Palin Can Shoot, But McCain Can Sing!

Are you down because the Dow is down? Did you work at Lehman Brothers? John McCain brings you a brighter today: McCain sings Streisand.

"I've been in politics for over 20 years. And for over 20 years, I've had Barbara Streisand trying to do my job. So I decided to try my hand at her job."

Watch this video of Sen. John McCain singing "Memories" and other musical classics back in 2002 on Saturday Night Live. Read the story.

Let's see Barack Obama top that! Actually, can you imagine doing anything like this? He takes himself far too seriously for this sort of light-heartedness. When you set yourself up as the Messiah (or allow others to do so), it really limits what you can do with propriety.

For more videos--both grave and gay (in the old sense, need I add)--scroll down a couple of posts, or click here.

Understanding the Credit Crisis and AIG

I found Michael Lewitt's "Wall Street's Next Big Problem" helpful in understanding how the continued stability of AIG (American International Group, FYI) is important for the financial system. Lewitt is president of a money management firm. Here is an excerpt.

Its collapse would be as close to an extinction-level event as the financial markets have seen since the Great Depression. A.I.G. does business with virtually every financial institution in the world. Most important, it is a central player in the unregulated, Brobdingnagian credit default swap market that is reported to be at least $60 trillion in size.

Nobody knows this market’s real size, or who owes what to whom, because there is no central clearinghouse or regulator for it. Credit default swaps are a type of credit insurance contract in which one party pays another party to protect it from the risk of default on a particular debt instrument. If that debt instrument (a bond, a bank loan, a mortgage) defaults, the insurer compensates the insured for his loss. The insurer (which could be a bank, an investment bank or a hedge fund) is required to post collateral to support its payment obligation, but in the insane credit environment that preceded the credit crisis, this collateral deposit was generally too small.

As a result, the credit default market is best described as an insurance market where many of the individual trades are undercapitalized. But even worse, many of the insurers are grossly undercapitalized. In one case in the New York courts, the Swiss banking giant UBS is suing a hedge fund that said it would insure nearly $1.5 billion in bonds but was unable to do so. No wonder — the hedge fund had only $200 million in assets.

If A.I.G. collapsed, its hundreds of billions of dollars of mortgage-related assets would be added to those being sold by other financial institutions. This would just depress values further. The counterparties around the world to A.I.G.’s credit default swaps may be unable to collect on their trades. As a large hedge-fund investor, A.I.G. would suddenly become a large redeemer from hedge funds, forcing fund managers to sell positions and probably driving down prices in the world’s financial markets. More failures, particularly of hedge funds, could follow.Regulators knew that if Lehman went down, the world wouldn’t end. But Wall Street isn’t remotely prepared for the inestimable damage the financial system would suffer if A.I.G. collapsed.

As far as I can figure it out, this whole crisis stems from interest rates being so low for so long. (Read Alan Greenspan's warning in 2005 concerning this, though he was Federal Reserve Chairman at the time: "Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve, warned Monday night that the baffling persistence of low long-term interest rates was driving investors to hunt for higher returns by plowing money into hedge funds that will not be able to deliver on their promises." -- NYT, June 7, 2005) That made money cheap to borrow. So lots of people did. They bought houses.

With so much money flowing into the housing market so freely, prices inflated. With home values rising so quickly, financial institutions eager for profit (nothing wrong with that unless it's unmoderated by prudence) developed ever more generous means of letting people into the market, such as adjustable rate mortgages and interest only mortgages. These are fine as long as home values keep rising. But they cannot rise indefinitely. This seems something like a Ponzi scheme without the scheming.

Campaign Videos and Humor

When I was a kid, like in the Clinton years when I was in my thirties, campaign ads ran on television. Where else would they run? And only the candidates, the parties, and well funded organizations like the NRA and AFL-CIO could afford to make them.

Today, anyone can make a campaign ad and run it on YouTube or some other Internet website. Those who see it have viewed it voluntarily. As the good ones get passed around, the size of the viewership is in some way a measure of the message. Also, the ad is not limited to 30 seconds, so you can develop an argument and say more.

Here are two exceptional videos running on YouTube. (I still have not figured out how to make a video screen image appear in my blog post like everyone else can do.)

"Dear Mr. Obama" runs 1:56, has had over 5 million viewers (that's a lot) and features a young veteran respectfully defending our military commitment to Iraq. It features a moving and unexpected twist at the end.

"Dear Mr. Obama II: Economics 101" is an imaginative, economically well-informed, and eloquent explanation of why Sen. Obama's policy proposals would bankrupt the country, or at least would revive the use of the "misery index" that we used under Jimmy Carter's disastrous presidency. That one is 4:20 and has had over 45,000 viewers.


Finally...well, this is not an ad, but a Saturday Night Live sketch that is purportedly "A Non-partisan Message from Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton." Tina Fey has you wondering for a second if it is really Palin up there. Amy Poehler does Hillary. Palin: "Tonight we are crossing party lines to address the now very ugly role that sexism is playing in the campaign." Clinton: "...an issue which I am frankly surprised to hear people suddenly care about!" They portray Palin as a beautiful ditz, but otherwise sincere and free of partisan animosity. They portray Hillary as an embittered, power hungry shrew. If that isn't a formula for great late night comedy, WHAT IS?

Finally, as if McCain-Palin weren't doing well enough on their own, the Obama-Biden camp seems to be doing everything they can to boost their opponents toward victory in November. In this ad, called "Still," the Obama campaign tries to depict John McCain as "out of touch" with ordinary Americans because he can't email. This recalls George Bush's surprise when he discovered supermarket checkout scanners during the 1992 campaign and how the Clinton campaign used it for the same purpose. But Jonah Goldberg tells us that McCain cannot use a keyboard without great pain on account of the disfigurement he suffered at the hands of his North Vietnamese prison wardens. Perhaps next they'll go after his patriotism for not being able to salute, and paint him as un-American for not being able to throw a baseball.

