Hey, she didn't mean that...But she can tell you herself

Remember when you got to bring your Dad to that followup interview at your dream college after the first interview didnt go well?:



Neither do I. I expect that it would have gone just about as badly as this did if something like that did happen, though.

Exactly what is John McCain thinking? He looked exactly like a Dad trying to get his daughter out of hot water and suddenly remembering that the only way for her to do that would be for her to do that, herself.

Well, guess what? Whatever slim notions we did still have that Sarah Palin could hold her own were just disabused. Thats all thanks to you John. No one else to blame. Although I am sure you will find some way to try to blame Barack Obama, John. It's all you have left.

Comments welcome,

Pat McGovern

Video via TPM.

It's got electoral votes. It's what politicians crave.

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Obama wins?

I am rather amazed by the reaction of the pundits on MSNBC. Almost universally, with the exception of Gene Robinson, they seem to think that John McCain won the debate on 'points'. I did not get that impression at all.

Interestingly, nearly every one of them, David Gregory, Chris Matthews, Pat Buchanan, Andrea Mitchell etc. qualified their assessment with the idea that 'stylistically' McCain lost points. It's the old "Well I think he won but people might have thought he looked like an old jerk." cover your a$$ excuse. The media didn't realize until the next day that Richard Nixon lost to John Kennedy in that debate in 1960. They thought Nixon may have won and certainly didn't do worse than draw. They didn't realize the reaction that people would have to his appearance. Everyone seems to be instinctively getting cover just in case they misread tonight.

I think that will have a lot to do with how people perceived John McCain tonight. He never looked at Barack Obama. Never addressed him directly, despite Jim Lehrer's entreaties to do so. He always is stiff, to some extent as a result of his war injuries, but he seems even more so at times tonight.

It was mentioned repeatedly, on many blogs and news items throughout the day, that he needed to avoid that 'gotcha' smirky laugh of his. It looks creepy. He didn't avoid it enough.

To be perfectly honest, I found myself caught up in how McCain looked saying things rather than what he was saying more than once.
Continue reading ^>> That isn't good. I wonder if someone with a more apolitical eye might have been so affected as well?

Beyond the appearance issue, I think Obama did, at the very least, match up to McCain on most of the questions presented. Indeed, on many of them, he kicked his butt.

McCain revealed very little of how he would govern tonight, beyond some very broad strokes. And yes, saying you will cut all earmarks, qualifies as a broad, not to mention unrealistic, stroke.

Obama actually answered the questions, at least, for the most part. Several times, he had to bring the discussion back to the point at hand because McCain tried to control the narrative and had taken a sharp left or right turn with his answer.

McCain, on several occasions, told stories instead of answering the question. I say instead of because when he was done with the story, he would invariably continue with an answer on an analogous topic which was more to his liking than the original question.

The people who had to be convinced tonight wanted to know what these two men would do when they become President of the United States of America. If they want to know who you are, that question would apply far more to Senator Obama than Senator McCain. Nevertheless, Senator McCain persisted in telling them who he is rather than what he would do.

I think that because the electorate is looking for that, this debate may have indeed been disastrous for John McCain. If you were looking for specifics, you got none from his side.

Obama was (to steal from Andrew Sullivan) commanding. He had a firm grasp of every issue thrown his way. I think he gave a few too many derisive chuckles at McCain's responses. He also needs to be more aware of his facial expressions when he is listening to McCain. The man may have said a few doozies but you need to control how you react and respond more diligently.

I think the amorphous middle/independent/undecided people liked what they saw and got from Barack Obama tonight. I don't think even those who were leaning towards John McCain got anything they were looking for. He secured veterans, neocons (with his neocon view of Russia and Ukraine), and probably reinforced the social conservatives a little. That's not a gain, that's treading water.

Even if you posit that he won the debate tonight there is the problem that he needed to win it by a lot more than he did. I don't think he won it at all. That is a big problem for his campaign.

If you take the Sarah Palin - Katie Couric interview as evidence of how the Vice-Presidential debate might go, than this campaign is in some serious trouble.

I have complete confidence that somehow, someway, John McCain will find something to 'stir up a hornet's nest' with in the next week or so. It's what he does best. Maybe, sometime, it'll actually help his campaign. But if it isn't soon, although it may be his only hope, he may bury himself deeper than it is possible to recover from.


