Bogus Gold

*YAWN* Isn't this meme getting a bit tired?

I mean, if you're young enough not to have heard the exact same charge made (and subsequently proven wrong by, you know, actual events for what those are worth) from the last election cycle, how likely are you to vote anyway?

The fact is a goodly proportion of America's political left needs to perpetuate these themes of impending persecution because otherwise their raving about the loss of their freedoms rings increasingly hollow by the fact of their own continued uninhibited freedom. Republicans are supposed to be setting up concentration camps for them and such. And yet... even when Republicans win, those camps never seem to appear. Well then maybe they're about to draft them all and send them to die in foreign wars! That's the ticket! And if you haven't drafted them yet, it's obviously because you're waiting for the NEXT Republican to do the dirty deed.

The question is how long normal people keep listening to the people who keep predicting the same thing no matter how long it doesn't come true. I have a feeling this one will be a wee bit less effective this election, and after that it will start to drive votes in the opposite direction. How many people want to vote for the "End of the World" Party, after their second predicted end date fails? And how many more don't want to be associated with those kind of loons?

Some of you might recall I posted back before the Iowa Caucuses that John McCain was going to be the next president. I wasn't calling him my personal choice among the Republican field. I was just assessing the race, and it looked to me at the time that he had positioned himself perfectly compared to the other candidates to pull it out, even though he wasn't leading in the polling anywhere at the time.

After the nomination was sewn up, I admit I started to buckle. The media swoon for the Obamessiah had yet to reach full force, and was already pervasive. Obama's money edge was (and remains) daunting. All the leading indicators were pointing to a Democratic landslide.

But lately that feeling I got before the Iowa caucuses is sneaking back. Reading the media reaction to the Saddleback quasi-debate between Barack Obama and John McCain, I notice elements that were becoming increasingly apparent last fall amongst Republicans. Other candidates could edge him in funding, looks, polling, high-powered staffs... but something about McCain's gritty realism in the end sliced like a knife through all the rest. McCain's "base", if you could even say he has one in the Republican Party, was tiny compared to the others, yet somehow that became a kind of strength. Suddenly he was the guy all the unconvinced could settle upon as "not like those other bastards."

Enter Barack Obama. He with the gigantic base with sometimes overtly religious fervor. He of the huge money advantage. And yes, with the celebrity (sorry Dems, you may not like the ads but the label is undeniable).

McCain isn't going to peel away Obama voters. He doesn't need to. He needs to compete for the same kind of undecideds who chose him over candidates like Romney, Huckabee, and Giuliani in the Republican Primaries. In a race where McCain's long record of disrespecting party orthodoxies should have doomed him from the start, somehow he won. And I don't think you can chalk that up to any particular policy shift. McCain won on one factor alone: character.

Oh, there are still those in the Republican party who will question McCain's character based on his support for campaign finance reform, or his support for a lenient immigration policy, or even his divorce. Those cards were all played in the Republican primary and came up wanting. McCain has character of a kind that can't be simply argued away. Voters - especially undecided voters - seem to sense it even when they can't entirely articulate it. But, as at the Saddleback event, it's not a show. He has a very full and rich life story to back it up. And the more you get him away from the teleprompter the more people pick up on it.

There is also humility to John McCain for all the reported ill-temper. I wouldn't think anyone could go through his experiences as a POW in Vietnam without having to confront their own weaknesses and frailties. It's the kind of experience that could either break or ennoble a man. And McCain, no matter what you think of his ideas regarding the policy matter du jour convinces one that his life experiences brought him great strength of character as well as real humility about himself.

For all the rock star treatment Barack Obama receives it would be easy to snark that he only pretends to have the kind of character of someone like McCain. But I don't sense a lot of pretense in Obama regarding his character. I sense naivete. He has never had to confront anything like the adversity McCain faced as a POW ... not that most of us have, but most of us aren't running against John McCain for the presidency. But for the record Obama has never had to confront the adversity McCain faced trying to push his staggeringly unpopular comprehensive immigration reform bill through Congress last fall either, if we require a more direct and contemporary comparison between the two. The McCain campaign's resurrection in the wake of that is, to me, far more impressive than anything Obama has accomplished in his campaigning by a wide margin.

Barack Obama has an interesting life story, based on his unique cultural background and upbringing. But the most powerful narrative of his campaign is, and always has been, "Is America ready to elect a black president?" Check the number of stories regarding that question in the U. S. and the rest of the world media over the past year if you doubt that.

However, as competing narratives go, by the time election day is upon us both campaigns will have forced the voters to look seriously at both of these candidates not as lofty ideas or enchanting meta narratives but as men. In that kind of battle John McCain is, once again, positioned to win.

It's well known (at least among right leaning political wonks) that America's mainstream political left has two basic playbooks they deploy in trying to defeat a Republican presidential nominee - "He's stupid," or "He's evil." Whenever they can't decide which playbook to draw from, they generally lose. It more or less started with Barry Goldwater, but truly came to dominate the left's presidential politics from Richard Nixon forward.

Nixon was evil. He was driven from office.

Ford was stupid. He lost to Jimmy Carter.

Reagan was stupid... no, wait evil! No... stupid! No... In short, Reagan won a couple of landslides.

Bush the Elder was supposed to be a wimp (?!!), neither stupid, nor evil in '88. He trounced Dukakis in that one. By '92 Clinton (with an assist from Ross Perot) pegged him as Monty Burns style evil and he lost.

Bob Dole was stupid, albeit in that lovable old codger way, so it didn't sound too harsh when they said so. But he lost all the same.

Bush the Younger was (and remains) stupid... no, wait... evil! No... umm... stupid!... This may be Bush's most Reagan-like quality, and allowed him to win twice despite the odds.

Anyway, this is all comes down to the current election in which someone from the Obama campaign attempted to float a trial balloon past the media suggesting McCain only looked so much better than Obama at their mostly under-the-radar appearance at Pastor Rick Warren's Civil Forum because he cheated. Somehow he had heard Obama's answers to the questions, even though the forum setup wasn't supposed to allow it.

Word the the Obamessiah crowd. You're better off playing the "evil" card here. The deeper you get into the substance of the issues the less intelligent "hope we can believe in" is going to sound next to anything McCain has to say. If anyone is going to come across as the "stupid" one here, it's not going to be the grey-haired candidate.

I mean, really, this one should be obvious, but I suspect Kool-Aid is the favorite drink at Obama-central, so it probably needs to be mentioned. Obama is a political naif. He has very little life experience outside of being Barack Obama. I'll grant he's very good at that, having written extensively on the topic, writing two whole books about himself before accomplishing anything more significant than being elected. But as for character-challenging experiences like going from hot-shot fighter pilot to spending years being tortured as a POW... like John McCain has... Obama can only fire blanks. When it comes to the wonky details of actual legislation passed - or even failed - Obama has an undistingished, and very brief, career while his opponent is as deep and experienced as could be imagined. Really, on almost every issue, Obama brings little more than a comfortable pose. Not depth.

For goshsakes, lefties, if you wanted depth why did you blow all your senior statesmen running for the nomination (i.e. Biden, Richardson, and Dodd) out of the running by the time Iowa tallied their caucus votes? That's not just a rhetorical question, it's a genuine puzzle to me. Anyway...

