Obsidian Wings

Surface Politics

by publius

One personal benefit of the Bush years is that I’ve become increasingly less cynical about politics. I now view political fights as both substantive and vitally important. I also believe (in a reversal since Iraq) that voters will generally act rationally assuming the press informs them what’s going on. Indeed, most of you probably feel this way too — if you didn’t think ideas and arguments actually mattered, why bother reading or commenting?

But Palin’s rise to fame has jarred me a bit. In fact, it’s bringing out my cynical side and reminding me of March 2003.

Looking back, the really scary part of the Iraq War was not the war itself, but how quickly Americans accepted and embraced a top-down war. The public went from never thinking about Iraq in July 2002 to being whipped up in a frenzy by October 2002, with no triggering event like Pearl Harbor in between (yes, 9/11 was in the background, but it wasn’t a direct trigger for war).

It was a pure top-down war — a pure vanguard movement in the Leninist sense. The administration decided on war, and proceeded to sell the public on it largely on the basis of a savvy media campaign. The war was troubling enough, but the public’s willingness to be manipulated — Julius Caesar style — was borderline terrifying. If we could be persuaded to march off to Iraq in that manner, what else could we be persuaded to do if, say, terrorists attacked again?

Love her or hate her, Palin’s rapid ascent has some eerie parallels. And to be clear, these criticisms have nothing to do with Palin individually, or her views or ideology. She may be a dud, or she may be the next Abraham Lincoln. The point is that no one knows.

What’s troubling then is not so much her, but the way in which both the conservative base and apparently a decent chunk of swing voters have embraced her on the basis of essentially nothing but media images and prepared speeches. It’s surface politics gone wild.

Public Service Announcement

by hilzoy

It occurred to me today that voter registration deadlines are going to start coming up soon, and that that being the case, it might be a good idea for someone to post them. And since I am the change I've been waiting for, I thought: why not me? After all, some of my readers might inexplicably have failed to register to vote, and others might feel like going out and doing voter registration but not have gotten around to it yet. So, below the fold, I have posted the deadlines for all the states and DC. I put links to the actual calendars; do check them, since while I did try to be careful, I'd hate for some typo of mine to disenfranchise anyone.

The Obama and McCain campaigns can probably set you up to do voter registration. On the Obama site, if you don't want to do it in your area, click here, then click the state you're interested in, and you will be able to find its various campaign offices. (Useful for people like me, who live in safe states and within driving distance of swing states.)

[UPDATE: On closer inspection, it's only really easy to find your local office in some states. All have lots of info on events, etc., but not all have the useful 'Find your local office' button on the right, under 'Take Action'. The ones with the useful button seem to be swing states, as one would expect. END UPDATE.]

Naked David Broder Speaks

by hilzoy

Over at the Washington Monthly, Steve Benen notes a Washington Post fact-check that equates these claims:

(1) Joe Biden said that "In the Senate, John[McCain] has voted with President Bush 95 percent." In fact, he voted with Bush 95% of the time in 2007, but his average over the entire Bush presidency is 90%, which the WaPo says is "significantly lower".

(2) Sarah Palin's claim that she said "thanks but no thanks" to the Bridge to Nowhere. The WaPo describes her as "overstating her opposition" to the bridge.

Steve Benen asks: "Why lump them both together as "questionable claims"?"

As it happens, there is an answer to this question, which was revealed to publius in a vision several years ago. (This is one of my favorite of his old posts, so I can't resist giving it a shout-out.) The whole post is worth reading -- after all, it reveals secrets known only to initiates into the arcane mysteries of the Washington Post -- but here's a taste:

"As soon as I stood up, the stream started bubbling more intensely, forming a white foam on its surface. Up from the foam of the waves, a giant seashell emerged with David Broder on it - naked - with ivy wrapped around his head. (...)

"What is this place, naked David Broder?"

"This is the Washington Post editorial board room. Everything is in balance. All is in harmony with the universe."

But just then, the peaceful musical bliss was interrupted by a voice echoing across the sky. It said:

Bush’s Social Security plan is a bad one. . . bad one . . . (echoing)

Suddenly, I heard a terrible grinding of metal. It sounded like a car was being crushed and digested by a trash compactor. At first, I couldn't tell where the awful screeching and grinding was coming from, but then I saw. To my amazement, I looked up and saw a massive set of scales - the type of scales that statues of blinded women outside courthouses hold. And the set of scales was huge - probably the size of an urban skyscraper. When the voice in the sky spoke, the scales had started moving, causing the screeching sound. Then I heard another voice coming from somewhere close. It was equally loud:

The Democrats have no plan. They are equally to blame. (echoing)

With that, the scales stopped moving and returned to a state of balance. Long-haired women resumed their music. Children laughed again. All was calm in the Washington Post editorial board room.

"What was that, naked David Broder?"

"This is why I have brought you here - to reveal my wisdom and our burden. You see, we here in the Washington Post editorial room are the guardians of the Great Scales of Objectivity. They must remain balanced at all times. Equally balanced."

"Or what?"

"Or everyone's head will explode.""

Truly, it is an awesome burden that the editorial writers of the Washington Post have to bear. The unenlightened see them as hacks, but in fact they and they alone keep the cosmos in balance. Few among us could bear the weight of such a burden without crumbling. Read, and thank the gods that you have not been asked to share their fate.

Pwned!

by hilzoy

As Jay Bookman notes in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

"According to his spokesman, U.S. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, a Southerner born and bred, had no idea on earth that the word "uppity" had racial connotations when he used it to describe Barack and Michelle Obama.

No idea at all. Could have knocked him over with a feather when someone told him. Really, who knew?"

(See also here.)

From Bookman's comments section:

"This morning I called Westmoreland’s office:

Them: Good morning, Congressman Westmoreland’s office.

Me: Good morning, I would like to make a public comment.

Them: Yes, sir, what is your comment?

Me: I would like to compliment Congressman Westmoreland on his comments yesterday about Barack Obama. We need more people like him to call a spade a spade. You crackers in Georgia must be very proud.

Them: [long pause] Sir, there’s no need to be insulting.

Me: I’m sorry, but how did I insult you?

Them: There is no need to call me a cracker.

Me: I’ve never heard that term used in a derogatory sense. It is important to note that the dictionary definition of "cracker" is "a thin, crisp biscuit." That’s what we meant by cracker when we used it in the city where I grew up.

Them: Well, that’s not how you meant it.

Me: Oh, so what you’re saying is that you don’t like being called names. Now you know how it feels.

Them: [another long pause] Sir, I have to take another call."

Heh. Indeed. (h/t Jack and Jill Politics)

Oops! She Did It Again

by hilzoy

ABC's Political Punch reports on Sarah Palin's speech today:

"She said she "championed reform of earmark spending by Congress, and I told the Congress thanks but no thanks on that 'Bridge to Nowhere'", she said, ommiting (sic) mention that she'd campaigned for governor supporting the bridge."

I take it most readers of this blog will know that this is a flat-out lie.

