The Vig

A phrase which drives me absolutely insane is “you’re too young to remember, but…”  I’ve heard that way too much in my life.  I’m careful to never use it around anyone younger than me.  It’s condescending and arrogant.

I’ve had a few conversations with friends and relatives about Obama over the last year-and-a-half.  Not all of them invoke the “you weren’t around” phrase, but they almost all bring up 1968 when they think about Obama.  That’s something I haven’t allowed myself to think about.  While I remain convinced that the hatred of Al Gore was so intense in 2000 that he wouldn’t have survived his first term, I’ve believed that should Obama be elected, that he would make it.  Reading this stuff, however, gives me pause.

“And, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, ‘launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,’” [Palin] continued.”Boooo!” the crowd repeated.

“Kill him!” proposed one man in the audience.

Was the guy talking about Obama or Ayers? I don’t think anyone but the man knows.  But if Palin’s rhetoric is generating this sort of response, and she’s linking the two as equals…does it matter?

Watching McCain and Palin whip the crazies into a frenzy is a frightening thing.  It’s the last move of a desperate campaign.

I proudly voted for McCain in 2000.  I thought he was the right guy.  Now I wonder if I ever knew him at all.

This Rolling Stone profile has been making the rounds for the last 24-hours.  In it, author Tim Dickinson goes there about McCain’s POW experience.

Soon after McCain hit the ground in Hanoi, the code went out the window. “I’ll give you military information if you will take me to the hospital,” he later admitted pleading with his captors. McCain now insists the offer was a bluff, designed to fool the enemy into giving him medical treatment. In fact, his wounds were attended to only after the North Vietnamese discovered that his father was a Navy admiral. What has never been disclosed is the manner in which they found out: McCain told them. According to Dramesi, one of the few POWs who remained silent under years of torture, McCain tried to justify his behavior while they were still prisoners. “I had to tell them,” he insisted to Dramesi, “or I would have died in bed.”

…

In the company of his fellow POWs, and later in isolation, McCain slowly and miserably recovered from his wounds. In June 1968, after three months in solitary, he was offered what he calls early release. In the official McCain narrative, this was the ultimate test of mettle. He could have come home, but keeping faith with his fellow POWs, he chose to remain imprisoned in Hanoi.

What McCain glosses over is that accepting early release would have required him to make disloyal statements that would have violated the military’s Code of Conduct. If he had done so, he could have risked court-martial and an ignominious end to his military career. “Many of us were given this offer,” according to Butler, McCain’s classmate who was also taken prisoner. “It meant speaking out against your country and lying about your treatment to the press. You had to ‘admit’ that the U.S. was criminal and that our treatment was ‘lenient and humane.’ So I, like numerous others, refused the offer.”

I’ve written and deleted a speculative post about McCain’s POW years probably a dozen times this year. Dickinson manages to confirm what I suspected.  McCain’s decision to stay in Hanoi didn’t have as much to do with “honor” as it did with career and family expectations.  Had he chosen to leave early, it would have been the end of his career and a severe black mark on the family’s name.  That would have been much worse than anything his captors could have done to him.

A little deeper in the article we learn the Reagans despised McCain, gave McCain’s first wife a job in the White House after he dumped her, and he has a less than polite relationship with Cindy, at one point dropping the c-word on her in front of several witnesses.  We also learn that Gary Hart, of all people, was a groomsman at his wedding to Cindy.

It’s a fascinating read and well worth the time.

The Asian markets have only been open for a few minutes, but already they’re liking what they see of the Treasury Department’s plan.  The Shanghai Composite is up over 8.5%.  I don’t get it, but whatever.  Hopefully silver gets knocked down a little tomorrow so I can pick some more up cheap.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch. John McCain’s chief economic advisor, and likely McCain Treasury Secretary Phil Gramm, scored a major coup today by getting one of his clients, UBS, written into the bailout.  Like you, I’m looking forward to hearing Senator McCain’s thoughts on Senator Gramm’s lobbying efforts

I got into blogging by answering a forum post on O-Live back in 2004.  Kevin “Velveeta” Cosgrove originally brought two of us in to give our insights into the election and blog our thoughts in what turned out to be near real time.  My partner was David B. Wright.  He’s now writing at TwoPennies.

