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MONDAY,  SEPTEMBER 29,  2008

THE DAY

Posted at 10:28 p.m. ET

It's a remarkable thing, during a presidential campaign, when the candidates seem irrelevant.  In the last week they have been overshadowed by the economic news.  But no matter what happens with the economy, the American people will vote for a new president on November 4th.  If the election were held today, the winner would be Barack Obama.

Just think of it:  The next president may be a man who 1) has no record of public accomplishment; 2) is the darling of the far-left fringe of his party; 3) is a product of one of the most corrupt political machines in the country, yet promises reform and change; 4) expresses views during the campaign that are at marked variance with the views he's espoused for years; 5) seems to have a lower-than-average ability to tell the truth; 6)  and has not come up with a single creative idea to move this nation forward. 

Other than that, he's the best candidate we've ever had.

McCain is foundering.  The debate Friday did him no good, and it was about his home issue of foreign policy.  Although he may be playing a constructive role in the current talks over economic legislation, it's hard to know what that role is because it's played out behind closed doors.  He seems to have no economic message.

The most important upcoming event of the campaign will be the Thursday vice-presidential debate.  I love Sarah Palin, but, based on her recent showing in sit-down interviews, I have to be worried.

So, what to do?

First, McCain must recognize the emergency in his campaign.  There are signs he does.  Apparently, he's sent his best people, not the second string, to work with Sarah Palin before the debate.  There are reports that he understands that we must see on Thursday the Sarah we saw at the convention, not the Sarah we saw being asked trick "gotcha" questions by those profound minds, Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric.

Sarah has to come out fighting.  Go after both Democrats and Republicans over the financial crisis.  Speak on behalf of the American family.  And while you're at it, put Joe Biden - not the sharpest knife in Congress - on the defensive.  Whatcha been doin' all these years, Joe?  Tear apart Biden's abysmal record on foreign policy.  The man never saw a success that he favored.  In Joe Biden's world, the Cold War would still be on

And, by the way, almost as an afterthought, take on the media.  Where were Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric while the financial system was collapsing?  Why, given their salaries, they were probably making plenty of money on it.  Maybe, Sarah could say, the media giants could devote as much time to the American economy as they do to sending reporters to Anchorage to get any available dirt on the governor of Alaska.  It's time the McCain camp realized that 1) the media has made itself the enemy, and a branch of the Obama campaign and 2) the media is never very popular.  Make the media part of the same establishment that watched the financial markets tank and never warned us.  "I don't give a tinker's damn," Sarah could say, "what some overpaid media windbag thinks of me.  I don't talk media.  I talk people."  The public will cheer.

And go after Barack Obama.  Barack who?  What qualifications does this man have to be president?  We are in a national emergency, and the Democratic Party nominates a man who's never solved a problem greater than the choice of his tie. 

And then John McCain must take up the same themes and go on the attack.  McCain is best when he's McCain - fighting, animated, Gary Cooper in "High Noon."  (Indeed, Cindy McCain bears a striking resemblance to Cooper's co-star, Grace Kelly.) 

McCain and Palin should do a whistlestop across America.  Invite citizens onto the train.  And talk directly to the American people, over the heads of the press.  Ronald Reagan was masterful at that, as was Harry Truman. 

And they both won.

September 29, 2008.      Permalink          

UPDATE AT 6:25 P.M. ET:  From The New York Times:  It was the Black Monday of 2008.  Stocks fell by nearly 9 percent on Monday — the worst single-day drop in two decades — after the government’s bailout plan, touted by its supporters as a balm for the current market stress, failed to pass the House of Representatives, setting off a fresh wave of anxious selling.

UPDATE AT 6:19 P.M. ET:  The Gallup tracker has Obama up eight points, same as yesterday.  So, of all four trackers, three were unchanged and one showed a one-point drop for Obama.  Now McCain must fight back, go on the offensive, be the McCain we saw in the later primaries, when he got out from under the shadow of defeat and drove toward victory.  And unleash Sarah.  The McCain staff has allowed her to be lured into playing by the enemy's rules.  Let her play by her own.