When politicians lie -- and here I mean not just putting the best spin on things, but out and out lying -- they might as well walk up to each and every one of us and say: Hello! I have no respect for the value of your time! You might have other things to do -- work, playing with your kids, taking a long hike in the mountains, whatever -- but I don't care. I'm going to put you in a position where you're going to have to research everything I say, or else just give up on your civic duty. You don't get to assume that my words are, if not exactly true, at least somewhere in the general vicinity of the truth, and decide whether or not to vote for me. If you want to be an informed citizen, you'll have to become obsessive, like hilzoy.

They might as well add: I have no respect for democracy. In a democracy, citizens listen to what each side has to say and decide who to vote for. To work, it requires that what each side says bears some resemblance to the truth. If I cared about democracy, I'd respect those limits -- maybe stretching the truth every now and then, but generally maintaining some sort of relationship between what I say and reality. But guess what? I don't care about democracy! If winning requires that I make things up out of whole cloth and hope that I'm successful enough to frustrate the popular will, then that's what I'll do. Don't like it? Think democracy is a good system, one that we should cherish? That's just too bad.

But Palin has gone beyond this. She is not just telling lies; she's telling lies that have been exposed as lies, and that have gotten a lot of attention. Assuming she does not actually want to lose, she must assume that her audience either doesn't know that she's lying, or doesn't care. In either case, it's deeply cynical, and deeply insulting.

I just hope she isn't right.

More Of The Same

by hilzoy

From the WSJ:

"The biggest project that Sarah Palin undertook as mayor of this small town was an indoor sports complex, where locals played hockey, soccer, and basketball, especially during the long, dark Alaskan winters.

The only catch was that the city began building roads and installing utilities for the project before it had unchallenged title to the land. The misstep led to years of litigation and at least $1.3 million in extra costs for a small municipality with a small budget. What was to be Ms. Palin's legacy has turned into a financial mess that continues to plague Wasilla.

"It's too bad that the city of Wasilla didn't do their homework and secure the land before they began construction," said Kathy Wells, a longtime activist here. "She was not your ceremonial mayor; she was in charge of running the city. So it was her job to make sure things were done correctly." (...)

Last year, the arbitrator ordered the city to pay $836,378 for the 80-acre parcel, far more than the $126,000 Wasilla originally thought it would pay for a piece of land 65 acres larger. The arbitrator also determined that the city owed Mr. Lundgren [the owner] $336,000 in interest. Wasilla's legal bill since the eminent domain action has come to roughly $250,000 so far, according to Mr. Klinkner, the city attorney.

Mr. Lundgren has appealed the decision, arguing that the arbitrator should have awarded him more interest. "It has been 10 years; it's just insane," said Mr. Lundgren, who now lives in Panama. "All [Ms. Palin] had to do was close the transaction.""

From Politico:

"Palin, who portrays herself as a fiscal conservative, racked up nearly $20 million in long-term debt as mayor of the tiny town of Wasilla — that amounts to $3,000 per resident. She argues that the debt was needed to fund improvements."

"'

A lot of that was for the sports center. If the WSJ's figures are correct, the increased sales price, interest owed, and legal fees come to a cool $1.3 million in needless expenditure. And the lawsuits aren't over yet.

Coming on the heels of the most fiscally irresponsible administration in a generation, this doesn't sound like change we can believe in.

Oh, Please.

by hilzoy

Sen. James Inhofe sets a new record for disingenuousness:

"Regardless of what polls show, Inhofe said, voters will have to ask themselves a question once they get behind the curtain in the voting booth on Election Day.

"Do you really want to have a guy as commander in chief of this country when you can question whether or not he really loves his country?" he asked.

"That's the big question." (...)

After he was asked for an explanation on why voters should question Obama's love for his country, Inhofe issued a written statement on Friday to clarify his earlier comments.

"Let me be clear," he said.

"I am not questioning Sen. Obama's patriotism, but you have to question why at times he seems so obviously opposed to public displays of patriotism and national pride, like wearing an American flag lapel pin.""

Nope. Not questioning his patriotism at all. Just his love of country, which is, as we all know, completely and totally different from patriotism.

You'd think the voters of Oklahoma might get tired of having their Senator insult their intelligence. I hope so.

Weekend Thread

by publius

A couple of quick notes for your weekend enjoyment.

1 - Brien Jackson from Below the Fold was kind enough to contact me a while back about doing an email interview, which you can see here. It extends over several days, so some of my answers were from the convention itself.

2 - Last night, the local establishment I patronized had an old-old-old-school Journey arcade game (that you could play for free!). The premise is that Journey's musical instruments have all been stolen and scattered to various parts of outer space. Your job is to control the band members (who all have paper cut-out Journey heads, sort of like South Park) and get the instruments back. Naturally, I took pictures (more below the jump).

Comparisons

by hilzoy

I got this email from a friend of mine:

"One thing that struck me last night was the irony of a candidate who relentlessly positions himself as a selfless servant of the nation ("I wasn't my own man anymore. I was my country's."), and then allocates such a large share of his convention speech to talking about himself. I can understand the need for Sarah Palin to dedicate time in her speech to introduce herself to the nation, given that she was an unknown quantity on the political scene at that point (notwithstanding the frenzy of Google searches over the last seven days). But at 72, after a long career in Washington, after a widely-televised campaign, and at the end of a convention in which an entire day had been dedicated to answering the "Who is John McCain?" question, it seems a little unusual for McCain to use his most precious block of national TV airtime to essentially read aloud from his memoirs, saying comparatively little about the country or about his platform.

Here is an admittedly simplistic way of looking at it based on analysis of the full transcript of the speech found on his campaign website. There were a total of 271 sentences in the speech, not including the "thankyouthankyouthankyouallsomuchthankyou" before he started and the "joinmejoinmefightwithmejoinmefightwithme" bit in the final minute or so. Of those 271 sentences, a remarkable 147 (54%) were devoted to telling us about John McCain himself: his past accomplishments ("I fought crooked deals in the Pentagon"), his qualifications for the job ("I know how the world works"), his family and childhood ("When I was five years old, a car pulled up in front of our house..."), his time as a POW ("On an October morning, in the Gulf of Tonkin..."), his patriotism ("My country saved me"), and so on. Another 8 sentences focused on Sarah Palin. This leaves only 116 sentences (43% of the speech) to discuss the topics that one might otherwise expect to constitute the majority of the speech: the state of the nation, his policy positions, future promises, differences between his positions and Obama's, and so on.

The contrast with Obama's speech is pretty dramatic if you go back and review the transcript of both speeches. Obama dwells almost exclusively in the realm of the state of the country, the future, what America is all about, key components of the platform, etc -- only occasionally sprinkling in comments about himself and his family that help to provide context and credibility. Using a similar analysis of the 226 sentences in the speech, 35 are devoted to Obama himself and/or his family, or about 15% of the speech. More than a third of these came in a single section containing memories about his mother and grandparents ("These are my heroes.")"

