Assess the Man, Not the Plan

Jonah Goldberg has a very fine column today ("The Best Laid Plans..." on how to assess a presidential candidate, and how NOT to. (I am so charmed by his reflections, that I have sent them around to all my students.) Let me tease you into reading it with a few quotes.

Some historians claim that 19th-century Prussian field marshal Helmuth von Moltke, not President Eisenhower, authored the aphorism that no plan survives contact with the enemy....

Even plans to build houses often require countless revisions. But planning for people is so much harder. Every weekend I have a plan for how my one 5-year-old child will spend her day. Keep in mind: I am literally the boss of her. She has no money, little education and no reliable means of escape. And yet, she foils my plans time and again. But somehow we're supposed to believe that a plan involving billions or trillions of dollars, millions of people (each with their own agenda) and thousands of communities influenced by countless interested parties and bureaucracies is not only possible, but the highest responsibility of our elected leaders....

But the point is that it is juvenile to believe that voting for a president is synonymous with holding a referendum on a plan. And yet we have these interminable, often Jesuitical debates on what the fine print of the candidates' plans says.

I am particularly fond of this one:

Even worse, after every debate we are subjected to an endless parade of focused-grouped "swing voters" who think they're oh-so-terribly sophisticated for wanting to hear ever more details about this candidate's plan for education reform or that candidate's scheme for health care. It's all absurd intellectual vanity. These voters are undecided not because they haven't been spoon-fed enough policy detail, but because they haven't been paying attention and haven't bothered to do even minimal research about the candidates.

And he wraps up with:

The real hints for how to choose a candidate, at least in a general election (as opposed to a primary), reside in the realm of judgment, philosophy, track record and temperament. And, using those criteria, the choice shouldn't be hard at all.

Thus, assess the man, not the plan.

Harold adds:

That Jonah Goldberg, he da man.

McCain Has Exhausted His Gambler's Luck

Prof. Horace Jeffery Hodges in Korea reflects on John McCain's propensity to gamble in his Gypsy Scholar blog. First, he cites Charles Krauthammer's own observations on McCain's gambler's luck in his column, "Hail Mary vs Cool Barry."

Krauthammer's Hail Mary Rule: You get only two per game. John McCain, unfortunately, has already thrown three. The first was his bet on the surge, a deep pass to David Petraeus who miraculously ran it all the way into the end zone.

Then, seeking a game-changer after the Democratic convention, McCain threw blind into the end zone to a waiting Sarah Palin. She caught the ball. Her subsequent fumbles have taken the sheen off of that play, but she nonetheless invaluably solidifies his Republican base.

When the financial crisis hit, McCain went razzle-dazzle again, suspending his campaign and declaring that he'd stay away from the first presidential debate until the financial crisis was solved. He tempted fate one time too many.

Hodges tells us about McCain's gambling activities at Foxwoods. The he concludes this way:

"A lot of people don't know when the moment to stop has come, as we've perhaps seen in the excessive risks that a lot of distinguished executives in the financial sector have taken over the past several years. The resulting financial crisis has made them look like inveterate gamblers.

"Whether or not McCain knows when walk away, even to be known as a risk-taker during this time of financial uncertainty might work to his disadvantage on November 4, when people are likely to pull the lever for the candidate who seems less likely to gamble with their future."

Harold adds:

So--given the info in "Card Night at Ole Miss" maybe we should, in the event of a tie in the Electoral College, let these two card sharps play off the tie in a round of 5 card stud. Could be an epic moment in political history--not unlike the story, from my home state of Colorado, where the governors of Colorado and Texas, playing a heated game of poker, found the Colorado governor out of chips. He "saw" the Texan's bet with title to Pikes Peak, lost the hand, and there has been animosity amongst Coloradans and Texans ever since, with Texans insisting they won it fair and square ,and Coloradans gritting their teeth over the sight of every tossed Lone Star beer can on the Front Range of the Rockies.

I Can't Believe We're Going to Elect This Guy!