UPDATE AT 12:36 P.M. ET:  The Hotline tracker, just published, is unchanged from yesterday, showing Obama with a five-point lead.  We now await only the Gallup tracker.  Of the three tracking polls published thus far today, two are unchanged and one shows a one-point loss for Obama.  Obama's gain from the recent turmoil may have stabilized. 

UPDATE AT 10:20 A.M. ET:  From The New York Times:  Stocks opened sharply lower on Monday, with the Dow Jones industrials down more than 300 points in the first half-hour of trading, even as federal lawmakers hammered out an agreement on the government bailout plan and Citigroup snatched up the core business of Wachovia, the ailing banking giant.

UPDATE AT 9:32 A.M. ET:  The Rasmussen tracker, which had Obama up six yesterday, has just been published for today.  It shows Obama up five points.  That is still a large lead in the Rasmussen poll, which tends to have small swings, and which has shown a tight race for months.  But a lead like this can be overcome. 

UPDATE AT 8:29 A.M. ET:  First tracker of the day is out.  The Battleground poll, the only one that has been showing McCain ahead, has him up two points over Obama.  Look, I don't understand it.  It's the outlier.  We have three other trackers due out in the coming hours. 

WHOOPS

Posted at 6:04 a.m. ET

World markets are already reacting to the bailout package constructed in Congress.  The envelope please:

(CBS/AP) Asian stock markets fell Monday amid investors' skepticism that the deal reached in Washington over a $700 billion bank bailout would quickly resolve the bad debt crisis.

Adding to concerns of further global financial contagion was news Sunday that Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg pledged more than euro11 billion ($16 billion) to Dutch-Belgian bank and insurance giant Fortis NV to keep it from insolvency.

"There's an increasing realization that the cleanup and the mending of all that's gone wrong is going to take an extended period to work through, and we're going to see an extended recovery period," said Jamie Spiteri, senior dealer at Shaw Stockbroking in Sydney.

I still want to know how all these bankruptcies and collapses occurred over a period of a few weeks.  Is there something we should know about the financial calendar?  Do they do these things between vacations?

In London, trading on the FTSE exchage got off to a weak start, despite the announcment that the British government was to nationalize troubled mortgage lender Bradford & Bingley.

You mean other countries have mortgage problems, too?  We're not the only bad people in the world?  Please tell that to the Ivy League.

U.S. stock index futures also fell, suggesting Wall Street would open lower Monday morning. Dow Jones industrial average futures were down 0.9 percent at 11,044, while Standard & Poor's 500 index futures were down 1.2 percent at 1,200.

And we may elect as president a junior senator from Illinois whose knowledge of economics begins and ends with clipping coupons at Stop 'n Shop.

I think I'll open a bank under my mattress.

September 29, 2008.      Permalink          

KRISTOL BALL

Posted at  6:01 a.m. ET

John McCain will be getting a lot of advice this week, and he needs it.  His campaign is in trouble.  Bill Kristol has some cogent ideas for getting things out of the cellar.  I'm particularly struck by his suggestions involving Sarah Palin, which strike me as right:

John McCain is on course to lose the presidential election to Barack Obama. Can he turn it around, and surge to victory?

He has a chance. But only if he overrules those of his aides who are trapped by conventional wisdom, huddled in a defensive crouch and overcome by ideological timidity.

Exactly right.  The campaign has lost its imagination.

We face a real financial crisis. Usually the candidate of the incumbent’s party minimizes the severity of the nation’s problems. McCain should break the mold and acknowledge, even emphasize the crisis. He can explain that dealing with it requires candor and leadership of the sort he’s shown in his career. McCain can tell voters we’re almost certainly in a recession, and things will likely get worse before they get better.

McCain is strongest when he's bluntest.  Kristol is correct.