I went back and did the same exercise. I called a couple of cases differently, but ended up with about 50% of McCain's sentences focussed on himself, but the same 43% on the state of the country, etc. I counted 14% of Obama's sentences as being about himself; as those included all sentences about his wife and Joe Biden, there was no need to count those separately. The remaining 86% was about the country, his plans, and so forth.

For the record, both my friend and I excluded any claims about McCain and Obama that were about what they were going to do, however vague (e.g., a sentence like McCain's "We’re going to change that" counts as a claim about the future, not a statement about McCain.) We counted only sentences that were about their present or past. The contrast was pretty striking, even more so when I read the speeches back to back.

A bit more after the fold.

Bailout

by hilzoy

From the NYT:

"Senior officials from the Bush administration and the Federal Reserve on Friday informed top executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage finance giants, that the government was preparing to seize the two companies and place them in a conservatorship, officials and company executives briefed on the discussions said.

The plan, effectively a government bailout, was outlined in separate meetings that the chief executives were summoned to attend on Friday at the office of the companies’ new regulator. The executives were told that, under the plan, they and their boards would be replaced, shareholders would be virtually wiped out, but the companies would be able to continue functioning with the government generally standing behind their debt, people briefed on the discussions said.

It is not possible to calculate the cost of any government bailout, but the huge potential liabilities of the companies could cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars and make any rescue among the largest in the nation’s history."

Yikes.

Voter Registration

by hilzoy

Scott at Edge of the American West decided to see whether he could track down information on changes in voter registration since the campaign got going in earnest. He has posted his information here. Democrats have gotten more new registrants in all states for which Scott could find data except for Alaska. In some cases, they have outregistered Republicans by considerable margins. Highlights (numbers are voters added between the first and second dates):

Colorado, Jan-July 2008: 13,352 Republicans, 66,516 Democrats, 23,437 other.

Florida, Jan.-June 2008: 77,196 Republicans, 209,422 Democrats, 26,100 other.

Iowa: Jan. - Aug. 2008: 7,515 Republicans, 69,301 Democrats, -62,922 other.

Nevada: Jan. - Aug. 2008: 1,230 Republicans, 51,547 Democrats, 7,550 other.

North Carolina: Jan. - Aug. 2008: 20,363 Republicans, 171,955 Democrats, 123,605 other.

Oregon: Jan. - July 2008: -13,349 Republicans, 122,518 Democrats.

Pennsylvania: April - Aug. 2008: 289 Republicans, 98,137 Democrats.

It occurred to me that the Florida numbers might reflect Gov. Crist's decision to reinstate felons' voting rights. He made that decision on April 3, so it fell within the period covered by the Florida numbers. However, there still seems to be a process for the restoration of felons' voting rights, and it is not clear to me how long that process would take, and thus how much the numbers here would reflect reinstated felons, as opposed to other newly registered voters. So I'm not sure about that.

In any case, some data to chew on.

Daily Show on Community Organizers

by publius

Probably the nastiest part of the entire Wednesday night 60 Minutes Hate was the attack on community organizers. As always, Jon Stewart had the best response -- the whole thing is worth watching, but that part begins at 7:20.

Angry

by hilzoy

A commenter at the Monthly noted that my last post was "surprisingly snarky" for me. I meant it, and I stand by it, but I take his point. There was something else, which I wasn't prepared to write about. Maybe I'm still not. But what the heck:

I was primed by watching the RNC's 9/11 tribute. It revolted me: both the idea of using 9/11 in this context, and the idea that it should be used by the party of George "All right. You've covered your ass, now" Bush. But then came McCain, saying:

" I hate war. It is terrible beyond imagination. I'm running for president to keep the country I love safe, and prevent other families from risking their loved ones in war as my family has."

I remembered this:

"Within hours [after 9/11], Mr. McCain, the Vietnam War hero and famed straight talker of the 2000 Republican primary, had taken on a new role: the leading advocate of taking the American retaliation against Al Qaeda far beyond Afghanistan. (...)

Within a month he made clear his priority. "Very obviously Iraq is the first country," he declared on CNN. By Jan. 2, Mr. McCain was on the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt in the Arabian Sea, yelling to a crowd of sailors and airmen: "Next up, Baghdad!""

That's a very peculiar way of hating war and preventing other families from risking their loved ones.

During the debate over the Iraq War Resolution, John McCain said this:

"We have a choice. The men and women who wear the uniform of our country, and who might lose their lives in service to our cause, do not. They will do their duty, as we see fit to define it for them.

We have a responsibility to these men and women to judge responsibly when our security is so threatened that we must call on them to uphold their oath to defend it. When we call them to serve, they will make us proud. We should strive to make them proud by showing deliberation, judgment, and statesmanship in the debate that will determine their mission."

He then proceeded to show none of these virtues, and to collude in making the worst foreign policy judgment in decades.

I am very, very angry about the Iraq war, and about the lives it has cost. When I hear someone who voted for that war talk about how very much he hates war, and how he will do everything he can to avoid it, it makes me angry. And when I hear that in the midst of a convention full of people who act as though they own love of country, concern for the troops, duty, honor, and service -- as though none of the rest of us has ever put the interests of others before our own, or loved our country, or lost friends in combat -- and acting this way in apparently complete disregard for their own disastrous record -- it makes me even angrier.

I didn't want to write about that. It's still pretty close to the bone. But I have never thought that I had a monopoly on honor and decency and love for my country. I wish more prominent Republicans would stop assuming that they do.

Paglian Chthonic Fecundity Subrational Frequencies

by publius

I don't entirely follow this post, but it appears that Will Wilkinson believes that Palin is more politically effective than Hillary Clinton (you know, 2 speeches versus 18 million votes) because Clinton isn't feminine.

He adds that these realities are unfortunate, but they're biological -- or cultural, I'm not entirely sure.

Watch What They Do, Not What They Say

by hilzoy

That was a rather listless speech by Senator McCain, though it picked up briefly at the end. I wanted to note a couple of things. First, McCain often distorted Obama's views. He said Obama would raise taxes, when (just to repeat myself) Obama will raise taxes only on people making over $250,000 a year. Still, in that case, you can imagine a way in which you might make what he said out to be true, if you squint a bit: Obama will raise some taxes. But there's no way to make this out to be anything but a lie::

"His plan will force small businesses to cut jobs, reduce wages, and force families into a government-run health care system where a bureaucrat stands between you and your doctor."

Here's a link to Obama's health plan. If anyone can find the part about forcing anyone into a government-run health care system, I'll eat my hat. (Remember the controversy from the primaries about mandates, and how Obama didn't have them?)

Second, about this, and all the talk about "The One":

"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."

It's worth noting that only one of the two major party candidates in this race who saw fit, in his acceptance speech, to focus our attention on his own character, to remind us that he has been his country's servant "first, last, and always", and to say things like: "I was never the same again. I wasn't my own man anymore. I was my country's." A servant, you might think, should not draw attention to himself, or insist on his own humility. And yet, oddly, it was the other candidate who focussed not on himself but on us, on the challenges facing our country, and on what he planned to do about them.

