Obama Hits Stretch Run, McCain Wheezes

The Obama Campaign raked in over $150 million in September, adding 650,000 new donors. Average donation amount was $80. The election's outcome is so obvious that, in keeping with the finely honed bureaucratic instincts of a 4-star general, uber-careerist Colin Powell gave his endorsement yesterday, slamming his old friend John McCain and his choice for VP on Meet The Press. Why his endorsement is important may rankle Karma, but its effect is immediate amongst the Council on Foreign Relations crowd. 14 days and 14 nights to go, and the airwaves will be flooded with Democratic ads. They're having difficulty finding open spots for more placements.

McCain is all but conceding. CNN is quoting McCain advisers saying they believe that Colorado, Iowa, and New Mexico are gone to the strong Obama ground game. They've conceded those states, and the RNC has started to pull back funding in prep for the 2010 elections. The advisors claim their plan for electoral victory requires McCain winning Pennsylvania, plus Nevada, Virginia, Florida, North Carolina, Missouri, and Ohio, but they're trailing in all those polls, while even Georgia has tightened to within 2 points. (Pollster, RCP)

For a sense of the Obama Campaign's take on their chances in Pennsylvania, they have no plans to visit for the duration. They've gone up +10% there.

Insert Four Thousand Words Here

Obama and McCain draw the Second Gilded Age to its conclusion at the Alfred E. Smith charity dinner in Manhattan last Friday; McCain talks to Cardinal Egan at said dinner; Obama addresses 100,000+ supporters in St. Louis on Saturday; ditto Kansas City.

McCain Lawyer Urges New York Times To Investigate Obama Drug Use

Cindy McCain's lawyer, John Dowd, complained about the New York Time's factual coverage, threatened a libel suit, and accused them of not digging enough into Obama's youthful drug use and his failure to rescue ancestral Kenya from poverty:

It is worth noting that you have not employed your investigative assets looking into Michelle Obama. You have not tried to find Barack Obama's drug dealer that he wrote about in his book, Dreams of My Father. Nor have you interviewed his poor relatives in Kenya and determined why Barack Obama has not rescued them. Thus, there is a terrific lack of balance here.

What Dowd apparently doesn't recall is that the New York Times, like other news outlets in the country, had already chased the Obama drug story for juicy details, and a Times investigative pieces reported what anyone who has read "Dreams From My Father" would suspect: if anything, Obama overstated the drug use in his books.

The Master Debate: McWTF??

Haldol side effects include blurred vision, dry mouth, nausea, vomiting, and grabbing people's asses.

This wasn't Photoshopped. Or more accurately, the entire Republican campaign is a Photoshop effort, and this image slipped past them somehow. It happened when McCain couldn't figure out how to greet Bob the Moderator.

Half a dozen friends came by and watched the contretemps, erupting in roars of laughter every 10 minutes or so. Lowest moment of the night #1: "Joe the Plumber" was mentioned 26 times, and we didn't have a drinking game ready for it. Lowest moment of the night #2: McCain was seated at the same table with Obama and Bob, just a lunge away from a head-butt and ear-biting, but the Haldol kept him in check. Best moment of the night, hands-down: when referring to running mate Sarah Palin, McCain said, "she's a breast of freth air."

Temper Mental

John McCain runs on hate, you can't read much about him before coming to the simple conclusion. Bottom line, it's miraculous he has not publicly exploded of late. With almost a full month to go until the election and his campaign doing a credible imitation of the stock market, however, there's still hope. Brave New Films, the folks who brought you the acclaimed documentary "Walmart: The High Cost of Low Price," has assembled some people willing to go on the record about witnessing his rage episodes. They're worse than suspected. In the video, a credible witness claims he back-handed a female POW-MIA advocate named Jeanette Jenkins so hard she spun around and hit the wall. They show a copy of her subsequent complaint to the Senate Ethics Committee.

The Master Debate

Apres debate, the audience of "carefully screened Undecideds" flocks around a Democrat, looking like they just found home.

Apart from the twist-o-meter battle going across the bottom of the screen and a few McCain patronizing gaffes and bad jokes, last night's "town hall debate" was predictably repetitive and obnoxious. My big take-away was that every time Obama said anything about Afghanistan, al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, Iran or hunting down the third-world $5 per diem mercenaries of Pakistan, a.k.a. "the Taliban," he flat-lined on both uncommitted men and women twist-o-meter focus groups. Barack should probably cut that shit out; most Americans don't care anymore, nor believe Gulbuddin Hekmatyar will go undercover in Santa Monica, take a few surfing lessons and blow up L.A. with a longboard.

Obama topped the graph out when he talked about energy being his first priority, and I was hoping to hear the phrase "Green Deal" out of him. But no. Mostly it was like watching a rigged fight, with Obama winning on points, all the while feeling he could rip McCain's arm off and beat him to death with it like whenever on political, factual, and personal bases, just boringly choosing not to. And maybe that's how the knob-twisters wanted it, since they disapproved of almost every criticism made by one candidate of the other.