Comments welcome,

Pat McGovern

It's got electoral votes. It's what politicians crave.

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Katie Couric - Sarah Palin Interview

For anyone interested, here is the Sarah Palin - Katie Couric interview:



I don't know. She didn't come off very well to me. She didn't come off very well to a lot of people whose opinions I trust. I am really unsure how she comes off to the voters they are trying to attract though.

It starts out with her essentially deriding anyone who has travelled internationally before the age of 43 as the children of elitists. It ends up with her reducing her conception of our relations with Israel, Syria and Iran down to "good guys" and "bad guys." Somewhere in between she half insulted Henry Kissinger. And she and her boss continue to refer to Putin as the head of Russia. Dmitri Medvedev, not Vladimir Putin, is the President of Russia. While the now Prime Minister is widely assumed to be the one still calling the shots in a Cheneyesque sort of way, it is bad form to not at least pay some lip service to the actual President of Russia. It might piss him off if you continue to refer to Putin as Russia's leader.

Anyhoo, I was deeply unimpressed. Again, I am a tough crowd. I wonder how this played to Main Street?

Comments welcome,

Pat McGovern

It's got electoral votes. It's what politicians crave.

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José who?

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon knows who Zapatero is!

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Spain. That is who John McCain appeared, at the least, to not be familiar with in an interview on a Spanish language radio station.

Via Time magazine:

During an interview in Miami earlier this week with Spanish-language station Union Radio, a reporter asked McCain whether, if elected, he would receive Zapatero in the White House. McCain answered, "Honestly, I have to analyze our relationships, situations, and priorities, but I can assure you that I will establish closer relationships with our friends, and I will stand up to those who want to harm the United States."

Ouch. The question about Zapatero, clearly framed by the reporter as a question about Spain, came after inquiries on Venezuela, Bolivia, and Cuba. As a result, much of the Spanish press has decided that the Republican candidate, who hails himself as the experienced foreign policy choice in this election, confused Spain — a NATO member and key ally in the fight against terrorism — with one of those troublesome Latin American states. That was certainly the interviewer's impression, for she followed up with a gentle reminder that Spain was a country in Europe. As Spanish newspaper El País put it, "In the best-case scenario, [his answer] demonstrates his ignorance with respect to Zapatero."

Of course, there's a worse-case scenario: that McCain would, if elected, maintain his predecessor's chilly relationship with Spain.

Wow! Simply wow! I mean he wasn't asked about someone say, like Gilbert Houngbo. Oh! You don't know that Gilbert Houngbo is the Prime Minister of Togo? Oh! You didn't even know there was a country named Togo? Well, at least it's not a member of NATO.

We are, however, talking about a member of NATO and an ally, if tenuous, in the war on terror. Bush would have been ripped to shreds on this one in 2000, never mind 2004. And he got a lot of 'gimmes' because everyone knew he wasn't a foreign policy 'expert.' You, John McCain, have this as one of your principle assets on your resume.

So, yes, John. We are going to hammer you on this.

Plenty of good reading on this at TPM here, here, here, here and here(there's even more, but you get the idea).

One actual station on which the interview aired: caracoll1260 scroll down to the "Hoy por Hoy" section for audio

The Spanish language channels version of the interview: Cadenaser.com

The full untranslated English version has been tracked down by TPM (it is one of the links above, but..): El Cid -- in English

Comments welcome,

Pat McGovern

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Polls on Sept 17th

Well lets see, Daily Tracking Polls...

Rasumussen has it John McCain 48% to Barack Obama 47%

Not any change from yesterday but still McCain seems to have topped out at 50-47 several days ago. Obama's top number has been as high as 51% as recently as 9/2. That just can't be something that McCain campaign manager Rick Davis likes.

---

Gallup now has Barack Obama leading John McCain 47%-45%. In this poll McCain has been sliding since Sept 9 when he still had a 48%-43% lead. I don't think this bodes well for his campaign. They've led the discussion for the last two and a half weeks. Only in the last few days has the economy presented itself as the story. Granted 2/3 of this poll was conducted after the weekend of Lehman Brothers collapse and Merrill Lynch's sale. That just indicates that McCain is taking the heat (justifiably) on this and that you didn't build up enough good will to whether the coming storm.