It's partly what we don't know about Barack Obama, and partly also what we do know, that leaves me astounded that the American people might elect Barack Obama to the White House.

Larry Sabato, the University of Virginia political scientist, tells us that there are "basic, pro-Democratic fundamentals" in place that should make a Democratic victory a certainty, and as the title of his article indicates, the dam may be breaking for Obama.

As for one of those disturbing things we know about Obama, Dick Morris and Eileen McGann put the Ayers question in a nut shell. (Oh, sure. Take that as a pun.)

So let’s sum up Obama’s Chicago connections. His chief financial supporter was Tony Rezko, now on his way to federal prison. His spiritual adviser and mentor was the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, of “God damn America” fame. And the guy who got him his only administrative job and put him in charge of doling out $50 million is William Ayers, a terrorist who was a domestic Osama bin Laden in his youth. ...

Why did Obama put up with Ayers? Because he got a big job and $50 million of patronage to distribute to his friends and supporters in Chicago. Why did he hang out with Jeremiah Wright? Because he was new in town, having grown up in Hawaii and Indonesia and having been educated at Columbia and Harvard, and needed all the local introductions he could get to jump-start his political career. Why was he so close to Rezko? Because he funded Obama’s campaigns and helped him buy a house for $300,000 less than he otherwise would have had to pay.

Not a good recommendation for a president.

This should run in commercials in every swing state.

Liberals Making Haste...Slowly

What is it about Democratic presidential candidates and terrorists? Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were each famously supportive of ur-terrorist Yassar Arafat. Carter, whose administration never had a discouraging word for Arafat, to this day is carrying water for Hamas, and the most frequent foreign visitor to the Clinton White House was Arafat. Hillary showed her undying adoration with her famous embrace of Suah Arafat, currently living in Paris off the stolen billions of Palestinian aid money her turbaned hubby weaseled away from US taxpayers and gullible tranny organizations. Al Gore, while never publicly--or privately that we know of-- endorsed Ted "The Unabomber" Kaszinski, the almost identical texts of the Unabomber's manifesto and Gore's book "Earth in the Balance" make such an endorsement--either way--a natural one. (Go here to take the fun challenge of detecting which quote is from which document). And the entire left had a blackout on the domestic eco-terrorists the FBI recently crushed (compare with the round the clock hysteria set loose on abortion clinic bombings).

And now of course we find revealed the intimate connection--whatever denials the Obama campaign attempts--of Barack Obama and William Ayers, founder of the late 1960's Weather Underground group, responsible for hundreds of bombings, multiple attempted murders, and two accomplished murders to their "credit". All defiantly owned and unapologized for, by the way.

As Bob Dylan wrote, you don't need a weatherman to tell you which way the wind is blowing (from the song that inspired the name that Ayers' romantic little band took for themselves). And as John Locke before him put it, in language picked up by Jefferson, when a long Train of Actings show the Councils all tending one way, how can a man any more hinder himself from being persuaded in his own mind which way things are going...?

So, the prevailing winds have been leftward, despite the freshet that was the Reagan Revolution. The revelation of this season's Democratic candidate's relation to the hard left has had the effect of a termite inspector's flashlight aimed at the dark underground places no one has been paying attention to these past decades. Turns out all our institutions are infested with left radicals, and they have been busily destroying the foundations of our society from within. Maybe they have made their big move too soon, and the American public will recoil at the idea of radical leftists moving into the open in positions of authority; in which case under the cover of darkness they will continue their slow but steady work of undermining the foundations.

If not, and they manage to get their candidate into the most visible office in the land, get ready for a wicked left turn, as the radicals pour out of the basement and into the rest of the building.

The $700 Billion Laugh Again

On Saturday, I posted the Saturday Night Live sketch depicting a C-SPAN press conference with President Bush, Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank explaining the $700 billion bailout package. It was remarkably candid, even though it was after the fact.

Later that day, the link to the video on the NBC site went dead. The video had been pulled. Political humor is dangerous when it's Democrats on the pointy end of the joke. It will only get worse if they control the executive branch in January.

