sticking my nose into other peoples' tragedies and misfortunes. Okay, maybe I enjoyed it too much, but I wanted to get away from it.

Sarah Palin:The Beginning of Wisdom

Balzac says no woman learns the truth until she reaches a  certain age.  Underbelly recalls and refashions:

Who's Sarah Palin?
Get me Sarah Palin!
Get me more Sarah Palin!
Get me someone like Sarah Palin....
Who's Sarah Palin?

Now this: link.

Palin the Debater

I'm listening to the last Alaska governorship debate, featuring the Person Best Qualified to Replace John McCain (link). She's good. She's comfortable in her own skin; she's well-briefed; she doesn't run away from her strong anti-abortion and anti-stem-cell positions, but she's not particularly bellicose or confrontational about them either. Indeed, the most interesting thing about the debate for me was its overall high quality--three candidates, all capable of responding to a range of (seemingly) well-formed questions on state issues which any non-Alaskan is likely to know zilch about.

This says about bupkas on the question of how she would face issues affecting a president, but it certainly counsels that one would be unwise to underestimate her. Anyway, we'd better get used to her; David Frum argues that win or lose, she is going to be around for a while.

In the contest for the palm as best Palin commentary of the day, a surprise winner: David Brooks, for his shrewd appraisal of Palin and also of McCain (link).

Bonus: there's an Intrade contract up on the possibility of a Palin withdrawal; it trades at this moment at 13.9/12. Obama for president is trading at 61.7/61.1.

Palin on Bendable Straws

It has become trope in noising around inside celebrities' private lives to come up with some innocuous but inglorious private weakness that can make us all chuckle with amused contempt. News Flash: Sarah Palin demands bendable straws.

I won't defend much about Palin but I will defend the bendable straws. Okay, har de har, but two things. One is, they probably have functional utility. She's a speaker, she's on the platform, she needs to keep her gullet smooth. I have no first-hand experience with this kind of life, but for want of a nail a battle was lost and, I suspect, some speeches go sour for lack of a bendable straw.

And two, so what if they are not practical? Who among us does not have a small private passion that does absolutely no harm to anybody, but would look somehow silly on the big screen. Isn't that what the right to privacy is supposed to be about--to let us preserve those secrets, harmless and not even shameful in themselves, about which we just don't want to tell anybody.

I do join up, though, with those who say she'll never get elected to public office--probably not even be a candidate--again. As they say, she's making too much money and having too much fun. And divas do not do well on the campaign trail. Yes, I'm looking at you, Elizabeth.

Re Palin, I Go Out on a Limb

I've been wrong so many times before, I might as well stick my neck out again: Sarah Palin won't be on the ticket on election day. People are talking Geraldine Ferraro but I'm thinking Thomas Eagleton--unvetted, thoughtlessly selected, a decisive source of regret and remorse. Or maybe I am talking about Geraldine Ferraro--a choice who never looked better than during the first 72 hours after her selection. I'm tempted to think about Harriet Miers, but this choice is perhaps least apt: Miers was brought down ultimately by the wingnuts for her tepid record on the hot-button evangelical issues. For Palin, the evangelicals are the one thing that may save her.

I don't want to suggest I am delighted with all this. If the Republicans do have to make a second choice in late September, the chances are they'll do something even more impulsive and reckless. "Get to know this woman and give her a chance," Alex Castellanos is saying. My guess is that is exactly what he is hoping we do not get a chance to do.

Afterthought: If I'm wrong (as I probably will be), then I'll say she's Ronald Reagan, and that some hacker wrote this post.

Update: This guy thinks they planned it that way all along. "Anon" in the comments here seems to think so too.

Update II: Or maybe just a hoax.