Why Is Obama Campaigning Against Himself?

So having reviewed much of what the Obama campaign is doing wrong, it is fair to ask what McCain is doing right.

Michael Barone says that the old fighter pilot has been "Getting Inside Obama's Loop."

Senator McCain was trained as a fighter pilot. In his selection of Governor Palin, and in his convention and campaigning since, he has shown that he learned an important lesson from his fighter pilot days: He has gotten inside Senator Obama's OODA loop.

That term was the invention of a great fighter pilot and military strategist, John Boyd. It's an acronym for Observe, Orient, Decide, Act.

"The key to victory is operating at a faster tempo than the enemy," Boyd's biographer, Robert Coram, writes. "The key thing to understand about Boyd's version is not the mechanical cycle itself, but rather the need to execute the cycle in such a fashion as to get inside the mind and decision cycle of the adversary."

For a fighter pilot, that means honing in above and behind the adversary so you can shoot him out of the sky. For a political candidate, it means acting in such a way that the opponent's responses again and again reinforce the points you are trying to make and undermine his own position.

Read how McCain has applied this strategy. It starts with his selection of Sarah Palin as running mate. The Obama people and their friends in the media go into a tailspin from there.

As Barone admits, Charlie Martin at American Thinker ("McCain and the OODA Loop") got the story first and provides more detailed analysis.

Palin Fits the American Mold

Maggie Gallagher suggests that Sarah Palin has established a new archetype for modern womanhood: the pioneer, oddly enough ("Sarah Palin's Pioneering Streak").

Generally, powerful female politicians fall into one of two archetypes: They are either Margaret Thatchers or Indira Gandhis.

Indira Ghandis come to power through their female family role, not in spite of it. They rise as daughters or wives in powerful political families to become mother figures -- playing off the "lady bountiful" ideal in traditional societies.

Margaret Thatchers are post-sexual figures. They're tough old biddies whose days as wives and mothers seem well behind them. Schoolmarms, crones -- they are classic female authority figures who can be trusted to exercise power "like men" because their disturbing and complicating female sexual persona has largely dissipated.

Hillary Clinton, as a pathbreaking female presidential candidate, struggled to combine both archetypes, and I think largely successfully. Hillary forged a way for a woman to appear tough and powerful enough to be president without altogether losing her female "brand."

But Gov. Sarah Palin is something completely new. She is still young, still beautiful, still in the middle of all the messy complications that the sexual role of being a woman brings -- a Down syndrome baby, a teenage daughter's pregnancy.

What we need here is a new sexual archetype for female achievement. And I think in Gov. Palin, we have an extraordinary one: pioneer woman.

A pioneer woman is a traditional figure. She stands beside her man -- not at war with him. She takes care of her home and her community. If her man is around, maybe she lets him kill the bear. But if he falls, or fails, she picks up the rifle and gets the job done, whatever the job is that needs to be done.

But Gallagher has it wrong. First, the pioneer wife did not "let" her man kill a bear. She would take charge quite capably if the man disappeared (death, long journey etc.), but while he was in the picture she was not in charge. She supported her husband. Palin's public service has had nothing to do with her husband. That's her husband (a man's man in every respect) standing off to the side holding the baby.

She does present a new model, but it's not the pioneer woman.

Her story certainly fits the classic democratic tale of universal opportunity. Despite your humble origins, perhaps a log cabin, if you work hard and have talent you can become President of the United States. Ronald Reagan was just a kid from Dixon, Illinois, who went off to seek his fortune and made his way to the White House. Bill Clinton was a boy from a broken home in Hope, Arkansas.

Barack Obama tried to package himself as an example of that American dream. It hasn't worked. The story has to start in an ordinary town. Yes, he was born in Kansas, and Hawaii plays a role at some point, but the story can't involve Muslim schooling in Indonesia.

Sarah Palin then steps into our American dream cravings that Obama had stirred but did not satisfy. She grew up in Wassila, Alaska (find that on a map). She married her high school sweetheart. She attended a non-Ivy League university. She has a big family. She started her trek to Washington on the PTA with a concern for reform. Americans can more plausibly look at Palin's life and say, "Her story is my story!" (not that I think that should make any difference, but that's our world).

And there's Barack Obama, standing at the side of the road with his baggage, watching the last bus to Washington leave with Sarah Palin sitting in what he thought was his seat. And all he has is Joe Biden to entertain him.

Note on the photos:

The photograph of the statue is from Flyoverpeople.net. The base of the statue reads: “Dedicated to the Pioneer Women of Kansas.” On the website (Nov.17, 2006), Cheryl Unrah writes concerning this photograph, “A woman, a babe, a boy, a gun and a dog. I thought the dog lying at her feet was a nice touch. I'm sure many pioneer women were often left on their own for days at a time. They were toughened by the danger, by the wind, by Kansas blizzards. This monument is on the grounds of the Kansas Capitol.”

The old photos of gun-toting pioneer women come from the Women of Action Network website, a page on markswomen.

Palin is Hollywood's Frankenstein

Michelle Ryan in The Bionic Woman

It was not supposed to happen this way. From 2005-2006, Hollywood produced 19 episodes of “Commander in Chief” starring Geena Davis as an accidental President. It was a national prep for a Hillary Clinton Presidency. The storyline was that the party put Geena Davis on the ticket simply to attract female voters, and with this gimmick they won the White House. So when the President suddenly died soon after taking office, they took it as a given that she would step aside, as she was never seriously expected to serve as President. But she got it in her head to be President anyway, and went on to an unexpectedly successful presidency.