With respect to his campaign, McCain needs to liberate his running mate from the former Bush aides brought in to handle her — aides who seem to have succeeded in importing to the Palin campaign the trademark defensive crouch of the Bush White House. McCain picked Sarah Palin in part because she’s a talented politician and communicator. He needs to free her to use her political talents and to communicate in her own voice.

I’m told McCain recently expressed unhappiness with his staff’s handling of Palin. On Sunday he dispatched his top aides Steve Schmidt and Rick Davis to join Palin in Philadelphia. They’re supposed to liberate Palin to go on the offensive as a combative conservative in the vice-presidential debate on Thursday.

That debate is important. McCain took a risk in choosing Palin. If she does poorly, it will reflect badly on his judgment. If she does well, it will be a shot in the arm for his campaign.

And then she can avoid sitting down with another vacant "anchorperson."

In the debate, Palin has to dispatch quickly any queries about herself, and confidently assert that of course she’s qualified to be vice president. She should spend her time making the case for McCain and, more important, the case against Obama. As one shrewd McCain supporter told me, “Every minute she spends not telling the American people something that makes them less well disposed to Obama is a minute wasted.”

Kristol says that Palin should emphasize Obama's liberalism, even though some in the GOP think that's an obsolete argument.

But the fact is the only Democrats to win the presidency in the past 40 years — Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton — distanced themselves from liberal orthodoxy. Obama is, by contrast, a garden-variety liberal. He also has radical associates in his past.

The Obama camp has criticized McCain for not using the term "middle class" in last Friday's debate.  Kristol has a response:

The McCain campaign might consider responding by calling attention to Chapter 14 of Obama’s eloquent memoir, “Dreams From My Father.” There Obama quotes from the brochure of Reverend Wright’s church — a passage entitled “A Disavowal of the Pursuit of Middleclassness.”

So when Biden goes on about the middle class on Thursday, Palin might ask Biden when Obama flip-flopped on Middleclassness.

That would be a great moment, and Palin needs a great moment now.  There's still time to turn this around.

September 29, 2008.      Permalink          

SUNDAY,  SEPTEMBER 28,  2008

BAILOUT

Posted at 8:47 p.m. ET: 

The bailout bill is the major event of the moment, indeed of many moments, yet there is little news about it.  The Politico reports that both presidential candidates may find a way to skip the vote on the bill when it comes up in the Senate, possibly tomorrow:

DETROIT, Mich.— The financial crisis is the only thing Barack Obama and John McCain talk about these days.

But neither nominee would commit Sunday to actually returning to the Senate this week to vote on the $700 billion bill aimed at preventing widespread economic collapse.

The dichotomy between their campaign trail rhetoric and their absence in the Senate is nothing new in this presidential race. Both nominees have spoken extensively in their travels over the last 20 months about bills on which they do not vote because they could not make it back to the Senate.

Yet no other piece of legislation has dominated the debate in this election cycle nearly as much as the financial bailout.

The fact is that John McCain tried to get the housing mortgage system reformed in 2005, but failed.  Obama, as usual, has no record of helping to solve any problem, let alone this one.  Yet, he is likely to be elected president.

Some wit made the comment that this may be the first presidential election where the winner demands a recount.  The problems facing a new president, from economic catastrophe to the rise of a nuclear Iran, are overwhelming.   Even former Democratic Senate leader Tom Daschle has suggested that the new president may only be permitted by the voters to serve one term because the chances of success are so small.  Yet, these problems provide a great opportunity for a political extremist, a demagogue, especially one helped along by a blind, ask-no-questions press.  The radical depends on conditions being very, very bad.  He also depends on shutting down serious questions.