Simple lesson for the Dems... If you're going to nominate a cheerful empty suit, you play the "evil" card. The "stupid" one is all too likely to snap back like an ill-timed rubber band shot on someone who's favorite phrase seems to be "umm... ahhh..." when caught off script. McCain being at his best off-script rather than on is why your candidate (smartly) declined the town-hall, rather than formal debate, format for their televised interactions, remember? You don't avoid "stupid" people going off-script. You welcome the opportunity. You only run from showing your guy against his opponent in off-script moments because you realize your guy can't keep up in those settings.

Anyway, we've seen plenty of "evil" trial balloons already, so it's not like no one on the other side is trying. I'd just be stunned if they don't get this message organized by the time their convention concludes.

Rich Lowery at NRO...

President Bush’s assurance back in 2001 that he looked into Vladimir Putin’s soul and liked what he saw was the international equivalent of his “heckuva job” boosterism of Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown in the immediate wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

True, dat.

I've been more than a little discomforted, if not exactly shocked, by the glowing propaganda NBC is pumping toward the autocratic People's Republic of China in exchange for their exclusive Olympic coverage permission. Why, to listen to Bob Costas and the like, all those people in the forced labor camps in China must truly be bad people. After all... who could oppose such a glorious and progressive state?

Enter New York Times pet conservative columnist David Brooks who, as far as I know, is not in the employ of NBC and, as far as I know, doesn't count on exclusive access to China in order to produce his columns. So what to make of this...

The opening ceremony in Beijing was a statement in [the collectivist versus individualist] conversation. It was part of China’s assertion that development doesn’t come only through Western, liberal means, but also through Eastern and collective ones.

The ceremony drew from China’s long history, but surely the most striking features were the images of thousands of Chinese moving as one — drumming as one, dancing as one, sprinting on precise formations without ever stumbling or colliding. We’ve seen displays of mass conformity before, but this was collectivism of the present — a high-tech vision of the harmonious society performed in the context of China’s miraculous growth.

If Asia’s success reopens the debate between individualism and collectivism (which seemed closed after the cold war), then it’s unlikely that the forces of individualism will sweep the field or even gain an edge.

For one thing, there are relatively few individualistic societies on earth. For another, the essence of a lot of the latest scientific research is that the Western idea of individual choice is an illusion and the Chinese are right to put first emphasis on social contexts.

...

The rise of China isn’t only an economic event. It’s a cultural one. The ideal of a harmonious collective may turn out to be as attractive as the ideal of the American Dream.

His vague fanboy allusions to modern science aside - and what political scientist of the Soviet era couldn't cite plenty of the same sort of science in defense of their ideology - what the heck is Brooks up to here? Is he seriously of the belief that the Chinese people themselves wouldn't prefer to be free if given the choice? You'll note that the lack of that choice by the people is always present in societies such as the PRC.

Look, Chinese history is deep and dazzling and the opening ceremony of the Olympics played that up enormously. But the fact is the current "collectivist" government in China once systematically tried to abolish that entire history under Mao. Thankfully it was not quite as successful as the Khmer Rouge was in Cambodia in accomplishing that task. Regrettably, it was pretty darn savage and destructive of history and human lives in its own right.

We in the West already fought this "collectivist versus individualist" battle during the Cold War. News flash to David Brooks: We won. China is currently trying to maintain the legacy of Marxist collectivism while gaining the advantages of Free Market growth. I don't care how dazzling the opening ceremony of the Olympics was... that's a tea kettle heading for a boil. It's not an alternative path to the American Way. It's an attempt to throw up a road block.

The Great Nation of the future in Asia is less likely to be China than India. India is casting its lot with democracy and free markets; haltingly, and with imperfections of course - but the trend is clear. China's demographics are now on the same unsustainable inverse pyramid as the welfare states of Europe. India's are healthy and growing. Doesn't sound like the "collective" of China thought that one through very carefully if it intends to succeed the free West in the coming decades.

In any case, it's beyond question that the significant problems of China deserve at least a wee bit of mention by Mr. Brooks before he goes on to portray them as a successful example of an alternative path to national success without all that messy personal freedom getting in the way.

I'm going to piggy-back off the post of Mitch's new co-blogger Jroosh and pile on this almost too-target-rich to be true "Letter of the Day" from the Strib.

Fair warning: I fisk meaner and weirder than Jroosh. We begin...

So John McCain is making money by mocking Barack Obama's suggestion to save fuel by making sure our tires are properly inflated and getting regular tuneups.

No. McCain isn't making money by this mockery. He's making Barack Obama look ridiculous and driving down his polling numbers. Obama is the one making money by schmoozing with donors shelling out thousands to dine with the chosen one (he's gone so far into fatcat territory to even catch the notice of Nick "hobo-lovin'" Coleman! Don't expect that to last too long, just enjoy the momentary irony.). Because that's change you can believe in... change from the expectations of Obama's checkbook history before he scored this cool gig as the Dem savior anyway.

An Aug. 5 article said McCain's presidential campaign is offering supporters tire gauges labeled "Obama Energy Plan" in exchange for a $25 donation.

Really? Cool. The Strib only provided a picture. I'll provide the link so anyone who wants one can find it. Makes a great stocking stuffer, I'm told.

If that's the "making money" referred to above, consider it more than countered by a single donor to Obama's $28,500 per diner private feast in Minneapolis last week. It's also funnier.

As a drivers education instructor, ...

Oh, THAT improves your credibility a lot... assuming none of us have ever actually experienced some "instruction" from a drivers education instructor sometime in our lives. Sadly, looking at the state of our traffic, we mostly have. And most of us apparently remain shell-shocked by the experience. ( I keed... I keed.)

I used textbooks that teach important strategies on improving gas mileage in any vehicle. These strategies include properly inflating your tires, having regular tuneups and using your cruise control whenever possible.

Yes, and the instruction manual of every lawnmower I have ever purchased tells me I should never operate it without wearing heavy boots, gloves, and eye protection. Also that I should occasionally change the oil. Ha! Well... okay that last one probably has some merit... But do you begin to sense a bit of a disparity between "best practice" and "actual behavior of the general populace"? If not, make a note. We'll come back to this.

This tactic of making fun of tried and true research sounds eerily familiar.

Yes it does. It reminds me of the kind of jokes smart people I work with like to make about those who think a terrific design idea includes something like: "And everyone using our product will successfully change their behavior when we tell them to, despite everything our experience and the evidence tells us regarding their tendencies." That kind of "Deus ex Training-Materials" thinking is the hallmark of VERY junior and sucky solution designers. It's more frequent than you might think. But not so frequent that anyone who has to account for their work over a couple of years in the private sector can't be winnowed out from serious roles of solution design.

I'm sure that's where Mr. Letter-of-the-Day must be going with this. Right?

Remember how President Bush's cronies distorted and discredited research on global warming?

Umm... Well that came out of nowhere. No. I don't remember that. I remember how a bunch of people hostile to the norms of scientific skepticism didn't want a debate on the topic and took their case to the media and politicians rather than adopting the normal methods of scientific discovery. We'll just have to agree to disagree on this one.

But what the heck does this have to do with Obama's ridiculous "tire gauges negate the need to increase oil supply" position?

