The Free Thinker

First Time Tragedy, Second Time Farce

The elections yesterday show that Americans are waking up after the crisis-numbed sleepwalking into the polls in November 2008. Christie's and McDonnell's victories are a tangible sign of what the polls have been showing for months: the ideological dominance of conservatism (whatever that means), the shifting of independents from the Democrats towards the GOP, the unpopularity of Obama's policies and of the Democratic Congress (and a rapid fall in Obama's own approval rating, which I expect will be lower than Bush's at every corresponding stage of his presidency). The American people are probably not such idiots as to fail to return fewer Dems and more GOPs in 2010, and a GOP takeover of Congress, as in 1994, seems likely. This should really be a no-brainer. It was the formula of the famous 1990s: as Brothers Judd slyly put it, the ideal might be a Democratic resident and a GOP Congress. Of course this is one of the thousand reasons why Americans were such idiots to vote for Obama in 2008: there was obviously going to be a Democratic Congress, and a President McCain was needed to check it, even aside from his superior judgment, experience, integrity, and intelligence. But the sheeple were in shock from the crisis, and did what CNN told them. Now they are beginning to get their wits back.

Maybe we'll be spared the tax-spend-and-regulate health care bill. Harry Reid hinted that it might not pass this year, and it's hard to imagine it will be easier to do so in 2010, an election year. On the other hand, the defeats in Virginia and New Jersey might convince some Dems that their careers are ending anyway, so why not make history while they have the chance. Of course, this was always the reason the Democratic leadership was focusing on health care this year in particular. It's obvious that, while it's tenable that our health care system is sub-optimal, this has little or nothing to do with the 2008 crisis or the high unemployment that is our main problem right now. A leadership confident it enjoyed real majority support would have focused on fighting the crisis now, and saved big structural changes until the economy was recovering, to avoid dumping a huge, gratuitous burden of political risk on entrepreneurs and investors at just the time they were least able to bear it. But the Democrats knew that their getting majorities this big was a sort of mistake, afforded them by the crisis, by the national BDS pandemic, and by the donation of most of the MSM's dwindling reputational capital to the cause. President McCain and a Democratic Congress would have had to focus on bipartisan issues. We might even have got the one thing that would stimulate the economy more than any other policy: immigration reform. But the Democrats had to use the one-party-rule moment to plow through the paleoliberal dream.

I think Marx said that "history repeats itself, first time as tragedy, second time as farce." The dictum expresses the relationship between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Barack Obama. Hoover-Roosevelt interventionism deepened and prolonged the Great Depression at home and worldwide, permanently altered America's economic constitution, largely discredited democratic capitalism in the eyes of the world, and opened a path for the rise of Hitler and the totalitarian Axis, culminating in World War II. Socialism, poverty, appeasement, retreat, war. Likewise, the comeback of Big Government under Obama has burdened business confidence, impeded recovery, and is altering the US economic constitution, while his weak, vacillating and cynical foreign policy has caused unease in allies from Poland to Israel to India to Japan to France while emboldening Putin-Medvedev and Ahmadinejad and the Taliban, and abetted the lethal blow to international law by letting Russia's thugocracy get away with the dismemberment of Georgia. But the difference of degree is so great as to be a difference of kind. America will not repeat the 1930s as France, to Marx's dismay, would not repeat the Revolution (the 1848 revolution, which led to a reaction and the rise of President-for-Life Napoleon III, was the "farce" to the "tragedy" of the 1789 revolution and Napoleon Bonaparte's world-historic career). Many of FDR's New Deal policies-- a top tax rate of 90%, show trials of leading industrialists and political opponents, an attempt to impose full-fledged planning on the economy-- amounted to very nearly an overthrow of the capitalist order. And it enjoyed strong public support as such. FDR was a formidable leader. By contrast, it is the essence of Obama to be the apotheosis of insubstantiality. "Hope and change" and "yes we can" succeeded not despite but because of their meaninglessness. How can meaninglessness be a virtue? To understand that, an interpretative glance at the past few years is needed.