David made up his mind fairly early on that he would be voting for Kerry.  I still had a lot of post-Limbaugh baggage to overcome and didn’t make up my mind until late-October that things had to change.

He doesn’t post much these days, given the fact he’s now got a big boy job down in Las Vegas which allows him to have both a mortgage and a nice sled.  But every now and then he’ll pop-up with some thoughts on what’s going on in politics.  He’s made no secret he’s voting for McCain this time around, partly out of dislike for Obama, but mostly because he prefers the idea of divided government.  Fine.

I asked him yesterday whether Palin changed his calculus at all.  The answer?

McCain could have picked a ham sandwich (to paraphrase) as his running mate, and I still would have to vote for him for the good of the country.  That I happen to like him, and distrust Obama, makes that choice easier.  That he made a questionable pick for VP is a bit troublesome, but I understand entirely why he made that choice.  I’d have chosen differently, myself, but that’s OK.

Gulp.

McCain’s choice, his first true executive decision, shows an impulsive, risk taking side that I don’t think this country can handle during this time of both domestic and worldwide uncertainty.  In my mind it truly is more of the same.  And while I sympathize with Wright’s idea that government is at its best when its divided, I don’t think we can allow a religious zealot to be this close to the seat of power.  Especially post-Bush/Cheney.  This was the argument against Huckabee, you’ll recall.  Two years, or even four, of one-party rule will not bring this country down.  The Dems are particularly afraid of their own shadows and will not stray too far from the middle, no matter their rhetoric.

The question on everyone’s minds now is how many Davids are out there?  We’ll know sooner rather than later.

This guy is good.

Now, we’d like to welcome our newest player to the growing cast of characters in our little drama – Thomas Van Flein. Mr. Van Flein (don’t you just have to say that with an accent?!) has been hired to represent Palin in the upcoming legislative investigation into the firing of Commissioner Walt Monegan.

“But wait!” you may be asking, “What about the state Attorney General? Why can’t he handle this?” Why not AG Talis Colberg? Well, he’s the one that Palin sent out to do a pre-emptive sleuthing campaign to see what the Legislature was going to find out when they investigated her. Just so she’d have a heads up. So now Colberg, who has already been talking to everybody and his uncle about the Trooper, including Walt Monegan, has now opened himself up to being called as a witness! So he’s out. (And incidentally, he’s also going to take over the role of Governor of Alaska should Palin end up as the VP, and her Lt. Governor Sean Parnell win his bid for Alaska’s sole House seat. My head hurts).

Mine does too.  Alaska is a Republican version of Louisiana and this guy knows all the ins and outs.

Someday McCain will regret not leaving this can of worms in a Wal Mart parking lot outside of St Paul and just driving away.  I know he loathes Romney, as do I, but he would have been a much better candidate for the #2 spot.

I turned off the computer this morning and headed out for a walk.  I had some podcasts to catch up on and wanted to burn out some carbons as well.  It was a good cleansing.

While I was out there, I thought a lot about an admonition I’d received from TeacherRefPoet.  He’s been pretty clear on his blog that a line had been crossed.  He’s correct when he suggests I’ve become the thing I hate.  (To clarify, he was speaking to someone else in that comment…but if the shoe fits…).  So yeah, I’ve become no better than the Obama is a Muslim crowd.  I get that and I’ve thought a lot about it.

I thought I’d come to a conclusion when I arrived back home.  I was going to leave it be.  There are enough “real” journalists up in Alaska right now tracking stories down that they don’t need my help.   The story, whatever it is, will come out soon enough.

The “story” came along at the perfect time.  It’s a three-day weekend where the press is catching a breather between conventions.  Maybe they’re taking a day off.  The hurricane story also helped jam up the news channels.  So there’s a lot of dead space in there where everyone is trying to figure out who the heck Sarah Palin is.  And it turned out there was some fuel laying around looking for a spark.  Voila!