Look where that has gotten us. It seems rather than come up with effective, researched plans of their own, the conservative Republicans would rather make trivial attacks to win over voters.

Woah. Didn't expect that audacious an idiocy to emanate from someone with the academic credentials of "a drivers education instructor."

John McCain's "effective, researched plan" is actually easily available. Handy tip for you there, oh master-of-drivers-instruction... the Internet. Look it up. It's not in the "automotive manuals" section of your local library. Ask for help.

Look, the basic idiocy of the Obama "tire-gauge-gaffe"... and it was very clearly a gaffe... is that it echoes Jimmy Carter's "put-on-a-sweater and turn down the thermostat" strategy to combat the oil crisis during his administration. Americans already know how they PERSONALLY have to deal with higher energy bills. And it goes way beyond energy specific activity. We don't need a president to tell us about it.

What are YOU as PRESIDENT going to do in the areas only the president can affect? That's the real question posed to those battling for the office. To the extent Barack Obama refutes the need to increase the domestic oil supply, deferring to tire gauges or anything alike, his answer is NOTHING. He intends to do nothing to alleviate the oil supply shortage. That is the message McCain's tire gauges convey. And they're most effective because they're conveying a truth and a significant distinction between the candidates.

John McCain, for all his (many) faults intends to do something within his power as president to increase the domestic production of oil. He's clear about that. Like Obama, he's also favoring the development of many alternatives. But that's not enough.

Today the economy runs on oil. Tomorrow the economy will run on oil. On the day after the inauguration the economy will run on oil. It doesn't matter how distasteful you find that idea. It's a fact. And Barack Obama runs from it at his peril.

We conclude...

Wake up, voters! Don't get duped again by Karl Rove and his surrogates' tactics.

Wake up, voters! Don't get duped again by thew Star Tribune and their "Letter of the Day" surrogates' tactics!

(And honestly, how did Karl Rove yet again insert himself into lefty paranoia here? Lefties seemingly do believe in a real bogeyman. And it's getting more than a bit creepy by now. Is there nothing left which lefties dislike that they don't earnestly believe is due to the machinations of Karl Rove?)

Almost everyone who writes about politics on the internet is a self-important moron embarrassingly unaware of his/her own ignorance about the topic.

I have been known to write (extensively at times) about politics on the internet.

(What follows?)

(P. S. Not going to stop doing it. Just wondering.)

Why you should never vote for Obama:

He's never done anything ever aside for getting people to put him in office. Really. His qualifications? He looks composed and cool. You really want to sign off on that as good enough for you as sufficient for chief executive of the United States?

Why you should never vote for John McCain:

He's too old...

Oh hell... this bit doesn't really work. The fact is Obama isn't even minimally qualified to be president. This election is apparently going to be about skin color.

Obama is brown. *gasp* This used to be bad. But now that we're sorry, it's good. Not that it will change a single vote, but it's kind of stupid in either direction. You can't make up for past stupid by being stupid oppositely. Just... stop being stupid.

It's weird that John McCain is about the LEAST doctrinaire conservative the Republicans have put up in decades, and yet this theme goes almost unmentioned in the media. No room for it within fitting Obama's halo I guess.

And this isn't a minor theme either. McCain doesn't just skew a bit off the conservative mainstream, he juts and jigs in ways that have some of their most prominent voices clamoring for his excommunication regularly. If you like "independent" as opposed to "party line" I challenge you to find a better example in the entire Congress.

I think McCain provides an excellent test for true independents. Obama is offering little more than rhetoric to independents. There are no legislative accomplishments to support his claims of bipartisanship. His actual record could hardly be more partisan.

McCain has taken the risk of defying his conservative base many times... often to his detriment. And this includes his positions within the heat of the nomination.

When the entire Republican base was clamoring for a huge wall with razor wire and laser-beam defenses on the Mexican border, McCain went into the primaries telling them it was stupid and we needed to accommodate the illegal immigrants in the country today. I don't care if you think this was a good idea. It was without question the kind of serious commitment to an ideal Barack Obama consistently twitches away from. It damn near killed McCain's chance to be president. And he knew it. And he never blinked anyway.

To me "People fawn over me and throw me money if I speak a certain way", versus "I will say and do what I think is right" is not that close a contest when selecting a top executive. I just fear that it's not that close for most others either, and they're coming down on the opposite side.

(hat-tip Andy A.)
The above is a great, compelling, and relevant message. It could even be an election turner.

The problem of course is that the guy atop the ticket is pretty mushy on embracing any of these policies. If we had a candidate who was talking like this, we could start building actual momentum around this issue. The Dems are completely boxed in by their unrealistic, fairyland environmental lobbies, who learned all they needed to know about environmental policy by watching Bambi in kindergarten. That plays well enough when America is living in the lap of luxury. Instead our candidate warbles his way around the topic like this.

Further making this a hard sell? Remember, since 9/11 we've had pretty clear market signals regarding the sensitivity of foreign oil supplies. And most of that time we had Republican control of Congress and the White House. And they did nothing.

It looks like the Republican Party is heading for a pretty thorough clock-cleaning defeat in November. And when it happens that's a good time to clear the decks of the boobs we've called party leaders the past eight years. Because there is an electorate out there hungering for an alternative to the Euro-Socialist party that spells its name beginning with a D. And the fact that the Republican leadership can't seem to spell out that alternative as anything other than "war, corruption, and the other guys would be even worse," is pathetic.

UPDATE:

Perhaps not all is lost just yet. Some seem to be waking up.

I probably can't back up the claim of that title. But in my personal Hollywood produced version of politics, the moment Congressman Dana Rohrabacher spoke this line on the floor of the House, the terrible government power-grab represented by the Lieberman-Warner bill was defeated:

I would like to point out that before the introduction of cattle, millions upon millions of buffalo dominated the Great Plains of America. They were so thick you could not see where the herd started and where it ended. I can only assume that the anti-meat, manmade global warming crowd must believe that buffalo farts have more socially redeeming value than the same flatulence emitted by cattle. Yes, this is absurd, but the deeper one looks into this global warming juggernaut, the weirder this movement becomes and the more denial is evident.

Humorous quote aside, it really does look like that awful cap-and-trade bill, which wouldn't actually change the climate even in the best case scenario but would certainly impoverish a lot more people in the name of looking sufficiently serious about the matter, has been silently defeated. This queues up the issue for an election year in which... both major party candidates support the bill without reservation. *sigh*

Welcome to the brave new world in which your government considers the very breath you exhale a form of filthy pollution responsible for killing polar bears and causing hurricanes. This, of course, compels them to take immediate action, partisan politics be damned!

Well, at least we won't have to welcome it THIS year thanks to Congressman Rohrabacher's eloquence regarding buffalo farts.

Regarding this admittedly thin speculation on a potential "maverick with a vengeance" ticket, it's obviously a dynamo for independents and moderates. But as for the base... could any staunch conservatives support it?

In my own case yes, but only in the least enthusiastic manner. It's better than the alternative. I can't come up with a lot more than that to get excited about. I'd be blogging about a lot more reality television shows and less politics between now and November if this was the ticket, that's for sure.