While the debate might have been a yawn, the aftermath was anything but, starting off with McCain's refusal to shake Obama's hand. The C-Span cameras stayed for as long as there was a candidate in the room. After the debate, McCain and Cindy stuck around for only 1 minute, trailing a "let's get the hell out of here" aura as they left. Obama and Michelle stayed for half an hour, clearly enjoyed themselves, and didn't leave until they had engaged with every individual in the whole town hall crowd. A summary:

00:00:13 — Cindy McCain walks out to greet her husband, and follows him awkwardly around the room for 25 seconds, until 00:00:39, when McCain finally acknowledges her presence with a quick, one-armed hug and a split-second glance at the side of her head.

00:01:19 — McCain may have patted Obama’s back here. Impossible to tell what exactly he is doing with his left arm. But if it was a pat on the back, however patronizing, it somewhat negates the handshake snub. Somewhat. But not really.

00:01:20 — The snub. Obama reaches out to shake McCain’s hand. McCain makes a weird face and points to Cindy McCain. Nonplussed, Obama smiles and takes her hand, says some pleasantries, and returns to the voters in the audience.

00:01:34 — McCain glances at Cindy, nods towards the exit door, and gives a spastic little bug-eyed wave goodbye to … the exit door he’s approaching?

00:01:35 — That’s it, the McCains are gone.

00:01:36 — Tom Brokaw is in the room, talking to the audience members. Barack and Michelle Obama are in the room, talking to the audience members. It’s almost as if there was an agreed-upon protocol — you know, basic manners.
00:01:36 through 00:11:11 — For the next 10 minutes, Barack and Michelle talk to people, pose for pictures, make jokes, have apparently serious conversations with people, sign autographs, shake hands, and otherwise engage with literally everybody in the room, a hundred people or more.

At 00:05:06, a woman slips under Barack’s arm and hugs him. He hugs her back, and she actually dances back to her seat, which makes a bunch of people laugh.

At 00:09:26, Barack starts talking to (we think!) the guy who asked the first question of the debate, the one about everybody losing all their retirement savings in the economic collapse. And he keeps talking to him, and keeps talking to him, and listening to him, for more than a minute.

At 00:10:42, a black guy in glasses and a gray sportscoat asks to have his picture taken with Obama, who motions up to the seats just out of view of the camera, and seems to say he was headed up there, but he’ll come back. At 00:11:15, he comes back to the guy and happily poses for the picture.

And that’s where this C-SPAN clip ends. The live video feed last night went on for another twenty minutes, because that’s how long the Obamas stayed in the little theater, working the room, their “body language” betraying no exhaustion or wish to get out of there and have a beer and relax. Which I was already doing for them until I found out that, Oh Cripes, there's another one of these damned things to go through between now and Halloween.

Fear Of A Black Reagan

Town hall debate coming up tonight at 6PM Hollywood Standard Time. The rules will be standard Media Wrestling Federation non-tag team format, with 3-second fall and 10-minute time limits, and jumping off the top rope is allowed. This picture will have to do until I think of something constructive to say.

The Mooselini Bounce Is Over

Lord Mom sent along an aggregation site of called PalinSucks.Org. I thought it would be flash videos and satire, but it's full of links to serious information dug up from far and wide on our possible Mrs. President. Anyhow, whether resulting from getting to know Sarah Palin better or from McCain's dramatic economic leadership, a bunch of new polls are out, and they indicate the battle for female and independent voters has decidedly swung in Obama's favor.

A new Time magazine poll has Obama 50-43, with a McCain collapse among women.

Obama leads McCain by 17 points with women, 55%-38%. Before the conventions, women preferred Obama by a margin of 10 points, 49%-39%. After McCain picked Palin as his running mate, the gap narrowed to a virtual tie, with Obama holding a 1-point margin, 48%-47%.

As a cross-reference, there are the Q-poll results. In Florida, women now back Obama 57-37, in Ohio Obama leads 53-39, in Pennsylvania Obama leads 58-34. (In men among those states, McCain runs from a dead heat to +5.)

Big trouble for McCain. He has the personality of a sea urchin, the body language of a low-status chimpanzee, and the credibility of a used car salesman in a clown suit. He has no room to maneuver on pro-choice, Palin was his best shot at the demographic, and after seeming to gain traction for a week or two she's spinning out. He may go more aggressive on Iraq withdrawal and give it more female-friendly packaging, which might help a little, but I don't see how he can regain decent support levels amongst women.

Further, Pew has a poll out today, Obama 49-42, an AP/Gallup national has Obama 48-41, and the CNN/OPR state polls in some battleground states are as follows:

Florida 51/47
Minn. 54/43
Nevada 51/47
Virginia 53/44
Missouri 49/48.

Getting above 50% in Florida is huge, getting above it in Nevada is downright surprising. Polls are neither terribly precise nor valid, but when they're starting to agree from multiple angles over time...

(Note: if, in an attempt to maintain your sanity, you swore off the evils of pop culture and don't recognize the picture above the title, it's a fembot from Austin Powers' "The Spy Who Shagged Me" movies.)