George W. Bush ran on ideas in 2000, and many of them-- tax cuts, the Medicare prescription drug benefit, the No Child Left Behind Act-- became law (Social Security reform didn't but Bush tried), while his foreign policy ideology, especially its liberationist side, seems to have been conceived in the wake of 9/11. Most importantly, Bush found a way to turn the illiberal imperatives of the War on Terror inside out. On domestic and foreign policy alike, Bush represented what might be called the radical center, and as such alienated the left especially, but also many on the right. He twisted America's ideological kaleidoscope. He ended up being unpopular, which is a rather less meaningful fact than might be thought. Suppose there are five issues, and person A is for B, for C, against D, against E, and for F, while person G expresses no views on B and C and leans in favor of D and E but is not sure and seems at various times to be both for and against F. A might be unpopular, if disagreement on one issue is reason enough to dislike him, for the set of people who agree on any position on all five issues is likely to be small, while G might be popular, managing by his vagueness and vacillation to leave a majority not antagonized, particularly if he has a pleasant face or manner. Of course, if G has to make decisions he must take stands and lose "popularity" or non-objectionableness. But the point is that A's unpopularity does not mean that a coherent coalition against him is possible. The Iraq War is a case in point. You can oppose the Iraq War because you are (a) totally pacifist, (b) a defend-the-borders-only type opposed to foreign entanglements, (c) a liberal internationalist of the kind that strongly believes in the "sovereignty" of other countries regardless of regime type, (d) a UN legitimist, (e) not opposed to overthrowing dictators in principle but unpersuaded that it's worth it in this case, (f) in favor of Saddam and other dictatorships for "primitive" non-Western peoples, (g) against all US intervention because you think the US is an incorrigible greedy capitalist imperialist hegemon. These seven groups (and others) might agree on opposing the Iraq War, but they wouldn't agree on any arguments against the Iraq War. So if they want to form a coalition, they'll need to be silent about their reasons for opposing Bush, since any discussion of reasons would shatter the coalition. How can they talk to each other then? By resorting to forms of communication that don't rise to the level of reason, i.e., sneering. If we want to claim we're the enlightened majority against the misguided Bush administration, we can't explain why Bush is wrong, lest we expose our own differences, but we can agree to call him dumb, over and over again. It takes a while to run out of epithets. And if we get tired of negativity, we can get some motivational-speakerish type to dress it up in language about "hope" and "change," by which we all know, however, that "not Bush," is meant. Thus Bush Derangement Syndrome metamorphosed into the Obama administration, and the intellectual poverty of the Obama administration is the intellectual poverty of the opposition to Bush. The word "disillusioned" seems too generous to apply to former Obama supporters; the promise of Obamism was so insubstantial as barely to qualify even as an illusion.

November 3, 2009 may mark the beginning of a return to commonsense, and the GOP takes Congress in 2010 and starts to clean up the mess (first order of business: the deficit), Great Depression II will be far shorter and less painful than Great Depression I. Nonetheless I think there is something irrevocable about America's lapse of judgment in 2008. At the end of the day, a nation capable of electing a man and a party so unfit to lead as Obama and the 2008 Democrats is unfit to lead the Free World.

Relative decline for America was always nearly inevitable and mostly desirable. The 5% of the world's population that are American citizens hold far more than their share of the wealth and power of mankind. This is not to say that Americans must become poorer: on the contrary, we can and may hope that the rest of the world will come closer to America's living standards, and this is not only feasible but will benefit America. A lot of people used to fulminated that the Bush administration was squandering America's moral standing in the world. I am not quite saying the opposite, namely that Obama is squandering the moral authority that the Bush administration won. Rather, as democracy spread, as foreign economies grew and developing countries grew more literate etc., America could no longer enjoy hegemony by virtue of its mere military and economic weight. If it were to lead at all-- and a group of people or nations can usually benefit from good leadership-- it had to articulate and champion an ideology with universal appeal that other nations could believe in and support. Democracy has, for the moment, just such a universal appeal. Under the Clinton administration the US was scandalously unwilling to risk the lives of US soldiers for the benefit of others: thus we pulled out of Somalia and relied wholly on air war in Kosovo and Iraq. The Bush administration broke this taboo, and showed how democracy could be spread not only passively and defensively, waiting for dictatorships to fall, but actively, and how dictators could be held accountable. The 2003 invasion of Iraq, though undertaken in support of UN resolutions and arguably essential to restore the UN's credibility in the face of Saddam's continued defiance and impunity, was at the same time a revolutionary strike against a notion of sovereignty that legitimized every thug who killed his way to the top. It was a risky yet potentially valuable precedent. Polls that showed a decline in favorable attitudes to the US and to Bush in the aftermath of the 2003 war belie the complexity of the world's attitude. Nowhere did a democratic electorate reject a government for supporting the Bush administration. On the contrary, Howard was re-elected, Blair was re-elected, Aznar's political heir Rajoy in Spain was on course for re-election until the Madrid bombings, while Bush adversaries Chirac of France, Schroeder of Germany, and Chretien of Canada lost elections in favor of leaders much more favorable to Bush and America. America's relations with Japan, India, and eastern Europe prospered; relations with western Europe recovered without any particular concessions on America's side. The war was a dangerous expedient; the world knew that and didn't particularly like it; but they didn't have a better alternative; and the fundamental presumption that America is uniquely trustworthy and beneficent which has defined the strategies of free nations since WWII was re-examined but was still, indeed was perhaps all the more, valid. The unholy alliance of Putin, Chirac and Schroeder that had tried to stop the war fell apart, with Chirac and Schroeder losing power and disgraced, while Putin withdrew his country into morbid paranoia. Diplomatically, the gambit succeeded. It seems to be succeeding on the ground in Iraq, too: elections were held, a constitution passed, Al Qaeda nearly sparked a civil war but was beaten back, and a new Iraqi democracy took shape, a development scarcely conceivable six years ago.