---

In the electoral prediction arena, Electoral-vote.com has McCain with 257 votes(270 needed to win), Obama with 247 and 34 votes too close to call (tied).

Virginia and Pennsylvania are the tied states. I still think Mark Warner will provide a reverse coattails effect for Obama in Virginia. Pennsylvania may be a tossup until the very end.

Michigan, Minnesota and Washington have become closer in the last week and states such as Missouri, Nevada and New Mexico have moved into McCain's column.

---

Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight.com has the projection at 288 for McCain to 250 for Obama. Before you panic too much, with his formula for calculating such things, McCain Palin/convention bump has only come to full effect in the last few days. Any backing off will, conversely, take a while to be seen in the results as well.

Short version is, it is almost the same as Electoral-Vote but with the ties going to McCain. Granted, he has Pennsylvania and New Mexico for Obama and Virginia, Colorado and Nevada for McCain. There are plenty of states, including those, in play, he just doesn't call any as 'ties' or 'too close to call'. It's either one way or the other. So there will be plenty of variation as we move forward on this, especially if the 'Palin bubble' really has burst.

---

ElectionProjection.com is another one that does not like to use the 'tie' or 'too close to call' option. The have Obama up 273 to 265. I am not as sure of their methodology. I am not a real big fan of using national poll numbers in any way when figuring out how a state may vote. But who knows, I didn't take a whole lot of courses in statistics in college, he might wind up the most accurate of them all.

---

Conclusion, thus far, it appears that McCain has, at best leveled off, and may indeed be slipping slowly toward pre-convention numbers. How much of that is people with Sarah Palin hangovers, or the voters starting to get exactly how much the McCain campaign has altered the truth (OK, lied) in the last week, is hard to know. Later this week, or early next week should give more insight into that.

Still, the Democrats do not need to panic, yet. McCain should have gotten a much bigger bounce with the Palin/convention combo than he did. That he didn't is probably making Rick Davis have some white knuckles. The Wall Street mess should make those knuckles even whiter in the coming weeks.

Comments welcome,

Pat McGovern

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Nancy Wilson's pissed

Ann and Nancy Wilson, the sister's who formed the core of the rock band Heart, issued a statement yesterday afternoon angrily denouncing the use of their song Barracuda on Wednesday night for Governor Sarah PalinEW has this story.

Well, the Republicans used it again last night after Governor Palin joined Senator John McCain after the completion of his speech. Boy was Nancy pissed. She and Ann issued another joint statement:

"Sarah Palin's views and values in NO WAY represent us as American women. We ask that our song 'Barracuda' no longer be used to promote her image......"

I'd print more of the statement, but EW is saying that the statement is 'exclusive', which, though it strikes me as vaguely absurd, I will avoid any issues there.

I had known about the Wilsons displeasure with the use of Barracuda before last nights speech. There were even rumors of a cease and desist letter being sent but that does not appear to be the case. I did, therefore find it odd that they would continue to use it.

Isn't Sarah Palin getting enough bad press? Does she have to go and steal a song from Heart?

Why can't politicians use songs from people who like them? Ronald Reagan used Born in the USA for his 1984 campaign despite the fact that a)Bruce Springsteen hated him and b) if you ever listened to the lyrics beyond the "Born in the USA" part, it was a completely inappropriate song for his candidacy anyway!

It's amusing that Republicans, in particular, like to use songs that have lyrics that denigrate many of the same things that they stand for. It's like they can't be bothered to listen. Hey, wait a minute, there might be a theme there.....

Can we please get permission for this stuff people! Everyone else has to do it. You aren't above everyone else.

Comments welcome,

Pat McGovern

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Palin Video

The Sarah Palin Introductory video that didn't get to air last night:


(Note: I orginally posted the official RNC video of the speech. But since UStream, what they use instead of YouTube, likes to behave funny, like play automatically instead of having to be manually started, I have replaced it. I apologize for any annoyance. I will never trust the Republicans to use modern technology again.)

My first thought is that this looks like a spoof. Part of the problem is the production values. It's a glorified slide show/powerpoint presentation.

My second thought is, this isn't getting any better.

Third thought, maybe having to drop this 'video' from the prime network slot of 10-11 EDT wasn't any accident last night. If it was, I think that John McCain and Sarah Palin benefited from it not airing.