McCain Campaign Takes Credit For Bailout Bill...Which, Ahhhm...Didn't Happen

Steve Schmidt, John McCain's campaign manager, exhibits his wares fully on yesterday's Press the Meat. He was, of course, joined by a plethora of Pug-bots repeating the same woefully ass-to-mouth, sequaciously inept, Chickens-Before-They're-Hatched Talking Points. Hahahahaa! Lewz-zers! But oh Jeebus what if these grasping Podsnappian dimwits, er, dot dot dot. Courtesy of the elegaic Empty Wheel, and via ThinkProgress:

“[T]his bill would not have been agreed to had it not been for John McCain. … But, you know, this is a bipartisan accomplishment, a bipartisan success. And if people want to get something done in Washington, they just watch John McCain.” — Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, 9/29/08

“Earlier in the week, when Senator McCain came back to Washington, there had been no deal reached. … What Senator McCain was able to do was to help bring all the parties to the table, including the House Republicans.” — Senior adviser Steve Schmidt, 9/28/08

“But here are the facts, and I’m not overselling anything. The fact is that the House Republicans were not in the mix at all. John didn’t phone this one in. He came and actually did something. … You can’t phone something like this in. Thank God John came back.” — Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), 9/28/08

“Before John McCain suspended his campaign yesterday, the situation that we’re looking at today looked very different then. After he showed leadership and called for bipartisanship, for us to partisanship aside and tackle this solution head on, here we are.” — Spokesman Tucker Bounds, 9/25/08

Great work, McCain!!

Update: Meanwhile, McCain's hiding in the front of the Straight No Talk Express trying to figure out what he can say about this.

"After bragging today about his role in shaping the economic bailout package, Sen. John McCain has made no statement to the press since the defeat of the bill, in part at the hands of House Republicans. McCain boarded his Straight Talk Air charter plane a few minutes ago, but the plane has not taken off yet. McCain is in the front of the plane, separated from reporters by a brown curtain."

The Real McCain: Communist Collaborator

I did not know this. Brother Tim over at the Blog of Revelation found a damning video of Republicans and fellow captives attacking McCain's Vietnam fabrications. They tell the truth about his successful, "heroic" effort on a 1992 Senate Select Sub-Committee to keep all Vietnam POW records classified. The measure to investigate POW-MIA status, and in the process open the records, was introduced by Republican Senator Bob Dole. It had previously passed the House of Representatives 401-0, was set to pass the Senate, but McCain dug in his heels. He was personally able to put language in the bill permanently classifying POW-MIA records. Just why would he have done so?

It has long been rumored that McCain, son of his Admiral father who commanded the US fleet off Vietnam, was offered special privileges and early release in exchange for 32 propaganda tapings he made for his captors. In itself, cracking under the mere threat of torture is excusable. But 32 interviews, containing confessions that could be played to people like Jane Fonda? Many American servicemen who cooperated far less with their Vietnamese interrogators than John McCain were not hailed as heroes, but were instead punished harshly under the "aid to enemies" provisions of the Code of Military Justice, losing rank, pay, and benefits.

There's a good reason John McCain is so obsessed with perceptions of his honor: he's a phony, and a coward. His political ambitions couldn't suffer transcripts of his interviews to come out, he made thousands of people whose boys went missing in Vietnam keep suffering. Now some of his fellow prisoners and lawmakers are speaking out against him. They're can't be dismissed as biased liberals, and they're pissed. View the video and pass it on to any fence-sitters as you see fit.

Going To The Candidates Debate

Laugh about it, shout about it when you've got to choose. John McCain didn't start chewing his microphone, exhibit obvious signs of Alzheimer's or remove his clothes to show the scars of his formative captivity. Those possibilities were in good part why we tuned in to Friday night's debate, but we're dealing with the disappointment.

There was a new real-time "audience reaction" graph for Republicans, Democrats, and Independents which crawled across the bottom of the screen, so we got to see the instant-gratification reaction of focus groups to what Obama and McCain said. Focus group members were given a dial to twist up or down depending on how they felt. In general, attacking the opponent was met with their disapproval, although Obama's highest twist came when recalling McCain's mistaken early support for the war in Iraq.

In a Fox News focus group of independents evenly split amongst Bush-Kerry voters in 2004, they gave the debate to Obama 61-39. They also think Obama won every individual segment. In the partisan focus groups, Republicans gave the debate to McCain 90-10, Democrats to Obama 93-7. You could see how ragged and indecisive the graph line was for the Independents was at many points, versus the steady sine waves of the declared. Obama gained ground, sure, but McCain won points for showing up and appearing coherent after saying he wasn't going because the fate of the country is too important, and made a case for being our bipartisan shibboleth.

Psyche's News Roundup

It's coming at the Pugs fast and furious this week:

A new Quinnipiac has Obama up by 4.

Bush canceled two GOP fundraisers in Alabama and Florida to meet with economic advisers today.

McCain has not spoken to the press corps that follows him in five weeks, or invited national reporters onto his bus in more than two months.

There are now not one but two firmly drawn curtains separating Mr. McCain’s spacious quarters on his plane from the press corps.

(AP) 7 US soldiers die in Iraq in a Chinook crash.

(AP) The Iraqi parliament is deadlocked on the elections law.