Well, I just heard the reason for this on Fox News. One sob-story couple who were not actually "victims" but made billions on their mortgages represented real people, and the sketch identified them by name (and in a caption suggested they be shot!). They are Herbert and Marion Sandler, radical left-wing and very wealthy real estate speculators. They, like George Soros who is also lampooned in the sketch, are also generous donor to the Democratic Party and many left wing causes like ACORN. Read Michelle Malkin for details.

Here is the sketch re-posted to the NBC site. They've softened the Sandler portion, removing the appalling but typically liberal advocacy of violence toward them. Sorry, they have removed the means to embed the video in the post.
You can see the original here on YouTube, including Herbert Sandler thanking Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) for blocking Congressional oversight of his corrupt activities. "Not at all!" says Frank. Well, we'll see how long it lasts on YouTube. The embedding information is "disabled by request."

Should Fear of Riots Influence Your Vote?

Prof. David Corbin was interviewed recently by Jim Brown of OneNewsNow.com on the role of race on election day ("Could an Obama Loss Spark Race Riots?").

A political scientist at a Christian college in New York City warns that if Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama loses the election on November 4, race riots could break out in large U.S. cities.

A recent Associated Press-Yahoo News poll suggested Senator Obama's race could cost him up to six percentage points on election night. David Corbin, a politics professor at The King's College, contends there is potential for public riots the night of or after the election, if Obama's lead in the polls does not translate into victory.

"I don't think that's something that we've looked at very closely, and I think that this could be a powder keg here as we get towards that day, given that Senator Obama is an African-American and given that there might be some backlash if he actually loses," Corbin explains.

Corbin notes that seemingly small stories involving O.J. Simpson and Rodney King have brought into play terrible riots in major cities across the U.S. "I think a lot of people are looking to an Obama presidency to affirm the notion that somehow Americans aren't racist and, if for some reason Senator Obama loses, then it's just, 'Oh well, it's said and done. We must be a racist nation,'" Corbin adds.

People who fuel that claim of racism, according to Corbin, do damage to one of Senator Obama's main themes -- moving beyond a red-and-blue, or black-and-white America.

David Corbin is assistant professor of politics at The King's College in New York City.

From a Little ACORN, a Mighty Oak Tree Grows

Stanley Kurtz, doing one of the jobs the mainstream media just won't do, lays out the nexus behind the financial scandal of lowering morgage requirements to such an extent that a fair portion of world financial markets are in jeapardy ("Planting Seeds of Disaster: ACORN, Barack Obama, and the Democratic Party").

You might want to file Kurtz's piece away for future reference, as the Democrats attempt their whitewash of this affair in the coming months.

I see this as diabolical--I use the word advisedly--on two levels. On the front end or surface, ACORN and their minions obtained handily their ostensible goals--more mortgages for poor people who would be in ACORN's debt, and more fees and government subsidies for making the arrangements flowing into their own coffers. But the larger picture involves the Cloward/Fox-Piven ploy--pressing democratic/capitalist structures to their limits and beyond in order to destroy them, create crisis, and thus pave the way for justified emergency intrusion by government to prevent societal or economic collapse. It is standard Marxist/Leninist doctrine embodied in the motto "the worse the better", given its American gloss by the now ubiquitous Saul Alinsky.

This banking crisis I believe must be seen in this context to be fully understood. The radical Left has spent the decades since 1968 perfecting this strategy across all boundaries of scale, and this happens to be their biggest score to date. But there are others are to follow--think of the oil drilling ban, the coming collapse of Social Security and Medicare, the prospect of nationalized health care, and large under-funded union pension funds--unless Republicans wake up and realize the depth and breadth of the subversion that has been going on right under their noses--Hyde Park, San Francisco, Madison, Manhattan, San Antonio, Berkeley, Boulder...you get the point.

If McCain and his campaign can't figure out how to bring this up before the election, the Obama administration that results will be full of these same jackals that Kurtz mentions, bent on taking us further into the Euro/ transnational leftist swamp where the rest of the West resides, and where voters have little more than a ceremonial role to play in their government.

