Obsidian Wings

Gustav

by hilzoy

Hurricane Gustav is projected to make landfall tomorrow morning. Our thoughts are with the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.

There's good information on the weather at Jeff Masters' blog and Weather Nerd; and on New Orleans at NOLA.com's Hurricane blog and Best of New Orleans. The latter reports that things are pretty bad on I-59. Otherwise, the evacuation seems to have gone well, and nearly two million people from New Orleans alone are out of harm's way.

Stay safe, and take care.

Borderline

by hilzoy

This is amazing:

"On Saturday, a Democrat tasked with opposition research contacted the Huffington Post with this piece of information: as of this weekend, the McCain campaign had not gone through old newspaper articles from the Valley Frontiersman, Palin's hometown newspaper.

How does he know? The paper's (massive) archives are not online. And when he went to research past content, he was told he was the first to inquire.

"No one else had requested access before," said the source. "It's unbelievable. We were the only people to do that, which means the McCain camp didn't." (...)

It has been previously reported that the McCain campaign did not contact Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan, who Palin pushed to have fired after he refused to remove her sister's former husband from the state's police force. That controversy, an investigation of which will be made public in late October, could cause major headaches for Palin in the days leading up to the election.

In addition, the former Republican House Speaker of Alaska, Gail Phillips, admitted to reporters that she was shocked by McCain's choice of Palin, as "his advance team didn't come to Alaska to check her out.""

The more I learn about this choice, the more it reminds me of Bush's choice of Harriet Miers. I don't think it's at all similar in its political ramifications -- Miers' nomination was seen as a betrayal by social conservatives, the very people who are thrilled by Sarah Palin. But it is similar in the manner in which each was chosen. In each case, the person who made the choice had wanted to pick someone else, someone he regarded as a close friend., In each case, he was told that he couldn't choose that person because it would be politically disastrous. In each case, the person who made the choice responded not by sitting down and thinking about who might fill the role s/he was to be nominated for with distinction, but by making a quick and ill-considered choice of a plainly unqualified person, a choice that seemed like an insult to the office that person was nominated to fill.

Moreover, in each case that choice reflected the fact that the person making it was chafing at the discipline required of him. As far as I can tell, Bush reacts very badly to the idea that his powers as President are limited in any way, or that he owes anything whatsoever to his party or his allies. McCain is similarly undisciplined: he has been willing to do what his party requires of him, up to and including sacrificing his honor and his principles, but he visibly bridles at it, and he seems to be thrilled at the chance to be a maverick again. If that requires picking a vice presidential nominee who is wholly unprepared to take over as President, without doing anything like the vetting a Presidential campaign would normally require, then so be it.

Discipline is not McCain's long suit, and he loves to gamble:

""Enjoying craps opens up a window on a central thread constant in John's life," says John Weaver, McCain's former chief strategist, who followed him to many a casino. "Taking a chance, playing against the odds." Aides say McCain tends to play for a few thousand dollars at a time and avoids taking markers, or loans, from the casinos, which he has helped regulate in Congress. (...)

"He clearly knows that this is on the borderline of what is acceptable for him to be doing," says a Republican who has watched McCain play. "And he just sort of revels in it.""

Picking Palin without doing a thorough background check first is of a piece with this: chafing at discipline, playing the odds, liking to bend the rules and get away with it, wanting to be a bad boy. These are not character traits I'd like to see in a President.

***

UPDATE: A commenter at Political Animal (where I crossposted this) notes that the Frontiersman archives are online. I checked by running this search, which is on "Sarah Palin", starting in 1980, ordered by date with the oldest articles first. It lists no articles before 1998, even though Sarah Palin was elected to the City Council in 1992, and became Mayor of Wasilla in 1996.

The archive page says that not "the archives are not a complete reference to all items published in our newspaper but only reflect those items that have been posted on our website." My search turned up one article from 1998, and three each from 1999 and 2000; the pace doesn't really pick up until Sept. 2001. Since Palin was Mayor throughout those years, I assume that there are articles from 1998-2001 that didn't make the archive.

In short: if I were vetting Palin, I would definitely want to see the physical archives, not just the online version.

More on "Executive" Experience

by publius

I want to elaborate a bit on Hilzoy's arguments below. One of the more frustrating arguments I’ve been hearing is that Palin has more experience than Obama — in particular, more “executive” experience. I’m sorry, but that argument is absurd — though it’s not immediately obvious why. After all, she was a mayor and governor, while Obama wasn’t. The problem then is with the whole idea of comparing Palin and Obama’s relative experience under these particular conceptual categories — e.g., “executive” vs. “legislative.” Those categories just aren’t very meaningful here.