There is also only one candidate whose speech gave the impression that simply by arriving in a place he has actually inhabited for several decades and deploying the force of his character in its general direction, he will change "the way government does almost everything". The other one gave us not a just promise to stand up to special interests, or to show backbone and not back down, but specifics about what, exactly, he planned to do, while reminding us not just that our country was great, but why.

Finally, there was one candidate who saw fit to tell flat-out lies about his opponent's positions. That should be no surprise, since that same candidate has previously shown himself to be willing to lie about anything, and to impugn his opponent's patriotism. What's odd, though, is that the candidate who did that comes from the party that goes on about how politicians have contempt for ordinary people, people who are not elites. What, I wonder, is more contemptuous than lying to their face?

Luckily, though, most people probably slept through it, and didn't notice the insult to themselves and their intelligence.

***

UPDATE: Ezra nails one point I was trying to get at: "Such public declarations of patriotism are not about why John McCain loves this country. They are about why this country should love John McCain."

First Thoughts

by publius

Ok — a few tentative thoughts.

First, the good parts. On a personal level, I appreciated that he was respectful to Obama at the beginning. I think “bipartisan McCain” is a lot more personally appealing than what we’ve been seeing pretty much all year. Overall, the speech was respectful and it didn’t make me want to donate to Obama (unlike last night).

I also think the McCain camp was — finally — at least looking in the direction of long-term strategy. They’ve realized that they need to be the “change” candidate. Honestly, I don’t know why McCain hasn’t been running in this direction since the end of the primary. In this respect, he and Lieberman hit the most politically effective notes in that they were at least trying to persuade undecideds.

It kind of makes you wonder what McCain could have been this year had he declined to run a Rove/Schmidt polarization campaign. Hell, even I sort of liked the old McCain in 2000. And like with an old relationship, you can still feel some embers of affection from time to time. But things change — and it’s hard to find the 2000-style message credible when we’ve watched him morph into Rove and Atwater over the past two years. Too much dissonance — he’s simply come too far to get that image back.

That said, there were plenty of bad parts. The most obvious is that McCain isn’t very good in this format. He’s boring, awkward, and just can’t seem to get into a flow. The green screen didn’t help either.

But delivery aside, I wasn’t terribly impressed by the text. It seemed wandering and uninspired. As I write, I’m watching Gerson on MSNBC saying that — on a policy level — McCain was just recycling old GOP points. In fact, I think Gerson actually said McCain was “preaching to the converted.” There’s something to that — there wasn’t anything new or exciting thrown in tonight.

I suppose the big story here is that McCain (and the GOP convention) has been almost entirely biographical and substance free. I’m stealing this from a friend, but I think the Dems could counterpunch effectively by noting that the GOP offered virtually nothing to help working class people (other than tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts). The Dems really should never stop saying this until November.

Last point — I’m personally sick of the POW stuff, but I still found it kind of moving tonight in spite of myself. It’s basically irrelevant to the issues people care about, but still. It’s sometimes hard to hate this guy. But Palin and Rudy made it a little easier.

Speech Open Thread

by publius

Well?

A War that Must Be Won in the Name of Truth

by Eric Martin

Gregory Gause (a professor at the exceedingly awesome University of Vermont), has a guest post up at Marc Lynch's place that is, as they say, well worth the read.  Gause describes some of the recent actions undertaken by Prime Minister Maliki and suggests that they form part of a larger strategy to consolidate power, solidifying Maliki's role as some new military strong man (like Saddam, only Shiitier!).  In this respect, Gause's post provides some additional evidence to bolster an argument that I have been making for the better part of the past four months (most recently here and here). 

Marc Lynch penned a follow up piece in which he offers some mild criticisms of Gause's post (some valid, some perhaps a bit unfair).  On the unfair side of the ledger, Lynch claims that Gause focuses more on Maliki's intentions while neglecting to discuss Maliki's capacity to actually execute the plan.  But, contra Lynch's critique, Gause's piece is punctuated with the recurring question of whether or not Maliki is overreaching.  In other words, Gause remains more agnostic about Maliki's abilities than Lynch gives him credit for.

That being said, Lynch is right to note that:

[Gause] could go further in considering the American role in empowering Maliki's assertiveness, even when that goes against avowed U.S. preferences. [...]

What's hardly been discussed is whether it would serve U.S. interests if [Gause] turns out to be right.

True.  In my previous two posts on the subject, I tried to raise some of those issues.  First, I pointed out that one of the publicly stated rationales for the invasion of Iraq was the need to change the image of the United States as the patron of despotic regimes in the region.  While there is definitely truth to the notion that our continued support for anti-democratic, and often brutal, regimes has tarnished our image, and that al-Qaeda and other radicals draw inspiration from these policies (and utilze them via propaganda), there was a certain disconnect between that reality and the argument that we could remedy the situation by forcefully changing the regime of one of the few dictators that we didn't support.  Invading Egypt or Saudi Arabia made more sense if that was the concern.

The bridge that was supposed to broach this gap in logic was the revamped domino theory: that if we could turn Iraq into a model democracy, democratic change would spread throughout the region like some form of highly infectious contagion (with the resulting elected governments having friendly relations with the US and Israel, naturally).  Belief in this re-tread of the Vietnam era formulation was so prevalent that in 2005, after a few minor election-related rumblings, many war boosters were quick to proclaim the arrival of an "Arab Spring" of democratic upheaval.  Hindsight reveals this enthusiasm to be as premature as it was naive.

Which brings us back to whether US interests will be served by Maliki's emergence as an anti-democratic strongman who uses the military (and police forces) to violently crush dissent.  Certainly not if there is any legitimate hope that Iraq the Model could provide a catalyst for democratic reform in the region.  In addition, our active role in the process will set us back even further in terms of providing succor to al-Qaeda and other radicalizing agents.  My conclusion from a prior post stands:

Perhaps more troubling, though, is the additional propaganda boon given to al-Qaeda and other anti-American elements seeking to radicalize the region.  In short, the US will be portrayed (accurately in many respects) as assisting a Shiite-led, anti-democratic government in a bloody crackdown on Sunni factions - and other [non-Sunni] Iraqi factions that pose a threat to that government through the democratic process.  All for the promise of beneficial access to oil and permanent military bases. 

They will continue to hate us for our freedom.

The more cynical - or realistic depending on the level of jaundice in your eye - might argue that a relatively stable Iraq governed by a strongman who is on more-or-less friendly terms with the US (and open to some level of US troop presence and exploitation of the Iraqi oil industry) would be a decent outcome all things considered.  Besides, the cynics might argue, all that purple fingered democracy ballyhoo was more about marketing than actual, hard-nosed foreign policy objectives.

Perhaps that is so, but there will be real costs in terms of the radicalization of a new wave of terrorists.  To the extent that we take the "war on terror" seriously, our dubious role in Iraq should not be underestimated.  And someone should probably tell Sarah Palin that God doesn't root for such callousness.