The Ayers-Obama Hand-off

The Obama people say this Ayers connection (they crossed paths; no big deal) was fully aired during the primaries. Let's see if it was. It is a very serious matter if a nominee for president with a very real chance of winning has not just connections but sympathies with a terrorist who is fundamentally opposed to the American regime. The fact that Obama's pastor for 20 years, Jeremiah Wright, has the same attitude toward this country politically, makes it all the more urgent that we investigate whether this charming and ambitious and relatively untested fellow is putting one over on us.

Sol Stern at City Journal gives us "The Bomber as School Reformer" on the Obama-Ayers connection.

Back in the early eighties, in an interview with David Horowitz and Peter Collier, Bill Ayers remembered his reaction upon learning that he would not be prosecuted by the government for his bombing spree as a member of the Weather Underground. “Guilty as hell, free as a bird—America is a great country,” he exulted. Ayers is now a university professor, but he must have been exulting all over again after reading Saturday’s front-page story in the New York Times.

The article explored the putative relationship between Ayers and Barack Obama during the time they worked together on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a fiveyear philanthropic venture that, starting in 1995, distributed over $160 million in school-improvement grants to the Windy City’s public schools. Ayers wrote the grant proposal that secured seed money for the schools and ran the implementation arm ofthe project; Obama became chairman of the board that distributed the grants. ...

Obama is a man whose father left him when he was very young, and he has had several fathers of sorts since them. Jeremiah Wright was one of them, and shaped the young community oragnizer's outlook. William Ayers seems to have taken a fatherly interest in Barack Obama as one who was well suited in outlook and ability to carry on his radical work where he was personally unable to go.

But Bill "the Bomber" Ayers had no idea that this angry young community organizer would take that radical agenda into the White House. Will he find what Lenin called "useful idiots" in a majority of the American electorate?

Addition: Let me add this precious quote from Stern. (Warning to our youth: you have to know basic Cold War history.)

"Calling Bill Ayers a school reformer is a bit like calling Joseph Stalin an agricultural reformer. (If you find the metaphor strained, consider that Walter Duranty, the infamous New York Times reporter covering the Soviet Union in the 1930s, did, in fact, depict Stalin as a great land reformer who created happy, productive collective farms.) "

William Ayers and Hugo Chavez

This little bit by A.M. Mora y Leon is taken wholly from the American Thinker:

Barack Obama's original political sponsor Wiliam Ayers has ties to the Hugo Chavez regime that apparently continue today. Here's how Hugo Chavez advertises Ayers as a member of the directorate of the Miranda International Center, a think tank funded by the Venezuelan government. There is zero doubt he approved of this description of who he is below on the Venezuelan government Web site. I translated it into English for you:

Bill Ayers
USA
bayers@uic.edu
212-576-8274
William Ayers was the leader of the revolutionary and anti-imperialist group The Weather Underground which initiated armed struggle against the government of the USA during most of the 10 years from inside the empire.

Now, he's a professor of education and executive investigator of the University of Illinois in Chicago. He's developed courses around the urban reform of schools, problems of capitalist education, and investigation. He is the author or editor of more than 11 books, including a memoir titled Fugitive Days on the struggle against the government of the United States.

Ayers Redux

Given Gov. Palin's pointed words recently on the Obama-Ayers connection, I think it is worth re-posting this from Harold Kildow's August 25 post:

I imagine the twenty-somethings running the Obama campaign are starting to hear the ominous music that we learned from the Jaws franchise movies always accompanies imminent unseen dangers. For the Messiah and his minions it is the William Ayers/Anneneberg Challenge Grant story just about to break into their loaves and fishes tour. Watch this one folks...Clarice Feldman argues ("Can Obama Survive the Annenberg Cover-Up?") this is the revelation of the Anointed One as a false prophet. If you haven't picked up on it yet, her piece is a good place to begin.