Mind you, I like Joe Lieberman's character, at least as far as politicians go. I just think he stands for a fairly mainstream Democratic Party view of the world in everything except foreign policy. And in that matter he's simply the last prominent office holder of the Scoop Jackson Democrats. That's not the kind of guy I want a heartbeat away from the presidency as we elect one of the oldest candidates ever. It's not a personal dislike, it's basic policy difference. As this campaign plays out it's getting further and further from me seeing anyone representing a direction I can believe in.

That said, this would probably doom the McCain candidacy in a hurry. Because I think a lot MORE conservatives would protest this selection thereby undermining McCain's Republican base. There would be a major protest candidate of some kind running purely to defeat McCain by taking the protest vote. And don't count on the likes of me working up much energy to oppose them.

Good Lord, would someone please keep all news about bridges away from the Strib's pet monkey columnist (that would be Nick "I am implausibly nobody's monkey" Coleman)? This is a guy who will strain to cobble together the most far-reaching similes and metaphors without having them so neatly pre-packaged for his gleefully dour columns.

To catch us up on Nick's position regarding Minnesota's bridges it is this: Republicans are to blame.

That's it. It doesn't really matter what the issue affecting bridges might be. He got started on his current roll when he noticed a Republican sitting in the governor's office when the 35W bridge collapsed. After that it's been a simple matter of connecting the dots for him. A news story pops up with the word "bridge" in it, and he's off on yet another "gotcha" column about Republicans.

What set him off this time. Apparently this:

On Tuesday, the Minnesota Department of Transportation closed the picturesque span for inspections after finding holes in the 67-year-old structure.

Considering his hysterical ranting about how MNDOT should have closed the 35W bridge, somehow anticipating the unprecedented collapse and completing emergency repairs to prevent said tragic collapse, and the only thing that prevented them from doing so was an unwillingness to spend the money, you would think this action was exactly the sort of change Coleman would welcome. No more with the "do more studies." No more "not in this year's budget" dodges. Just close the damn thing and fix it. We're not going to chance a repeat of what happened to the 35W bridge.

If you think Nick has even the slightest chance of taking such a lesson from this, you simply don't know the man. Like a monkey cannot be expected to resist the temptation to fling his feces no matter how nice you are toward him, Nick flings away...

It seems as though Minnesotans can't turn anywhere during our sesquicentennial without banging up against the realities of years of neglect and under-spending on infrastructure, especially highways and bridges. Even Gov. Tim Pawlenty has had no luck avoiding potholes.

Yes indeed folks. The problem cannot be resolved by spending to fix things now. We, one of the nation's highest taxed states, have not been spending enough all along. This is an itch too old to scratch now. And therefore the justification for whining can never be withdrawn. Lucky Nick.

Lesson number 5731 in how conservatives can never appease liberals. You don't spend all the money they want, you're damned as a miser in the pocket of the fat-cats. You change course and start spending like they demand and...

Other bridges have been slated for emergency repairs since Pawlenty declared there was nothing that could have been done to prevent the 35W bridge from falling: The Hwy. 61 bridge in Hastings, the Lowry Avenue bridge in Minneapolis, the Blatnik Bridge in Duluth and, now, Winona.

Why, it's as if we have some kind of transportation crisis!

... now you're responsible for creating a crisis! They can prove it too. Look how you're closing bridges and spending so much on emergency repairs!

But wait, isn't that kind of circular reasoning? No it's a Nick Coleman column. But I repeat myself.

Lost amidst all Nick's ranting is the fact that the actual battle over Minnesota's transportation dollars for the past decade between liberals and conservatives (not so cleanly between Democrats and Republicans) has been that liberals want a larger share of dollars to go to alternative transportation - commuter rail, more buses, bike trails - while conservatives want those same dollars spent on improving the existing infrastructure. You know. Things like bridges and roads.

As that billion dollar (and counting) light rail chugs past Nick Coleman's Star Tribune building, I wonder if he ever feels just a tingle of the notion that there may be people who aren't Republicans who share just a tiny bit of responsibility for this crisis he personally declared and now condemns.

Apparently some on the right have decided we ought to become as wussified and outraged as the perpetually offended members of the left. The controversy de jour involves Rachel Ray wearing a scarf with too strong a whiff of the rampaging Saracen hordes in a Dunkin' Donuts add.

Michelle Malkin and Charles Johnson (big surprises there) have made a big deal out of it. Now we are apparently supposed to denounce and condemn Ray, Dunkin' Donuts, and the perhaps entire fashion world for... well I don't know. I mean when I first saw the picture of her wearing the scarf I honestly had no clue what I was supposed to be outraged about. To those not inclined to look for symbols of jihadist conspiracy around every corner it's a freaking white and black scarf worn by that perky 30 Minute Meals lady to hawk some coffee.

Here... have a look for yourselves. But I worn you; if you're a regular Malkin or Little Green Footballs reader you might be striken with outrage so severe your computer monitor becomes instantly coated in flecks of spittle from your uncontrollably infuriated pavlovian response upon sight. So please only follow the jump with caution...

Now that half my raison d'être for blog writing has gone into summer hibernation I'm finding myself having trouble getting into the other half - politics. And this time it's not due to any kind of burnout or even boredom. No, this time is because I've developed a weird mixture of "no dog in this fight" and resignation that I'm not even turned off for the reasons other people seem to be. To whit:

I'm not all that concerned about illegal immigration. There. I said it. Oh, I think we ought to have better border control. And I think our nation's immigration system is long overdue for an overhaul. I just don't expect it's all that feasible to make it right all that quickly. Too much of the American economy is now dependent on access to the very unregulated and therefore very cheap labor that strolls across the border without proper documentation these days (what a concept - even benign government regulations drive up costs - who knew?). I also think such immigrants will either head back home or assimilate within a couple of generations regardless. They're not the vanguard of an "invasion" or a "reconquista." By and large they're just folks trying to earn a living and more likely to have an opinion about their favorite sports teams and television shows than about immigration policy. There's certainly a legitimate security concern there, but it's almost always overblown by those with the necessary passion to do something about it, which makes it self-defeating in the end.

Anyway the point is, I can't really join the outrage of the folks who may rebel against the Republican ticket over John McCain's sins on this issue.

I'm quite concerned that the government is too big now; that it's getting bigger; that we're slowly treading down the bankrupt path that has stagnated Europe's economies and threatens to collapse under ever aging demographics which can't sustain their welfare states. But more than this I'm concerned that the Republican Party, which has been rhetorically opposed to this direction since Reagan, doesn't seem capable of doing anything about it even when they hold the presidency and the Congress. Sure, I think the Democrats will get us to the undesirable situation sooner, but that's not exactly a "rally the troops" kind of election cry. I don't see a lot of reason to believe more than a vocal minority of elected Republicans truly care about this, and I see lots of indications most are just as married to ever-growing government as their opposition across the aisle. The main difference seems to be where they'd allocate the most money first.

So I can't really get fired up to "clean house" in the Republican Party over this either, as I no longer believe it's a position truly in the majority of that party. Republican governance gave us the biggest expansion of the welfare state since Lyndon Johnson and out of control earmark abuse, neither of which show signs of abating, even if Republicans are put back in charge.