Well, it turns out that life has ended up imitating art far more closely than they had planned. Hillary lost the nomination, but the Republicans nominated...Sarah Palin...a beautiful young (relatively) inexperienced governor for the vice-presidency. Let’s hope the parallel ends there (as we wish no ill on Sen. McCain and expect great accomplishments from him).

Then consider the model of womanhood that Hollywood has been serving us for the last 30-35 years, from the bionic woman and Charlie's Angels (1976) to Angelina Jolie. (Of course Bionic Woman and Charlie’s Angels bridge the entire era, as it turns out.) These women were supposed to be the liberated anti-conservatives. Every film, every episode, every re-run was an assault on traditional sexual categories, a deconstruction of marriage and family as we have always known them.

But it has always been so absurdly fictional, such a daydream of the liberal imagination to which we have been constantly exposed like inmates at a re-education camp for political deviants. In real life, no one is like that except a few rock climbing products of modern technology. Then along comes Sarah Palin, the beautiful, athletic, charming woman who rockets into high office not on her husband’s coattails when he dies or serves his maximum two terms, but by her own extraordinary abilities.

But wait! The story is out of control! She’s not supposed to be a conservative! Add that she’s a social conservative, an economic conservative, a political conservative and an Evangelical Christian all rolled into one, and it’s a liberal cultural engineer’s nightmare, a Room 101 from 1984.

Thus, Sarah Palin has become Hollywood's Frankenstein with an ironic inversion. Of course, in Mary Shelley's 1818 novel, Frankenstein was not the monster, but the scientist. So it is Hollywood that is Frankenstein. But who is the monster?

The project of the Hollywood liberal establishment was to reconfigure, construct, and propagate the modern woman, defying nature, for a brave new world. But just as Dr. Frankenstein's "man" turned out a monster and took on a life of his own, Hollywood's monster has turned out to be a real woman, a wholesome human being.

Can Sarah Palin be model for American women? That is a separate matter. Just because Hollywood is horrified doesn't mean that their nightmare should be every man's dream come true. Growing up is hard when your mother is busy in the public sphere. Rather than justify the female juggler of family and career, Palin may refocus attention on this quintessentially modern, democratic problem.

Obama-Biden Postmortems Pour In

After Walter Mondale’s drubbing at the hands of Ronald Reagan, Joshua Muravchik wrote “Why The Democrats Lost” (Commentary, Jan. 1985). Then in 1989, he wrote, “Why The Democrats Lost Again.” These postmortems were written after the election was decided. It is interesting that the postmortems on Barack Obama have begun two months before election day. The campaign does appear to be in meltdown. But let me remind you: anything can happen in politics.

Here is a far from comprehensive review. It is just what I have noticed.

Kirsten Powers in “How Obama Blew It” (New York Post, Sept 9, 2008).

Obama's toughest challenge has always been to connect with working-class swing voters. So attacking the poster child for small-town values, Sarah Palin, was a bad strategy. No, Obama didn't engage in the mass sneering at Palin - but he did fall into the trap of disrespecting her. When McCain chose her, the Obama campaign's first response was to ridicule the size of her town. Then the candidate himself began referring to her as a "former mayor" when she is in fact a sitting governor. ...

Lured by the McCain camp, Obama supporters engaged in an argument about who had more overall experience - the top of the Democratic ticket or the bottom of the GOP ticket. This diminished Obama. ...

So now he is weighted down with more baggage as he works to convince an important voting bloc that he and his party don't hold them in contempt.

Clive Crook at Britain’s Financial Times (“Democrats Must Learn Some Respect," Sept. 7, 2008) elaborates on this contempt problem among the Democrats, a problem that, despite all his little-guy sob stories on the campaign trail, Obama has earned for himself. He was recorded telling a private gathering in San Francisco (that didn’t help) that when tough times hit, small-town people "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." Despite billing themselves as the party of ordinary Americans, of Main Street versus Wall Street, Clive observes that Democrats “lack respect for the objects of their solicitude. Their sympathy comes mixed with disdain, and even contempt.”

Democrats regard their policies as self-evidently in the interests of the US working and middle classes. Yet those wide segments of US society keep helping to elect Republican presidents. How is one to account for this? Are those people idiots? Frankly, yes – or so many liberals are driven to conclude. Either that or bigots, clinging to guns, God and white supremacy; or else pathetic dupes, ever at the disposal of Republican strategists. If they only had the brains to vote in their interests, Democrats think, the party would never be out of power. But again and again, the Republicans tell their lies, and those stupid damned voters buy it.

Crook has great sympathy for Obama and would like to see the Democratic party in power more frequently. But he sees from afar the obstacles that the clever and highly paid leaders of that party cannot bring themselves to recognize.

They will have to develop some regard for the values that the middle of the country expresses when it votes Republican. Religion. Unembarrassed flag-waving patriotism. Freedom to succeed or fail through one’s own efforts. Refusal to be pitied, bossed around or talked down to. And all those other laughable redneck notions that made the United States what it is.

Jonah Goldberg (“McPalin Rattles Team Obama,” National Review Online, Sept. 10) faults in part Obama’s choice of Joe Biden as running mate. He may help win Pennsylvania, but for the next two months he is either either useless or a drag on the campaign. As a consequence, Obama is playing two on one defensive ball against McCain and Palin. (“McCain's team doesn't care if no one guards Joe Biden, who seems to spend most of his time yelling to the media, "I'm open! I'm open!" But when he gets the ball, all he does is talk about what a great player he is and dribble in place.”)

The Obama people keep walking (no, jumping!) into the Republican snares.