The Terrapin Syndrome

by publius

In thinking about the semi-panicked reaction of many Dems this morning, I thought back to the Maryland basketball team. This analogy won’t work well for non-college basketball fans, but bear with me.

When I was in law school (circa 2003), the Maryland squad got beaten regularly by Duke. It wasn’t just that Duke beat them – Duke snatched victory from defeat in the most heartbreaking and crushing of ways. Maryland, for instance, was up 20 in the first half in the Final Four, but got beat. In another game, they got up 10 in the last minute and got beat in overtime in one of the craziest finishes I’ve ever seen.

It got to the point that Maryland had simply internalized defeat. It didn’t matter if the game was going well. It didn’t matter if they were up 20 with 2 minutes left. In the heart of every Terrapin fan, they saw a Duke comeback. Any foul, any travel – these were not merely routine events, but terrifying omens of the inevitable defeat to come.

I think that, in the wake of 2000 and 2004, the Democrats have developed a bit of the Terrapin Syndrome. In the nightmarish recesses of their minds, Palin’s speech is a foreshadowing of yet another defeat. I understand these fears, but I think everyone should calm down.

Specifically, everyone needs to take an Obama/Axelrod long-term Zen view of these things. The greatest strategic error of the McCain campaign has been its decision to run a “rally the base” 2004-style campaign. That works well in a 49/49 race like 2004. But McCain has been polling in the low 40s pretty much forever. That, coupled with fundamentals, means that McCain has to expand the pie or he will lose. That’s why Schmidt’s obsessive focus on the daily tactical news cycles is misplaced – McCain needed to reclaim the middle ground, but he hasn’t really even tried.

Palin is just another example of the same ol’ problem. News cycle won – check. Palin bounce? – quite probable. But even if it comes, it’s likely to be fleeting. That’s because Palin’s speech was designed to win over the already-persuaded. It was a rally the base speech. And it seems to have been quite effective in achieving that objective.

But – here’s the key – the objective is flawed. To win, McCain needs to expand the pie – the Dems win a “base versus base” election (at least this year they do). It’s hard to see how Palin’s speech convinced a single undecided voter given its nastiness, inaccuracies, and lack of substance.

The next reason to calm down has been provided by Nate Silver. You should just go read the whole thing, but the nickel version is that Palin hasn’t established the credibility to drastically change people’s minds about Obama yet. He writes:

[B]ut the fact remains that Barack Obama is extremely well known and Palin is largely unknown, and when that is the case, your perception of the known commodity is more likely to influence your perception of the unknown commodity than the other way around. If there's a certain Italian restaurant that you've been going to for years, and some stranger stops you on the street and tells you that they don't know how to cook their pasta, you're going to think that the stranger is a kook -- not that the restaurant is poor.

And not only is Barack Obama exceptionally well known, but perceptions of him are exceptionally well entrenched.

So relax people – even Maryland finally got their NCAA championship.

Factchecking Palin

by hilzoy

I thought Palin's speech was quite good: well-written, well delivered. And, as I said earlier, I think she's a genuinely engaging person, and comes across very well. There were just a couple of problems. One, which I have seen people notice, but which I suspect won't be a big deal for a lot of voters, is that it had very little substance. The other, which the commenters I saw on TV for some reason neglected to mention, was that she told a lot of lies. A few that stood out for me, or that I spotted in my quick run-through of some blogs:

Palin: "To the families of special-needs children all across this country, I have a message: For years, you sought to make America a more welcoming place for your sons and daughters. I pledge to you that if we are elected, you will have a friend and advocate in the White House."

Sarah Palin might have changed her mind on this one recently. However, a comment here notes that Palin actually slashed funding for schools for special needs kids by 62%. Budgets: FY 2007 (pre-Palin), 2008, 2009 (all pdfs). UPDATE: This is wrong. As you can see if you look at the list of component budgets here (2007) and here (2009), funding for the Alaska Challenge Youth Academy was broken out into its own budget category, which accounts for the drop in funding for the original item. I regret the error. END UPDATE.

Palin: "As for my running mate, you can be certain that wherever he goes, and whoever is listening, John McCain is the same man."

Steve Benen's list of McCain flip-flops is here. See for yourself whether constancy is, in fact, John McCain's middle name.

Palin: "I told the Congress "thanks, but no thanks," for that Bridge to Nowhere. If our state wanted a bridge, we'd build it ourselves."

Just to reiterate what others have said: Congress' requirement that funds be spent on that bridge (aka the 'earmark') were removed before Sarah Palin became governor. She was therefore in no position to tell Congress anything about the bridge, one way or the other. During her campaign, she said she supported funding for the bridge. Brad Plumer, citing the Anchorage Dialy News via Nexis:

"5. Would you continue state funding for the proposed Knik Arm and Gravina Island bridges?

Yes. I would like to see Alaska's infrastructure projects built sooner rather than later. The window is now--while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist."

Later, she accepted the money -- now not restricted by an earmark -- and used it for other infrastructure projects. Here's her statement about why she wasn't building the bridge (also via Plumer.) Decide for yourselves what role a principled opposition to earmark funding plays in it. Hint: here's what residents of Ketchikan AK said when they heard her recent remarks:

"In the city Ketchikan, the planned site of the so-called "Bridge to Nowhere," political leaders of both parties said the claim was false and a betrayal of their community, because she had supported the bridge and the earmark for it secured by Alaska's Congressional delegation during her run for governor. (...)

"People are learning that she pandered to us by saying, I'm for this' ... and then when she found it was politically advantageous for her nationally, abruptly she starts using the very term that she said was insulting," Weinstein said."

Palin: "But listening to him speak, it's easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform - not even in the state senate."

Ha, ha, ha. I gave a rundown of Obama's accomplishments in the Senate here. They include the Lugar-Obama bill on nonproliferation, and an ethics reform package that the Washington Post called "the strongest ethics legislation to emerge from Congress yet." Ruth Marcus summarizes his record on reform:

"He helped pass a far-reaching ethics and campaign finance bill in the Illinois state Senate and made the issue a priority on arriving in Washington. Much to the displeasure of his colleagues, Obama promoted an outside commission to handle Senate ethics complaints. He co-authored the lobbying reform bill awaiting President Bush's signature and pushed -- again to the dismay of some colleagues -- to include a provision requiring lawmakers to report the names of their lobbyist-bundlers. He has co-sponsored bills to overhaul the presidential public financing system and public financing of Senate campaigns."

Not a single major law or reform, indeed.

And I wasn't aware that writing memoirs was something to be ashamed of. Obama has, in fact, written only one. McCain (with Mark Salter) has written at least two.

Palin: "America needs more energy ... our opponent is against producing it."

No -- he plans to develop a lot more energy than John McCain does. It's just that a lot of it is renewable, not carbon-based. Moreover, Obama hasn't skipped the last eight votes on renewable energy.

Palin: "The Democratic nominee for president supports plans to raise income taxes ... raise payroll taxes ... raise investment income taxes ... raise the death tax ... raise business taxes ... and increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of dollars. My sister Heather and her husband have just built a service station that's now opened for business - like millions of others who run small businesses. How are they going to be any better off if taxes go up?"