Bachmann, Palin and "Flinty Working Women"

Molly Worthen in Slate  does a workmanlike job of setting forth  a point that isn't really new but is rarely so well documented: women are natural conservatives.  Well: if not "women," per se, then (quoting Worthen) "flinty working women," as exemplified here by Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin, with a lineage that goes straight back to Phyllis Schlafly (who, I am somewhat surprised to learn, is still mixing it up).  All of which supports an intuition I've tried to articulate for a long time: women live in a world of maintenance, where there is a premium on continuity and order, and little or no enthusiasm for discontinuous risk.  It is men, after all, who ride the rails or spend two years before the mast or make war on Lesser Breeds before the law .  I think Worthen is also talking about married women, who do, after all work, and may, perhaps, qualify as "flinty."  At any rate that seems to me part of the point: women end up holding it all together, including that lunkhead of a husband (think Marcus Bachmann, think Todd Palin)--or is it the point that we are all lunkheads?

Like I say, I can hear a coherent story here.  Look,we work hard,we hold it all together, our lives have meaning.  It's in many ways an appealing story, with one glaring reservation.  That is: the whole enterprise seems to me to be driven by a head of anger as strong and forceful as a steam boiler.  I can't believe it is all the fault of the (alleged) crime of Obamacare, and apparently it cannot be ascribed to  the lunkhead husband.  So where, exactly, does all that anger come from?   

Update:  Have been advised I use the word "lunkhead" too often.  Okay, Doofus.  And, Scrooge, it may not be what Orwell meant, but it's what I mean. 

Governor, You're No Sarah Palin

David Adesnik is flirting with a flirtation with (sic) Bobby Jindal (link) (link). "Jindal the Wonk," he calls him,and from a guy like Adesnik, that's a compliment. He's certainly right: Jindal is no Sarah Palin: even though he may appeal to the same base, he is a thousand times better informed and likewise more resourceful on his feet. Adesnik adds:

... I would expect all those conservative columnists who condemned Sarah Palin as lacking substance to fall in love Jindal the same way that liberal columnists fell in love with Obama.

It's not easy to suss out exactly what Adesnik has in mind here, but he seems to be advancing two propositions, neither of which will bear close scrutiny:

• Jindal will be able to maintain his more-or-less coherent body of conservative doctrine once he gets caught up in the maws of the national Republican party.

And:

• Conservative commentators have been pining for an honest and coherent conservative candidate and will toss their hats in the air when they see one.

The first is the more problematic of the two: it maybe that the national Republicans will forgive him a reasonable amount of policy coherence as long as he retains a commitment to core principles like exorcism and general religiosity. Although I wouldn't count on it: the only guy in the last round who had anything like an intelligible economic platform was Mitt Romney and look what happened to him.

The second point is, I think, just laughable. The idea that there is a cadre of "conservative commentators" who are just waiting for an honest and responsible Republican candidate to embrace is just laughable. Or rather it is a club of one: Bruce Bartlett. Beyond that, it is hard to think of any self-styled conservative commentator who wasn't willing to get in bed with the devil if it looked like elective office for his team might be the prize. So if they take him, it will be because they think he can win, and his "program" will be just an incident.

[And while I'm at it--scoring against David Gregory may not be that big of a deal anyway. Gregory interviews strike me as pretty limp, although it may be a question whether that's a weakness in Gregory or in his customary opposiition.]

Update: Brad DeLong believes that Jindal shows disloyalty to his electorate by rejecting unemployment spending. But this is hardly disloyalty: the money in question would go mostly to blacks who didn't vote for him anyway.

Palin/Truman

Steve Benen picks up on the Palin/Truman meme and declares resoundingly: Governor, you're no Harry Truman. He's right as far as he goes (but: war hero?)--she doesn't have anything like the experience and seasoning that Harry had. But I think Steve misses the point. Sarah's not wedded to the claim that she is as experienced as Harry. What impresses her was that Harry was an outsider who came from more or less nowhere to the Presidency in a matter of months. Sarah just loves that part. President McCain better hire a food taster.

Feeding the Google

The Wichita Bureau is intrigued by a Howard Kurtz piece about how Google is driving news production--everything you write these days has to generate Google hits.  Me, the part I like best is a quote from David Carr at the NYT where he says that it has changed the way people write headlines:  you used to go for cute, now you go for the words that will catch the search wave.