Thanks to the double-team strategy, Obama has found himself in the awkward position of sounding as if he's running against the GOP's vice presidential nominee. When Obama compared his own experience to Palin's tenure as mayor of Wasilla (leaving out her current job as governor), he ran right into the pick the McCain campaign had set, leaving McCain a clearer path to victory. The more Obama has to explain why being a community organizer - or a state legislator, or a one-term senator with few accomplishments under his belt - is better preparation for the presidency than being a mayor or governor, the more he volunteers his own shortcomings when compared with McCain.

In today's New York Post ("Why Bam's Flailing"), op-ed editor Mark Cunningham argues that that Obama's inexperience in fighting elections has been critical to his failure in this big league competition.

If it suddenly seems like the Obama campaign doesn't have any idea what it's doing, maybe that's because it doesn't. Barack Obama has never run a campaign against a real Republican. ... In the [2004 Senate election], he basically had it won once a Chicago paper took down the GOP nominee by getting a court to unseal unseemly divorce papers, and the local Republicans then tapped Alan Keyes - a carpet-bagging right-wing performance artist - as their standard-bearer.

He says the same of Obama's campaign team. "And his main strategist, David Axelrod, is way out of his areas of expertise. Axelrod specializes in urban politics. He's run a bunch of mayoral races (usually in cities with lots of blacks), plus contests in true-blue states like Massachusetts and New York."

J.R. Dunn at American Thinker was ahead of the game when he chronicled Obama’s flakery and electoral buffoonery, and anticipated a fatal continuation of this until election day. See my August post, “Why Obama Will Lose: He’s a Flake!”

But the amazing Spengler, writing in the Asia Times ("How Obama Lost the Election," Sept. 3, 2008), has to cap it off with this account and a reference back to his devastating profile of Obama that he published back in February ("Obama's Women Reveal His Secret") that predicted the eventual self-destruction of the Obama candidacy.

Fatal step #1: He passed over Hillary for veep.

Obama will spend the rest of his life wondering why he rejected the obvious road to victory, that is, choosing Hillary Clinton as his vice presidential nominee. ...[R]ejecting Clinton in favor of the colorless, unpopular, tangle-tongued Washington perennial Joe Biden was a statement of weakness. McCain's selection was a statement of strength. America's voters will forgive many things in a politician, including sexual misconduct, but they will not forgive weakness.

Fatal step #2: He chose Biden instead.

Obama evidently chose him to assuage critics who point to his lack of foreign policy credentials. That was a deadly error, for by appearing to concede the critics' claim that he knows little about foreign policy, Obama raised questions about whether he is qualified to be president in the first place. He had a winning alternative, which was to pick Clinton. That would have sent a double message: first, that Obama is tough enough to make the slippery Clintons into his subordinates, and second, that he is generous enough to extend a hand to his toughest adversary in the cause of unity.

Fatal circumstantial flaw: he cannot get around his glaring inexperience, a weakness that McCain has skillfully exploited in his own choice of running mate.

The young Alaskan governor, to be sure, hasn't any business running for vice president of the United States with her thin resume. McCain and his people know this perfectly well, and that is precisely why they put her on the ticket. If Palin is unqualified to be vice president, all the less so is Obama qualified to be president.

Fatal character flaw #1: “a fatally insecure personality”

Obama, in short, is long on brains and short on guts. ...Obama could have allied with the old guard, through an Obama-Clinton ticket, or he could have rejected the old guard by choosing the closest thing the Democrats had to a Sarah Palin. But fear paralyzed him, and he did neither.

Fatal character flaw #2: subservience to Michelle, i.e. “His peculiar dependency on an assertive and often rancorous spouse."

Spengler calls Michelle “a very angry woman” who “hates America,” and documents both of these claims in his jaw dropping February column, "Obama's Women Reveal His Secret." He cites Robert Novak’s May 10 report that Michelle vetoed Hillary consideration as running mate. You could see the loathing in Michelle's eyes when Hillary was speaking at the convention.

If Novak's report is accurate, then Michelle's anger will have lost the election for Obama, as Achilles' anger nearly killed the Greek cause in the Trojan War. But the responsibility rests not with Michelle, but with Obama. Obama's failure of nerve at the cusp of his success is consistent with my profile of the candidate, in which I predicted that he would self-destruct.

Of course, Shelby Steele's little book, A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can't Win (Free Press, 2007) explores Obama's peculiar background and equally peculiar character more fully. You can read the first chapter in this NYT excerpt.

Spengler’s bottom line: “He is trapped in a losing position, and there is nothing he can do to get out of it.” He is the author of his own undoing.

But...it's a wild world we live in, and anything can happen in politics.

Conservatives Are Poised to Vote

The conservative base of the Republican party is back in the game and playing to win. This is the report from Bill Whittle at National Review Online ("Proud of the GOP").

I have personally seen hundreds of crusty, old-school paleocons who despised McCain now saying “He finally listened to us.” By picking Palin — instead of Lieberman, who we all know he wanted — he has told conservatives that he gets it. They’re not holding their noses and voting any more. They want yard signs and bumper stickers — they can’t wait to vote GOP. And the proof of the pudding is in the tasting, folks: they are writing checks.

His take on how Obama has been neutralized is spot on. "Sarah stole Obama’s glamour. McCain stole his message."

This comes as Obama Fatigue is settling in. There are two groups that are not fatigued and won't be: (1) the true believers who will commit mass suicide with him the day after his electoral defeat if he tells them they should, and (2) the millions who heard him for the first time during his acceptance speech. But there is also a significant number of politically attuned voters, perhaps independents, perhaps moderate Democrats and Obamapublicans, who are sick of hearing the media fawning over him for so long, and disturbed at the Messianic expectations that constantly surround him, especially now that he stands in real contrast to a genuine leader.

McCain Cutting the Republican Gordian Knot

Groucho Marx once said that he would never join a club that would have him as a member. John McCain is in a similar situation. He is running against the Repoublicans while serving as their chief standard bearer in this election. Watch McCain and Palin run against their own party in this TV ad, "Original Mavericks." Not a bad idea.