(BBC) Maliki questions the future of the US-Iraq SoFA saying there are "serious and dangerous obstacles" to such a deal ever taking place.

(IntNews) The new head of the UN general assembly slams "acts of aggression" in Iraq and Afghanistan.

McCain unintentionally declares Spain an enemy of America to the Spanish press. (TPM 1, 2, 3)

NBC Nightly News (video) tears apart the Palin lies.

ABCNews (video) tears McCain apart over his flip flop on AIG.

Newsweek blasts McCain over "the fundamentals of our economy are strong."

The AP's Glenn Johnson hits McCain with an extremely harsh lede blasting him on his insider/outsider claims.

At the UAW plant in Grand Rapids with Palin, the crowd chanted "Sarah, Sarah." They "haven't once screamed for McCain, even after Palin introduced him."

(All via MikeVotes at Born at the Crest.)

The New Narrative: Ready to Lie

Few things change an election narrative like a banking system failure. Sure, wars are great for a good crisis, too, but you can only start so many of them before, ah, before your banking system fails.

Last week, when Palin went up in the polls, lots of people (such as me) were having Gore-Kerry flashbacks, and Lord Wife noted that Obama explicitly kept hammering home two election points: economy and inequity. With the failures of AIG, Merrill Lynch, and Lehman brothers coming over the weekend, she speculates he was "banking" on some upcoming news. Whether or no, both Lord Wife and Obama are looking pretty damned smart this week.

The campaign followed the bad economic news with their own August fund-raising figures, which they'd held back on reporting:

(Reuters) Obama raises $66 million (a record) with 500,000 new donors.

Slavering media coverage of Palin/McCain as a phenom began to curdle, and what the punditry just recently described as their 'misstatements,' 'possible inaccuracies,' and 'attacks' are now being openly called 'Lies:'

Rove offers a "hook" for all the lies coverage by commenting on FoxNews?

(AFP) McCain, Palin defiant in 'lies' storm

A collection of some of the "lies" editorials.

Now conservatives are starting to pummel McPain in print:

David Brooks, conservative columnist, questions Sarah Palin's readiness.

Richard Cohen, rabid stump-chewing Zionist, calls McCain a liar.

Carly Fiorina, McCain economic advisor: "Palin couldn't run a corporation, neither could McCain."

The McCain campaign's responses are as funny as cries for help:

McCain states on CNN, "The fundamentals of our economy are strong."

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, domestic policy advisor, holds up his Blackberry to a reporter and claims, "He did this. You're looking at a miracle John McCain helped create."

Me: "By the way, you may not have heard this yet, but John was once a PRISONER OF WAR."

To put a cherry on top, what has long been begged for is now being done: they're slugging McCain in the throat. Obama is directly assaulting the Character Brand in spots called "Honor" and "Ready to Lie: An American Hero's Fall from Grace." Two months to go, but these should be effective for now.

Reasons To Feel Good About the Republican Convention

I managed to catch a few of the speeches by various luminaries before last night's "Moose Head Barbie" climax, and here are a few summaries:

Rudy 9iu11ani: "If you don't elect McCain, I'll blow up Florida."

Mike Huckabee: "For freeing Arkansas from its Russian occupation, I heart John McCain."

Some Party Woman Speaking at 5:50 PM: "I...can. Read!"

The Moose Head herself was pretty impressive. Well-written, well-delivered, telegenic, roughly 25% of Sarah Palin's content was Nobama criticism, 25% hostile fabrication, 25% standard anti-government ravings, and 25% "Proud to Be A Murkin." In other words, formulaic. But for the remarkable addition of a vagina, the speech could've been written for anyone from Barry Goldwater to Steven Colbert. Listening to the Party responsible for $20 trillion in bad bonds warn against tax increases was a trifle much, of course, with the irony lost on the angry, angry crowd. A crowd which expressed its Homo Loquens sentiments as follows: "Boo. Booo! Yay. Yaay! Boooo. USA! USA! USA!"

(Aside: If a Republican wanders in here for some reason and has stuck with it this far, congratulations, and I have a question: what do you have to be angry about? Your party has been in power, has usurped more power, has exercised more power over our liberties, our finances, our allies, and our so-called enemies for the past 8 years than any other period in US history, and you're still angry. There is good news for you, a soothing Gilead's balm guaranteed to finally make you happy. Calm down for a minute, go look in a mirror, and repeat these words: "I f**ked up." Say them often, and you will start feeling better in no time.)

Speaking of feeling better, despite Sarah Palin's well-received litany of scandals, lies and deceits, the revitalized, high-energy Pugfest masks a deep rift in Republican philosophies, one which reaches deep down between McCain and the Fundie Panderers running his own campaign. Even Palin seemed to think some of the vitriol she was about to read off the prompter was going too far, acid sure to have back-splashed once the various women's focus groups which were running collate their data. The Rovian speech could be interpreted as taking a folksy Moose Head brand and transforming it into Cutthroat Opportunist.