An America which exercised its power for the general good, to spread freedom and uphold international security, might be able to hold continued sway over the free world through moral suasion, initiative, and good example. Near the end of the Bush years this seemed to be taking place: al-Qaeda had been drawn into the trap of Iraq and self-defeated; no one questioned the legitimacy of the new Iraqi democracy; the bonds between the Western allies were being reforged with the Iraqi precedent unrepudiated; and the Free World alliance of the Cold War years had now been definitely expanded to eastern Europe and India, and was strengthened in Japan. A McCain administration might have made a cause celebre of Georgia as the Bush administration had done with Iraq, thus reaffirming the commitment to international law which the Iraq war had seemed to undermine-- but international law, please note, in the sense that democracies' borders are inviolable, not in the sense that tyrants are sacrosanct-- and immigration reform at home would have strengthened the foundations of American democracy from below, reaffirming America's egalitarian ideals and signalling its openness to the world. The scenario seems to have the force of destiny, but one can flunk one's destiny, one can miss one's moment.

I'm not sure that the moment can be recovered. Why should allies trust us again if we treat them as shabbily as the Obama administration has done to Poland and Georgia? Indeed, the Obama administration's manner of dismissing the war-- "a dumb war, a rash war"-- is an insulted to Tony Blair and all of America's most faithful allies. It would be an entirely different matter if he had limited himself to respectful disagreement. Obama's ignorant remarks about the impossibility of one nation imposing democracy on another have just enough of the flavor of a new false orthodoxy to make strategic thinking difficult going forward. The situation in Afghanistan is especially sad. The Democrats embraced Afghanistan as "the good war" opportunistically, as a means to outflank Bush's "war president" credentials, but Afghanistan never offered hopes of a conclusion as satisfactory as was possible in Iraq. Iraq is urban and literate and middle-class and densely populated and civilized modern enough to have a decent chance of making democracy work; moreover, Americans were in a position really to run the country for a while, and lay the foundations of a new politico-institutional matrix. In Afghanistan a democratic outcome always stretched the bounds of plausibility, which made objectives harder to define, since our ideology makes democracy obligatory. At this point, we should probably abandon objectives other than to avoid the disgrace of having the Afghans who allied with us be left at the mercy of the Taliban. Maybe we defend the cities; maybe we accept some Afghans as refugees in the US, as we did after Vietnam; maybe we try to negotiate some power-sharing federalist deal. But the Obama administration is far from having made it clear that they have a strategy and are determined to pursue it through to success. The contrast with the Bush administration in 2007 is striking. It seems likely to end in quagmire, attrition, retreat, compromises, a blot on our record.

We have ceased to be the comparative free-market paragon we were in the 1990s. It is not just that we've gotten worse; other countries have gotten better. Western European countries have been comparatively reformist; and now they almost all have right-leaning governments with an interest in fiscal discipline and/or market reform. Now our unemployment rates are above Europe's and may stay there for a while. Asia, not surprisingly, is showing a much more robust recovery from the 2008 recession. America is ceasing to be the cutting edge of prosperity. I think we'll recover, more quickly than in the 1930s, both economically and ideologically. There will be a shift back in the direction of supporting freedom abroad and limited government at home. But by that time the world will have begun to move on, to find ways to rely less on American leadership and example. We probably have decades of prosperity before us, and American ideas, not least the liberationist credo of the Bush administration which is now incarnate in Iraq, will continue to be influential, but the American people, the escapist rubes who voted for "hope" and "change," will cease to be the most important carriers of those ideas.

"It's Still the Economy, Stupid" (Daniel Henninger):

It's been a long time since James Carville said the most famous thing he ever said: It's the economy, stupid. That famous phrase was in fact part of a sign hung in the Clinton campaign headquarters in 1992. There was a sense among the electorate in the fall of 1992, not entirely accurate, that the economy was foundering under George H.W. Bush. Bush lost control of the public's perception of the economy, and then he lost the presidency.

Why with unemployment heading above 10% was Barack Obama on TV last night draining a dwindling reservoir of presidential capital on health care? Redesigning the 17% of the economy that is health care appears to be the siren song of Democratic presidencies. Mr. Obama's crew has famously said it wouldn't make the mistakes the Clintons made on health care. How calling forth both houses of Congress in prime time to join him in betting the ranch on health care qualifies as smarter politics than the Clintons is a mystery.

Even more so now than way back in 1992: It's still the economy, stupid.

To save himself and his party from enduring another health-care debacle, Barack Obama should put his agenda on the back burner, bend his efforts to raising the economy, and rebuild his political capital by taking credit for the inevitable rebound. That just might minimize the impending loss of House seats and allow him to revisit his wish list in 2011. The alternative is promising big, accomplishing little and getting credit for nothing. This could be America's greatest failed presidency.

The economy is Barack Obama's 9/11. If you're Mr. Obama, it must seem a little unfair. One year ago at the Labor Day turn toward the stretch, Mr. Obama and his team were on the cusp of one of the most thrilling wins in American presidential history. No matter that many Obama voters were looking past all the state-based initiatives in his politics; the air was filled with possibility.