Up until last week, many Republicans have been tempted to stay home in November, and send their corrupted party out into the cold for sobering up until 2012. But wouldn’t it be nice to stay in power, especially given that the Democrats want to declare defeat overseas and fundamentally restructure the American economy at home?

In his acceptance speech on Thursday, however, John McCain offered a way to cut the Gordian knot. Electing the maverick Senator allows disaffected Republicans to deal a chastening blow to the Republican bums in office while retaining control of the White House at the same time.

That may be the ideal situation.

The King's College on the Front Page

The King's College in New York City (where I teach) is the cover story in this month's American Spectator ("King's of New York" by Shawn Macomber). He writes, "While there is no air of elitism at King's, it is clear that these young men and women are elite."

The article is not available online, so you will have to buy a copy, read it at Barnes and Noble, or find it at the library, a real bother for all of us who've been corrupted by Google.

You can also see some of the school's best students in this FoxNews story.

Sept. 19 update: You may now download a pdf of the article.

More Evidence the Winds of Change are Shifting Right

In this MSNBC floor interview with Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker of the House overwhelms the reporter with an avalanche (do they have those in Alask?) of evidence that Sarah Palin has lots of experience that suits her for the vice-presidency, whereas Barack Obama actually has none.

Gingrich concludes with, "I don't know of a single thing Obama's done except talk and write."

Change You Can Indeed Trust

I have never heard a political speech like the one John McCain delivered tonight. It was powerful. McCain said essentially "If you want change like I want change (and I have always worked for change), you can trust me. I have not changed and so you can trust me to bring the change you want in Washington."

All politicians say, "I will work for you." But coming from John McCain, you know that it is more than just words. His account of his POW experience served as a testimony comparable to how Christians tell the story of their conversion to Christ. He said that his country "saved" him from his youthful arrogance. His brutal captors in Vietnam broke him of his high self-regard and self-centeredness. He explained that much of the partisan rancor in Washington traces back to elected officials putting self before service. That rings true.

Given the military history of honorable service in his family, his own experience in the Vietnam prison, and even the lessons he learned coming out of the Keating Five scandal, it is entirely beyond doubt that John McCain will put service to country before preference for self. What John McCain thinks best serves the public good may not in fact be good, as indeed he has demonstrated--the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law and the "Gang of Fourteen" compromise on judicial appointments to name just two. But the remedy for that is in the wisdom of many counselors across the three branches of our government.

Barack Obama crows defensively that we cannot question his patriotism. I don't see why not. If Obama is running on a "change" platform (by now you would think it was his middle name), and if faithful commitment to what is required for genuine reform requires a strong, selfless, patriotic zeal, he has invited us to scrutinze his patriotism. John McCain's is beyond question. In John McCain, if you took away patriotism, there would be nothing left.

Politicians lie. They generate buzz and fabricate public personas that are designed to mask who they really are so that they can get away with using public authority for private advantage. For this reason, wise citizens should assume a politician is guilty of this duplicity until he proves himself otherwise. John McCain has more than proven himself.

Barack Obama on the other hand, a newcomer to the public eye, is shrouded in questions. He has talked endlessly about post-partisanship and yet he has no record of bi-partisan cooperation. He speaks incessantly about change and yet he has no record of having defeated entrenched political interests or of having persuaded them to mend their ways. As for his patriotic zeal, or public spiritedness, the vapor on which his claim to be a reformer stands together with his wife's anti-American statements, his rabidly America hating pastor of 20 years, and his own persistant refusal during the primaries to wear a flag pin invite legitimate scepticism. It would be naive and irresponsible not to scrutinize his character in this matter.

If you have enough natural charm, it is easy to look like the answer we've all been waiting for when you're on stage surrounded by a huge cheering crowd and flanked by Oprah Winfrey and your adoring wife. But when Barack Obama and John McCain stand side by side on the stage for three debates, I cannot imagine how the man whose only accomplishments are his two autobiographies and whose claim to merit our confidence is a fiction will survive the comparison.

Where's the Beef in 2008?

Experience has become an important issue in this campaign. The McCain and Obama camps are arguing back and forth over who is the most critically deficient in this regard, Obama or Palin. Does a small town mayor beat a community organizer or does it count for nothing?

We find ourselves in this odd situation because of Barack Obama's self-propelled meteoric rise to the nomination. He has hurried through various vocations and levels of public authority, never settling long enough to accomplish anything significant. Given that he had barely warmed his seat in the U.S. Senate before declaring himself a candidate for the White House, there is a sense in which he went straight from state senator to running for President. For Obama, the Senate was a launching pad, not a task to be completed before moving on. So he is presenting himself to the nation young and unaccomplished, but very charming.

Obama has picked the fruit of his own potential before it is ripe. He should have served at least a full term in the Senate, and perhaps even served as Governor of his state, and only then sought the highest office in his mid to late fifties.

In response, John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate. She too is only in her first term in high office. The difference, of course, is that she has great accomplishments. Nonetheless, the fruit of her potential is, like Obama's, not yet ripe. And she's only 44!

Furthermore, weren't people seriously considering Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana for McCain's number two, whether inside the McCain circle or just outside? He is also in his first term as Governor and he is only 37.

I raise these points not to discount the possibility that any one of these people might, in the event of unforeseen circumstances, serve at least as well as...say...Jimmy Carter. I am only pointing out that this is a strange conclusion to a primary season that has been strange from the beginning. Why this youth and inexperience on both sides of the contest at one level or another? Is it simply that Obama has lurched ahead of himself and drawn the Republicans to select a running mate who is competitively young and novel? Is it that after 20 years of two families dominating the two parties, we are seeing a reaction in favor of obscurity? That theory is especially plausible on the Democratic side where the Clintons threatened to return for another eight years.