We're watching observed real-world results collected over the past decade falsify the predictions which caused the IPCC and people around the world such alarm regarding global warming. It's becoming increasingly clear that, no matter what you believe regarding human causation of climate change, no model exists which can accurately predict the impact changing carbon emissions will have on a future climate. None of the climate models predicted that a decade of increasing carbon emissions since 1998 would result in a cooling global temperature ever since. They predicted the opposite. Yet cooling rather than warming is what has happened. And at this precise moment the political opposition to implementing huge and expensive new taxes and regulations on carbon emissions has collapsed. Whether we have a Republican or a Democrat in office next year, and no matter what new scientific discoveries reveal, we will almost certainly have sweeping new programs to regulate almost every area of our economy in the name of preventing global warming. That something so hubris laden as global climate control could become a matter of legislation bypassing the normal scientific protocols for peer review in favor of glitzy propaganda is troubling enough. That its steamrolling along oblivious to the continual falsification of the constituent predictions is nothing short of deflating. More deflation? A Republican administration just listed polar bears as a threatened species even though their population is five times what is was when first counted in 1970. Why? Because if the earth gets warm enough to melt the arctic - and those computer models says it might - they'll all drown. Or something like that. And I'm supposed to worry about the ridiculous government intervention in the environment if the other party is put in charge?

So I can't join the "New Republican" enthusiasm for those like John McCain, Norm Coleman, and Tim Pawlenty who want to develop a "green" Republican agenda, which accepts pretty much everything the other party's greens assume only with more talk about "markets" in the way we address them. I like conservationism style environmentalism focused more on local decisions, responsible stewardship, and individual accountability. But apparently that's a position in search of a political party these days.

I'm convinced that, after a long and stubborn period of making an utter mess of things in Iraq, we're finally turning the corner there, largely because a new commander was allowed to adopt the proper tactics. I do not believe our presence in Iraq squares in the public mind with a comprehensive global anti-terrorism strategy anymore. Which is the only reason it made sense to invade in the first place. It has become an end in itself, and I can only hope we end it the right way as opposed to stabbing the Iraqi people in the back again by withdrawing our promised support prematurely. However I have a sneaking feeling that no matter who wins the presidency, the domestic political situation will call for the troops to come home sooner rather than later. No one is buying the War on Terror as the new Cold War anymore. There is a strong isolationist strain woven through American history and it's pulling against a major and long-term commitment of so many American troops. The sand is running out of the glass on this one, and neither party seems very mindful of the balancing act involved there. Yet if we leave too soon a regional - not just a civil - war is a real possibility. And this with oil prices already well above one hundred dollars per barrel and going up.

So even as I support John McCain's basic position on this matter, I don't know how effective he'd be with an increasingly resistant Democratic Congress anyway. He'd need the support of the broad public and I don't think he'll have it long unless he started dramatically drawing down troop strength.

The price of oil is skyrocketing, but neither party wants to approve domestic oil production. The Republican Party's candidate compared drilling for oil in a desolate strip of land along a small strip of a South Carolina sized chunk of Alaska to defiling the Grand Canyon. The other party says it's even worse. Gas prices at the pump approach 4 dollars per gallon. Construction of nuclear power plants can't get approval. Wind and solar power aren't capable of meeting more than a small fraction of energy needs. The price of food is inflating as well because we're burning corn to make ethanol - which adds more carbon to the environment in production than it removes by burning in place of gasoline which undermines its very purpose. And it doesn't matter which party is elected regarding any of that stuff because they're all spouting the same empty poll-tested rhetoric and proposing nothing serious to handle any of it.

And on, and on, and on.

I want to distinguish this from the ubiquitous writings among conservatives lately about how to "fix" the Republican Party, or how to bring back "real" conservatism in politics. I'm actually quite the apostate myself in some of those areas lately and regardless that's not my point.

It's not that I don't care about politics either. And it's not that I'm not interested in who wins elections. I still enjoy the horse-race aspects and tactics of it at least.

But there seems to be a whole lot of important stuff I don't care about in politics which other people do. And there's a lot I think is critically important that the elections won't affect. I'm somewhere between apathy and rebellion but I can't quite tune into either vibe very well. My personal political platform feels like "Meh" followed by an exclamation point. Or maybe the other way around. What punctuation conveys "meh" at the end of a sentence?

Anyway the mood or the political climate or something needs to change before I find much interest in opining on politics on anything close to a regular basis. Can I have a show of hands here, because I have a feeling I'm not alone.

Quote of the day from Thomas Sowell:

If Barack Obama had given a speech on bowling, it might well have been brilliant and inspiring. But instead he actually tried bowling and threw a gutter ball. The contrast between talking and doing could not have been better illustrated.

An astute metaphor for the campaign building castles in the clouds. One might also say it like this...



UPDATE:

Or a slightly less wordy version...

When I first heard about John McCain's fondness for something called "cap and trade" I thought it must be an odd coincidence. Perhaps he was misunderstood and was dubbing himself "Cap'n Trade," to characterize his free trade positions in contrast to his Democratic rivals' aversion to NAFTA and similar free trade policies. I pictured him in a captain's hat with his hands on his hips proclaiming himself "Cap'n Trade" here to save us from the Dems protectionist policies.

But alas, amusing as it might be to picture John McCain in a "Cap'n Crunch" looking hat, the truth wasn't really so amusing at all. It turns out McCain is a committed advocate of the "cap and trade" system for reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

While it may be fun to take another futile charge against the Washington consensus that we can control the weather by regulating our production of a single gas, I had no illusions we were getting that kind of candidate in McCain. He's about as green as they come on the right side of the aisle. He's explained how he draws inspiration from his hero Teddy Roosevelt, leading him to buy into things such as the need to preserve the "pristine" mosquito swamps of the tundra in ANWR from evil capitalist oil drilling much like we preserve the Grand Canyon.

Incidentally I too believe the Republican Party needs a credible environmental agenda. However I believe that agenda doesn't need to conflict with the basic principles underlying the rest of the party's beliefs. And much to my chagrin, the Republican candidate for president has embraced a system hard to swallow in that regard. To quote Lawrence Kudlow:

As good as John McCain’s pro-growth, supply-side tax plan is, his cap-and-trade strategy unveiled this morning is very hard for conservatives to swallow. The whole cap-and-trade experience in Europe and elsewhere reveals that this is a huge government command-and-control operation that taxes, spends, and regulates on a grand scale. The “cap” part rolls back production to an extent that undermines economic growth. The European cap-and-trade plans are prohibitively expensive, and are themselves hostile to economic growth.

My main problem with McCain's embrace of the cap and trade position (once I choke down my belief that it's a solution to a non-problem in the first place) is that there are many more intelligent ways to assert ones' environmentalism - including belief in human caused global warming - while showing complete respect for the free market.

Bjørn Lomborg provides a great counter example. Like McCain he has no doubt regarding man-made global warming. But unlike McCain he evaluates things through a far more empirical cost/benefit lens... a perspective that sounds strangely more aligned with the free market principles of American conservatives than the man running to lead them.

Some excerpts from his recent interview by National Review's Kathryn Jean Lopez (all emphases mine):

Lopez: How can John McCain legitimately differentiate himself from the Democratic nominee on climate policy?

Lomborg: I’m no expert on American politics.

