LATER EVENING POST:  JULY 16,  2008

Posted at 10:52 p.m. ET

DISGRACEFUL

Want to make your blood boil?   You know, it kills the germs.  It really does.

Here's something that'll do it.  You know, of course, that the mainstream media's designated savior, Barack Obama, will be going on tour next week, visiting Europe and the Mideast.  There will, of course, be press coverage.  Boy, will there ever be press coverage.  Get this, from the International Herald Tribune: 

WASHINGTON: Senator John McCain's trip to Iraq last spring was a low-key affair: With his ordinary retinue of reporters following him abroad, the NBC News anchor Brian Williams reported on his arrival in Baghdad from New York, with just two sentences tacked onto the "in other political news" portion of his newscast.

But when Obama heads for Iraq and other locations overseas this summer, Williams is planning to catch up with him in person, as are the other two evening news anchors, Charles Gibson of ABC and Katie Couric of CBS, who, like Williams, are far along in discussions to interview Obama on successive nights.

And while the anchors are jockeying for interviews with Obama at stops along his route, the regulars on the Obama campaign plane will have new seat mates: star political reporters from the major newspapers and magazines who are flocking to catch Obama's first overseas trip since becoming the presumptive nominee of his party.

The extraordinary coverage of Obama's trip reflects how the candidate remains an object of fascination in the news media, a built-in feature of being the first African-American presidential nominee for a major political party and a relative newcomer to the national stage.

But the coverage also feeds into concerns in McCain's campaign, and among Republicans in general, that the media is imbalanced in their coverage of the candidates, just as aides to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton felt during the primary season.

You think?

This is a disgraceful display.  Senator Obama should be covered by the same reporters who cover him every day, with possibly a foreign-policy reporter or two sprinkled throughout the crowd to give it some class.  But the crawling of the anchors to the throne of Obama will simply underline the deep suspicion that exists in the public - and it goes well beyond conservatives - that the mainstream media is not about news, but about entertainment, and the promotion of a sixties-style agenda.

Of course, the usual excuses will be trotted out.  He's new.  He's exciting.  He's a rock star.  But he's also a candidate for president of the United States.  He's not running for president of Actors Equity.  

Is there really an imbalance between the coverage of McCain and Obama?  Consider:

The imbalance has appeared in various analyses of the news coverage. The Tyndall Report, a news coverage monitoring service that has the broadcast networks as clients, reports that three newscasts by the traditional networks — which have a combined audience of more than 20 million people — spent 114 minutes covering Obama since June; they spent 48 minutes covering McCain.

Obama gets more than twice the time. 

There are any number of stories out there, many this week, about the economic woes of mainstream media, especially newspapers.  Ad revenue is down, readers and viewers aren't reading and viewing.  There are major layoffs and reorganizations.  The media attributes all this to the growth of the internet and economic bad times.  Yes, those are important factors.  But I believe another is that millions of Americans have lost confidence in the media - in its abilities and its fairness.   Next week's vulgar display of world-class groveling will not make that situation any better.

July 16, 2008.       Permalink          

EARLY EVENING POST:  JULY 16,  2008

Posted at 7:42 p.m. ET

APPEASEMENT?

The impression is given - maybe it's just an impression, maybe not - that the Bush foreign policy is continually weakening as the administration nears its end.  We were sold a bill of goods on the North Korean nuclear program after reaching an agreement that seems problematical at best.  Now we seem to be caving to Iran, slowly, but discernibly:

PARIS — The decision by the Bush administration to send a senior American official to participate in international talks with Iran this weekend reflects a double policy shift in the struggle to resolve the impasse over the country’s nuclear program.

First, the Bush administration has decided to abandon its longstanding position that it will only meet face-to-face with Iran after it first suspends uranium enrichment as demanded by the United Nations Security Council.

Second, it infuses the negotiating track between Iran on the one side and the six global powers — France, Britain, Germany, Russia, China and the United States — on the other with new importance, even though their official stance is that no substantive talks can begin until the uranium enrichment stops.