Regardless of how we got here, here we are, and we have to weigh these tickets and make our choice.

Theatre of the Absurd as Political Convention

Warning: this is hilarious.

David Brooks is one of the most thoughtful, generous and likable pundits. He has been especially fair with Barack Obama. So it is all more funny when, after the Democratic convention, he lays out the candidate's weaknesses and absurdities in a satirical speech he would like to have given and, in a perfect world, he would have given. Here is a sampling from "A Speech to the Delegates."

My fellow Americans, it is an honor to address the Democratic National Convention at this defining moment in history. We stand at a crossroads at a pivot point, near a fork in the road on the edge of a precipice in the midst of the most consequential election since last year’s “American Idol.”

One path before us leads to the past, and the extinction of the human race. The other path leads to the future, when we will all be dead. We must choose wisely. ...

We meet today to heal the divisions that have torn this country. For we are all one country and one American family, whether we are caring and thoughtful Democrats or hate-filled and war-crazed Republicans. ...

We got to know Barack and Michelle Obama, two tall, thin, rich, beautiful people who don’t perspire, but who nonetheless feel compassion for their squatter and smellier fellow citizens. We know that Barack could have gone to a prestigious law firm, like his big donors in the luxury boxes, but he chose to put his ego aside to become a professional politician, president of the United States and redeemer of the human race. We heard about his time as a community organizer, the three most fulfilling months of his life.

We were thrilled by his speech in front of the Greek columns, which were conscientiously recycled from the concert, “Yanni, Live at the Acropolis.” We were honored by his pledge, that if elected president, he will serve at least four months before running for higher office. ...

The comments people posted were interesting. Obamamaniacs really have no sense of humor when it comes to the One. many read the column as "bitterness." They saw sour grapes in it. They are convinced their Ubercandidate is a shoe in, and so Brooks must be writing out of anger as a poor loser. "A very childish article from a man who is obviously resentful that his party is heading for a spectacular defeat," said one (recommended by 909 readers). "Even for David Brooks this is over the top nasty. I think you are really scared!" said Cynthia or Portland OR. "Not funny, mean spirited," says Stephen of Santa Cruz (1,149 thumbs up). "Wow, bitter and jaded neocon." "This wasn't a funny column. It wasn't insightful. It was bitter and cynical." And on, and on.

They look in the mirror and do not recognize either themselves or their candidate. Take for example the "three months" and "higher office" remarks. He has never alighted long enough at any stage of his life to accomplish anything serious. He has been racing from one level of elected office to another, not serving but being served. True? And when you build your candidate up to Messianic proportions, you should expect his critics not to take him as seriously you think they ought and even to ridicule him.

"Barack Obama loves the future because that’s where all his accomplishments are." That's funny because it's true and witty.

Peggy Noonan is a little more sober in "Obama Gets Serious."

What I'd Like to Hear Sarah Say

In her speech tonight I'd like to hear her paraphrase a line from Pink Floyd's Wall:

Hey, Screachers, Leave those kids alone!

The moral authority of a strict, no nonsense mom is a big part of what got her where she is, and a "look at me when I'm talking to you" from her tonight might shame even the shameless drive-by's into silence.

Recall Barack Obama's straight-on come back to Maureen Dowd, who early on dared the attempt to "toughen him up" by joking about his ears. Heard anything about the taxicab ears of the Light Worker lately?

Of course, she is going up against the Old Girl's Network, and they are not happy about some upstart Annie Oakley pushing into the room. But perhaps, with a whip and chair in hand, she can back the ill-tempered cats back onto their stools and take control of the Big Tent tonight. And that I think will be key: she needs to let the media know in no uncertain terms that she knows the game they are playing, and that she can beat them at it.

She can take care of herself. She answered concerns about her preparedness from the McCain professionals with this quip: Know what the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull is?

Lipstick.

The Two Strains of Feminism

Christina Hoff Sommers, always worth reading, has an interesting history of feminism at the American Enterprise Institute's website. It turns out the divide we have watched develop in 20th century feminism, between the radical, women's study kind of feminism--ie, the "approved" version--and the sort ordinary women have in the main taken up in the last decades, stretches back to the dawn of feminist stirrings. I knew of Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) as a student of Locke and Enlightenment liberalism, and knew that she traveled in cutting edge circles (read libertine) during her time. Her thought, as developed along the lines of other feminist icons you have heard of--Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony--is the approved doctrine that forms the official history of the feminist struggle for recognition.

But as with the rest of cultural and political history, the progressive Left has airbrushed out inconvenient parts and instead given us the politically correct narrative that is meant to raise our consciousness. And again, as with the rest of the progressive left's agenda, it is an ill fit with the way normal people see the world and live their lives. So it is not too surprising to find another strand of feminism buried in the archives, purposely ignored by the radicals in charge of education. (Reflect here that William Ayers, to maximize his radicalizing intentions, chose a roost in a school of education, where education theory is taught--teaching teachers how to teach). Along side the Rationalist Enlightenment liberalism of Wollstonecraft taken up by the radicals, there was--and Hoff Sommers argues remains--another sort of feminism, one she labels conservative feminism. It seems another influential woman was at work contemporaneously with Wollstonecraft: a woman named Hannah More.

A couple of paragraphs from Hoff Sommers piece:

At the time Wollstonecraft was writing, Hannah More (1745-1833)--novelist, poet, pamphleteer, political activist, evangelical reformer, and abolitionist--was waging a very different campaign to improve the status of women. More is well known to scholars who specialize in eighteenth-century culture. The late UCLA literary historian Mitzi Myers called her a "female crusader infinitely more successful than Wollstonecraft or any other competitor," but More is rarely given the credit she deserves. The story of what she initiated and how she did it is integral to the story of women's quest for freedom. But few contemporary feminist historians have wanted that story to be told.