Oh..the little punk in the picture? That's the once and future terrorist Billy Ayers, co-founder of the Weather Underground, that romantic little clack of "liberals in a hurry", as some of their indulgent parents thought of them, who considered blowing things up and terrorizing bourgeois society legitimate political speech. Several federal judges agreed, and viola, Bill Ayers and his lovely wife/partner in crime Bernadine Dohrne are now safely ensconced in...where else?... tenured university jobs, where they continue to hold forth on the evils of the United States.

PS...can anything good come out of the south side of Chicago?

And this tail end of his September 23 post, "Nightmare Scenario."



Why the picture of Bill Ayers with this post? He's another Alinsky acolyte, ally and mentor of Barack Obama, willing to do and say anything, including terrorist bombing campaigns. Look at him defiantly trampling the flag. This will be the mindset of an Obama administration. Are you questioning his patriotism?

The link is to Stanley Kurtz's article in the Wall Street Journal, "Obama and Ayers Pushed Radicalism on Schools" (Sept. 23, 2008).

In "Barack Obama and the Strategy," The American Thinker shows us the connection between Obama and the left we call fascist because it is so far left it makes Nancy Pelosi look like Sarah Palin, and because of its record of violence to achieve its ends.

A $700 Billion Laugh

Here's some fun from Saturday Night Live.



So, yes, the liberals know that the whole mess is their fault and that this bailout is coming to the rescue of many a fool and scoundrel.

Remember, it's only funny if it resembles the truth, or what is widely thought to be the truth.

Update: Well, shortly after I posted this, NBC pulled the video. Hmmm. Was that a political decision on the network's part? Will heads roll at SNL for politically inappropriate laughter? The political climate on the Democratic side is getting scarier all the time. I don't expect it to abate after October 31.

Further Update: I just heard this on Fox news. One sob-story couple who were not actually "victims" but made billions on their mortgages represented real people, and the sketch identified them by name (and in a caption suggested they be shot!). They are Herbert and Marion Sandler, radical left-wing and very wealthy real estate speculators. They, like George Soros who is also lampooned in the sketch, are also generous donor to the Democratic Party and many left wing causes like ACORN. Read Michelle Malkin for details.

Unlikely That We'll Throw the Bums Out

Rasmussen reports that, in the wake of the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, 59% of those polled would vote to replace the entire Congress. Given how radical Barack Obama would be as president, not only in taxing and spending but also in his suppression of criticism, it would be good for our liberty and prosperity if his power were balanced by at least one house of Congress. If every member in the House of Representatives were shown the door, the Democratic majority would become a Republican majority. The Senate is designed to be more stable in its membership, and so only one third of that body comes up for re-election every two years.

But do not hold out hope for any kind of upheaval of this sort. Public disapproval of Congress as a whole rarely translates into voters' disapproval of their own congressmen. The last electoral upending of the House was in 1994 and it was a rare event. It was a midterm election, so voters could focus their attention on congressional issues, and it happened under the gifted leadership of Republican House leader, Newt Gingrich. As we have seen in the last couple of weeks, there are no leaders of any description in Congress at this time.

Market Identifies Which States are "Christian"

The free market cannot do everything, but it can supply us with some information quite accurately. Is America a Christian nation? Well, some states are more Christian in character and sentiment than others, and the market may have identified which of the fifty states are "Christian."

A film about Billy Graham, Billy: the Early Years of Billy Graham, opens on October 10 in select states, not necessarily near you. They are: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. That is 12 out of 50 states.

So much for "Jesusland."



The website describes the film:

Most of us know Billy Graham as the self-assured and charismatic preacher who became one of the most important figures of 20th Century Christianity. Now, with the release of Billy: The Early Years, we meet Billy as the earnest and promising young man at the crossroads of faith and doubt, ultimately facing the moment of decision that launched one of history’s most powerful evangelistic careers.

Most compellingly, Billy: The Early Years paints its portrait of Graham against the backdrop of his relationship with Charles Templeton, another gifted young preacher who’s faith could not withstand the onslaught of scientific skepticism. He and Graham parted ways and in the film, Templeton comes to personify the rising tide of disbelief into which Graham launched his crusades.