Comments welcome,

Pat McGovern

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The Rebuttals and Debunks

I said last night:

She attacked on a lot of fronts with a lot of inconsistencies and inaccuracies. I wonder if the McCain camp is hoping to swamp the Obama-Biden camp, the media and the blogs so much with refuting and debunking her speech that they take some time off from digging in her past.

For those of you interested in the details of the numerous inconsistencies and inaccuracies in Governor Sarah Palin's speech, Hilzoy has one very good post at Political Animal and Mark Kleiman has an even more complete post over at The Reality Based Community.

Heres a little taste on a subject I have not yet touched upon:

PALIN: “Before I became governor of the great state of Alaska, I was mayor of my hometown.”

REALITY: UNDER PALIN, WASILLA GOVERNMENT SPENDING & DEBT SKYROCKETED.

Total Government Expenditures Increased 63 Percent Under Palin. In fiscal 2003—the last fiscal year Palin approved the budget—the total government expenditures of Wasilla, excluding capital outlays, were $7,046,325. In fiscal 1996—the year before Palin took control of the
budget—the expenditures were $4,317,947. The increase was 63 percent. [Wasilla Comprehensive Annual Financial Report 2003, Table 1]

Palin Supported Increasing Wasilla Sales Tax From 2 to 2.5 Percent to Build $14.7 Million Sports Center. “Wasilla residents have given the go ahead to building a new multiuse sports center in town and to raising the city sales tax to pay for it. With the final votes counted
Friday, residents voted 306 to 286 in favor of a measure to raise the city sales tax from 2 percent to 2.5 percent to pay the estimated $14.7 million cost of building the center…Mayor Sarah Palin, who supported the measure, said the tight vote will motivate city officials to keep a close eye on the budget for the center.” [Anchorage Daily News, 3/9/02]

Palin Left Behind Almost $19 Million In Long-Term Debt, Compared to None Before She Was Mayor. In fiscal 2003—the last fiscal year Palin approved the budget—the bonded long-term debt was $18,635,000. In fiscal 1996—the year before Palin took control of the budget—there was no general obligation debt. [Wasilla Comprehensive Annual Financial Report 2003, Table 10]

Have fun reading if you wish. I will not waste too much time detailing it here. After all, we have a whole new fish to fry tonight!

If you would like a taste of the consistency of John McCain please, avail yourself of this link to The Carpetbagger Report.

A tiny taste of that one:

Foreign Policy

7. McCain was for kicking Russia out of the G8 before he was against it. Now, he’s for it again.

Comments welcome,

Pat McGovern

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OMG WTF?!

Most of you will get what the headline means and, yes, it does have to do with Sarah Palin, her pregnant seventeen year old daughter and John McCain.

(For those who dont: OMG=Oh My God! WTF=What the F&*%!)

Yes, you read that right. Alaska Governor Sarah Palin confirmed that her seventeen year old unwed daughter is pregnant. See here, here, here, here and here.

John McCain knew about about this before he selected her!

From MSNBC:

Senior McCain campaign officials said McCain knew of the daughter's pregnancy when he selected Palin last week as his vice presidential running mate, deciding that it did not disqualify the 44-year-old governor in any way.

Let's keep going with the confess to the press on Labor Day fest, shall we?

Fox News/AP:

News also broke Monday about Todd Palin being arrested and charged with driving under the influence of alcohol in 1986 when he was 22. Sarah and Todd Palin were high school sweethearts so they were dating at the time.

Now, I'm not big on punishing anyone for what they did in their youth. So the last part doesn't really get me all that much. There are, however, people to whom that will matter some.

The same, all around, largely goes for the first part as well.

Now, onto the bigger problem.

This is not about Sarah Palin or her family. I am sure they are good people. I do not blame her for accepting when John McCain asked. When the gold presents itself you should grab it!