Well, it all depends whose taxes go up, doesn't it? If Heather and her husband make less than $250,000, their taxes will not go up. Most Americans will pay less in taxes under Obama's plan than under McCain's. So they might well be better off.

Those are just the falsehoods that leapt to mind. I'm sure there are others.

Whether or not Sarah Palin's engaging personality matters more than the fact that she tells lies depends a lot on the media, and whether they allow her to say that she opposed the Bridge to Nowhere, or that Obama has never authored a major law or reform, without calling her on it. I hope they do. But I'm not holding my breath.

***

UPDATE: Mark Kleiman posts an Obama campaign rebuttal, which is more thorough than I was.

Quick Thoughts

by publius

I’m not going to say a lot tonight — honestly, I’m not sure what I think yet. But here are some very quick thoughts, with more to come tomorrow.

First, I think Josh Marshall gets it exactly right — they’ve opted for a pure base rallying strategy. The main speeches were, for whatever other merits they had, extremely nasty and extremely “substance free.” I don’t really see how the GOP in 2008 (vs. 2004) can win purely by energizing their dwindling base. They’re going to have to win people disaffected with the GOP and people who are struggling economically — I honestly didn’t see anything tonight that would appeal to these people. It was all character, family, and attacking Obama — no real issues.

Second, I think the press reaction was over-the-top gushing. The McCain camp successfully got in the media’s head — they all but declared it the best speech in the history of the world. And I think they were doing it as penance. Refs successfully worked over tonight.

As for Palin’s speech itself, I need to noodle it a bit more. I wasn’t all that impressed, but many others whose opinions I respect thought it was very good. So I want to think more about that. One lingering issue will be whether the press pushes back on many of the quite blatant falsehoods (e.g., Bridge) — in fact, I think Hilzoy may be bringing the thunder on that soon.

UPDATE: Ezra's take seems spot on, especially this:

In that sense, the speech was slave to the same priorities that governed her selection as vice president: It was aimed at wining the news cycle, not the campaign. . . . The presidency was presented tonight as if it were the Medal of Honor, or a purple heart. As if it is only a quirk of our political process that stops us from simply finding the longest serving prisoner of war and gifting him the keys to the office. On a rhetorical level, it was effective, if only because McCain's story is so powerful. But it is not, fundamentally, a sustainable approach to this campaign. If McCain is more appealing for what he did than what he will do, he will lose the election.

Guest Post: Just A Hunch

A guest post by our regular commenter dr ngo.

***

JUST A HUNCH

by Dr Ngo

I have been unwell recently (nothing serious, just debilitating and distracting), and have not followed recent political events nearly as assiduously as many others have. But between sleeping and waking and dozing and dreaming, an insight struck me, inspired by the comments of that consummate political hack David Brooks.

He suggested – or so I recollect, and that is all that matters here - that McCain's selection of Palin reflected a mutuality of spirit and temperament, with each of them inhabiting an essentially moral [sic] universe, and to the devil with the details. This, he thought, was Just The Thing when it came to foreign policy, and the evil that is Putin (or Islamofascism, or any other Evil Du Jour). OTOH, it might be a handicap when it came to the plodding competence required to piece together a health plan or economic policy, where the Democrats might have the upper hand. On balance, he was concerned about the balance of the ticket.

Many observers, not least on ObWi, have remarked that McCain is a gambler, a “hunch player,” and that the naming of the unvetted Palin is just the latest and most conspicuous example of this flaw. It bespeaks (we say) a lack of judgment, the very quality McCain is supposed to exhibit supremely over the untested Obama.

But in the context of American politics, I fear, this analysis is wrong.

Huck Fever

by publius

Mike Huckabee is delivering a fantastic speech. I don't really understand why McCain didn't give him more serious consideration if he wanted to win over social conservatives. It's not merely that he's a good speaker -- he has a compelling populism weaved into it.

He was also re-elected as governor and could have made a more plausible claim on the executive experience front.

Open Thread: RNC Convention

by hilzoy

(From The Wonk Room. See also here.)

Tell Us What You Really Think...

by hilzoy

Via TPM, what Peggy Noonan, Mike Murphy, and Chuck Todd say about the Sarah Palin pick when they think the mic is off:

Transcript:

"Mike Murphy: You know, because I come out of the blue swing state governor world: Engler, Whitman, Tommy Thompson, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush. I mean, these guys -- this is how you win a Texas race, just run it up. And it's not gonna work. And --

PN: It's over.

MM: Still McCain can give a version of the Lieberman speech to do himself some good.

CT: I also think the Palin pick is insulting to Kay Bailey Hutchinson, too.

PN: Saw Kay this morning.

CT: Yeah, she's never looked comfortable about this --

MM: They're all bummed out.

CT: Yeah, I mean is she really the most qualified woman they could have turned to?

PN: The most qualified? No! I think they went for this -- excuse me-- political bullshit about narratives --

CT: Yeah they went to a narrative.

MM: I totally agree.

PN: Every time the Republicans do that, because that's not where they live and it's not what they're good at, they blow it.

MM: You know what's really the worst thing about it? The greatness of McCain is no cynicism, and this is cynical.

CT: This is cynical, and as you called it, gimmicky.

MM: Yeah."

The Next Rounds

by publius

This is nothing other than a gut feeling, but I suspect Palin may have survived the early-round knockout that seemed possible just a day or two ago. The AIP story has not checked out. Also, I get the distinct sense in watching the coverage last night that the McCain campaign has successfully pushed back and made the press feel a bit guilty for “piling on.”

Plus, the expectations are so low tonight that she’ll almost certainly meet them. Following her speech, the press will probably offer gushing praise — in part because of low expectations, in part as penance for its (appropriately) critical coverage.

Of course, all this could change if a NEW problems breaks out, but I get the sense she’s weathered the first storm. That said, I still think it’s very likely that new stories or especially new embarrassing gaffes will come out in the weeks ahead if she’s ever released to the media. So she’s still a risky pick for McCain.

But going forward, the focus needs to be both on McCain’s rushed judgment and her rather extreme ideology. For instance, maybe someone should ask McCain what he thinks of her position that, if a woman gets raped, she must be forced by the state to give birth. Also, I’d love to hear about her attempts to ban books -- which ones in particular? There's a pretty high correlation between a leader's scariness and the intensity of their efforts to ban books.

I’d be happy for all this to turn out to be a Von Hoffman, but I think Palin needs to be incorporated into a longer-term political criticism. There may not be a short-term knockout, so Dems should prepare as if they’re trying to win by decision.

Osmosis

by hilzoy

Every so often, I run across an argument so manifestly absurd that I think: wow, this isn't just spin and deception, this is performance art. Today I found just such an argument, made by Frank Gaffney:

"Speaking of geography, Alaskan territory is also along the trajectory of ballistic missiles launched eastward out of Stalinist North Korea. For that reason, among others, Alaska's Fort Greely was selected as the site for the principal U.S. ground-based defense against such missiles. As that state's governor, Sarah Palin would know more by osmosis – if nothing else – about the necessity for U.S. anti-missile systems than either Messrs. Obama or Biden."