This looks like the kind of thing Bush 41 would do.  And, indeed, both Secretary of State Condi Rice and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates are honor graduates of the Bush 41 school of international relations.  More:

All of the Bush administration’s negotiating partners, particularly the Europeans and the Russians, have been pressing Washington to join the talks. They welcomed the decision to send Mr. Burns as an important signal by the Bush administration, in its final months in office, that it is seeking a peaceful solution to the nuclear crisis and not moving toward military action against Iran.

Freely translated, the problem, as the Europeans see it, is with the United States, not Iran.  If only we'd sit down and end this silly talk about actually stopping the Iranian program, all would be well, and trade could be conducted. 

The problem is that Iran has already drawn "red lines" that make any truly successful negotiation impossible:

Iran repeatedly has made clear that its “red lines” refer to its insistence that it has the right to peaceful nuclear energy as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, including the enrichment of uranium.

So what is there to talk about?

The danger here is not only the concession Bush is making to Iran - seeming to signal a start of direct talks without getting anything in return - it's the message sent to Iran that America itself is weakening, and will be even weaker if the leftist Obama takes office. 

Great way to deal with the axis of evil. 

Earlier this month, Iran formally responded to a proposal of broad political and economic incentives by the six powers aimed at resolving the nuclear impasse, but ignored the key issue of its uranium enrichment activities.

Instead, the response, which came in a letter by Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki addressed to Mr. Solana and the six world powers, said that Iran would be willing to open a comprehensive negotiation with them.

Well, of course.  Why not negotiate, when you can go for years without giving up a thing?  All the while, the centrifuges are spinning in Iran, bringing that nation closer to the nuclear point of no return.

Something doesn't sound right here.

July 16, 2008.      Permalink          

AFTERNOON POST:  JULY 16,  2008

Posted at 4:49 p.m. ET

TRACKERS

Both our standard trackers are out, and both Gallup and Rasmussen have Obama ahead by three.  Some other polls have Obama up by more, as we reported this morning, but, balancing out the numbers, it seems to be less than a five-point race. 

Michael Barone, a superb student of politics, takes a look at the latest results and applies them to the electoral college.  His conclusions are estimates, but knowledgeable estimates:

It is conventional wisdom that candidates improve their standing by moving to the center, as Obama has done on myriad issues in the past two weeks (for a pungent summary, see Charles Krauthammer's July 4 column). But Obama's movement undermines one of the central premises of his candidacy, that he is not a Washington-style politician, just as his 20-year embrace of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright undermined another central premise, that he is one who seeks to transcend racial barriers. In any case, Obama may have slipped a bit and does not seem to be making significant gains by "refining" his positions.

How could that affect the standings in the 50 states?

He answers.  Based on polls, most of which were taken in June, this would be the result:

Those polls (and my inclusion of Delaware, D.C., Hawaii, Maryland, and Vermont) show Obama leading in 26 states and D.C. with 320 electoral votes, and McCain leading (or, in the case of North Dakota, tied) in 24 states with 218 electoral votes.

However, when Obama's recent dip in the polls is factored in, this is Barone's conclusion:

If one assumes McCain is running a little stronger now, in which states would he be overtaking Obama, assuming a uniform rise across the country? In the South, Virginia (13 electoral votes). In the West, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, and Oregon (24 electoral votes). In the Midwest, Indiana and Ohio (31 electoral votes). In the East, probably nowhere: He trails in June-July polls by 8 percent in Pennsylvania and 9 percent in New Jersey (36 electoral votes). Leaving aside the East, these 68 electoral votes added to his current 218 would give him 286 electoral votes, the number George W. Bush won in 2004.

From Barone's mouth to you-know-who's ears.

Barone concludes:

This has the potential to be a furiously contested race.

All right, McCain.  Start contesting.   You can pull this out.

July 16, 2008.      Permalink          

WEDNESDAY:  JULY 16,  2008

Posted at 7:14 a.m. ET

NEW POLLS

Some new polls are out, and one is at variance with the trackers we publish here every day.

A CBS/NY Times poll has Obama up six over McCain.

But an ABC News/Washington Post poll has him up only three.

Our latest trackers show Obama up four (Gallup) and two (Rasmussen), an average of three. 

The CBS/NY Times result, although a bit stronger for Obama than the others just listed, is still lower than the Quinnipiac poll, announced a few days ago, which has Obama up nine.