I note that Obama and Clinton have called McCain’s plan “too timid” — but I also note that the three of them are all supporting, in varying levels, the Warner-Lieberman Bill on climate change, which looks set to be a massive subsidy-fest that would achieve very little for the environment, at great cost.

McCain could dramatically differentiate himself by being the only candidate acknowledging that promising cuts in the near future just means economic pain for no gain. He could stand out by acknowledging that promising dramatic reductions in the far-off future is simply sweeping the hard choices under the rug for now, for no gain. Wishful thinking is not sound public policy.

We need the technological solutions that will allow our societies to transition cost-effectively to low-carbon energy by mid-century. McCain could recognize that this is a century-long problem which needs century-long, smart solutions.

Lopez: You are about to hold your Copenhagen Consensus 2008. What happened there that John McCain (and the rest of us) should know about?

Lomborg: The Copenhagen Consensus 2008 gets some of the world’s greatest thinkers together to prioritize solutions to the world’s greatest problems: air pollution, conflict, disease, education, global warming, malnutrition/hunger, sanitation/water, subsidies and trade barriers, terrorism and women/development.

The prioritization is based on research that has been created specifically for the project by top economists in each field, identifying the best investments we could make in order to achieve good in the world.

Politicians like John McCain prioritize every day. The message from Copenhagen Consensus is that when it comes to battling environmental and developmental problems, we need to be explicit about our priorities, and talk about where we can do the most good first.

We should not focus on the problems that get the most publicity, but the issues where we can do the most good. Analysis from Copenhagen Consensus research shows that cutting CO2 now will do 90 cents worth of good for every dollar spent — a bad deal. However, investing in research and development of new energy technologies will do $16 worth of good for every dollar spent — while being much cheaper. Let us do the smartest things first, in dealing with all of the world’s problems, including global warming.

John McCain does not have a problem being concerned about the environment. That's actually both laudable and especially needed among Republican candidates who are all too often mute about such issues. Provided he's being respectful of conservative principles and sensible rather than hysterically reactive I don't even have a problem with his complete agreement with the global warming crowd. McCain's problem is that he's copying the means as well as the values of the left when it comes to this issue.

A conservative should instinctively distrust huge multi-national plans relying on command and control economic models, no matter what lip service they pay to free markets. He should have seriously investigated any number of alternatives before calling for something so drastic and so antithetical to the values of the right. That he has not done so doesn't brand him a "maverick" as much as a "follower" when it comes to this matter. And we deserve better.

One might be inclined to sympathize with the troubled local media entity, the Star Tribune, what with its well publicized financial troubles lately. Why they've even apparently resorted to outsourcing their time-honored tradition of dishonestly smearing Republican candidates to their Letters to the Editor writers.

I suppose if I was an investor looking at the struggling Strib's bottom line, I too might see the advantages of this strategy: no need to pay for the writing; no need to accurately cite any sources; and the paper can still prominently feature the commentary as its own "Letter of the Day."

See how easy it is?

John McCain said in a speech last week that, as president, he would appoint federal judges who favored overturning Roe vs. Wade. He also said he thinks that federal judges should be responsive to the will of the people.

Wow, that's a pretty major assertion. I mean, the Roe v. Wade controversy has been THE major judicial appointment sticking point on both sides of the aisle for over three decades now. And not only that, apparently John McCain also turned his back on a generation of conservative judicial philosophy that explicitly condemns judges who rule according to their own notion regarding the "will of the people" rather than the plain wording of our laws? Double-wow! Major blockbuster! I wonder why the Star Tribune failed to take note of it in the only news story they carried regarding this speech.

I suppose they might be forgiven for reasons a bit more relevant than budget cuts. Reasons like: John McCain said no such thing. Really. Not even close. You can read the entire transcript of the speech in question (or watch the video of it) if you'd like.

There is no mention of Roe vs. Wade in the speech whatsoever. The thrust of the speech is devoted to respecting the restrained role of the judiciary. How could one possibly take that speech and make the asserrtion that it had anything to due with judges ruling based on the "will of the people" rather than in respect to the law? Apparently from this section of the speech, which I'll present in context:

The executive, legislative, and judicial branches are often wary of one another's excesses, and they should be. They seek to keep each other within bounds, and they are supposed to. And though you wouldn't always know it from watching the day-to-day affairs of modern Washington, the framers knew exactly what they were doing, and the system of checks and balances rarely disappoints.

There is one great exception in our day, however, and that is the common and systematic abuse of our federal courts by the people we entrust with judicial power. For decades now, some federal judges have taken it upon themselves to pronounce and rule on matters that were never intended to be heard in courts or decided by judges. With a presumption that would have amazed the framers of our Constitution, and legal reasoning that would have mystified them, federal judges today issue rulings and opinions on policy questions that should be decided democratically. Assured of lifetime tenures, these judges show little regard for the authority of the president, the Congress, and the states. They display even less interest in the will of the people. And the only remedy available to any of us is to find, nominate, and confirm better judges.

That is the ONLY mention of the phrase "will of the people" in the entire speech. Feel free to fact check that assertion. Unlike the Star Tribune, I provided a link to the source so you don't have to take my word for it.

As anyone above moron-level intellect can observe, the phrase "the will of the people" above is not presented as the standard by which judges are supposed to be deciding cases. It is presented as a further criticism of judges who are ruling on matters that don't belong in front of the judiciary in the first place. The phrase McCain used describing this improper judicial behavior is: "... federal judges today issue rulings and opinions on policy questions that should be decided democratically."

McCain's point in a nutshell: If I think the speed limit on my street should be lowered to 20 mph because there are lots of kids playing in it, I shouldn't go to a judge but rather to the relevant elected officials. That's how the system is set up. But if I DO go a a judge over it, a proper judge should tell me he's got no authority to change that kind of thing. However some judges ignore that basic issue and issue rulings over these kind of issues where the constitution does not give them proper authority. And John McCain says this is wrong and he doesn't want to appoint those kind of judges. Hearing that point, where does our Star Tribune "Letter of the Day" run with it?

Send that man back to Constitution school! It's hard to believe he's served so long and still hasn't learned the basic division of responsibilities among the three branches of the U.S. government.

Yeah, especially hard to believe when he called our this basic division explicitly in the preceding paragraph. One might even begin to conclude that John McCain very obviously and demonstrably knows about this distinction, and therefore someone asserting the contrary is serving some particular agenda above and beyond telling the truth.

Our outsourced editorialist continues...

The judiciary is the one branch of our government that is responsible to the Constitution, the law and to justice. It is the only branch that protects the minority from the potential tyranny of the majority.

Okay, that's just stupid and has nothing to do with John McCain so let me dispense with it myself. Every branch of government is responsible to the Constitution. Every branch of our government has its authority and the limits of its powers enumerated therein. And every branch of government has a role in protecting the minority from the tyranny of the majority because that's the basic distinction between a Republic, which is what our Constitution established, and a pure democracy, which is little better than mob rule.

So... We'll now go back to our letter writer's dishonest dissembling of McCain's remarks.

If, perchance, judicial justice matches the will of the people, it's a nice coincidence. But judges should never base their decisions on what the people say they want. And the selection of judges should be based on their ability to know the law and to administer justice fairly. Their selection should not be based on any pre-judging of cases that might come before them.

Shame on McCain!