John McCain has nominated a person who:

• was mayor of a town of 8,471 (2005, although the 2000 census total of 5,470 is probably more accurate for her term) for six years from 1996-2002
• was Chairman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, a pretty powerful appointment, for about a year from 2003 until she resigned in protest in Jan. 2004
• has been Governor of the State of Alaska for 1 year 8 months and 29 days, counting today
• had a scandal upon becoming mayor of Wasila because she fired the Chief of Police who claimed she did so because he supported her opponent, and subsequently sued her. The court ruled in her favor but only because it said she did not have to have a reason to fire the Chief.
• is involved in a scandal involving the firing of Alaska's Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan which, he claims, was due to his failure to bow to pressure to fire Gov. Palin's ex-brother in law who is a state trooper
• has a daughther who is seventeen, unwed, and five months pregnant (so much for abstinence only)
• well...we just won't touch the husband thing, there is more than enough other stuff

Sen. John McCain would have us believe that he believes the person above is qualified to step in and be commander in cheif should anything happen to him. He is not a spring chicken, having just turned 72, is a cancer survivor, and both his father and grandfather, good admirals that they were, never made it past 70. (To be fair, his great-grandfather made it to 83.)

John McCain has made, to many people, an obvious error in judgement with this pick for his running mate. He either did know about all of this and still thought this was the most qualified person to serve as backup commander in chief of the most powerful country in the world. Or..his campaign didn't thoroughly vet this candidate for vice-president and Sen. McCain picked her without knowing a whole lot about her.

Either way, this is a tremendous failure in judgement. Sen. George S. McGovern got ripped apart for picking Thomas Eagleton. Sen. John McCain is, from what it appears, just beginning to get ripped apart for his pick.

Again, this isn't about Sarah Palin and her family. It is about the judgement and competence of a Senator who wants the American people to elect him President of the United States.

Thus far, his judgment seems to have landed him in the middle of a three ring circus. If he can change that perception, he is a magician.

I don't think John McCain is all that magical.

Comments welcome,

Pat McGovern

P.S. - McCain spokesman Steve Schmidt:

"warned Democrats not to try to use the revelations to their political advantage: "If anyone tries to politicize this, there will be a backlash. One thing I think everyone agrees on is let the kids alone."

In case Mr. Schmidt has forgotten, Karl Rove changed politics. Before 2000, maybe, but this will get politicized. Does Mr. Schmidt expect us to believe that he would not politicize this if it were a 17 year old daughter of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, John Kerry, John Edwards, Al Gore or Joe Lieberman (2000 version)? I think not. I am not saying it's fair but gimme a break. Nice try though.

This is yet another reason that McCain should not have selected Palin if he knew. It is also a reason that she should not have accepted the offer. Both of them were willing to put the child through this? They had to know they would get pounded on this. If they didn't, that tells you yet more about their collective judgement. (I won't even get into what their morals are if they anticipated a firestorm and decided to put a seventeen year old through it.)

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Wonder what these numbers will mean for the bump?

You have to wonder what these ratings will mean for the 'convention bounce?' From Reuters:

Over 38 million Americans tuned in for television coverage of Barack Obama accepting the Democratic nomination for U.S. president on Thursday in what is believed to be the most watched convention speech ever.

and

By comparison, 24.4 million viewers saw the 2004 Democratic nominee, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, give his acceptance speech, and fewer still, 21.8 million, tuned in for the final night of the 2000 convention when then-Vice President Al Gore was nominated as the party's standard bearer.

Makes you kind of go WOW! The average Gallup bounce is 5 points. One wonders if for reasons of both quality and quantity Obama's might be bigger?

We'll find out for sure Monday with the release of the regular Gallup Poll.

So far Rasmussen has Obama up 46-43 in their daily tracking poll which does not yet include the speech. It's 49-45 when 'leaners' are included.

Gallup's daily has Obama up 49-41! It also was conducted almost entirely pre-speech.

Those seem to indicate a pretty sizable bounce. One has to wonder what, if anything, Sen. John McCain's selection of Governor Sarah Palin as a running mate will do to affect those numbers.

Wait and see. Wait and see.

Comments welcome,

Pat McGovern

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Really? Seriously?

Just finished watching Governor Sarah Palin's speech in Dayton, OH. Hmm. Take a gander:



Seriously, she looks and sounds like a soccer mom giving a campaign speech! We are really supposed to buy into the idea that she can step into the presidency at a moments notice?

David Schraub's post at The Moderate Voice while watching:

So far, this is not going well. She looks star-struck up there. My girlfriend says she’s rambling. I think she sounds hokey (sometimes that’s a good thing, but I don’t think here). Her diction is not strong — she sounds halting to me. And it’s thematically disjointed.