If Wollstonecraft was the founder of egalitarian feminism, More was the founder of conservative feminism. Like Wollstonecraft, More was a religiously inspired, self-made woman who became an intellectual peer of several of the most accomplished men of her age. But whereas Wollstonecraft befriended Paine and debated Burke, More was a friend and admirer of Burke; a close friend of Samuel Johnson and Horace Walpole; and an indispensable ally and confidante to William Wilberforce, a father of British abolitionism.

Concerning the French Revolution, which Wollstonecraft initially championed, More wrote, "From liberty, equality, and the rights of man, good Lord deliver us." And she was surely the most prominent woman of her age. As one biographer notes, "In her time she was better known than Mary Wollstonecraft and her books outsold Jane Austen's many times over." Her various pamphlets sold in the millions and her tract against the French Revolution enjoyed a greater circulation than Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France or Paine's Rights of Man. Some historians credit her political writings with saving England from the kind of brutal revolutionary upheaval that traumatized France.

All this as prologue to what we see playing out before us in the media savaging of Sarah Palin. The NOW gang, with its implanted sisterhood in the media and other elite institutions, regard the conservative feminism of Sarah Palin--and by extension the many millions of women like her--as no feminism at all. As Kathryne Jean Lopez at NRO presents it, the sisterhood sneers, "We're not sisters with her."

Radical ideologists can never let anything come before the idea, not even, and perhaps especially, the real world. The women's studies sisterhood will never relinquish their stranglehold on the orthodoxy, and in doing so will alienate even further the conservative women who have long since settled into the freedom to be themselves and who find the hard edged, elitist, "sanctimonious sermonizers" Camille Paglia speaks of to be overbearing and leading a parade from the past. They will find in Sarah Palin the heroic public figure the gatekeepers have prevented before now, and I suspect the anger we see building is going to be expressed electorally.

Hell hath no fury...

The Confidence of Authenticity

Newt Gingrich has sent an email to Bill Kristol at The Weekly Standard that is destined for fame, and is going to resonate around the web for some time. In it, Gingrich says he was struck by the comments of people coming up to him in non-political venues expressing their excitement about Sarah Palin.

It comes down to one word: authenticity. Sarah Palin is the real deal; there is no spinning or myth-making to do to present her story to the public, unlike the literally unbelievable "biographies" of Biden and Obama that are so insultingly served up. Sarah Palin, by contrast, has her feet on the ground, so to speak, and has the look of one who is completely comfortable in her skin.

One's apparel, especially a woman's, is all important in the audience's discovery of who this person is. Hillary and Nancy Pelosi use pantsuits to strike the pose they calculate makes the best presentation. Sarah Palin, in a black skirt and jacket, and these fabulous open-toed Dorothy pumps threw down a gauntlet of sorts to those who think they have locked down the definition of what it means for a woman to be a power player.

I think the shoes Sarah picked for her biggest moment so far says it all, and in a way that is at once galling to the feminist sisterhood in their various brands, and thrilling to real women all over the country. Not only has she managed being a mother of five while rocketing upward through the political ranks to the top state post in Alaska, but she's still got it goin' on appearance-wise. The beauty queen in her lives on, and with a sprite-like insouciance, she sent a clear message at her national debut that she has no apologies to give for being a woman--and in fact, she likes being a woman, and always has.

This looks to me to be the real symbol of "girl power"; she has walked into committee rooms and faced powerful, connected, domineering Republican men, probably wearing shoes very much like these, and proceeded to kick butt and take names. And as Camille Paglia likes to remind us, symbols matter. Real women are cheering to see a real woman arrive at the Imperial City. She's going to take it to the Wizard in them shoes, just watch.

The Organic Candidate and the Machine Candidate

Antonio Gramsci, the Italian political theorist, spoke of “organic intellectuals”, those who are self-taught and make their own way, as opposed to the intellectuals churned out by universities. Eric Hoffer, the “philosopher/longshoreman”, comes to mind. Perhaps only in America can one also speak of “organic politicians”, citizens whose ambitions or desires to get involved find their expression outside the settled political establishments. Such an organic politician is Sarah Palin. And it is in this characteristic that we find the most telling, and most important, distinction between her and both Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Both of the latter attended top drawer universities and law schools before being fed into the intake machinery of the political apparatus to which they are still beholden. Both are utterly conventional politicians, despite the gauzy promise-making, dream-weaving shtick of which the Obama campaign mostly consists. Sarah Palin went to a western university little heard of, then returned to the little backwoods berg where she was reared, to marry and rear her own family.

Sarah Palin’s almost inadvertent involvement in civic affairs had its genesis in about as local a concern as it gets—she joined the PTA. Being a person of firm convictions, she found it easy to weigh in on issues and help guide decision-making at the micro-scale of American political society. She exhibits the spirit of the early American “genius” Alexis de Tocqueville pinpointed—the proclivity of Americans to form and join organizations to solve problems. Her rise through the levels of political organizations—PTA, School Board, City Council, the Mayoralty, a seat on an important state commission, and finally the Governorship, was accomplished mostly against the wishes of the party bigs. Her campaigns have always been grass-roots in the most authentic possible meaning of that term, drawing support not from established party bosses but from the broad electorate disgusted at the closed room deal-making that all party establishments tend toward. In other words, her success is in spite of, not because of, the existing party organization. Now, political associations are perhaps the main sort of group de Tocqueville was so impressed by, and they surely form one of the main pillars of political liberty in America. But all human efforts tend toward corruption, and when power is involved, the tendency is all the starker. Thus, the real need for critical outsiders to bring reform.