Gosh. One thinks our letter writer might agree with the fellow who said this:

Federal courts are charged with applying the Constitution and laws of our country to each case at hand. There is great honor in this responsibility, and honor is the first thing to go when courts abuse their power. The moral authority of our judiciary depends on judicial self-restraint, but this authority quickly vanishes when a court presumes to make law instead of apply it. A court is hardly competent to check the abuses of other branches of government when it cannot even control itself.

One Justice of the Court remarked in a recent opinion that he was basing a conclusion on "my own experience," even though that conclusion found no support in the Constitution, or in applicable statutes, or in the record of the case in front of him. Such candor from the bench is rare and even commendable. But it was not exactly news that the Court had taken to setting aside the facts and the Constitution in its review of cases, and especially in politically charged cases. Often, political causes are brought before the courts that could not succeed by democratic means, and some federal judges are eager to oblige. Politicians sometimes contribute to the problem as well, abdicating responsibility and letting the courts make the tough decisions for them. One abuse of judicial authority inspires more. One act of raw judicial power invites others. And the result, over many years, has been a series of judicial opinions and edicts w andering farther and farther from the clear meanings of the Constitution, and from the clear limits of judicial power that the Constitution defines.

Sometimes the expressed will of the voters is disregarded by federal judges, as in a 2005 case concerning an aggravated murder in the State of Missouri. As you might recall, the case inspired a Supreme Court opinion that left posterity with a lengthy discourse on international law, the constitutions of other nations, the meaning of life, and "evolving standards of decency." These meditations were in the tradition of "penumbras," "emanations," and other airy constructs the Court has employed over the years as poor substitutes for clear and rigorous constitutional reasoning. The effect of that ruling in the Missouri case was familiar too. When it finally came to the point, the result was to reduce the penalty, disregard our Constitution, and brush off the standards of the people themselves and their elected representatives.

Well... perhaps not. Because that all comes from the same speech which our letter writer came away from concluding McCain wants to appoint judges exactly like the ones he took the time to explicitly call out and condemn.

It's quite clear from the speech that McCain's reference to the "will of the people" is expressed as his respect for the laws properly enacted by their representatives. This is hardly an unusual position for a long term senator of either party. It's also quite clear that he is condemning the behavior of judges who take it upon themselves to defy the proper limits of their authority AND the will of the people as expressed by the legislation legally enacted by their representatives in order to advance some personal agenda.

There's probably some shame called for here. But it doesn't belong with John McCain. It belongs with the letter writer who was either too stupid or too dishonest to tell the truth about John McCain's position on the judiciary, and especially to the Star Tribune which not only printed the unsourced accusation, but chose to feature it as its "Letter of the Day."

I suppose I might be a disturbing signal of Republican ennui in the upcoming election because I can't get very interested in the typically base-exciting speculation about whom the Republican presidential nominee will pick for his running mate.

Kathryn Lopez makes a very good case for Mitt Romney today, which I by and large agree with on the entire left side of my brain. On the other hand, the whole right side of my brain tells me...

A. These guys don't fit together.
B. These guys probably can't stand each other.
C. Isn't this election over yet? Can't we talk about who's going to be the next Top Chef (Richard is my bet, incidentally) or something else more interesting?

I dunno, I guess I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that the American people are ready to let the Democrats try out their version of Euro-socialism, which is doomed to fail and to do it painfully, but eh... what can you do? The Republican Congress, more than George W. Bush, is responsible for killing the Republican brand in the mind of the voter. The president was, however, responsible for cementing all the worst impressions in key moments that have stuck in the public's mind.

If I thought my electoral choice was between a corrupt, big-spending, war-mongering party which wanted to selectively impose their favorite Christian ideals to micromanage my life, or the untested party who disagreed with that approach and was also favored by my favorite Hollywood celebs I'd be leaning toward them as well. I don't think this is the real choice of course, but my opinion can't reshape the narrative by November.

Nor can any vice presidential nominee. That's going to fall upon the Big Mac himself. And the only way he can do it effectively is by running in a manner decidedly unattractive to the party die-hards who think they can keep running like it's 1980 in perpetuity.

That being said, Mitt Romney's best traits in a 2008 election are, to me, the ones he barely ran on at all in the primary: he's a super-smart private sector executive who's not really that interested in any "culture war" matters. That Romney would mesh nicely with McCain. The "culture warrior" who emerged during the campaign does not, and frankly if we want one of those on the ticket McCain should pick Mike Huckabee who at least plays that role with some affability and charm.

Really I have to think that this is one of those tickets that only looks good on paper. I simply don't see McCain and Mitt as a viable ticket. The elements about them which could serve as compliments only seem to exacerbate the elements that made them so bitter toward one another campaigning.

As the Obamessiah's poll numbers recover from that embarrassingly off-script crazy pastor saga (largely due to a return to the hands-off media coverage that enabled his rise in the first place), the Democratic presidential race is returning to a study writ-large regarding the mental state of the Democratic electorate. To the extent you can set aside your belief that voters are by and large rational creatures it has its own special fascination. Especially in contrast to the substance that characterized the parallel Republican race earlier.

Let's reflect on that latter point for a moment. In the Republican primary there was much fluff and pompery attempted by many candidates trying to skate past the issues with airy proclamations that they represented the next Ronald Reagan. Time after time this strategy failed, as voters held candidates accountable for their positions on immigration (which almost sank McCain's campaign last summer), war (which resurrected McCain's campaign in the winter), domestic security, federal spending, the environment, and many more. The important thing was, there were clear differences between the Republican candidates regarding their policies around these issues, and what the candidates themselves represented. Rudy Giuliani was seen as the social liberal who would be a foreign policy hawk and a law and order guy at home. Mitt Romney was the guy who adopted all the right socially conservative positions (but perhaps too conveniently close in time to his presidential run) and brought a whiz-bang understanding of private sector business wisdom. John McCain was the "maverick" who may occasionally thwart his own party but possessed of an iron sense of honor, who would never compromise with terrorists and who's resume gave instant credibility over matters of war and peace. The list goes on (Huckabee, Thompson, Hunter, etc.). These were candidates with DEEP resumes and considerable track records of accomplishments by which to measure them, forcing them to explain themselves to one another and to the electorate exhaustively.

Flash over to the Democratic race and one finds plenty of candidates with equally impressive resumes (Biden, Richardson, Dodd). The difference was how little impact they made upon the race, while inexperienced candidates with little to offer but rhetoric soared to the top of the polls. Obama, Edwards, and yes, Hillary.

It should be remembered that Hillary Clinton is only an "experienced politician" in the least conventional sense of the word. Yes, she's been close to matters of the utmost political importance for decades as First Lady of Arkansas and then of the United States. But after the one major political issue she had unquestionable accountability for (Hillarycare) went down in flames, she was carefully protected from clear positions of authority or accountability until she became a U. S. Senator years later. Her Senate record is weighty compared to Obama and Edwards, but hardly compared to most anyone else. And when it comes to matters of policy substance, it has been pointed out repeatedly there's almost no difference between Obama and Hillary (Edwards offered a slightly stronger whiff of anti-capitalism, but he's gone now and both remaining candidates have subsequently adopted his populist rhetoric too when necessary).