In this debate, people have been focusing on the “type” of experience rather than on the nature of their relative experiences. In simpler terms, what matters is not so much the arbitrary label, but the size, scope, and stress of their relative experience.

For instance, let’s say Apple is deciding whether to hire me or Bill Clinton to be its CEO. And let’s say I was a manager at a Burger King, while Clinton never worked in business. In this respect, I have more “business experience” than Bill Clinton — in a world where arbitrary labels rule, I win. But I’m clearly less capable of running a major transnational corporation than he is. That’s because the nature of Clinton’s experience makes him a better fit — he’s led an executive branch and two presidential elections under extreme scrutiny and has become knowledgeable of, well, everything.

That’s sort of what’s going on with Palin and Obama. Yes, if you elevate the arbitrary category of “executive” above all else, then she has more experience. But if you look at the nature of that experience, this argument falls apart.

Palin was mayor of a town that has a fraction of the people present at an NFL game. She was also governor of a thinly-populated state — following an anti-incumbent reaction against corruption — that doesn’t have to struggle as much with limited budget revenues because of the state’s natural resources. She’s never been in the national spotlight, never operated under extreme stress, and just hasn’t had the type of responsibilities that even a governor of say Florida or California would have had.

Obama, by contrast, has had a much tougher time. He became a state legislator by navigating the local politics of a major urban center. He’s been a Senator. And most importantly, he’s been under unrelenting scrutiny for years — managing a presidential campaign masterfully and knocking off a Democratic President’s financial and political machine.

He’s also had to master the national spotlight, and respond to a million different type of questions. He’s also developed extensive policy positions and has defended them in debates and to the public for years. And he’s never lost his cool, showing calm judgment coupled with far-sighted strategic planning (e.g., early organizing, hesitancy to chase the news cycle).

In short, Palin’s “experience” trumps Obama’s only by elevating arbitrary categories over underlying factual realities. Now, it might be different if she had governed a state of many millions (like Reagan) and had won re-election. But she hasn’t — and the idea that calling everything “executive” trumps Obama’s accomplishments just doesn’t work.

UPDATE: In the comments, TP makes the astute point that Palin actually has more "executive" experience than McCain, under this line of thinking.

Executive Experience

by hilzoy

On the McCain Report, Michael Goldfarb writes that Sarah Palin "has more executive experience than Barack Obama and Joe Biden put together", a point that, by some strange coincidence, has popped up all over the conservative blogs. I think that the idea that Palin has an advantage over Obama in this area is completely wrong.

When this campaign started, one of my biggest questions about Barack Obama was whether he would be any good at managing things. The President is, after all, the head of a very large organization, and he had better either have good management skills or hire a chief of staff who does. The fact that I didn't know whether Obama had them didn't prevent me from voting for him -- none of the other candidates I might have supported had a track record in management either -- but I would have been happier had I known whether Obama was any good at running things.

I don't have that problem any more. Obama has spent the past year and a half running a large organization -- as of last December, it had "about 500 employees and a budget of $100 million" -- and running it very well. It's not just that he and his team beat the Clinton campaign, which started out with enormous advantages. It's not even that he often did so by building effective political machines from scratch in states in which Clinton had locked down the political establishment. It's that every account of the Obama campaign that I've read makes it clear that he has done an outstanding job of constructing and running a political organization. For instance, this account of Obama's campaign is very much worth reading, if you want to get a sense of how he runs things:

"The story of how Obama assembled his top advisers — and how he got them to work together as a team — offers a glimpse into his approach as a chief executive who manages an organization of nearly 1,000 employees. Obama has built "an amazingly strong machine," says Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, president of the Chief Executive Leadership Institute at the Yale School of Management. "People expected a more ad hoc, impromptu, entrepreneurial feel to it. It has been more of a well-orchestrated symphony than the jazz combo we expected."

Indeed, in merging the talents of powerful Washington insiders and outside-the-Beltway insurgents, Obama has succeeded at a task that has traditionally eluded Democratic candidates: forging an experienced inner circle who set aside their differences and put the candidate first. "The whole point is that it's not about any of these guys," says longtime GOP strategist Frank Luntz. "They feel blessed. They see it as how lucky they are to be working for this man, at this time, in this election. This is the dream team for the dream candidate. I waited all my life for a Republican Barack Obama. Now he shows up, and he's a Democrat.""