Except that Obama wouldn't even have won the election without the financial crisis.  McCain was just overtaking Obama in the polls when the financial meltdown hit and spooked the sheeple into numbly doing what the MSM told them.  But I think Henninger's right: Obama should be trying to solve the country's problems, not creating more.  To deal with health care now is self-indulgent.  The bizarre timing of the health care drive is a function of the fact that the voters aren't likely again to make the mistake they did in 2008, so the Democrats want to (ab)use their power while they still have it.

Tax Employer Health Care Benefits!

"Barack Obama is a Big Fat Liar" (NRO):

Ever since Barack Obama declared his candidacy for president, it’s been easy — and great fun — to spotlight when his promises and statements come with “expiration dates.” The list is long: Public financing. Renegotiating NAFTA. His promise to support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies. His inability to disown Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The release of detainee photos. Denouncing Turkey for genocide.

Flip-flops are nothing new in politics, but every once in a while, a president breaks a promise or an important pledge on such an epic level that it defines him, at least in part: “Read my lips: No new taxes.” “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.” “We did not — repeat — did not trade weapons or anything else for hostages — nor will we.” Even “I will never lie to you.”

Barack Obama’s sudden about-face on taxing employer-provided health insurance deserves to rank among these classics. Not because it’s as laughable as Bill Clinton’s, or as emphatic as George H. W. Bush’s, but because it takes a certain moral venality to casually adopt, as president, a position that was a dominant theme of your argument for why your opponent should not be president.

Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign spent $44 million on 16 different television ads hammering John McCain on this idea, according to research by Evan L. Tracey, founder and president of Campaign Media Analysis Group, a TNS Media Intelligence company.

“This message was a central theme and a significant percentage of the Obama campaign’s advertising in 2008,” Tracey said. His organization estimated last November that Obama’s campaign spent $250 million on television advertising, meaning that about 17 percent of all of Obama’s ads were denouncing McCain for this proposal.

Hey, I'm not complaining! The more McCain policies Obama picks up, the better. If Obama morphed into McCain on spending and deficit reduction, we might even get back to full employment and growth. Taxing employer health benefits, an attack on the third-party payer arrangements which are at the root of all the problems of American health care, would be an especially good McCain policy to adopt.

Mr. Pork Apologist

"Obama defends pet projects, signs spending bill"

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama, sounding weary of criticism over federal earmarks, defended Congress' pet projects Wednesday as he signed an "imperfect" $410 billion measure with thousands of examples. But he said the spending does need tighter restraint and listed guidelines to do it. Obama, accused of hypocrisy by Republicans for embracing billions of dollars of earmarks in the legislation, said they can be useful and noted that he has promised to curb, not eliminate them.

On another potentially controversial matter, the president also issued a "signing statement" with the bill, saying several of its provisions raised constitutional concerns and would be taken merely as suggestions. He has criticized President George W. Bush for often using such statements to claim the right to ignore portions of new laws, and on Monday he said his administration wouldn't follow those issued by Bush unless authorized by the new attorney general.

White House officials have accused Bush of using the statements to get around Congress in pursuing anti-terror tactics.

Obama signed the bill in private, unlike a number of recent signings that took place with fanfare, but he raised the issue of earmarks in public remarks playing down their scope and possible harm in the measure. They comprise about 1 percent of the spending package, which will keep the government running through September, he told reporters.

"Done right, earmarks have given legislators the opportunity to direct federal money to worthy projects that benefit people in their districts. And that's why I've opposed their outright elimination," he said.

Wow.  A grimly cynical comment about how fast Mr. Hope-and-Change has turned into Mr. Porkbarrel Spending Apologist would be almost superfluous at this point, as I suppose everyone knows by now what a travesty his campaign rhetoric was.  I wonder: Did Barack really defend earmarks on the campaign trail, or is he making that up?  Doesn't really matter, I guess.

The problem with earmarks is that pandering to handfuls of easily-mobilized swing voters in order to maximize the re-election odds of favored legislators corrupts the latter and is not conducive to efficient economic policy.  That's why earmarks are rightly unpopular, in the abstract.  But given the ease with which the sheeple can be bought off with cheap rhetoric, the Democrats may feel they run few risks by courting swing voters to the detriment of the general public interest.  And they may be right.  Such a large part of the population suffers, along with the media and intelligentsia, from Bush Derangement Syndrome, that if there's a run on the dollar people might convince themselves it's Bush's fault and Obamessiah was just a victim.

The pattern so far is that every time Obama does everything (since the Geithner appointment at least) the stock market drops.  Let's see if the pattern holds.

From the Might-Have-Been President Obama Convinced Us We "Can't Afford"

"GOP leaders balk at stimulus" (Boston Herald)

Over the last week, some Republicans have intensified their criticism of the $825 billion package as too big, too slow, and too wasteful to pull the country out of recession.