I'm sure he's write but he is talking about  guilty secret that headline writers have known about for a long time--headlines admired by other copy readers are not those favored by readers.  The copyreaders' choices are lmost always too elegant, abstruse, or cute. In this respect, I suspect that copyreading is not that-all different from other forms of intellectual production.  Example: the "literary artists" admired by the cognoscenti are rarely the ones admired by casual readers.  Think of names like John Barth, John Hawkes, Gilbert Sorrentino: names still uttered in hushed tones around the academy, yet nobody actually reads them.  I suspect you could make the same sort of analysis of music and art.  Yet also among upmarket novelists, you can sometimes sense a trend that they're trying--like copyreaders--to figure out a way to chase the market: think Haruki Murakami.

Meanwhile Wichita recalls the old insight that the three most popular book topics are/were "Lincoln," "Doctors" and "Dogs."  So a book named "Lincoln's Doctor's Dog" ought to be a smash.

At Wichita's suggestion I Googled "Tiger Palin Koran" (though not in parentheses).  Got only a lousy 880,000 hits.

And FWIW, I assume the headline on this piece is precisely not what the marketers want.

Update  here's a piece on Palin word-searches, including the "r" word.   A Google Search for "Hawkes Sorrentino Barth" gets a lousy 51,800.  Here's a piece about Hawkes and Barth with the not-very-reassuring title "Ironie ist pflicht."

Afterthought on Friedman on Palin

Tom Friedman rightly fulminates against Sarah Palin's notion that taxes are "unpatriotic" (link). Inter alia:

I can understand someone saying that the government has no business bailing out the financial system, but I can’t understand someone arguing that we should do that but not pay for it with taxes. I can understand someone saying we have no business in Iraq, but I can’t understand someone who advocates staying in Iraq until “victory” declaring that paying taxes to fund that is not patriotic.

He might have addded that there is at least one more way to finance all these ventures. and that is to monetize the debt--politespeak for turning on the printing press and letting inflation roll (or flame, or explode, or whatever is your metaphor of choice). We haven't yet become Zimbabwe or the Weimar Republic or (all time champion?) Hungary, but if we insist on a policy of not paying our bills, sooner or later we are going have to start heading that direction. My Taft-Republican father liked to remember the (alleged) FDR slogan: "We will tax and tax, and spend and spend, and elect and elect." If only.

McCain the Crap Shooter

Nearly everybody who keeps on politics, keeps up on Charlie Cook. And I don't know anybody who thinks he is a partisan. Here's Charlie on you-know-what:

If you put the pictures of every Republican governor in the country on a dartboard and thrown a dart, the chances of a better selection might be higher

But It's Not the Base: Charlie again, on what McCain can hope for from the woman a heartbeat away:

Clearly, concerns about the base drove this decision. But it would appear that Palin's selection was driven more by fear of alienating the base by choosing a Lieberman or Ridge than by the need to put starch in the shorts of party members. McCain has consistently polled stronger among Republicans than Barack Obama has among Democrats. Although many Republicans don't particularly love McCain and might not run full speed to the polls, they'll likely show up out of disdain for Democrats and Obama. Four years ago, Republicans were running roughly even with Democrats in party identification. Today, they are somewhere between 7 (NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll) and 13 (Pew poll) points behind. The question seems to be, "Can Palin help McCain get the lion's share of independents?" and not, "Can she solidify his base?"

Required Homework Assignment: Michael O'Hare on Craps v. Poker.

Kling More or Less Loses it on Foreclosures

Arnold Kling can barely contain himself: 

[T]toss around words like "shoddy" or "sloppy" or "fraud" is going rather far. If you want the record-keeping process to adhere perfectly to the traditional process, then you effectively eliminate securitization. I think that would be fine, but it would have been more helpful to have made that determination in 1968, before the government created GNMA, and before it created Freddie Mac in 1970.

It is safe to say that what is going on now is not helping "little people" against "the banks." It is an assault on a process that has done little or no actual harm to borrowers, and which supports the complex allocation of mortgage cash flows under today's securities.

In the end, the biggest losers will be the unemployed, because the assault on the foreclosure process is going to keep the housing market in limbo for years. That in turn is going to make economic recovery something that does not begin until well after President Palin takes office.