The part about mentioning Geraldine Ferraro and Hillary Clinton was a forced nod. The fact that she had the gall to bring up Hillary's 18 million cracks! OMG! If Hillary wasn't invested in Obama before, she sure as hell will be now! Hillary will work overtime to make sure that ceiling holds for at least four more years.

I think that the 18 million cracks reference was a serious tatical mistake by the McCain campaign. Did they vet the speech? Did they think Hillary would take that sitting down?

I think Hillary will volunteer herself for attacking this one personally now. She may not have been a willing attack dog before but look out now. No half term governor, former mayor of a city of less than 9,000 people is going to hijack what she started, after all the time and effort she put into this, especially if she will not benefit from it.

Does the McCain campaign seriously want Hillary to be Obama's active attack dog along with Biden?

Speaking of Biden. What is McCain going to do about the debate. Can you imagine the woman at that podium in a debate with Joe Biden? Are they going to lock Sarah Palin in an intensive debate immersion room for the next few weeks?

I assume the woman is intelligent. Even with that assumption, what is the strategy? That she will appear so overmatched against Biden that people will equate Biden with the hunter that killed Bambi's mom? Why would you try that strategy?

They've got an incredible amount of work to do in the next several weeks. They get a pass for the convention, maybe, but then all bets are off.

I think that either:

1. John McCain had a defining lapse in judgement that even exceeds the lapses in judgement that Ronald Reagan, and, later, Ronald Reagan's lapse in judgement, George H. W. Bush came to regret. Or....
   
2. John McCain is about to learn, quite painfully, that your advisors can be complete idiots even when they are getting paid obscene amounts of money.

Which it is depends entirely on who made the call here. Either way, I am not seeing this ending well.

I said it earlier, and I still believe, John McCain had few, if any, good choices. I didn't envy him his decision. I still don't.

Comments welcome,

Pat McGovern

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Wow, It's McCain-Palin 2008

I am not sure what to say. It's that shocking. Senator John McCain has selected Governor Sarah Palin, Republic(an) of Alaska, to be his running mate.



I think I'm shocked! Didn't think he would actually do it! Let's go to the blogs!

Powerline's Paul Mirengoff:

I'm very disappointed that John McCain would put someone as inexperienced and lacking in foreign policy and national security background as Sarah Palin a heartbeat away from the presidency.

Andrew Sullivan has a lot of different takes but here is one:

The first criterion for a veep - and I'm simply repeating a truism here - is that they are ready to take over at a moment's notice. That's especially true when you have a candidate as old as McCain. That's more than especially true when we are at war, in an era of astonishingly difficult challenges, when the next president could be grappling with war in the Middle East or a catastrophic terror attack at home. Under those circumstances, we could have a former Miss Alaska with two terms years under her belt as governor. Now compare McCain's pick with Obama's: a man with solid foreign policy experience, six terms in Washington and real relationships with leaders across the globe.

One pick is by a man of judgment; the other is by a man of vanity.

She may be a fine person, but she's my age, she has zero Washington experience, and no foreign policy expertise whatsoever.

McCain has just told us how seriously he takes the war we are in. Not seriously at all.

Ed Morrissey, over at Hot Air, is trying to justify the pick:

Palin has no formal foreign-policy experience, which puts her at a disadvantage to Joe Biden. However, in nineteen months as governor, she certainly has had more practical experience in diplomacy than Biden or Obama have ever seen. She runs the only American state bordered only by two foreign countries, one of which has increasingly grown hostile to the US again, Russia.

And at TPM, Josh Marshall says this:

Next, John McCain's central and best argument in this campaign is that Barack Obama simply lacks the experience to be President of the United States. And now John McCain, who is a cancer survivor who turns 72 years old today, is picking a vice presidential nominee who has been governor of a small state for less than two years and prior to that was mayor of a town with roughly one-twenty-seventh of the citizens that Barack Obama represented when he was a state senator in Illinois.

Whatever you think of Barack Obama's qualifications to be President, Palin is manifestly less qualified. And that undermines the central premise of McCain's campaign.

That last one, in a nutshell, is the biggest problem for McCain. Several conservative blogs are saying that Obama cannot go after Palin's lack of experience without McCain taking advantage of it. There is something that they are not realizing.

He doesn't have to.

The media is, after John McCain spent the last two months saying that he "would choose someone who is ready to be president on day one," going to go after this pick. The conservative bloggers are going to go after this pick. Obama and the left don't have to do one darn thing but sit back and watch.

