Palin's Struggles...

What's become very apparent is that Palin is not ready for much of anything, let alone the Vice Presidency. Watching the Couric interview I almost feel bad for her, she's way out of her league. The more you watch, the more you realize that she's not even a good surrogate, let alone a good candidate.

The Maverick Counter

John McCain's insecurity in dealing with the economy over the past two weeks has been apparent. Now, in a pretty savvy political move, he is attempting to neutralize this by calling for a suspension to his campaign, and a return to Washington to help put together a bailout plan. As transparent a gimmick as this is, I think it's a smart political move. Ezra Klein eviscerates this ploy, and rightfully so. Following up on his analysis, for better or worse the ball is now in Obama's court. My advice to the Obama campaign (as if they care), would be to reject the call for the debate cancellation, stressing the importance of a national dialogue on the economic issues, and offer to McCain that the debate be repositioned from one on foreign policy to one on the economy. This not only undercuts the McCain stunt, but allows Obama an opening to reposition the debate to a terrain that he is more comfortable on than McCain.

Fall

I realize I'm a day late, but I just want to take a moment out to celebrate the arrival of unarguably the best season. Enjoy!

McCain's Temperament

George Will offers up a must read today. It goes to the heart of my fear about a McCain presidency. His decision making is based on gut a feeling, with often little else to support it (e.g. Sarah Palin). More to the point, this is how he approaches pretty much EVERY decision, big or small. We've just had 8 years of this. Enough.

Palin and Debates

This is absolutely ridiculous, and I think, sexist. Andrew agrees with the ridiculous assessment.

Obama, McCain, and Bush on the Bailout

One of the central narratives of the general election campaign has been McCain's weakness on economic issues. In the wake of the banking crisis that came to a head last week, it's been interesting to watch the reactions of Obama, McCain, and Bush. Bush has been largely quiet on the issue, appearing for two minutes before the press to make a statement and took no questions. You would hope to hear a bit more from your nation's leader on this issue, but the silence is somewhat understandable, in the same way that Obama has largely resisted making specific declarative statements about what should and should not be done at this point. I expect him and Bush to refine their positions in the coming weeks, and I have no problem with that. This financial crisis is a huge mess, and there are alot of very smart people trying to figure out what should be done. As much as we would like to think that our presidents are economic wizards, they are not, which is why they surround themselves with people who are. However, what you do want from your president is someone who can digest the economic advice given to them. I suspect Bush and Obama are both trying to come up to speed on what is a very complex issue, by listening to their advisers and attempting to digest and synthesize what they're hearing. Some things are like that. Not everything can be, and should be, handled off the cuff.

McCain's response was the most interesting. His bluster on what should be done with the bailout, reinforced his insecurity on the economy. Knowing that this would be a big test for both him and Obama, McCain thought it was best to try to get out in front of the issue, which caused him to reverse himself several times within a 5 day period, recklessly call for the removal of the chairman of the SEC, and then propose a "commission" to find out what went wrong. This is not what a president does, as ABC's panel noted on This Week, but it is what John McCain does. For anyone who has been paying attention to his career this should not be a surprise. Much like president Bush in the past, McCain is attempting to mask his incompetency with his confidence. That's not the type of decision-making we need to handle the most pressing issues of the day.

McCain Gets Pressed on The View

It's a shame that the toughest, and most straightforward interview that McCain has seen thus far has come from The View. The defense of his lies are weak, and I hope more news organizations will begin to honor the trust American citizens are forced to place in them, and start doing their job. There are serious issues not being discussed, not the least of which is a wholly unqualified Vice-Presidential nominee.

On Organizing...

I've become quite disgusted at some of the cheering going on in the press this morning over the following line from Palin's speech: "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a "community organizer," except that you have actual responsibilities." I take the mockery of community organizing as exhibiting a gross lack of knowledge on the historical roles that community organizing has played in our country, particularly in the Black community which was for so long shut out of the traditional political power structures in America. The list of prominent community organizers in American history is long to be sure, with Martin Luther King front in center in this tradition (not to mention Saul Alinsky, whom Hillary Clinton thought was important enough to make him the topic of her undergraduate thesis). The thing I find most striking about the mockery of community organizing is that while running as a "reformer" and "Washington outsider," she's mocking a profession which in a very real sense is in concert with those labels. While the republicans are slapping themselves on the back over a clever line, I sense and hope, that this can come back to bite them in a serious way. Just asking, but aren't labor unions, of which Palin's husband is "a proud member of…," born out of the tradition of community organizing?

Reaction to Palin's Speech

Congrats! A potential vice president of the United States can read a teleprompter. There seemed to be a lot of enthusiasm surrounding this revelation after Palin’s speech. This was apparently all Sarah Palin needed to do to prove she was ready for the vice presidency. The hypocrisy of this moment, as a friend of mine pointed out on his blog, before the speech, was striking:

“A quick note on tonight’s Palin speech: beware of the hypocrisy of Republicans on this. They claim that Obama only gives a good speech, but you’ll hear them say that Palin has proven her substance after tonight’s speech. It'll be a good speech, but, again, we need more than that.”

Some have commented that this speech was on par with the Obama speech of 2004. I have to laugh at this, because for one the speech that Sarah Palin read was clearly written by someone for her, packed with about 30 minutes of lines pulled straight out of the McCain commercials we’ve seen for the past month. Obama’s speech was written by him, and then tweaked by others. Palin’s was a speech predicated on division, while Obama’s was a salvo for unity. For all the energy put into the conservative base by the Palin pick, I can only imagine that her speech tonight did the same for the liberal base.

The speech didn’t do anything for me. I had several issues with the actual substance, or lack thereof. I found the initial introduction of her family, and constant brandishing of a 4 month old baby with downs syndrome like a trophy a little hard to take after the outcries from the republicans over the past few days insisting that the media leave the family alone. Also, I found it a bit disconcerting that she was able to lie so well, about her record and Obama’s record, during her first appearance on the national stage.

The thing that irked me the most were the attacks on Obama, and community organizing. She ridiculed, and mocked Obama’s time spent as a community organizer by saying that being mayor was the same thing, accept she had actual responsibility. The funny thing about this is that she never actually outlined that responsibility. But, more to the point, mocking someone’s job is never a good thing. Community organizing in the sense that Obama did it is rather unique. However, on a broad scale, I’d venture to say there are a lot of moms and dads out there who have done some level of “organizing” in their own communities who might not take so kindly to having their service disparaged. Random question. Aren’t union leaders kind of like community organizers? Maybe I’m wrong about that. While the snarky line went over well in the hall, I see this as an opening for the Obama campaign to exploit in a good way. But for all the attacking of Obama, her inability to actually deal with her own substance was very telling.

This was the “prosperity” night of the convention. One would think we would have heard a bit more about her and John McCain’s economic roadmap for America, outside of “Drill baby, Drill!”

At the end of the night I’m still left with not really knowing anything of importance as it regards Sarah Palin’s views and experience on national security, the economy, health care, and a litany of other issues that the people she claims to be apart of worry about everyday. They wrote the speech, and she stepped up and delivered it. Good Job. We’ll see over the few remaining weeks before the election whether she can take it as good as she gave it on this night.

Palin and Patriotism

It occurs to me that the selection of Palin not only undercuts the experience argument, but also the patriotism argument that the McCain campaign was trying to frame. For all the outrage on the Right over Obama's tenuous relationship with Bill Ayers, and innocuous statements by Michelle Obama, and Rev. Wright, it would seem to me that active membership in a secessionist party might send the these same parties into a similar sort of outrage. I think most would agree that the latter is quite a bit more serious.