"There should be an endpoint to all of this spending - say, two years," Senator John McCain, the party's 2008 presidential nominee, said in an interview on "Fox News Sunday." He vowed to vote against the bill in its current form.

"We need to have a commitment that after a couple of quarters of GDP growth, we will embark on a path to reduce spending . . . to get our budget in balance," McCain said.

McCain.  Always.  Right.  And with 41 GOP senators, enough to filibuster if they stick together, he could just turn into the legislative gatekeeper.  If he shapes the Obama administration as much as he shaped the Bush administration, we may be OK after all.

The big upside of McCain's defeat is that he won't necessarily be out of Washington eight years from now.  He could stay in the Senate till he's 98, like Strom Thurmond (who is not a role model in any other way, of course).

McCain on Immigration

"McCain Courts Florida Hispanics: John McCain attacked Obama over immigration in a two-day Florida tour to court Hispanics" (Miami Herald, 9/16/2008): 

Speaking to a predominantly Hispanic audience considered crucial to winning Florida, Republican John McCain vowed Monday to make immigration one of his ''first priorities'' if elected president and accused Democrat Barack Obama of spiking reforms in Congress.

McCain spearheaded a bill in 2006 -- reviled by the right wing of his own party -- that would have allowed illegal immigrants to earn citizenship. Obama supported the overall goal but backed controversial amendments that would have limited a guest worker program.

''The fact is that Sen. Obama proposed amendments that would have killed the legislation. I fought for it,'' McCain told more than 350 people at a town hall meeting.

McCain leveled the same charge in ads running in Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada, which Obama called ''dishonest'' in an interview Sunday on Spanish-language television.

McCain's attack is not dishonest at all.  He's right.  Obama didn't have the courage to vote for the bill.  If he and others on the left had voted for the bill, a lot of immigrants would be on their way to citizenship today.  Obama deserves to be hit for it, and the charge of "dishonesty" against McCain is unworthy.  Yes, Obama might prefer to characterize his action differently, but he doesn't have the right to demand that the whole world accept his own self-serving characterizations of his record.  This is an example of why voters are wise to disregard charges of "lying" by Politician A against Politician B, except as evidence that Politician A is a jerk.

But the really interesting thing, though, is how Palin's appeal to the right has freed McCain to move left on certain issues.  If that issue is immigration, I'm lovin' it.  Mickey Kaus thinks immigration reform is more likely to pass under McCain than Obama.

The Democrats' Ken Starr Strategy

I don't read liberal blogs often, but I was curious as to whether Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo would concede that Obama has lost ground, so I checked it out.  Ugh.  It turns out his almost nonstop theme is that McCain, and Palin, are liars. 

I can't help but think: did the Democrats learn nothing from the Ken Starr episode?  Way back then, 1998, ten years ago, the Republicans assailed Bill Clinton for committing adultery and lying about it.  They even proved it.  What happened?  Bill Clinton, the liar, actually became more popular, while Ken Starr became a symbol of hateful partisanship.  Why do they think the "lying" attack will work against McCain when it didn't even work against the certifiably-dishonest Clinton?

Voters are probably wise to disregard charges that politicians have lied.  There are philosophical problems with defining a lie.  A lie doesn't consist merely of asserting something which turns out to be false, as the "Bush lied about Iraq" crowd seems to think.  It involves an assertion that the speaker knows, at the time he says it, to be false; and the knowledge condition is hard to ascertain.  Of course, the statement needs to have a definite enough meaning to have falsifiable content.  Politicians' statements usually don't even meet that criterion, and not just because politicians obfuscate; sometimes they're simplifying a complicated issue.  And even obfuscation might not be all bad.  Words are instruments of policy; eloquent-but-empty phrases can sometimes soothe foreign leaders, or markets, or voters who are bad (e.g., nativists) and who need to be hoodwinked-- maybe without any actual lying!-- for the common good.  A wise voter may well give the benefit of the doubt as to what he knew, or meant, at the time he said this or that.  When-- as is almost always the case-- those making the charges of "lies" have partisan motives, he will be as suspicious as a used-car buyer, knowing that Josh Marshall, say, is willing and able to parse and package the words and facts in unfair ways that the poor voter won't be able to detect.  And a wise voter may even condone some obfuscation.

If the charge is that McCain engages in spin, and that that makes the premise of the "Straight Talk Express" campaign theme a little hollow, the critics may have a point.  But even if the charge is true it's hardly fatal.  Bill Clinton, the king of spin, was a pretty good president.  I don't think Marshall has come up with anything close to proof that McCain is "lying."  If he does, congratulations, he's achieved parity with Ken Starr.  If not, voters will probably perceive this stuff as nothing but nasty partisanship, and that judgment is probably not the least accurate possible assessment of the matter.