Obama, by contrast, merely used the political machinery ostensibly in place to work as “community organizer”on neighborhood problems to build his resume for the next rung on the career ladder. His accomplishments are thin because at the attainment of each new level, his sights are shifted to the next step up. Why were millions wasted with no results in those South Chicago neighborhoods? Why did he not publish anything from his coveted perch at the Harvard Law Review? Why all the “present” votes in the Illinois State Senate? Why has he not held a single hearing as Chair of the Veterans Affairs sub-committee in the US Senate? He is more a vehicle for the party apparatus, an empty vessel for them to fill, than a public servant working to actually produce results. Think of it: how antiquated and quaint the term “public servant” seems next to the image of cosmopolitan, jet-setting celebrity he quite consciously cultivates, following the excrescences of the Clinton presidency. The hope and change campaign themes obscure the utterly cynical and conventional Chicago-style ward politics that provide the gears for his machine, while Soros' money provides the grease. Being all about being all about himself, there is no there there when actual policy questions are brought to discussion. Hence the celebrity-lite responses when he has no script.

Sarah Palin knows the ground in a way that Obama never will—she has been a foot soldier at the front, earning her stripes, while he, a connected and elite officer at the rear, has been pinning fabulous ribbons and medals on his dashing uniform, in preparation for his coronation.

Candidates of Life and Death

In light of Barack Obama's voting record, John McCain's selection of Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate puts the abortion issue squarely in the public eye in a way that could not be more flattering to the respect for innocent, unborn life, and could not be more unflattering to the support for legalized and freely available abortion.

God is the author of life. Knowing him in Christ is fullness of life. Where his presence is, there is life. Where he withdraws, there is death. Hell is the second death.

When people deny God, they deny life. The Soviet Communists killed tens of millions of their own citizens. The Communist Chinese force mothers to abort their unborn children. In America, our cultural and political authorities have been explicitly turning away from God and embracing atheism for the last 40 years. As a consequence of this, we have tolerated and even encouraged 40 million abortions since 1973. It is the equivalent of a self-inflicted nuclear strike.

Whereas Sarah Palin, an Evangelical Christian, has five children and refused to abort that last one when she learned he had Downs Syndrome (it's a disgrace that we think of that as heroic because it implies the acceptability of killing difficult children), Barack Obama as Illinois state senator voted against a bill to protect babies who are born alive despite an abortion procedure. An almost identical bill passed the U.S. Senate at the same time by a vote of 98-0.

This juxtaposition of candidates is an interesting providence.

The Mask Is Slipping

Obama's much-heralded speech last night, seen by most in attendance on the jumbo-tron from between the classical columns--eerily like scenes from the movie Metropolis--did not outshine either of the Clinton speeches, the benchmark I rather brilliantly established in my last post, Stand and Deliver. But all seriousness aside, Obama looked and sounded to me quite small, despite the Hollywood staging and production. Vaguely fascistic (see Metropolis link above) in scale and tone, tending toward his real nature as mean and vindictive, Obama let slip the new politics, above it all neo-savour mask and got back to his bare-knuckle Chicago instincts. This I believe is the real Obama, as the actual history of his shoving aside five rivals for the Illinois State Senate, including one party stalwart much more deserving of the slot shows; nor is that instance just ancient history, as his campaign's recent attempts to intimidate all who would point to the true depth of the association with William Ayers, America's Homegrown Terrorist, shows. (By the way, remember the total freakout by the media over "homegrown terrorists" after the Oklahoma City bombing happened? Oh, that's right...they thought it was right wing terrorism. Violence from the left is always excusable because the intention is always valid. And did you see the Chicago cops roughing up and then arresting--for what? the ABC News producer outside the Brown Palace Hotel in Denver? Hitler's Brown Shirts are looking on with approval: intimidation is the collective tool for the individually weak).

Back to the speech: Jennifer Rubin has a nice compendium of analysis of it here, but none of which makes the following point. Which is why I am going to make it now.

Despite the standard campaign stories of American families toughing out hard times with staunch American values and durable American strength, of hardy parents and grandparents imparting hard-won wisdom to the nascent candidate in the making, despite the cloaking of themselves with the virtues of hard work, tenacity, and traditional American spirit, both Obama and Biden then immediately proceeded to decry the present conditions--greatly exaggerated of course-that might call these virtues up in the people they claim to stand for. Obama explicitly characterized the Republican stance as leaving people to go it alone, to pull themselves up by the bootstraps--as if this is unparalleled cruelty. Why is it inspiring and virtuous in their forebears but not suitable to today's audience? Is it because the Democratic party is a party of whiners? The party of Euro-socialist envy? For every problem, discomfort, phobia, dislike, and jealousy, the Democrats have a government department to create, a lawsuit to bring, and a government spending program to bring to bear. The socialist strains in all this lay right on the surface; the go-it-alone culture of the Republicans is mean, selfish, and all about the rich getting richer on the backs of the poor. Democrats want to do for the working class masses what they have done for the inner city family--push government programs in and push individual virtues and cultural institutions out. As government programs, entitlements, and invention of rights proliferate, personal responsibility and even opportunity are smothered. The clear import is that the collective is prior to and more important than the individuals of which it is composed.

And that is what I saw last night at the Forum. The truthful motto of this campaign and party is "Seeking Power. Denying Liberty." The mindless applause of socialist and fascist ideas that would efface the individuality of every person there makes another discomfiting allusion to mass rallies as a political tactic.

The mask of the post-partisan Messiah, of the One soaring above the quotidian political fray, has slipped, unveiling a street tough schooled in the use of the Saul Alinski-formulated tactics of lying, bullying, name calling, dishonest infiltration and institutional subversion. The hard left must be pleased as their god-like candidate descends from the blessed heights of Mt Olympus to the rhetorical means streets of political radicalism.