Sarah Palin learned foreign policy by osmosis? Really? I always relied on catalysis, myself: I just drop some zeolytes into my brain, and lo! instant expertise. I had no idea it was possible to do it by osmosis, though on reflection that would explain the large number of grizzly bears who are up to speed on Sino-Soviet relations.

Osmosis is an even lamer argument than the claim that Palin learned foreign policy by commanding the Alaskan national guard. As it happens, that's also false (h/t):

"Maj. Gen. Craig Campbell, adjutant general of the Alaska National Guard, considers Palin "extremely responsive and smart" and says she is in charge when it comes to in-state services, such as emergencies and natural disasters where the National Guard is the first responder.

But, in an interview with The Associated Press on Sunday, he said he and Palin play no role in national defense activities, even when they involve the Alaska National Guard. The entire operation is under federal control, and the governor is not briefed on situations."

Still, even though she has visited two foreign countries, and refueled in a third, as she said, "I've been so focused on state government, I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq." That makes it all the more fortunate that she can learn foreign policy by osmosis. All the McCain campaign really has to do is send her up in a zeppelin and let it meander lazily around the globe, allowing her to absorb the ambient expertise.

Palin And The AIP: Update

by hilzoy

While I was out this afternoon, the McCain campaign released records showing that Sarah Palin was not registered as a member of the Alaska Independence Party, though TPM Muckraker found that her husband was. Now the main source for the story that Sarah Palin was a party member is backing off his earlier claims:

"Dexter Clark, husband of Lynette and a vice chairman of the Alaska Independence Party, said that when his wife told reporters that Palin had been an AIP member she was "acting on information from Mark Chryson," the party's regional chair for Wasilla, Palin's hometown. The 1994 convention was held in Wasilla, where Palin was a city councilmember at the time. Chryson "has repeatedly said to me personally and my wife, Lynette, and groups of party members at large, that at that 1994 convention, Sarah and Todd Palin attended and registered as members," Dexter Clark told Mother Jones.

Asked how Palin could have been a member, when state records did not indicate Palin ever registered as an AIP member, Chyrson, in an interview with Mother Jones, backed off his account. "What could have been the confusion—her husband was a member of the party. He was at the convention. She could have been considered—it might have been thought she was a member then." Talking Points Memo has reported that Todd Palin was a member of the AIP from 1995 to 2002, with the exception of a short period in 2000 when he was undeclared.

Chyrson said he did not remember seeing Sarah Palin at the 1994 convention: "I don't, no. I was working behind the scenes. Back then I was only vaguely familiar with her. I would not have recognized her. I had just met her. I probably would not have recognized her." He added that Sarah Palin did not play "an active role in the party" or to speak out for its causes.

Not being registered as an AIP member did not keep some Alaskans from being supporters of the party and its aims. Jack Coghill, the lieutenant governor of Alaska from 1990 to 1994 and a candidate for governor in 1994 on the AIP ticket, told Mother Jones that being friendly with the AIP and a registered Republican was "common" in the 1990s. Might Palin had had a similar relationship with the party? Given her husband's long-time membership in the group, Palin was likely aware of the group's tenets. And in 2008, as governor, she submitted a welcoming video to the AIP convention in Fairbanks. "Your party plays an important role in our state's politics," she said. "I've always said that competition is so good, and that applies to political parties as well… We have a great promise: to be a self-sufficient state." She closed by saying, "Good luck on a successful and inspiring convention. Keep up the good work, and God bless you.""

Since I wrote earlier that she was a member, I wanted to set the record straight.

Why It Matters

by publius

As Hilzoy correctly pointed out, the real significance of McCain's Russian Roulette blind VP nomination is that it reflects upon his judgment and illustrates that he will govern on the fly. Yglesias adds another crucial point, and I'll just quote him:

Looking at the Sarah Palin debacle, one is reminded that one of the principal powers of the presidency is the power to appoint people — federal judges, ambassadors, cabinet secretaries, subcabinet officials, FEC members, the Amtrak board, all kinds of things. Presidents don’t always put the best people in these positions, but normally they give the matter some thought. Even an unqualified crony gets his job because somebody knew him. Is McCain going to just pick people at random in order to “shake things up?” Not bother to do any vetting in order to preserve the element of surprise?

I'd add that the selection is deeply troubling even if the selection turns out ok. The President shouldn't play dice with the universe.

John Didn't Get What He Wanted

by hilzoy

From the NYT:

"A Republican with ties to the campaign said the team assigned to vet Ms. Palin in Alaska had not arrived there until Thursday, a day before Mr. McCain stunned the political world with his vice-presidential choice. The campaign was still calling Republican operatives as late as Sunday night asking them to go to Alaska to deal with the unexpected candidacy of Ms. Palin. (...)

In Alaska, several state leaders and local officials said they knew of no efforts by the McCain campaign to find out more information about Ms. Palin before the announcement of her selection, Although campaigns are typically discreet when they make inquiries into potential running mates, officials in Alaska said Monday they thought it was peculiar that no one in the state had the slightest hint that Ms. Palin might be under consideration.

“They didn’t speak to anyone in the Legislature, they didn’t speak to anyone in the business community,” said Lyda Green, the State Senate president, who lives in Wasilla, where Ms. Palin served as mayor.

Representative Gail Phillips, a Republican and former speaker of the State House, said the widespread surprise in Alaska when Ms. Palin was named to the ticket made her wonder how intensively the McCain campaign had vetted her.

“I started calling around and asking, and I have not been able to find one person that was called,” Ms. Phillips said. “I called 30 to 40 people, political leaders, business leaders, community leaders. Not one of them had heard. Alaska is a very small community, we know people all over, but I haven’t found anybody who was asked anything.”

The current mayor of Wasilla, Dianne M. Keller, said she had not heard of any efforts to look into Ms. Palin’s background. And Randy Ruedrich, the state Republican Party chairman, said he knew nothing of any vetting that had been conducted.

State Senator Hollis French, a Democrat who is directing the ethics investigation, said that no one asked him about the allegations. “I heard not a word, not a single contact,” he said."

As far as I'm concerned, the story about Sarah Palin is what John McCain's decision to make her his running mate says about his judgment. And what this tells us is stunning. It is basic, basic politics that before you ask someone to become your running mate, you vet them thoroughly. You want to know what you're getting into, and you don't want any unfortunate surprises. Apparently, McCain didn't bother to do this. That's astonishing. It's like starting surgery before you do an initial medical workup and diagnosis, or handing all your money over to a financial advisor before you find out whether she's legitimate. In this particular case, there are two huge problems with what McCain did.

The first is the most obvious: in choosing a Vice Presidential nominee, McCain is choosing someone who might well end up taking over as President. This would be true for anyone, but it's especially true in McCain's case, since he is a 72 year old cancer survivor. Anyone who "puts country first", as McCain is fond of telling us he does, would have taken care to ensure that that person was up to the job, and had no unpleasant secrets like, oh, past membership in a fringe secessionist organization. Not bothering to do the most basic due diligence before naming her as his running mate is staggeringly irresponsible.