Palin and Poetic Justice

Politics are hilarious lately.  I got caught up in the Palin phenomenon a bit at the beginning.  She does fire the imagination somehow.  We all know that the low-born can be made by Ivy League schools, and we should be grateful for that degree of meritocracy in other society; others have lacked it.  But Harvard-as-kingmaker still leaves most of us out in the cold.  But for a woman to go from hockey mom to PTA mom to mayor to governor to vice president, that's something new.  And, at the same time, old.  Old-fashioned.  Like Abraham Lincoln splitting rails.  Like New England town-hall democracy.  She's a frontierswoman, Alaska being the last place in America where the great myth of the frontier, that is so much a part of America, is a reality.  Etc.  But I'm not swooning.  Just because the Palin story has a powerful appeal doesn't mean it would be a good idea for her to be president.  If it were Palin vs. Obama, I think I'd support Palin, for both ideology and experience reasons, but it would be a close call, and I wouldn't like my choices a lot.  Actually, I'd probably stay home.

But what's beautiful/hilarious about the Palin phenomenon is the sheer poetic justice of it!  Here a one-term senator, former law professor, "community organizer," an under-achiever or at least without any significant achievement in any of the jobs he's held, won the hearts of a bunch of airheaded teenagers of all ages, and we were all supposed to cheer and to thank him for saving us from ourselves!  Not so fast.  A comment that Nato made strikingly underlines the strange emptiness of the Obama candidacy:

The single thing I like most about Obama is his conservative, non-ideological temperament...  btw - I meant small "c" conservative in the sense of being skeptical of ideological excess and unwillingness to diverge sharply from the past. This is, of course, at odds with the "charge" narrative, unless you see it - as I do - as a retreat from politics in which we assume bad faith on the part of those who disagree with us...

"Somewhat at odds with the 'change' narrative."  Uh, yeah.  If "non-ideological" conservatism can mean anything, what could it mean except a general resistance to change?  Now, Nato may be right that Obama is conservative in this sense.  Here's the funny thing: for a politician running for office to advocate "change" is almost a tautology if you're replacing the current officeholder, and even incumbents invariably offer some new ideas and policies.  'Change' the abstract noun has served Obama, if anything, as a substitute for actually communicating substantive changes.  That's a good sign in that he seems less bound to the bad campaign promises that candidates in a Democratic primary might make.  But wow.  One is not sure whether to be indignant or to admire the sheer chutzpah of it.  To swing left (right) in the primaries and back to the center in the general is, as everyone knows, the key to electoral success, but it's hard to do it without losing credibility.  Empty words like 'hope' and 'change' and 'new politics' were a brilliant way to lure the left without letting them put albatrosses around his neck.  In short, the 'new politics' is the latest way of playing the old political tricks.  So Obama is a "blank screen."  That the great champion of 'change' can be given credit for being, of all things, "conservative" shows just how well the blank-screen tactic is working.  With Nato at least.  Maybe Nato's right that Obama is really 'conservative,' but if so, Obama's book should have been called The Audacity of Humbug.

But lo, two can play that game!  Palin-mania and Obama-mania seem to be iterations of the same phenomenon, and the former exposes a good deal that was mysterious about the latter.  People like new faces, that's all.  It's fun to get caught up in an excitement.  Symbolism matters, more than it should probably.  It can be an advantage not to be encumbered by a long, controversial record, to be from "outside the Beltway," suddenly elevated to candidacy for the highest office in the land.  It's a bit silly, but sort of innocuous as popular enthusiasms go.  Except that it might put an unqualified candidate in the White House.  Fortunately, Palin-mania and Obama-mania seem to be canceling each other out.  Obama is being knocked down by the same kind of wave of dreamy mass infatuation that he rode to the Democratic nomination, and which was, all along, the sole basis for his candidacy.  Hilarious.

Amidst the rival infatuations the one solid fact, like a great rock amidst stormy waters, still stands, and now looks like it will be the deciding factor in the race.  The overwhelmingly superiority, by objective criteria, of John McCain.

With Malice Towards None

McCain's speech got bad reviews (except from me) but it seems to have worked with the people: Gallup shows McCain with a 10-point lead, and McCain is now ahead in the RealClearPolitics poll average.  Like Bush in 2004, McCain seems to have used the Convention to make a compelling case for his candidacy, and swung enough voters to take the lead in the race.

If I had to name one thing as the reason, Abraham Lincoln's phrase from the Gettysburg Address, "with malice towards none," seems most apt.  George W. Bush, in 2004, may have gotten elected partly on the basis of malice towards various groups.  Towards al-Qaeda and the "Axis of Evil"; towards gays; towards liberals and Democrats.  One of the most admirable aspects of McCain's speech last Thursday was that there was no malice towards anyone.  Not even towards the Vietcong captors who tortured him.  I was inspired afresh by the story of McCain helping to normalize relations with Vietnam after the war, despite what they'd done to him.  And this:

Russia's leaders, rich with oil wealth and corrupt with power, have rejected democratic ideals and the obligations of a responsible power. They invaded a small, democratic neighbor to gain more control over the world's oil supply, intimidate other neighbors, and further their ambitions of reassembling the Russian empire. And the brave people of Georgia need our solidarity and prayers. As President I will work to establish good relations with Russia so we need not fear a return of the Cold War. But we can't turn a blind eye to aggression and international lawlessness that threatens the peace and stability of the world and the security of the American people.