You might call the core rift a battle between the Roots and the Shoots, a desire to deal with a plethora of contrary, dangerous details by shoe-horning them back into a narrative past. This isn't a Republican impulse--it's ancient, it's tribal, and is still the most commonly observed behavior in organizations which are in deep trouble. When facing a confusing, hostile environment, the collective decision is usually to go back to what used to work best, and try to do it harder and better. That's why (Karl Rove protege) Steve Schmidt the campaign manager who lobbied so hard for Palin, is actually trying to hide McCain as much as possible. Consider, for but one example, that Oldfinger's convention address tonight is scheduled to exactly coincide with the Giants-Redskins game which kicks off the NFL season. Palin's speech drew an audience close to 20 million. McCain won't draw 10.

The problem with the "dance with them that brung ya" behavior is that the greater the levels of confusion and danger, the less likely it will work, and sharper wits in the Republican Party realize this. In a golden media moment of illustrating that point, the feed to a microphone was left on during Chuck Todd's MSNBC show yesterday. Mike Murphy, John McCain's closest former advisor, and conservative columnist Peggy Noonan, the right's Intellectual Ballerina, talked freely amongst themselves. Contrary to their public line-toeing, they completely trashed the strategy of picking Sarah Palin. I assume you've already heard or read Noonan's damnations of, "It's over," and "The most qualified? No! I think they went for this -- excuse me-- political bullshit about narratives --" The full transcript is worth reading, and it's proof of intelligent Republicans speaking honestly.

While Palin was in some ways a brilliant choice for VP, the Republican Party is playing a bad hand with yesteryear's calculator. They're scared and confused. America needs heroes, they know that, but they're offering icons treadworn and false. The other side offers Vince Lombardi, innovation, and an exercise regimen. I see the appeal in the former, I see it in the whole country "bottoming" so hard as to remove all denials, dignities, and doubts in the hard collisions that would happen under McCain/Palin. Or, as it might well turn out, under a President Palin.

President Palin. Catastroika. No decorum or restraint whatsoever would remain in what has already been the greatest corporate orgy since the Gilded Age. The tent villages of homeless in my city would swell into towns, the line outside the soup kitchen that's there every morning when I drop my son off to his $1,000 per month Day Care would stretch around the street corner, down the block, pensions and Social Security checks would be worthless, and the angry youths I see walking through our neighborhood from their alternative high school would start unleashing what they're barely managing to contain.

The other side offers coaches who know how to coax out the best competencies, even from the alien corporate-socialist substrate upon which patriots, governments and consumers must currently float like reviled stains of dirt. The coaches are the only feasible hope we've got left for climbing up into coherencies. Deep down, I think, even Sarah Palin and the Fundies might know that.

McCain Ad: Does This Look Like Change To You?

Finally, an effective attack ad comes out of the Obama campaign. Even die-hard Republicans will be unsettled by this one, and appropriately enough, these posters are first going up around the Republican Convention site in Minneapolis-St. Paul. The stark use of simple colors, graying the image of the McCain and Bush Embrace casts a wonderful pall of doom over what will be the main attack tagline from here to the election. They will (or should) just hammer on McSame, McSame, McSame, with occasional side condiments of "Win A McCain Vacation Home" and "Iraq Is So Safe, We Send Our Children There!"

(Research creds to MikeVotes.)

Paris Hilton: Future President Of The United States

I have, amongst annoyed friends, non-plussed relatives, and on this very blog, predicted that Paris Hilton would one day occupy the White House. In a sadistic sort of way, I was dead serious, but certainly didn't expect to see hints of my eventual vindication come this soon.

C'est arrive, me hearties. Paris's response to a John McCain ad which used footage of her to lampoon Barack's celebrity appeal has made me look like Nostradamus after downing 6 lattes. It wasn't that hard, really, just a matter of sticking with the basics. This woman consciously understands how to craft images, promote herself, stay on top as a taste-maker and manipulate the masses at will, and she can turn those talents to any purpose she wants. She's got what it takes, and would make a fine President or a top-notch dictator.

If you watch the video, you'll see how she successfully articulates a compromise position on energy and the environment that everyone would actually vote for, one which would probably work. Politics is now more about style than policy detail or machine loyalties, and fortunately or not, this 'Funny or Die' video provides one glimpse into the future. I forgive you in advance for self-protective mechanisms such as calling me an imbecile, since for most healthy people such a future is simply too terrifying to contemplate. (Whatever you do, don't think of a Pink White House.)

(Update: Lord Wife, who first pointed out the video, reacted to this post with the raised eyebrows of incredulity. To which I rejoined, "People give this girl $50,000 to show up at parties for a couple of hours. By that measure, is she not the smartest person alive?")

Obama Compels The Republicans To Do His Will

To bowdlerize Bismarck, politics are "the continuation of war by other means," and continuing with Clausewitz, no other human activity is so "continously or universally bound up with chance." Winning is only half the battle, and while those whims mull whether he'll ever be sworn in, last week a leader threw himself into a Presidential vacuum and plugged it. Plugged it tight. As one Berliner said, speaking for the world, "We know there is a different America. He is the President in our hearts." As a practical matter, America's foreign policy framework changed last week, and although the change agent also visited Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq, France, and England as well as Germany, the symbolism provided by the last nation was resoundingly clear.