It's hard to know where to begin here but I can't for the life of me understand why insistence on effective record-keeping. would "effectively eliminate securitization."  It would have slowed it down, I suppose, but so what?  And is he saying that the very existence of securitization was the fault of some crack-brained government decision?  That the poor misled banks are just so many lemmings walking off a government cliff.

And I have to admit I fail to grasp the linkage between the bankers' serene indifference to facts and their horror at the possibility of mortgage writedowns.  Just for the record, I'm not that nuts about writedowns either (FWIW I'm with him also on bankrupting banks).  And I would assume that most of these borrowers do, in good conscience, owe something to somebody.  But I should think that minimum civility would require that they pay their creditor, not any guy in polyester who happens to show up at the sale.

Maybe what Arnold is thinking of is that bit from the AP Herbert story (in The Common Law) about the guy who was brought up on charges after a policeman fished him out of the canal.  The judge said (I quote from memory):

It's been my experience that most people who come to the attention of police have done something to deserve it and I don't see why it should be the policeman's fault if he can't come up with the charge.

 On second thought, I suspect Arnold probably wouldn't understand why that is funny.

[Going away thought: I suspect he is probably right when he says that the biggest losers will be "the unemployed" (by which I guess he means "the borrowers").  We'd agree that it certainly won't be the banks.  Oh, and by the way, I'm sure the thought of President Palin turns his small intestine to water just as much as it does mine.]

Grass-Roots Rage: Another Voice

Andrew Sullivan gives the megaphone to a remarkably articulate voice:

The past year has been a very difficult one for me, personally and professionally. I've been up a lot more than I've been down, and I've been angry and frustrated with life, as we all are at times. But I can't remember the last time I felt such overwhelming rage toward a group of people as I have felt toward the Republican Party and the conservative movement since President Obama's election....

And now some low-rent hairdo, whose sole claim to fame is posing naked for some ladies' magazine way back when, may happily destroy whatever chance this country has at moving in a more just, humane, and morally and fiscally responsible direction.

As you stated, the Republican Party of this new century is shot through with nihilists. Unabashed nihilists. But what leaves me shaking with anger damn near every day since President Obama's inauguration is the pure smugness and nonchalance of their nihilism.

Palin, McConnell, DeMint, Boehner, Cantor, Rubio, Scott Brown and the rest of the Ailes- and Limbaugh-warped GOP: Would you trust any one of these goons to greet you at Wal-Mart, much less govern our country? The question answers itself. ...

That's just an excerpt; you can read the whole thing here. I have to admit I agree with about all of this, even though (by good luck more than good planning) my own situation isn't anywhere near as bollwackers as his.

But let that pass. The thing that puzzles Democrats is: why doesn't everyone feel that way? Why aren't all the voters willing--as they clearly are not--to dump the same spew of venom on the authors of their misfortune and--more apposite--the ones so determined not to offer any salvation or even relief?

Well of course if I knew, I wouldn't be here: I'd be out advising campaigns somewhere (so thank heavens that I don't know; at least I'm saved from that fate). I do offer a tentative and partial suggestion, though: our old friend Dr. Freud's cousin Schaden. They like to see 'em squirm. Put differently, they really don't think much more of the Republicans than our correspondent thinks. Truth is, in their rare moments of candor, they'll tell you that of course Sarah Palin isn't fit to govern a class picnic nor John Boehner a fourth-rate mortuary. But it is the Democrats who are inside the piñata for the moment. If you beat them hard enough some goodies might tumble out, but suppose not: at least you get to listen to them squeal. Damn, uppity, patronizing college girls and funny-looking tan guys. They never bother to stick their heads up around here until election time and now they want to tell us how to solve our problems! Hah! As far as we can see, our problems are not going away, but at least we have the momentary diversion of screaming holy hellfire at the fancy dancies who say they'd like to help.

My suspicion is that when if the Republicans do get back in, they'll find that their friends "the people" are not as good-natured and docile as they must seem for the moment to be. But meanwhile, it is the other guy who is the problem and the target.