The second is that McCain was willing to take a huge gamble not just with our country, but with his own political interests. As I said earlier, gambling with the country is worse, but gambling with your own interests is a different kind of bad judgment, and worth noting in its own right. If you are selfish enough to put your own interests above the interests of your country, that's awful. But it doesn't move you into the realm of the wholly unpredictable, the people from whom you truly never know what to expect. (It's like being one of those dictators who are nonetheless rational enough that things like deterrence can work with them: you are bad, but bad in a way that makes it possible to anticipate what you might do next.)

Being willing to take a huge and reckless gamble with your own interests is not like that. It's not cool and collected selfishness that leaves room for some hope that if your interests and the interests of your country align, you might end up doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. It's sheer impulsive stupidity: an unwillingness to think, in even the most basic ways, before you act. That's a terrible trait in a President.

Consider what one of McCain's advisors said about how he made this decision: "This was really kind of rushed at the end, because John didn’t get what he wanted. He wanted to do Joe or Ridge."

John didn't get what he wanted. Right. He could have waited to make his decision until after Palin had been thoroughly vetted. That, however, would have meant giving up his clever idea of announcing his VP pick the day after Obama's convention speech. Alternately, he could have gone with one of the people who had been thoroughly vetted: Pawlenty, for instance. But "neither was the transformative, attention-grabbing choice Mr. McCain felt he needed, top campaign advisers said". So he decided to gamble it all on someone he barely knew and had not vetted.

Was it pique at not being able to nominate the people he really wanted? A desire to be the "attention-grabbing" maverick again, or a Norma Desmond-like urge to show the young whippersnapper who has the gall to say that he's the agent of change how it's done? Pushing back against the discipline of a campaign? Or just plain unadulterated idiocy? I have no idea, though I suspect it's all of the above. What I do know, though, is that I don't want someone who makes decisions like this to be my President.

Curiouser And Curiouser

by hilzoy

Ben Smith in Politico:

"I can't remember the last introduction to the national scene this rocky, and it gets worse every hour — and even before the investigative reporters have settled in to Anchorage.

Just got off the flight to St. Paul to find, in my inbox: a second source confirming her past membership in a secession-minded fringe group, her lawyering up in an inquiry the AP slugged "Troopergate," and — insult to injury — another woman claiming she was actually Miss Congeniality in the Miss Wasilla '84 contest.

The name on the tongues of gleeful Dems, meanwhile: Eagleton."

TPM Election Central adds a few more bits like the fact that Palin "relied on an earmark system she now opposes", as well as supporting the Bridge to Nowhere before the funding was cut. Which, of course, means that when she said "I told Congress, 'Thanks, but no thanks,' on that bridge to nowhere," she wasn't exactly telling the truth.

And besides all that, she was a Director of Ted Stevens' 527 corporation, and hired his former chief of staff as a lobbyist for Wasilla. (Question: why does such a small town need a lobbyist? "Of 149 incorporated places in Alaska, just six of them had paid registered lobbyists in 2002, including Wasilla, lobbying records show.")

Of these stories, Palin's past membership in the Alaskan Independence Party seems the most damaging to me. The Party's Introduction page has this quote from its founder:

"I'm an Alaskan, not an American. I've got no use for America or her damned institutions."

Its goal has its own separate page:

"The Alaskan Independence Party's goal is the vote we were entitled to in 1958, one choice from among the following four alternatives:

1) Remain a Territory.
2) Become a separate and Independent Nation.
3) Accept Commonwealth status.
4) Become a State.

The call for this vote is in furtherance of the dream of the Alaskan Independence Party's founding father, Joe Vogler, that Alaskans achieve independence under a minimal government, fully responsive to the people, and promoting a peaceful and lawful means of resolving differences."

Here's its platform, and here are its statements on issues. Among its positions are the reclamation of all federal land through homesteading, the abolition of all property taxes, the prohibition of all bureaucratic regulations not expressly passed by the legislature, "the right of jurors to judge the law as well as the facts," and a host of other things. But their main goal is the vote on independence mentioned above, which should be "a true plebecite according to international law, only legal Alaskan citizens, it is in the language of the people, federal military and their dependants are not legal citizens and will not be allowed to vote in this plebescite." (So much for the right of military personnel to register to vote where they live, like the rest of us. Although since they don't spell out who counts as a "legal Alaskan citizen", maybe the rest of us wouldn't have the right to vote in the plebiscite either.)

On the Party's website, there's an article by Joe Vogler explaining what he thinks was wrong with the original vote by which Alaskans chose statehood. I got about halfway through it and became unable to read carefully (it's long, and not well-written.) If anyone makes it through, please feel free to correct the provisional opinion that follows. That said: as far as I can tell, this is one of those articles that voluble cranks write when they encounter something that sets them off. Documents are adduced, footnotes proliferate, there is every appearance of monstrous erudition, and yet the whole thing makes no sense. Reading it reminded me of the time I was at a survivalist convention (don't even ask), and someone tried to explain to me, in excruciating detail, why the entire income tax was illegitimate.

This is a nutty organization. It is, moreover, an organization whose founder took his views, and the Party's, to imply that he was not an American.

The McCain campaign has been more than willing to question Obama's patriotism on the basis of nothing at all. Yet when asked about Sarah Palin's past membership in a secessionist party, "a McCain spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment."

T's Uncrossed, I's Undotted

by publius

Even assuming the Palin post-selection vetting turns out ok, it’s still looking more like a disaster. It just completely undermines McCain’s strongest argument, which is that Obama lacks the experience necessary to lead.

The contradiction is starting to bear some poisonous fruit. Check out (via TPM) this Campbell Brown interview of Tucker Bounds, a McCain spokesperson. What’s particularly noteworthy is that Brown is basically laughing at him — taunting him. The press seems to think this is a joke, and the coverage will start reflecting that.

On another note, tomorrow’s NYT piece confirms both that the McCain team did only a cursory vetting prior to picking her, and that Dan Balz got Rick-rolled (Rick Davis, that is). The thing about playing Russian Roulette though is that it’s a stupid thing to do even if it turns out ok. It’s just unbelievable how cavalierly they decided to put her as the #2.

In Alaska, several state leaders and local officials said they knew of no efforts by the McCain campaign to find out more information about Ms. Palin before the announcement of her selection, Although campaigns are typically discreet when they make inquiries into potential running mates, officials in Alaska said Monday they thought it was peculiar that no one in the state had the slightest hint that Ms. Palin might be under consideration.

I know I'm not objective, but this . . . is . . . INSANE. It's frankly hard to believe.

But of course the more substantive problem is that this type of “act first, think later” impulsive recklessness is all too common with John McCain (see also Russia/Georgia, immediate aftermath of 9/11). And it’s a striking contrast to Obama’s grueling in