The crowd in Berlin stretched for over a mile down two avenues radiating from the Victory Column, and the park in the Tiergarten Zoo was packed full to listen to the Senator. Newspapers estimated 200,000 people were there, but those streets are wide, and you could easily fit 200,000 people into a mile on any one of them. It looked at least half a million, if not a million. JFK didn't draw that kind of crowd in Germany. Reagan didn't. Hitler didn't. On the same day, his opponent John McCain cut a stark contrast, holding a presser in front of Schmidt's Fudge Haus in New Hampshire next to scandal-brewing Pugbot Lindsay Graham, who visibly cringed when McCain refused to allow a question from a Wall Street Journal reporter. The was no audience, only reporters. Even before the Berlin speech, the Republican campaign had expressed "frustration" over Obama's trip, and George Bush Senior helpfully explained from a golf course, "we're a bit jealous, is all."

Republicans have been compelled to triangulate towards Obama's Mid-East proposals, seeking to minimize differentiation between him and their candidate. After Obama's 16-month withdrawal plan received public endorsement from Iraq's Nouri al-Maliki in the German weekly Der Spiegel, the White House suddenly announced its agreement to a year-and-a-half timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, following with a spokes-general PR campaign: not as many troops are needed on the ground because the Surge has worked so well, so they can now take the fight to the Taliban. And of course, the State Department opened direct, albeit secret, negotiations with Iran, signaling the decisive internal demise of one Richard B. Cheney.

The rub in cleaving to all these new positions is clear: while fairly effective in blurring leadership differences, they're also doing Obama's bidding. He's where the leading is coming from, and the Republicans are abandoning policy agendas once held maniacally sacrosanct. How desperate must they feel? Hopefully this can begin to counteract blogsphere disgust over Barackian moves to the center-right. Naj is enraged over his refusal to acknowledge Iran's right to nuclear power, Bruce is ticked that Nader is being ignored, Zoey & Me hisses and spits over FISA, Orcinus bemoans recent softening on gun control. You know what? I agree with all of you, and there's a reason for my living in the closest thing to Denmark you can find in the US. Now, please hear me out for a minute.

Above, I compared politics to war--admittedly the Berlin backdrop provoked my subconscious, but there is much to be gained by analyzing politics in a military framework. I view them as two poles on the same continuum, and both are very dirty disciplines. To wit, Clausewitz again, and he could just as well be describing politics:

Kind-hearted people might of course think there was some ingenious way to disarm or defeat an enemy without too much bloodshed, and might imagine this is the true goal of the art of war. Pleasant as it sounds, it is a fallacy that must be exposed: war is a...dangerous business.

Each deals with primordial emotions, competing social structures, and tidal waves of chance, so I see little strategic difference between politics and war, and indeed one activity eventually leads to the other. Politics is the art of mustering collective will to enact change, and it necessarily starts at the margins and works toward the center. To succeed, you have to learn to move elliptically, you have to work in curves, and I say that as someone who changed an entrenched academic bureaucracy, led a movement against its will, and amongst other threats, received personal cease and desist orders from my state Attorney General. (Which I ignored.) To succeed and weld the changes into place, I had to compromise on most issues, punt on others, kiss butts liberally, repeat myself almost constantly, and endure the enmity and traps of people far more powerful than me.

Change is possible, but demands enormous sacrifice and patience, and frontal assaults on the ramparts of What Is are the most expensive kind, to be resisted above all others. Change is probably best achieved when it feels like experimentation, or even better, play. It's harder to notice then, more fluid, more adaptable, more capable of faith. It has to arc around the straight, and in so doing may better obey how the world is really structured, versus our conception of how structure should be. If you ever come upon a straight line of trees in the forest, you know they were planted by humans. We love to think in straight lines, and there are no straight lines in nature. Everything including light curves and disperses, matter agglomerates in ragged scattered orbits, and likewise the process of making good decisions is shamanic and arcane--competing factors aren't either/or, and in the moment it's difficult to distinguish the chaff from the coup de main.

The human mind is wired for pattern recognition, the crowd is achingly predisposed to scarce simplicities, and when our theoretical searches for them prove fruitless we flourish easy answers out of entropies like fake bouquets from magician sleeves, glossing over immovable objects and irresistible forces. Rather than reject cheap tricks and accept factual ambiguities, "What pretty flowers," we exclaim, for results must be obtained. And they can be; the problem is that the work of obtainment, and the obsessive practice with prestidigitation required, is far less appealing than dramatic reveals and magic wands.

If I were in charge of getting us out of Iraq, I would first reassure the generals in the Pentagon their budget is in no danger. I would then point out that Iraq obviously was not the source of terrorism, and hold up perfidious Taliban as the real enemy. I would propose shifting troops from Iraq into Afghanistan, sign a long-term security agreement with the Iraqi government in the context of oil access, and then proceed to empty Baghdad of soldiers, sending two home for every one sent to Afghanistan. Not, I admit, that sending soldiers to Pakistan's spongiform border will solve any problems; it is an oriental screen behind which an Iraqi withdrawal can take place, face can be saved, and appearances of weakness along with their deadly domestic and international consequences can be obscured.