Filmed in Tennessee, Billy: The Early Years captures the feel of the Depression-era tent revival where Graham heeded the altar call, and follows him through the doubt and resolution of the next decade. The film was directed by the versatile actor/director Robby Benson – the voice of The Beast in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. The movie’s power lays in its honest portrayal of Billy’s struggle with the ideas represented in Templeton’s eventual unbelief and shows how Billy’s faith, so dramatically portrayed in the film, goes on to change the face of modern evangelism.

Now that this movie is out, it strikes me as odd that Hollywood didn't get to it first. It is a compelling story that would draw a large audience and make a lot of money. Instead, they make Milk, the story of San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk, the country's first openly homosexual elected official, starring Sean Penn and due for release in December. But, as Michael Medved has shown, the ideological left in America is moved less by the profit motive than by their moral priorities. Yes, aggressive moral agendas are not solely the province of the Christian political right.

Palin Relaunches Herself

For anyone who hangs on my every word and listens to no one else (Hi Mom!), you should know that no one whom I consider wise or a shrewd observer agrees with me on the veep debate. Sure, these are conservatives, but so am I. Conservatives tend to be self-critical, so I take this widespread praise to be well-considered. Palin has apparently relaunched herself into shining stardom. Perhaps she will push ugly economic news off the front page.

Deborah Saunders at The San Francisco Chronicle, "The Palin-Biden Verdict."

Peggy Noonan, "Palin and Populism."

David Brooks, "The Palin Rebound."

Rich Lowry, "The Veep Debate: She's Back!"

Dick Morris and Eileen McGann, "Palin Wins Big With Reagan-Like Flair."

Fred Barnes, "Palin's Comeback."

Even Hillary Clinton gave her praise: "It's amazing. She's been thrust into the national spotlight with very little preparation and I think, all things considered, you saw a very composed and effective debater last night."

Barack Obama thinks Biden won. So there.

The Bailout and Distrust

The ancient Greek orator Demosthenes said:

There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies as against despots. What is it? Distrust. (Philippic 2, sect. 24)

When Congress and our former Goldman Sacks CEO Treasury Secretary ask us for $700,000,000,000, ask yourself, "Do I trust these people with this much power?"

What Running Mates Do Joe Did

Last night, watching the Veep Debate, even I felt an urge to vote for Obama-Biden. Then I shook myself, and said, "No, David! It's all an illusion!"

Biden played his running mate attack dog role effectively. He tore into McCain and made the Arizona Senator look like a slug. According to Biden, McCain voted to cut money for the troops, voted twenty times against alternative fuels, voted against health coverage for kids, voted against the Violence Against Women Act, proposes to tax health care benefits, and would give $4 billion to oil companies that are already making $600 billion in profits. On top of all that, he opposed the regulation of Wall Street as he has opposed all regulation. (You see? The financial crisis is John McCain's fault!) And he wants to make the same mess of our health care system by getting the government out of that too!

Who would vote for a beast like that? Whereas, according to Biden, Barack Obama anticipated every major problem that we face today, including the credit crisis, and urged the right actions for each one. The guy's amazing! And he loves the middle class too.

Biden actually got angry at McCain's record, but there was no such alarm and outrage from the other side of the stage. He is not a Maverick, Biden said, then made a list of charges.

Palin took a few jabs at Obama. But whereas there is a mountain of dirt she could have dumped on him, she only kicked some dust on his shoes.

She spent a lot of her boasting of how ordinary she is and how well she relates to ordinary people. Biden buried that with his own testimony, ending with an almost tearful remembrance of sitting at the bedside of his child who was hovering between life and death. Furthermore, Palin struck me as too ordinary. She seemed like a nice lady you'd meet at the bowling alley. People expect a certain amount of polish in their Presidents and prospective Presidents.

McCain-Palin will not win simply with their boasts of being Mavericks and just like us. They need to expose the Obama illusion. The debates are the big opportunity because they get no free airtime with the press. Palin's job last night was to do the heavy lifting on that. She did not.