Consider recent attempts by the Obama legions to shut down a Chicago radio station's interviews with Stanley Kurtz, who was investigating Obama's ties to radical Bill Ayers.  Consider suggestions from Democrats in Congress to reinstate the fairness doctrine in broadcasting, which could easily kill talk radio by requiring stations to give equal air time to differing points of view, a quick road to bankruptcy.  Consider reports out of Missouri - and here I'm indebted to many readers who've alerted me - that Obama's forces are organizing law-enforcement officials to take some unspecified actions against those who "distort" Obama's record.   

I don't believe that every negative event should be labeled a crisis.  We overuse the word.  But I do sense we are present at a dangerous moment in history.  Edward R. Murrow once said that the New Deal, which he favored was, like the surgeon's scalpel, "dangerous."  This new bailout package is dangerous.  The potential election of a man like Obama, whose views expressed in the campaign are strangely different from the views he's expressed most of his life, is dangerous.  The collapse of the mainstream media is dangerous.

Franklin Roosevelt's great gift was that he gave the American people confidence.  One could agree or disagree with individual policies, but his leadership abilities in times of despair were remarkable, as one of his opponents said upon learning of his death in 1945.  Barack Obama gives us no confidence.  He doesn't even seem, at times, to believe in his own country, and his wife's opinions have been stated quite bluntly.  John McCain, with all his faults, inspires us to believe again in our greatness.  The American people, in weeks, will decide whether they accept that belief, or whether they'll turn their backs on John McCain and elect a silver tongue mounted atop an empty suit.

September 28, 2008.      Permalink          

UPDATE AT 3:17 P.M. ET:  WASHINGTON (AP) -- Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama said Sunday his Republican rival deserves no credit for helping to forge a tentative agreement on the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street.  Instead, Obama said he deserves credit for making sure the proposal includes safeguards for taxpayers. Obama said he is inclined to support the bailout because it includes increased oversight, relief for homeowners facing foreclosure and limits on executive compensation for chief executives of firms that receive government help.

COMMENT:  Nice guy, this Obama.  Wasn't he the one, just a few days ago, who ridiculed John McCain for rushing back to Washington to do the job of a US senator?  Wasn't he the one who said that those coping with the crisis could call him, Obama, if they needed him?  Now, after laughing at McCain, Obama wants the credit.

UPDATE AT 2:07 P.M. ET:  The Hotline tracker, just out, has Obama up five, same as yesterday.  So, two of the three trackers published today show no change, although Gallup has a gain of three for Obama over yesterday's result. 

If McCain can ease Obama back to a lead of 3-4 points by the end of the week, victory is still possible, although very difficult.  Much is riding on Sarah Palin's performance in the debate Thursday.  I suspect it will draw a larger audience than did the presidential debate.  One thing Sarah has going for her:  They can't edit her remarks the way Gibson and Couric did.  One negative for her:  The moderator, Gwen Ifill, is a highly partisan liberal.  Sarah may just come through for us. 

UPDATE AT 1:09 P.M. ET:  The Gallup tracker, just out, has Obama up eight points, a gain of three since yesterday.  This includes one full day of polling since the debate Friday night.  We are in grim territory. 

UPDATE AT 9:34 a.m. ET:  The Rasmussen tracker just out has Obama up by six, same as yesterday.  Well, at least he didn't increase his lead.  Battleground won't publish today, but Hotline and Gallup should be out later.  We'll be looking to see if the race has stabilized. 

The Rasmussen poll includes surveys done yesterday, which means that part of the polling was conducted after Friday's debate.  The report on Tuesday will consist of polling done entirely after the debate.

SCANDALOUS

Posted at 9:32 a.m. ET

Faking a story is one of the most serious offenses in journalism, and normally results in a writer being fired.  Jason Blair, the now-famous faker at The New York Times, faked some stories and was eventually shown the door.   A Pulitzer Prize winner at The Washington Post was found to have made up her winning story, and was similarly escorted out of the compound. 

There are several ways to fake a story.  You can make up facts, you can leave out critical information to give a false impression, or you can edit the story in such a way as to twist it out of shape.