This would actually be a great pick except for the fact that EVERY time he was asked what he was looking for in a vice-president he said that their ability to become president on day one was critical. That was his litmus test.

Governor Sarah Palin is, at best, as qualified as Barack Obama. Ed Morrissey's justifications aside, she has far fewer national security and foreign policy credentials than Barack Obama. She is light years away from Joe Biden in that category.

He decided, after last night's speech, to try to throw the Hail Mary. I don't think this works for him.

It was he who tried to make experience the defining characteristic of the presidential race. It was he who announced that experience was to be a key characteristic of his vice-presidential selection.

He can now wallow in the mess he has created.

He has captured the news cycle from Obama's speech. I don't know, but I don't think, that that will turn out to be a good thing.

Comments welcome,

Pat McGovern

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Bill Clinton

If you didn't see Bill Clinton's speech last night, but are still interested, here it is (I promise it is a LOT shorter than his 1988 convention speech):



Bill did a great job with what he had to do, namely come out unequivocally for Barack Obama. Because he had to do that there was a lot less McCain/Bush bashing than some of us were hoping for. He did fit in a pretty good amount of that in the second half though.

All in all, pretty good, even for him. Didn't think I'd be able to say this a few months ago but Hillary's speech was better. Sorry Bill, but she rocked. I think you already know this though.

Comments welcome,

Pat McGovern

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It's Joe!

Well, somewhere around 1AM EDT last night the Obama campaign started running into problems hiding the private plane and the police escort in Delaware. Thus it was that AP first reported Joe Biden as Barack Obama's pick for Vice-President.

Those of us who were waiting for two days for a text message or email got the shaft. My email came at 4:44am although I've heard reports about the text message as early as 3AM. Of course, I got about 9 emails from the Obama campaign yesterday, which was, of course, the idea. Fundraising leads.



This pick, as Chuck Todd explains in the video, makes the most sense. He says the Obama campaign was all about avoiding a drama pick.

My explanation is rather simpler. The Obama campaign wants to spend as little time as possible introducing the VP candidate to the American people. Kaine, Sebelius and even Bayh to some extent suffered from a need for the campaign to mount a "Meet ...." campaign that they didn't want to waste time on.

That is why I was pretty certain that when Chet Edwards' name popped up on the radar it was either a red herring or some reporter suddenly realized that he had already been vetted and was trying to find a story to report on. C'mon! I been following the House and Senate for years and Chet Edwards isn't usually on MY radar screen.

That is also why I wasn't completely ruling out Hillary. Picking her still carried a lot of advantages for the Obama campaign. Those advantages did not outweigh the negatives enough, however.

I am happy with the pick. I wanted to vote for him twenty years ago, before the whole Neil Kinnock plagiarism thing came up. He knows his way around foreign policy and was also a former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He will be a great attack dog on McCain and whomever he chooses.

C'mon, this is the guy who said of Rudy Giuliani:

There's only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun, and a verb and 9/11.

How can you not love that!

I think Obama made a safe but correct pick here. I look forward to seeing how much of a bump they can get out of the convention.

Comments welcome,

Pat McGovern

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Cluster Munition Accusations Continue

Russia continues to deny the use of cluster bomb munition in it's operations in Georgia despite continuing and growing evidence to the contrary.



Human Rights Watch is dogging Russia on this but it isn't getting a whole lot of press coverage outside of the occasional NPR mention. That seems rather odd given our media's general record on human rights. Heck, it would seem to be a great opportunity to grill McCain and Obama about their thoughts on the use of such horrible weapons!

• Georgia: Russian Cluster Bombs Kill Civilians
• Georgia: Civilians Killed by Russian Cluster Bomb ‘Duds’

I think Russia would do well to fess up and help with the cleanup. It might even help to foster some international goodwill. Of course, Russia is not usually amenable towards ideas that I come up with.

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Russia also continues to drag it's feet on withdrawal from Georgian territory but has reportedly finally started to do so, at least from some positions.

As with most conflicts, just about every party here seems to deserve some blame. Georgia for being idiotic enough to use force in South Ossetia. Russia for it over the top reaction and for their own human rights abuses during their 'response.' Even the leaders in both South Ossetia and Abkhazia deserve some blame as they have not helped to defuse anything and seem more intent on fermenting further bad feelings.