This could have been avoided in a couple of ways.  First, McCain could have done his homework.  Had he, I don’t think any of this would have happened because Palin wouldn’t have been the selection.  Alternatively, McCain could have done his homework and shown his work as he was doing it.  This is what happened with Romney and Pawlenty.  Lots are already known about both, good and bad.  Had McCain thrown her into the crucible three or four weeks ago (or longer…he’s had the nomination locked up since February), this could have all come out and the public could have weighed in.  Instead, this was hastily thrown together, and now everyone’s learning on the fly.

Back to TRP’s point for a moment.  I think he’s probably right when he suggests we should leave the kids out of this.  None of the five Palin kids asked to be thrust into this, and truth-be-told, a week ago, I don’t think any of them believed they’d be here today.  TRP comes from a unique perspective as a high school teacher.  A popular one at that.  He’s probably seen dozens of Bristol Palins come through his classroom, and has probably had more than a few confide in him things they can’t tell their parents.  So when he sees me go after Bristol (I want to quit using her first name…but what else do I call her?  The Kid?  That seems even more demeaning…), he sees me going after one of those kids he’s helped.  Heck, those are kids I’ve helped.

Am I going after her though?  The story is about the mom and her decision making.  Her kids are in the crossfire.  And honestly, if there weren’t questions being asked, then the McCain could continue to pass off the Palins as the Cleavers, and no one would have been the wiser.  The thing is, they aren’t.  They’ve got all the drama of any other family.  And that’s a huge reason I don’t want them anywhere near the Naval Observatory.  I look at Sarah Palin and all I see is Lynn Snodgrass with a banana clip.

Like I said, the media channels should start filling with some of the Palin background story this week.  It will make an interesting juxtaposition against the Republican convention; we’re trying to figure out who Palin is while McCain and the Republicans try and explain who they are after Bush.  Should be a fun week, but I’m going to do my best to refrain from commenting further on the maternity of the youngest Palin and will leave the rest of the children alone.  It’s what Barry wants, it’s what TRP wants.  I can do that.

After this?  We are roughly 40 days from the vice presidential debate.  At that time, the nation will be tuning in to see whether Palin has the chops to make it as VP.  She’s got a tone to brush up on between now and then.  McCain’s error here, and Karl Rove will back me up on this, is he’s changed this election from a referendum on whether Barack Obama is fit to be commander-in-chief to a referendum on whether Sarah Palin is fit to be a proverbial heartbeat away.  In that scenario, the Republicans lose.  The genius of Rove was that neither 2000 nor 2004 were about his guy, both were about the other guy.  All Bush had to do both times was correctly read a teleprompter and stay out of the way.  At this point, I think that’s all Obama has to do.

Does Palin survive?  As of this second, I don’t see how McCain can jetison her.  The base is over-the-moon with joy at her selection and they will walk if she’s dropped.  McCain cannot win without them, so he’s stuck.  His hope right now is that an energized Chritian base will overcome the middle-of-the-roaders who are horrified by Palin.  It will be obvious by the second week of October whether Palin has crossed the respectability threshold with the swing voters.  If she doesn’t, it will be too late to change course.  By then McCain may well wish he’d dumped her this week.

So close, yet so far away.

I was out of town last weekend when Obama selected Biden to be his VP.  I exchanged a few texts with friends and advisers as I drove across the high desert.  Mostly they sought assurance that Biden would be a decent pick, particularly after I knocked him around a bit.  I remember thinking at the time that should Obama lose the election, the post-mortem surrounding Biden’s selection would be a most interesting read.  There had to have been another camp suggesting a different pick.  Ultimately it was Barry’s decision, and it’s one I can live with.  Biden will make a fine post-Cheney administrator, which is what Obama needs.

This Palin thing is a stumper.  When I first heard it, I immediately thought it was a cheap pander to the disaffected Hillary supporters.  And it is.  But in a way, I think it was the perfect pick for McCain.  He needed someone who could bridge the gap between his right wing and the moderates.  Someone who could be acceptable to both.  Romney wasn’t that person.  Neither was Rudy.  Or, really, Pawlenty.