There's been plenty of buzz about Sarah Palin's poor performance in her interviews with Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric.  I'm not here to make excuses for some of her inadequate answers.  However, it turns out that a number of her answers were actually far more adequate than what we saw on television.  There are two remarkable articles on this.  The first is by Frank Miele of the Daily Inter Lake of Montana.  Miele is an excellent columnist who went west from the East Coast and has acquired a fine journalistic reputation.  The second is from the Iris Blog, which I'm using for the first time. 

These articles can't be summarized.  There's too much vital detail.  But both examine the Gibson and Couric interviews and reveal, stunningly, how they were edited to make Sarah Palin look ridiculous.  These writers have the goods.  They compare the original transcript of the interviews to the edited versions that we saw on TV.  They prove their point about deceptive journalism beyond any reasonable doubt.

I urge you to read these pieces.  You won't regret it.  They will give you an insight into the dry rot that is eating away at much of the mainstream media.  Miele deserves a Pulitzer for his story.  He won't get it.

September 28, 2008.      Permalink          

THE REAL OBAMA

Posted at 8:41 a.m. ET: 

I've always believed that under the silky exterior, Barack Obama is a tough, ruthless political operator, and not a man particularly bound to the truth.

Now we have some certified proof of that, stemming from Friday's debate.  Just get this, from the great NewsBusters site:

Barack Obama played the "me too" game during the Friday debates on September 26 after Senator John McCain mentioned that he was wearing a bracelet with the name of Cpl. Matthew Stanley, a resident of New Hampshire and a soldier who lost his life in Iraq in 2006. Obama said that he too had a bracelet. After fumbling and straining to remember the name, he revealed that his had the name of Sergeant Ryan David Jopek of Merrill, Wisconsin.

Shockingly, however, Madison resident Brian Jopek, the father of Ryan Jopek, the young soldier who tragically lost his life to a roadside bomb in 2006, recently said on a Wisconsin Public Radio show that his family had asked Barack Obama to stop wearing the bracelet with his son's name on it. Yet Obama continues to do so despite the wishes of the family.

It shows Obama's contempt for the military.

Radio host Glenn Moberg of the show "Route 51" asked Mr. Jopek, a man who believes in the efforts in Iraq and is not in favor of Obama's positions on the war, what he and his ex-wife think of Obama continually using their son's name on the campaign trail.

Jopek began by saying that his ex-wife was taken aback, even upset, that Obama has made the death of her son a campaign issue. Jopek says his wife gave Obama the bracelet because "she just wanted Mr. Obama to know Ryan's name." Jopek went on to say that "she wasn't looking to turn it into a big media event" and "just wanted it to be something between Barack Obama and herself." Apparently, they were all shocked it became such a big deal.

But, he also said that his ex-wife has refused further interviews on the matter and that she wanted Obama to stop wearing the reminder of her son's sacrifice that he keeps turning into a campaign sound byte.

Can you imagine how the press would react if a Republican had done such a thing?  The word "exploitation" would have been the most popular word in journalism for at least two days' running.  But there is only media silence on Obama's callousness.

When President Obama visits a military base, if he gets around to it, I wonder how he'll be received?  Courteously and respectfully, of course, considering his office.  But I wonder what they'll really think.

September 28, 2008.      Permalink          

UPDATE AT 8:01 A.M. ET:  From the Washington Post:  Congressional leaders and the Bush administration this morning said they had struck an accord to insert the government deeply into the nation's financial markets, agreeing to spend up to $700 billion to relieve Wall Street of troubled assets backed by faltering home mortgages.

COMMENT:   There are reports that John McCain was heavily involved in organizing Republicans to move this along.  There are no reports of Barack Obama lifting a finger to ease this grave economic threat.  I guess if he becomes president, and someone decides to fire a dozen missiles at us, he'll tell the Defense Department to call him if they need him.

"What you see is news.  What you know is background.  What you feel is opinion."
    - Lester Markel, late Sunday editor
      of The New York Times.

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