Despite the strong condemnation of Russia, McCain promises to 'work to establish good relations."  No malice. There wasn't the faintest hint of malice towards gays in McCain's speech.  I think McCain in general is not anti-gay. And then there was his praise of Obama and his supporters.  And all his disavowals of partisan rancor.  And his declaration that "I hate war, it's terrible beyond all imagining."  John McCain, man of peace.

That's more important than a confident, comfortable delivery.

I Love John McCain

First, I'm a sucker for political speeches.  Some of George W. Bush's State of the Unions have got my heart beating with pride and admiration.  I was stirred by Obama's address when he won Iowa, too, though not since.  That may show it's not the speeches so much as the history that move me.  More than formal platforms, it seems to me, these high-profile speeches are the crucible of democracy, where the reciprocity between the people and the servant-rulers is forged, and I feel fresh awe at this great system that embodies the ancient Christian principle:

25Jesus called them together and said, "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. 26Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, 27and whoever wants to be first must be your slave... (Matthew 20:25-27)

Second, if I say that McCain's speech last night is the greatest political speech I've ever seen, that's not from a particularly big selection. I've watched maybe 10-12 that are sufficiently high-profile to be comparable. And of course, I don't mean on delivery. The delivery was wooden. I couldn't care less about that, though. There was a lot of biography, but here's the thing: while McCain's speechwriters might hope he pulls some votes for his service in Vietnam, there's another and better reason to include it: this underlines his whole political philosophy.  "Country first."  Service to "a cause greater than self."  A life experience of suffering, of being broken by torture, of being placed in a position of deprivation and misery lower than the "bottom billion" who live on $1/day-- precious few Americans have been there!-- undergirds an appreciation of, gratitude for, America and freedom that is profound and authentic and very hard for those of us who have not suffered so much for it to much; and that, in turn, underlies a political philosophy that dissolves the distinction between principle and pragmatism, and which provides a framework for the host of policy ideas, pretty much all sound, with which some parts of the speech were packed. 

McCain's politics is at once moralistic and humble.  He is out of touch in a good way: out of touch with the partisan play-by-play.  I don't entirely share his philosophy.  I am, frankly, more cynical, even more cheerfully cynical: I tend to think politicians will be politicians, grabby, cynical, pandering, and partisan, and it's all rather unseemly, but the system still makes things work out pretty well.  Maybe I'm wrong, either because (a) there is more honor among politicians, and we'd be worse off without it, than I imagine, or (b) because politics really can be made less egoistic and more cooperative and service-minded-- more like McCain, and like the public persona which Palin has adopted (not quite justified by her record perhaps, but she may yet live up to it)-- and it would be better for the country if it were.  That was the tension I felt inwardly, it was almost painful: McCain's dogged civic virtue, rubbing like sandpaper against my moderate cynicism.  I've tended to regard McCain as a bit quixotic, but in a harmless way.  The speech forced me to question that.  It was reassuring, but at the same time, it filled me with wild hopes, for my country, for the world.

There's more to praise about McCain's speech-- or rather about McCain's life and politics, which the speech encapsulated, and which give what in someone else's mouth would be corny platitudes a power to stir the spirit, to inspire-- than I can fit in one post.  So my favorite line:

I will keep taxes low and cut them where I can. (my emphasis)

Contrast this with Obama:

I will cut taxes, cut taxes, for 95% of all working families.

Now, of course, Obama will raise other taxes, even according to him, and there's room for doubt that the tax cut he advertised in his acceptance speech will really happen.  And also, McCain talked a lot about various tax cuts elsewhere in the speech.  But the "where I can" is precious.  It provides a hint-- amidst the furious pandering and fiscal delusions on both sides-- that McCain recognizes, at least to some extent, that you can't have your cake and eat it, and that tax cuts may not be his priority.  Also, the tax cuts he does talk about, especially corporate tax cuts, are smart tax cuts, not bald attempts to bribe the median voter at the expense of economic efficiency.  Wow.

McCain also gets the economy.  Why have the past few years not quite met the exuberant standards of the 1990s?  Big government:

I fight to restore the pride and principles of our party. We were elected to change Washington, and we let Washington change us. We lost the trust of the American people when some Republicans gave in to the temptations of corruption. We lost their trust when rather than reform government, both parties made it bigger. We lost their trust when instead of freeing ourselves from a dangerous dependence on foreign oil, both parties and Senator Obama passed another corporate welfare bill for oil companies. We lost their trust, when we valued our power over our principles.

We're going to change that. We're going to recover the people's trust by standing up again for the values Americans admire. The party of Lincoln, Roosevelt and Reagan is going to get back to basics.

Exactly.  Versus the Democrat theory that having a Democrat in the White House magically creates prosperity.