You can find more good descriptions of the Obama campaign here and here.

Executive ability is not the most important thing in the world. (For one thing, hiring a good chief of staff goes a long way towards making up any deficiencies you have as a manager.) But it does matter. At the beginning of this campaign, I don't think anyone knew whether Barack Obama would be any good at running things. Now, however, we do.

The Palin Proxy War

by publius

One of the many fascinating aspects of the Palin nomination is the grass roots’ enthusiasm for her. It’s tempting to see the excitement among the social conservative base strictly through the lens of abortion politics. That is, you might think that the excitement over such an unknown, inexperienced first-term governor is evidence that the base ranks abortion over everything else.

There’s something to that, but I think it misses a larger point. The Palin nomination is a proxy war between more elite/DC neocon Republicans and the social conservative base. The schism has been bubbling for some time, but it’s grown more intense lately.

The social conservative base, while committed Republicans, is harboring some deep grievances at the moment. In their eyes, the GOP powers that be have not only failed to push its agenda (being too soft on gay marriage, abortion, judges, etc.), it’s also become arrogant and corrupt (Abramoff, spending, Iraq mismanagement, Craig, Foley). They look on in silent anger every four years as the GOP parades around a bunch of pro-choice Republicans at the national conventions. They watch Bush mumble on about Roe during the debates, unwilling to say what they want him to — and on and on. (The neocons, by contrast, privately blame the social conservative wing for making the party distasteful to social moderates.)

A lot of the conservative frustration about the presidential choices this year can be understood in this light. Social conservatives weren’t crazy about Romney, and really disliked Rudy, and so several of them opted for Huckabee. And while many have reconciled themselves to McCain, they don’t really like him — and more importantly, they don’t trust him.

And my hunch was that a revolt was coming if McCain had picked either a pro-choice Republican or Lieberman. So in this sense, yes, they applied a litmus test — but that misses the larger significance of their frustrations (also, note that Dems wouldn’t accept a pro-life VP either). It wasn’t so much the pro-choice VP candidate per se that would upset them, but the larger sense of grievance that such a selection would reinforce. They were all geared up to be screwed over (again) — at least in their mind.

Enter Palin. No one knows much about her, but she’s seen as “one of us” among evangelicals, primarily because of her abortion politics, which are well outside the political center (she opposes abortion in cases of rape and incest for instance). The celebration, then, isn’t over the ascendance of a true pro-life candidate, but over the selection of “one of us” (finally) to the ticket. In short, it’s a long-awaited, much-desired public acknowledgment of the evangelical wing of the party.

Elite neocon DC types, however, are having none of it. They don’t care much for the social issues anyway, so all they see is a small-town mayor and second-year governor being nominated during wartime. If anything, Palin’s more extreme abortion politics makes them even more wary of putting her on the ticket. For these reasons, you see people like Frum and Krauthammer and Ambinder’s sources expressing skepticism.

On a final note, this selection also illustrates why McCain (somewhat ironicially) will likely govern in a more socially conservative way than any modern GOP President. With Reagan and Bush II, the social conservatives liked them and gave them a pass. McCain, by contrast, is always going to feel the need to prove himself to them to win re-election. Palin is the first of what will be many examples of making sure the social conservatives are happy. In this sense, he is their most promising candidate in recent history, and maybe ever.

Reckless

by hilzoy

Now that I'm back from the convention, and have transferred all my backed up stuff onto my new computer (sigh), I've finally had a chance to sit down and consider McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate. I was in an airplane during her speech yesterday, but I saw her speak with McCain today, and I think it would be a mistake to underestimate her potential appeal. Besides making a significant chunk of the Republican base swoon with delight, she seems like a genuinely engaging person, and one who will give the McCain campaign some badly needed energy. These are not negligible things.

On the other hand, I completely agree with Steve Benen:

"What matters most right now is John McCain's comically dangerous sense of judgment. He picked a running mate he met once for 15 minutes, who's been the governor of a small state for a year and a half, and who is in the midst of an abuse-of-power investigation in which she appears to have lied rather blatantly. She has no obvious expertise in any area, and no record of any kind of federal issues. McCain doesn't care.

Sensible people of sound mind and character simply don't things like this. Leaders don't do things like this. It's the height of arrogance. It's manifestly unserious. It's reckless and irresponsible. It mocks the political process. Faced with a major presidential test, McCain thought it wise to tell an imprudent joke of lasting consequence."