Oh, as an afterthought: it might be nice if just once in a while somebody, somewhere in the Democratic apparatus gave them at least a little evidence that they were wrong, I saw Bill Clinton today, tromping around in the Haitian mud. It was shameless, look-at-me grandstanding, of course, but what grandstanding! Couldn't somebody on the White House team just for a moment show that they really do conceptualize the current crisis as something more than an academic exercise in fiscal management. Then, just possibly, the glacier might start to crack and you might begin to see the rage of Sully's letter-writer just a bit more often than sometimes.

Afterthought: By the way, I must have missed something. Which low-rent hairdo was it who posed naked for a ladies' magazine?

Must Read of the Day: Circular Firing Squad, with Strobe Lighting

Fascinating Charles Homans piece about Trotskyite liquidationist tendencies on the right. Yes, I know it is a stale topic, but somehow I had missed "Culture11" a righty answer to "Slate," with the surprise hook of some dazzling snark:

Culture11’s in-house writers also had a gift for whacking their own partisans, with varying degrees of constructive criticism and snark. "Filmmaker Jean Luc Godard famously declared that, to do his job, all he needed was ‘a girl and a gun,’" [Arts Editor Peter] Suderman wrote on the occasion of Sarah Palin’s selection as John McCain’s running mate, alongside a photo of the Alaska governor posing with a stuffed grizzly bear. "On his hunt for a Vice President, John McCain apparently came to the same conclusion." A month after the election, when even respectable right-leaning publications were expending ink and pixels on the legitimacy of Barack Obama’s birth certificate, Culture11 offered up a mischievous list of the "Top 11 Fringe Right Arguments Against Barack Obama Becoming President" (Number two: "He’s not really black." Number one: "He’s black."). [James] Poulos, the political editor, wrote about Democratic and Republican dynasties with equal acidity: the Clintons were "wily, and probably deathless, political opponents, with an arsenal of depleted-uranium loyalists"; Bush was "a man who thinks in grand words made up of few letters." When Palin, at the apex of her popularity, held a campaign rally in Virginia, he stopped by and was perturbed by what he saw. "In place of a detailed contrast between the GOP’s shortcomings and failures and the real change that’s promised," he wrote, "the McCain campaign seems content with zingers and chants. Those things are fine and natural ornaments for the election-year tree—but they do require a tree."

Update: A brief search of my archives shows that League of Ordinary Gentlemen knew all about Culture11; I just wasn't paying attention. And here's an Atlantic piece about a new Poulos enterprise.

Fallows on Palin

Just in case you care, allow me to direct you to the sanest web coverage I've seen on l'affaire Palin. That would be the work of James Fallows, whose day-job beat is China, but whose experience in politics includes a stint as a speech-writer for Jimmy Carter, enough to give him some compassion for mediocrity. Find his work here. Recall also: Underbelly opined weeks ago that she actually looked pretty good in an Alaska state debate. The real question may be whether the McCain "handlers" have so mismanaged her as to damage her spirit. I'm not at all ready to bet on who will come out winners in the Biden match, but it ought to be fun to watch.

Eh, You Only Live Once...

Onion News Network (H/T John) reports:

A recent poll shows 62% of Americans say they don't want to vote for Palin, but kinda just have to see what would happen.  

Makes me think of 1979 when I was visiting at the University of Texas.  One of my colleagues-I forget his name--was as nice guy, good company but somewhat to the right of Ivanhoe.  The topic arose, who would the Republicans nominate in '80?  By way of outreach I suggested--how about John Connally?

Somewhat to my surprise, my pal hesitated.  "He'd be an interesting President," he said at last. "For another country.  A small country.  Like Belgium.  With no nukes." 

Lyndon Johnson used to say that he was afraid of John Connally.  Wonder what Mitt Romney thinks of Sarah Palin.

Fiorina Goes Palin

I don't envy Carly Fiorina.  Set aside the fact that she was a mediocre CEO and that she has no natural feel for politics; still, she's far more informed about the hard facts of economic life than the Palins or O'Donnells; the degree of self-loathing she suffers as she postures before the multitude must not be fun.  Still, I think she went over the edge this morning while evading Chris Wallace's questions about what she would cut out of the Federal budget.  Forget about the evasion itself; we can't fault her for that because no candidate can identify any particular spending cuts unless s/he is looking for a quick trip to oblivion.  But then there's this:

FIORINA: …We don’t know how taxpayer money is spent in Washington...