The key point:  No poll shows McCain ahead.

July 16, 2008.       Permalink               

BARACKED, BOTHERED AND BEWILDERED

Byron York, at NRO Online, does some original reporting on stories leaking out on Democratic disaffection with the front runner.

I just got off the phone with a well-connected Democrat, trying to get a better read on this Democrats-miffed-with-Obama stuff. It's real, he said, and more serious than the mostly process concerns outlined in the Politico story. Yes, party leaders are irritated at the Obama campaign's go-it-alone style. "Another Democrat said that they want to do this without help from anyone inside the Beltway," my source says, "because they want to arrive in town and not owe anyone anything. Which is a big gamble, because if it doesn't work, everyone is going to blame the hell out of them."

And there's something else...

But the bigger problem is the after-effect of Obama's extensive "refinements" in policy. "What they thought they would do is improve their position on issues by moving Obama to the center," the source says. "And what they failed to account for is that in improving their position politically, they underestimated the damage to the brand that was going to be inflicted by this."

Okay, but this is a little nutty.  In effect, this Democrat is saying that Obama's move to the center is damaging him with the hard-left fringe of the party, which can't put anyone in the White House.  This source mentioned Obama's moderating his stand on FISA legislation, enabling easier wiretaps of potential terrorists.

But isn't concern about FISA pretty much inside baseball, limited to the hard-core base, people who might complain about Obama but always support him? Yes, the Democrat says, but, "his base cares about it a lot, and he made a big deal in the primaries about how he would filibuster. It was a matter of moral principle." And it's not just principle involved. It's money. What was the source of Obama's miraculous fundraising prowess? It was people who cared a lot about things like FISA. "Where FISA and Iraq hurt him is with small donors on the Internet," the source says. "If the brand is really damaged, then the decision to opt out [of the campaign finance system] becomes a lot riskier, because the $100 donor is the donor who pays a lot of attention to that stuff. It's the FISA-head who gave him 100 bucks."

That's the brand?  Who wants that brand?  Well, apparently many Democrats do.  I like that term "FISA-head."  It conjures the image of some guy with gray hair who thought the North Vietnamese had justice on their side.  I don't think I'm far off.

Fascinating, what's happened to that once-great political party.

July 16, 2008.       Permalink               

THE SOFT CENTER

Tony Blankley is one of the most underestimated columnists writing today.  Leave it to him to have a refreshing take on Obama's lurching to the center.  Everybody does it?  No, Blankley points out.  Everybody doesn't do it.  In fact, he can find nothing comparable to Obama's shift in direction, presumably including the night the Titanic tried to avoid the iceberg.  He gives these examples:

Who can forget Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign, when he came out for tax cuts, lower social spending and more military spending in the primary, only to back away from those policies in the general election when he famously said: "I got a little rhetorically over-excited during the primary. On closer examination, President Carter seems to have built up our defenses sufficiently. We will have to see about those tax cuts; we may need the revenues for more social spending."

And there was militantly anti-war George McGovern:

And then in September, he went to Vietnam to consult with the generals. Upon his return, he pivoted to the center. He announced: "Well, leaving may not be practical. The generals tell me just another 200,000 troops and we can win this thing. So what the heck; let's go for a victory, as all of the independent voters and most conservative blue-collar Democrats want. I may be progressive, but I'm practical. If I want to win this election, I've got to promise to win the war."

Both switches are similar to Obama's.  The problem is, neither ever happened.  As the late director, Otto Preminger, used to say, they're "made opp."  Blankley uses the fictional changes of those past candidates to show just how dramatic is Obama's veering to the middle.

Finally...

I am not aware of anything remotely comparable to Sen. Obama's recent reversals of positions. To my knowledge, it is without moral precedent in modern American presidential elections. It is an act of political cynicism, compounded in its audacity by Sen. Obama's explicit claim to being above politics as usual.

This election season is getting interesting. Obama seems to have opened himself up to Dr. Samuel Johnson's famous admonition: "Be not too hasty to trust or admire the teachers of virtue; they discourse like angels, but they live like men."

Ah, yes.  Mere mortals.  The kind who vote by the millions.

July 16, 2008.       Permalink