I have a terrible track record predicting how voters will respond to things, but I think that this choice will damage McCain in the long run, particularly since he made it so shortly after Obama's speech. This might have seemed like a good way to stomp on the Democratic convention, but it also ensures that a lot of voters will have this juxtaposition in their minds: Obama's speech, which, whether you agree with it or not, manifestly took the election and the choice before us with the seriousness they deserve, and McCain's transparently cynical choice of a charming but plainly unqualified person to be his running mate, which did not.

I was also struck by McCain's willingness to gamble not just with our country, but with his own campaign. He has chosen as his running mate someone he has barely met; who has no experience dealing with the kind of scrutiny she is about to face; who has, by all accounts, not been fully vetted; and who is in the midst of a scandal. That is a shockingly reckless thing to do. Obviously, I think it's worse to gamble with the country, but taking this kind of crazy flyer on someone you don't know nearly enough about is recklessness of a different kind, and worth noting in its own right.

My First Von Hoffman!

by publius

Well, probably not my last. But yes, as I noted in an earlier post, I was wrong about the VP coverage -- guilty as charged. In my defense though, I wasn't expecting such a crazy selection. I doubt Pawlenty or Romney would have generated anything close to this much coverage.

Battered Base Syndrome

by publius

I didn’t have a chance to write about Palin today (unlike Eric, some people have to work), so I’ve been chewing it over this afternoon. The more I think about it, the more insane it seems. McCain might well have lost the presidency today.

Curiously though, the base is all in. Their enthusiasm seems odd given how much this group supposedly values national security and commander-in-chief qualifications. Why are they ignoring Palin’s very real flaws as a candidate and embracing her so passionately? The answer I think is what I’ll call “battered base syndrome.”

The battered base syndrome goes something like this — the GOP religious base has been so cavalierly ignored and exploited by the GOP elites that they’re hungry for even the slightest signs of acknowledgment. This may seem strange from a liberal’s perspective, but from the subjective perspective of many evangelical Republicans, the national GOP has been ignoring them and their agenda. (See, e.g., Bush’s refusal to take a stand on Roe during the debates in 2004). And the sense of grievance runs deep (and helps explain Huckabee’s rise).

With Palin, however, the social conservative base finally got what they wanted — acknowledgement. She’s truly in their camp, or at least they perceive her to be. And in their haste to celebrate — in their joy at finally being acknowledged (A true conservative! At last!) — they are ignoring everything else.

In particular, they’re ignoring what an atrocious, borderline insane selection this was. Most importantly, the Palin selection completely — 100% — undermines McCain’s strongest argument, which is that Obama lacks experience. That’s why people shouldn’t worry about Obama’s limited ability to attack McCain for picking an inexperienced candidate. This is looking at the problem backwards -- the real limitation is now on McCain. With this selection, he cut the legs out of his own trump card.

It’s also another illustration of McCain’s obsession with tactics over strategy (I credit this observation to Hilzoy, who made it in an email -- see Kevin Drum too). Look, the Palin choice dominated the news cycle — I was wrong earlier. The choice was so unexpected that it got tons of coverage and knocked Obama off TV.

But what about the long term? There’s no way she’s been properly vetted. Hell, the Post is reporting just today — within the first 24 hours — that the fired state official in Alaska has emails from Palin illustrating her involvement. (See also Mark Kleiman.) If that holds up, she’s been caught in a whopper of a lie before she even gets out of the first day. Who knows what else will come up? More broadly, who knows how she’ll answer the one million substantive policy questions she'll get in the days ahead?

It’s just an enormous and short-sighted gamble. But that’s the McCain style I suppose — he’s just applying his foreign policy philosophy to the vice-presidential selection process.

Farber and Martin, LLP Present: A Threadbare Thread to Bare (A Play in 3 Acts)

Key Grip: Eric Martin

Happy Labor Day weekend.  In the spirit of the holiday, I've scaled back the rant. 

One request:

If you call me on the phone, you do not get to ask "Who is this?" before identifying yourself.  It was you that called me for the love o' god?

One regret:

Summer?  Sob.

One thought:

Thank you all.  ObWi rocks.

Ready on Day One?

by Eric Martin

Sarah Palin last month addressing speculation that the McCain campaign was considering her for the vice presidential slot:

As for that VP talk all the time, I’ll tell you, I still can’t answer that question until somebody answers for me what is it exactly that the VP does every day?

Sigh.  Video here for the curious. 

(h/t cleek)