In Afghanistan, the objective of my soldierings would be to shower the supporters of the Taliban with cash, roads, and schools. Wherever resistance is encountered, my tactic would be the only one which has ever worked in the area: bribe the tribes. Bribe them into submission, then declare victory and get the hell out. Our presence there is probably harmful, but can be enlarged as a short-term, tactically sound, useful sleight of strategic hand. Although mine is an elliptical path to incomplete extractions, it curves in the right directions and would probably work. This is exactly what Barack Obama appears to be doing, and he is already forcing Republicans to bend to his will. That he has achieved such a feat beneath the radar but in plain sight of the national press is extremely significant, and I think worthy of further faith and investment. He is proving highly effective and probably downright brilliant. The cheering troops, the embassy staff in Baghdad giving a standing ovation, the world leaders with newly relaxed body language, the city of Berlin. They all see it, too.

That said, I don't know if Obama will give Iran a fair deal, will be able to rein in a burgeoning domestic police state, will ever implement Ralph Nader's badly needed prescriptions for this nation, or if he'll get fewer Americans to shoot each other. Much less our military to stop shooting people around the world. I do know that each issue is a very tall order, the resistance to change is enormous, and each is in the realm of fightin' politics. If he takes a Clintonian approach to them, he will lose just like they did on Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell and Health Care. That stuff won't fly and them dogs won't hunt. All you can realistically do is point out a different reality, move the ball a little at first, take reasonable positions that are hard to deny and impossible to dislodge once gained. You keep building from there, and then you might win.

(Note: had worked on this post awhile, so it was first filed out of sequence.)

(Update: Bruce at the River Blog responded to this post, and eloquently, even patriotically explains why it's smart to support both Ralph Nader and Obama.)

Parallels & Differences Between JFK-Nixon And Obama-McCain

On July 15, 1960, John F. Kennedy accepted the nomination of the Democratic Party for the presidency in a speech he delivered in an outdoor football stadium, the Los Angeles Coliseum. The recent announcement that Barack Obama will follow that precedent when he accepts the Democratic nomination at Invesco Field in Denver on August 28 is but one among many echoes from that momentous election 48 years ago that can be heard reverberating in this one. In addition to the numerous similarities, however, there are a few critical differences. Both the parallels and the divergences are instructive in assessing how the 2008 Election is likely to unfold.

Similarities

1. Both Kennedy and Obama emphasized change, and in some respects the change they
represented is similar. Some aspects of that change, however, constituted a double-
edged political sword.

2. "Every American election," Theodore White wrote in The Making of the President,
1960, "summons the individual voter to weigh the past against the future." The past,
White said, is the identity and beliefs, including prejudices, that the voter carries with
him. "And the future consists of his fears and dreams."

3. Obama represents a new generation of leadership, as Kennedy did. Kennedy often
stressed this theme of generational change in 1960.

4. Kennedy represented not only Americans of Irish ancestry and Catholics; he was the
first person descended from the ranks of the millions of non-WASP immigrants who had
swelled the American population from the 1840s onward, to reach the presidency.
They would vote for him because he was breaking the barrier for them, too.

Joseph P. Kennedy foresaw this dynamic when he told his son four years before JFK's
election that his victory would show that "this country is not a private preserve for
Protestants. There's a whole new generation out there and it's filled with the sons and
daughters of immigrants from all over the world and those people are going to be
mighty proud that one of their own was running for President. And that pride will be
your spur."

Very much the same dynamic will be aiding Barack Obama in this year's election. His
election would break through the glass ceiling for all sorts of heretofore excluded
groups. All the talk of Latinos not wanting to vote for an African-American (talk
that is now very much belied by poll numbers) goes out the window, because the
feeling will be, if a black or mixed race man can be elected president, someone from
our group can, too. This feeling is likely, as the disappointment over Hillary Clinton
not winning the nomination dissipates, to be widespread among women as well as
minorities.

5. The other edge of the sword:

Although it is a fact that is now generally forgotten, anti-Catholic prejudice was every
bit as powerful in 1960 as anti-black prejudice is in 2008--quite possibly it was a
stronger force (not as strong as racism was in 1960, but stronger than racism is in
2008).

6. "The intertwining of religion and politics laced all through the history and traditions of
America," Theodore White wrote. "Now, in September, the old echo of fear was
slowly being amplified--not only in the border states of Tennessee and Kentucky, but
in downstate Indiana and Illinois, in the farm belt, above all in the South. . . .[T]hese
gut-Democrats were disturbed by this candidate of Roman Catholic faith; and if they
were, so were millions of others.

Substitute "race" for "religion" in the above description of the intertwining of religion
and politics in 1960 and we have precisely the biggest hurdle that Barack Obama faces
in 2008.

7. Kennedy was critical of the loss of American prestige around the world during the
preceding eight years of Republican administration.

Nixon complained that JFK, by declaring that American prestige was at an all-time
low, was "running America down and giving it an inferiority complex."

Change the names and these positions sound exactly like one of the main arguments
this year.

8. Nixon stressed his experience against Kennedy's youth and inexperience. The same,
of course, is John McCain's principal selling point against Barack Obama.