Link.  File this one under "oh, for pity sakes."  First of all, we do know how taxpayer money is spent in Washington; as an ordinary taxpayer, Fiorna has more information available about Federal spending than she did about spending at HP when she was CEO.

But simple wrongness is not the worst of it.  The infuriating part is that this plays to directly into the weaknesses and prejudices of the worst part of her base.  I'm talking about the people who truly don't know anything about how the Federal government spends its money and really don't have a clue as to what it would take to get Federal spending back into line.  This ignorance is shameful on the voter's part, but Carly makes it respectable: You are right not to know; I, the former CEO do not know; by not knowing, you are just as well informed as I.  Your ignorance is not the product of laziness and incuriosity.  You are the victim of forces you cannot control

The press reports are saying she she's been running away from Palin on the campaign trail.  I can see why; wirth demagoguery like this, she really doesn't need her.

Obama and the Great Disconnect

I suppose some folks have already counted the number of people who tuned into the Obama/GOP talkfest over the weekend, as compared to the number who watched Beyoncé sweep the Grammys (I suppose there may be some overlap). The same counters can probably also tell you which Americans think Obama is a socialist and which think Sarah Palin is better qualified to be President.

You guessed: I watched the talk fest. Not all of it, I guess; I had it up on YouTube while I was filing papers and then I had MSNBC on screen while I did some housework. I think I saw enough so I can chime in with an opinion: it was a stupendous performance, Clinton without the rambling digressions, a wonk's wonkery for the ages. Better qualified? Well, yes.

But now that that's out of the way, let's take a deep breath and remind ourselves that wonkery is almost entirely beside the point. To win another election, Obama has to figure out some way to do what he doesn't seem yet to have learned how to do: to define an issue, to mobilize the indifferent masses and (perhaps this is the most important) to strike fear in the hearts of his enemies.

All the time I was watching the talkfest, I kept muttering "but it doesn't matter." Later I heard Rachel Maddow say that he "mobilized the base." Well, possibly. Maybe he put a bit of juice back into people like me who really want to like him but who are dismayed at how badly he seems to have blown it over his first year (may I be excused for suspecting that that is why MSNBC gave him two hours of a Saturday morning?).

But that's pretty thin soup, and it only helps at the margin. He's still got to figure out how to do what he ha hitherto so tragically failed to do: to set aside his air of detachment and immobility, to say goodbye to Mr. Cool, to make 'em laugh, to make 'em cry, and to make 'em mad at somebody other than him. Otherwise, we may find unselves facing up to the fact that in a grotesque and constrained sense, when it comes to High Office, the Other One really is better qualified.

Tea Party Enablers

Best thing I read all day is Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic Monthly (h/t, Bruce Bartlett) how it is time to quit romanticizing Tea Party loonies.  They had a chance at Jon Huntsman, Mitch Daniels, Tim Pawlenty and Gary Johnson and they wind up with mad,, impulsive crushes on the likes of Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich--way more than evidence enough for the proposition that they are not to be taken seriously.

So far fine, but it is also time to bitch-slap the mainstream "respectable people" who tiptoe around the Tea Party because they don't want to damage their own careers.   Well you know what?  Your careers aren't that-all important to me.  If you can't get ahead in politics without pandering to these nutjobs, well then go find another line of work.

Yes, yes, I know.  Boring from within blah blah.  Got to stay on board so I can be a steadying force, blah blah.  If we leave them alone they'll only get worse, blah blah, and politics is the art of compromise.   Beguiling halftruths all, but if we are ever (again) going to have a responsible center in this country, it will not be achieved by all these pretend centrists who are willing to cut and run whenever they hear the dog whistle.  And by the way, if you expect those guys to thank you for what you're doing, you better think again.  When (!?) they finally do get real power, chances are you will find that your kind of squishy centrism will get pushed right on off the cliff.