Question: McCain doesn't seem all that smart.  So how does he manage to be right, again and again and again?  I think the reason is that solving policy problems depends not only on intelligence, but on the moral will (a) to do what you believe is right rather than what is in your self-interest, (b) not to let your beliefs about what is right be distorted by self-serving bias or partisan groupthink.  Moralistic politics doesn't always steer McCain right.  I think he's too willing to demonize phamaceutical companies because he doesn't understand the economics of intellectual property (although I'd add that I doubt even the top economists in the field really know what the optimal design of drug patent laws is).  But it has given him the best political batting average, in terms of being right on the issues, of any politician in America.

His remarks on foreign policy justifies his reputation:

We have dealt a serious blow to al Qaeda in recent years. But they are not defeated, and they'll strike us again if they can. Iran remains the chief state sponsor of terrorism and on the path to acquiring nuclear weapons. Russia's leaders, rich with oil wealth and corrupt with power, have rejected democratic ideals and the obligations of a responsible power. They invaded a small, democratic neighbor to gain more control over the world's oil supply, intimidate other neighbors, and further their ambitions of reassembling the Russian empire. And the brave people of Georgia need our solidarity and prayers. As President I will work to establish good relations with Russia so we need not fear a return of the Cold War. But we can't turn a blind eye to aggression and international lawlessness that threatens the peace and stability of the world and the security of the American people.

The brilliant thing here is that al-Qaeda gets two short sentences, Iran one, and Russia/Georgia five.  That Obama is still demagoguing on bin Laden really suggests he's unserious.  Foreign policy is something Democrats have to talk about during elections to neutralize a traditional Republican advantage.  Push the right buttons.  Obama's fighting the last war.  Actually, this is one of the areas, like taxes maybe, where Obama is, I think, trying to outflank McCain on the right.  How to interpret this line-- "John McCain likes to say that he'll follow bin Laden to the Gates of Hell, but he won't even go to the cave where he lives"-- except as an allusion to Obama's willingness to invade Pakistan to capture Osama?  Speaking of "charging into other countries!"  McCain's emphasis and focus are exactly right: keep pursuing al-Qaeda but that's secondary now that Russia poses a new and greater threat.  Uphold the international order.

And something else that blew me away: there was almost nothing negative about Obama.  Obama and Palin, who really deserve each other, were full of barbs.  I think Obama's were at least as unfair as Palin's.  The Obama line just quoted was more unfair than anything Palin said.  As was the line "John McCain has voted with George Bush ninety percent of the time," as can be seen by thinking about the seeming corollary that the ideal would be to "vote with George Bush" (whatever that means, as George Bush does not vote in the Senate) zero percent of the time.  Or the implication that since McCain has been in Congress for twenty-six years while oil consumption has increased, that's somehow McCain's fault.  (Which is stupid for another reason: for most of that time oil prices were low and "oil addiction" wasn't a problem.)  But never mind, that's just the normal political give-and-take.

Except that it was one of the things McCain rose above.  Here's what he says on Obama:

Finally, a word to Senator Obama and his supporters. We'll go at it over the next two months. That's the nature of these contests, and there are big differences between us. But you have my respect and admiration. Despite our differences, much more unites us than divides us. We are fellow Americans, an association that means more to me than any other. We're dedicated to the proposition that all people are created equal and endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights. No country ever had a greater cause than that. And I wouldn't be an American worthy of the name if I didn't honor Senator Obama and his supporters for their achievement.

And there was very little in the speech to offset that.  Of course he outlined differences between himself and Obama.  And he said, "I will reach out my hand to anyone to help me get this country moving again. I have [the] record... to prove it. Senator Obama does not."  Which is absolutely true.  And there was this: "I'm not running for president because I think I'm blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed me to save our country in its hour of need."  No mention of Obama here; why would anyone think so?!  It fits in with the humility theme of the speech, and if it doubles as a coded message, it is only understandable because the weird presumptuousness of Obama running for president with so little experience and accomplishment and (unlike, say, John Edwards) no discernible ideology has cornered us all into concluding that Obama must think he is blessed with some sort of ineffable personal greatness, as the only way that to make sense of his candidacy.  Still, for negative, that's about it.

I should say that I might quibble with the "personal greatness" line, by the way.  I'd lean towards the view that McCain IS blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed him to save our country in its hour of need.

This is exactly right.  It ought to be beneath McCain to waste his time boxing such a lightweight as Obama, and last night, it was.  He didn't attack, he laid out an agenda, a philosophy, and an ethos.  Brilliant.  Inspiring.  It doesn't affect my vote, of course; I've been for McCain since 2000.  It does make me hopeful that we're on the verge of one of those occasional great presidencies, like Abe Lincoln, FDR, or Reagan, that change and renew America.

Finally, a word of credit to Obama.  He started the "change" theme, even if all he really had to offer was paleoliberal reaction.  He was never the man to deliver on that promise, which requires, at a minimum, the courage to stand up to one's party.  But-- assuming he loses-- he deserves to be remembered well by history, as the bright young orator who served as the red carpet for President McCain.

UPDATE: McCain's speech appears to be the most-watched political speech in American history.  Deservedly so.