In Palin you get a combination of Patty Murray’s “mom in tennis shoes” and Jan Crouch, with a little Charlton Heston thrown in.  Perfect!

The problem is the selection has completely turned off the very people it was meant to attract.  Betty with Sunglasses emailed this morning to ask if she should be worried about the selection.

“Worried?” I said, “the selection is aimed straight at you!  Outdoor-loving mom who loves her man and the baby Jesus.  What’s not to love?”

Betty, once a Hillary supporter, is 100% for Obama these days.  She’s exactly the voter McCain wants.  The thing is, I suspect that neither Betty nor the millions like her sees themselves in Palin.  Certainly not in McCain.  And that’s a problem.  If you’re going to gamble on one particular voting bloc (the voting Bettys!), you’d better be damn sure you understand them.  McCain and the Republicans don’t.

This lack of understanding won’t, however, keep Hannity and his ilk from beating Betty over the head with the fact she’s a hypocrite for supporting Hillary because she was a woman while failing to support Palin.  Guilt tripping those you’re trying to woo is not a good way to make friends and influence people.  In fact, it pisses them off.  Betty is more pro-Obama now than when she woke up.  Like I said…fascinating.

Sidebar: You know what else is fascinating?  This.  Give it a few minutes.  It’s really a slow burn.  It’ll sneak up on you.  Genius does that sometimes.  End Sidebar.

Sullivan was on fire today discussing everything from the origins of her kids names (could you imagine if Obama had named one of his children Willow?) to observations from Alaska.  My thoughts, however come back to that 3am wake-up call that Hillary asked us to imagine.  Is Palin ready for something like that?  Sullivan ponders:

It occurs to me that some on the right actually think that Obama is as inexperienced and as trivial a figure as Palin. So ask yourself: could Sarah Palin have run a national election campaign against, say, a machine as powerful as the Bush family, and won? Does she have the skill set to construct a campaign that would actually have brought her to the nomination herself? I find the comparison with Obama ludicrous. But it will be made. Palin looks to me like a lovely person and a good local politician, with some inevitable rough spots. I’d be delighted if she took a leadership role in the GOP in the future. But in the same league as Obama? Do Republicans really think that little of him?

I guess they do. We are looking at a different person.”

Had Hillary won the Dem nomination, would McCain have gone with Jindal to try and capture the “I wanted to vote for the brown-skinned guy” vote?

The clincher, and the one which should give McCain’s people the most pause, was the email I received from Pete in Parkrose.

Well, it’s official. My in-laws never liked McCain, and Palin is the proverbial straw. It helps that they already liked Obama to begin with, and now they will be voting democrat for the first time in their LIVES.

I can feel better about my conscience knowing that they turned the corner with me. I think he’ll get my vote.

I learned an important lesson about politics in August a few years ago.  The Bush administration got caught in something huge in the summer of 2003.  I mean it was knock you off your feet huge.  What was it?  I couldn’t tell you.  I remember writing about it.  Getting all up in arms about it.  But it turned to dust by Labor Day and we moved on.

Reading folks’ disappointment with Obama’s August backslide reminds me of that lesson.  It also reminds me of this last spring.  We Obama supporters held our collective breath after Texas and Ohio, wondering if Hillary might just pull the whole thing off after all.  Heck, I was starting to plan an August vacation to Denver to take to the streets.  In the end though, Obama put Hillary’s challenge down and we moved on.

Yes, Obama’s getting whacked pretty hard right now.  But no one outside talk radio and cable television is paying attention.  You might not have noticed, but the Olympics are on and something like 157 million people watched at least part of them last weekend.  And when they’re not doing that, they’re vacationing or cooking out or sitting on the deck watching the river drift by.  They’re simply not paying attention right now.

This will change next week when the conventions begin.  Let’s see where things stand in a month before we begin panicking.

$51 million for Obama in July.  Only $27 million for McCain.

I know the polls show a tie, but this means something, doesn’t it?