The United States seems to deserve some blame here as well. There is some reason that Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili seemed to think he would be backed up with his action against South Ossetia. There is some reason why he thought we would come to his aid, militarily, when Russia moved against Georgia. That reason is not simply that Saakashvili suffers from delusions (which is not beyond the realm of possibility.) He was given some type of assurance from someone. Whether it was someone within the government or someone he had reason to believe knew the intentions of the government is the question.

There is a story here that hasn't been told yet. Perhaps the story has started to be told at TPM and the Washington Post? John McCain better hope that this is not the start of the story that will be told. That would work out badly for him.

Look for it though. The rest of the story is coming. It's out there somewhere and it won't be pretty. It is disgraceful that so many had to die and be injured because of it.

Comments welcome,

Pat McGovern

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Bad Guy?

I made a separate post for this, even though it is from the same Politico interview as the previous post. Reason: It deserves it's own post. Check this out and tell me what caught my eye here:

Asked if he could deal with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, whom he has consistently excoriated on the stump, McCain flashed a smile and said: “I’ve faced bad guys in my time.”

“I’d be glad to meet with him,” McCain added. “It would be important to have some kind of framework for the meeting. In other words, there would have to be some kind of predetermined, at least outcome about some aspects of the meeting … for example, some progress in some area that was agreed upon earlier – the Nixon in China, Reagan-Gorbachev, et cetera. It would have to be something besides just a, quote, meeting.”

If you put the bad guy title of the post together with the bad guy part of that then I have some hope.

Since when is it okay for a candidate to call the head of government of a, if not friendly, at least not hostile government a "bad guy?" A former head of state of that government, no less.

This is a guy with foreign policy experience? Tell me, Senator McCain, would you meet with a guy running for Russian president who described you as a "bad guy" if you are elected and he wins? I don't think so. I think that would seriously sour your attitude towards that person.

Ronald Reagan did not call Soviet Premier Yuri Andropov "evil." Rather, he called the country or system an "evil empire."

In your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware the temptation of pride, the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil. - President Ronald Reagan, March 8, 1983

You see, John, it isn't about personal politics. It about international diplomacy. George H.W. Bush started this crap with his personal vilification of Saddam Hussein. Perhaps that was the correct course, as it was he, personally, who was responsible for nearly everything that went on in Iraq. He didn't close the deal on that monster, as was probably also correct. I and many of my ilk still think there were other, better, ways to deal with him. George W. Bush and his cronies, have taken personal relations in international politics to an extreme. You seem poised to continue down that dangerous path.

Everything in this administration is about personal relationships. Just because you personally think Vladimir Putin is an a$%&#le, which he is, does not mean it is alright to shout it from the mountaintops if you are aspiring to lead the world's last superpower. Don't buy into this personalization of international relations.

Do personal relationships come into play somewhat, sure. However, our relationship is between the government and people of the United States of America and the government and people of the Russian Federation. You would do well to remember that.

Your comments do absolutely nothing to help that relationship. All that comment does is serve to vent steam, waste a chip, and create another hurdle to someday normalizing our relationship with one of the world's largest countries and economies.

It is only about the person when you are talking about monsters. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Amin, Hussein. These were monsters. It stopped being about the relations between the countries and rather between the monster and various other countries and leaders. Putin is a jerk, but he has not shown that he is a monster.

It is our relations with the country he represents, not him, that matter. You have made a increasingly difficult situation to recover from that much harder, if you become president. That is not a real smart move.

Do you really think Nixon liked Nikita Khrushchev? Or Chou En-Lai? How about Reagan and Saddam Hussein? Or Deng Xiaoping? Did the personal relationship interfere with the relations between countries in those relationships? Sure Reagan and Gorbachev got along. But even that success has been exaggerated. They were united in a common desire not to blow each other and their countries up. They weren't really best buddies.

Regardless, I have never heard of a major presidential candidate say anything akin to "I’ve faced bad guys in my time" when asked about the head of government or head of state of a power that we are not at war or nearly at war with. I am sure Russia isn't happy with that statement. I am not sure why no one else seems to be calling him on it.

Perhaps you shouldn't listen to that former lobbyist for the Georgian government who is now your foreign policy adviser so much;-)

Comments welcome,

Pat McGovern

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