The real question is, what the heck is going on in the Democratic race? Why has that entire party chucked experience out the window and driven themselves mad over a choice between two major unknowns? Why has half the nation decided they could chant words like "hope" and "progress" and not have to worry about being bitten by the far more consequential presidential traits like "inexperience" and "ambition" in the end?

I think a keen look into part of the answer comes in this revealing piece in New York Magazine today attempting to rationalize the media's crush on Obama.

Contrary to the vast-left-wing-conspiracy visions of the right, much of the press never really loved the Clintons—they just feared and loathed their enemies more. The first people I ever heard viciously ragging on Bill Clinton, early in 1992, were a liberal reporter covering him and a writer then working as a Democratic staffer on the Hill. Part of it was visceral suspicion of the Clintonian political M.O. and character. And part of it, I think, was a kind of half-conscious intragenerational resentment.

Despite conservative conspiracy theories to the contrary, this jives very well with my memories of the Clinton era. The media would fall all over themselves to cover for the Clintons, but became exhausted and frustrated in the effort. They needed the Clintons because they knew how to win against Republicans. They had no one else on deck who seemed capable, as the subsequent George W. Bush presidency bitterly taught them. One has to remember, Democrats always believe their Republican opponent is unbelievably worse than their nominee. They thought Carter and Mondale were clearly superior to Ronald Reagan. Michael Dukakis was clearly superior to George H. W. Bush. And of course Al Gore, John Kerry, and any random third grader were clearly superior to George W. Bush. So to them this strange ability to win the presidency has little to do with the quality of their candidate. It all has to do with some mysterious formula of winning over the rubes who keep getting it wrong. The Clintons seemed to have this magical touch, and it grudgingly won over the liberal media.

That, in a nutshell, was at the heart of Hillary's once "inevitable" nomination. She didn't have to prove she was better than the other Democrats. It was presumed any Democratic candidate would be "better." The Clintons weren't about "better," they were about "winning."

So how the heck did Obamania emerge amid all this? Now we come to the most interesting part (subsequent emphasis mine).

...it’s ironic that the media and their fellow upscale Americans are now disposed to like Obama precisely because he resembles them in so many ways. The difference is he’s relatively unsullied, an exquisite, idealized version of themselves: educated, thoughtful, twigged to nuance, a lovely writer, well-traveled, witty, cool, dignified, candid, a little quixotic, a clued-in grown-up but not yet ruined by the ugly facts of Washington life.

And, mirabile dictu, a perfectly postmodern embodiment of compromise between the hard binaries of race and age. He’s both white and black. Born on the very cusp of the baby boom and Generation X, he’s both oldish and youngish. And as a skinny, athletic, gentle-seeming, virtually metrosexual man, he nearly splits the difference on gender as well.

What we're seeing here is the triumph of egotism over compromise. If Hillary Clinton's appeal was that she had that mysterious "winning" formula, Barack Obama's appeal is to every Democrat who believes they themselves know how to win too. It's as if a mass movement all believe that, "Sure John Kerry and Al Gore and Michael Dukakis, and on and on might not understand it. But I, (insert individual upscale Democrat's name here), am smarter than them. I know how to beat those nasty Republicans. And look - there's a candidate that is like an 'idealized version of myself.' He and I don't need Hillary in order to win the White House. It's a new era and finally people like me are calling the shots."

Why would a mass of people come to believe this all together? Because Obama's campaign rhetoric is an explicit demagogic appeal to this impulse. "We are the change we've been waiting for" is the thing in a nutshell, swelling the vanity of the individual voter into a cult of personality around Obama.

So where does Obama's appeal increasingly fall flat? Among anyone who looks at Obama and is unable to see their own idealized reflection. Don't take my word for it. Here's how the same article describes them:

Uneducated white people, residents of the so-called C and D counties, and the elderly—in other words, Hillary Clinton voters

There's a serious implication here, which I think Republican strategists ought to chew on. Hillary Clinton remains far and away the candidate more likely to win over any Republican in November. Why? Because while those "uneducated white people, etc." may not be enough in number to sway the Democratic nomination, they're far more significant in the general election.

Obama's cult of personality is built around a shared ego-trip. Hillary's campaign is (now that she's had to actually battle to win the thing) built around tough campaigning and often shameless pandering campaigning to the key demographics that swing elections. You want to know the Clinton's special "winning formula"? That's it.

With most every other key indicator favoring the Democrats in the general election, that Clinton "winning formula" is positioned perfectly for a November victory. Voters are by and large ready for a new party in the White House. Perhaps the Republican "maverick" represents enough of a break from the Bush presidency to suffice, but I wouldn't bet upon it. I don't like John McCain's chances against Hillary Clinton in November at all. But, of course, Obama stands a very good chance of keeping her name off the ticket.

I suppose it's about time I mentioned something political, since that's the "other" topic this blog is allegedly about. The problem I'm having with writing about politics lately is that it's becoming both to big and too small at once. We're in the process of choosing the next leader of the free world who will wield to power to inflict and/or relieve decades of misery upon bazillions of people. And yet we're stuck talking about some crazy preacher in Chicago ad nauseum.

For the record I don't care about the crazy preacher. I read enough early on the get the gist of the matter. Obama chose a big flashy black church to cement his radical street-cred in Chicago which he needed to launch his political career there. It worked. Whether he simultaneously got any legitimate spiritual fulfillment out of it is between him and the good Lord. Whether he heard some nasty crazy rantings from the pulpit there is pretty much a certainty. He almost certainly had no idea he'd be running for president twenty years later, and none of that stuff was going to damage him in the world of Chicago politics.

It's a special kind of crazy we're going through which allows such an unseasoned and unknown politician run to the front of the pack of likely presidential contenders in the first place. Not that I agree with Geraldine Ferraro about much, but she was certainly right when she noted his popularity is rooted in his skin color. Liberal whites want to atone for the nation's racist sins by electing a black president. They thought they found one far enough removed from the racially polarizing fringe they could get it accomplished. Now this whole crazy preacher thing threatens that outcome, and I'd imagine it pisses them off incredibly as a result.

Because you have to realize this was never about electing Barack Obama in the first place. It was about white liberals making a fashionable statement about themselves, showing how "inclusive" and "diverse" they are... especially compared to those nasty white male Republicans... by choosing a black candidate over all the white ones. Aren't you impressed by how progressive that proves they are? By the statement it makes to the whole world about how cool a nation we've become?

This is the overarching reason Obama is having limited appeal with the Democratic party's traditional lunch pail voting block. The party members who are looking for a candidate who can best answer the question, "What are you going to do for ME," see little to support in Obama. He's a junior senator without any major accomplishments to his name. He talks about courage and new politics but he's got nothing in his record backing it up. Like so much of his career in the Illinois Senate, his record of accomplishments reads like one big vote for "present."

Back when some Republicans were still hot on the notion of nominating Condoleezza Rice for president, I had to point out that if she looked like Dick Cheney no one would possibly think of her as a presidential candidate. Those supporting her simply liked the idea of stealing the "black" and "female" identity issues from the opposition party. Well those of you who thought that was ever a good idea, take a look across the aisle and see how well it's working out for the Democrats. Identity politics and symbolism over substance feels great at first but wow can it turn ugly in a hurry.