Nixon said that the times were too grave for America to try inexperienced leadership;
McCain says the same.

9. In 2008, as in 1960, Republicans sought to focus the election on foreign policy and
national security. "If you ever let them [the Democrats] campaign only on domestic
issues, they'll beat us--our only hope is to keep it on foreign policy," Nixon warned.

10. JFK became, especially after the first presidential debate, the first political celebrity of
the TV age. Huge crowds, including "jumpers" (young women who leapt into the air
when they saw him) surged around him. Kennedy was a "rock star"--a political Elvis.
All of this, obviously, applies now to Barack Obama.

Differences

1. Nixon was a Republican who was relatively young, trying to succeed the oldest
president up until that time, a member of his party who was very popular.

McCain is a Republican who is the oldest presidential candidate, trying to succeed a
younger president, a member of his party who is very unpopular.

2. Dwight Eisenhower had ended a war and "waged peace" for seven-and-a-half years.

George W. Bush started a war and waged war for five-and-a-half years.

3. Ike remained popular. His silence through much of the campaign hurt Nixon, and his
entry into the campaign in its final days helped Nixon.

The opposite is true of Bush, whom McCain needs to keep quiet and out of sight
throughout the campaign.

4. The conventional wisdom this year is that "the future" is Obama's issue, as it was
Kennedy's in 1960. In that year, Nixon claimed the past.

Nixon ran on the "Peace and Prosperity" that he said the president of his party had
produced during the preceding eight years.

McCain can hardly run on the "War and Recession" that the president of his party has
produced during the past eight years.

In 2008, then, the past is as much Obama's issue as the future is.

This comparison of 1960 and 2008 suggests that Barack Obama is in a stronger position this year than John Kennedy was in 1960. But before Senator Obama orders inaugural invitations, he should look at a significant cautionary note in Kennedy's experience in 1960.

For all the advantages the rock star Kennedy had over Nixon, who was literally "the man in the gray flannel suit," a Nixon surge in the last ten days of the campaign nearly defeated JFK.

"How did I manage to beat a guy like this by only a hundred thousand votes?" a baffled Kennedy wondered after the election.

The answer seems to have been fears welling up from deeply ingrained prejudice combining with concern over Kennedy's inexperience. For all the advantages that Barack Obama has this year--advantages that ought to produce, and may well actually produce, a landslide victory for him in November--the same two problems that nearly led to Kennedy losing to Nixon are lurking just below the surface of the 2008 political landscape.

There's still a "Seller Beware" dynamic in play--even when the seller is a master salesman with a vastly superior product. That is the lesson of 1960 that Barack Obama and his campaign must keep in mind from now through November 4.

Saturday Sadism: John McCain's Off-Brand Speech

This blog has been horribly remiss in sadistic pillories of late, and we can now kick John McCain while he's down after the universal pummeling he took from the punditry in the wake of his Tuesday night debacle. Late to the party again! Still, things have been far too positive around here lately, the blog is turning into Pollyanna-land. Time for the gratuitous, time for a few vaudevillian slaperoos.

My mom flew in Tuesday night and her flight was late, so I orbited around the airport listening to McCain's arresting speech in New Orleans. It was a fascinating, disphonic, disconnected thing which started taking on a gruesome life of its own, and it moved me to think, "Sweet shotguns of Barry Goldwater! There is no joy in Pugville. Things are worse there than anybody knows, and I've got to watch this shit on video."

I did, and it was mesmerizingly bad. How can I describe how bad? First the symbolic venue: so, if you were a Republican candidate for President, would New Orleans be the setting you would choose to bemoan the evils of big government? Maybe if you're David Duke. The visual exposition: white-white man, green-green backdrop. McCain: the organic candidate. Right. He looked about as comfortable as ice cream in a deep fryer. The message: weird talking points which couldn't decide whether to push security or disaster capitalism (one example: "we should be able to deliver bottled hot water to dehydrated babies" WTF??). The delivery: sucked. McCain was like a punch-drunk old fighter shuffling back towards the ropes, gesturing with his gloves and saying, "Punch me, c'mon ya puppy!" At one point, slowly winding up for one of his jabs, he actually closed his eyes and grit his teeth, his smile shifting into a grimace-rictus.

If you want to cheer yourself up with visual evidence of how bad-off the Republican Party is right now, watch the video. The camera pans back at one point only to show that he's addressing maybe 70 supporters, most of them his VP candidates and their families. McCain himself exudes tragedy and paradox. He reminded me of the pained, self-hating Watto, the Star Wars character bound by tradition and overcome with greed. His few objectionably surviving scruples twitch and rebel, pricking through the armor of a career of flip-flopping, through the desensitization of decades in Congress, clear up through the tranquilizer his eyes say he took. His delivery was so pathetic it was endearing. Somewhere, there's a good man under all that pain who is killing himself.

Transmigration Of Trolls

Senile psychopath "Maverick" John McCain was all set to negotiate with Hamas in 2006, but it's taboo for Barack Obama to dish that crazy talk now, because, because, ahh--oh, dammit--Neville Chamberlain! [ABC News]