Card Night at Ole Miss

Ethan Campbell writes:

Barack Obama may not look like a seasoned cardsharp, but he reportedly dominates Senate poker games. “Obama’s analytical mind,” James McManus gushed in The New Yorker, “helped him to excel at draw, stud, hold ’em, and also the sillier, more luck-based variants.”

Indeed, on Friday night in Mississippi, both candidates proved themselves capable high-stakes debaters, with full decks of anecdotes and statistics. But in a Presidential race, as in a poker tournament, the prize is never simply rewarded to the player with the best math skills. Undecided voters ask themselves gut-level questions—like which candidate is better suited to sit across the green felt table with sharks like Putin or Ahmadinejad or Abbas. The winning strategy thus belongs to the man who can master the intangibles.

The first key, any Vegas pro will tell you, is to develop the right poker face. It could be the classic neutral stare, or a cavalier smile—or in McCain’s case, an unnerving, reptilian smirk. What matters is that the player’s emotions are unreadable.

During the debate, Obama wore the face of a nickel-ante gambler at the Bellagio. Early on, he looked straight at the TV camera and delivered a promise to middle-class taxpayers: “You will not pay another dime.” But as the game shifted to foreign policy, his answers grew tentative, and his direct looks at the camera stopped. The message to viewers was subtle but clear—Obama wasn’t confident enough to look us in the eye. His baby browns didn’t meet ours again until the very end, back on the safe turf of childhood memories.

Obama’s smile was never one of good humor or playful sarcasm. It was a grin of helpless panic. When McCain scored hits—“It’s hard to reach across the aisle from that far to the left,” “It isn’t just naive, it’s dangerous”—the tally wrote itself on his stretched lips.

McCain’s expressions, on the other hand, were almost freakishly consistent. While Obama spoke, McCain fixed an eerie gaze on moderator Jim Lehrer, never once making eye contact with his opponent or the camera. When Obama attacked, he looked down at his notes. When the attacks got vicious, he gave Lehrer the smirk.

Often while Obama rebuked him, McCain treated the viewer to all three expressions in a row. Eerie gaze, down at his notes, smirk. Even during Obama’s finest moment—a two-minute tongue lashing over Iraq that made the Youtube highlight reel—McCain looked down, then up to smirk, then back down. Rinse and repeat.

The unreadable face does little good, though, unless one uses it to bluff. And McCain constantly pushed the action, with attacks that were difficult to verify.

Obama proposes “$800 billion in new spending on new programs,” McCain said. “I . . . I don’t know where John is getting his figures,” the junior Senator sputtered.

“He has voted to increase taxes on people who make as low as $42,000.” Obama denied the charge (“That’s not true, John”), and McCain denied right back (“You can look it up”).

Even after Obama’s Iraq indictment, the rhetorically wounded veteran shot back with a baffling but brazen claim: “Senator Obama doesn’t understand the difference between a tactic and a strategy.” He continued with a rambling tirade, about soldiers pleading to “let us win” and Obama cutting their funds.

Obama impotently tried to interrupt, but settled for smiling until it hurt. “Jim,” he said finally, “there are a whole bunch of things we have got to answer.”

The pattern developed quickly. McCain placed bets, and Obama called them. When Obama attacked, McCain raised the stakes.

When Obama mentioned embarrassing quotes from McCain’s past—singing “bomb, bomb Iran,” or saying we could “muddle through” Afghanistan—McCain didn’t bother to touch them. Instead, he stayed on the offensive: “You might think that with that kind of concern, Senator Obama would have gone to Afghanistan.”

When Obama accused him of voting “23 times against alternative energy, like solar, and wind, and biodiesel,” McCain absorbed the blow and struck back: “Senator Obama says he’s for nuclear, but he’s against reprocessing and storing. It’s hard to get there from here.” Obama desperately tried to “correct the record,” as Lehrer pressed the candidates to move on.

An aggressive strategy does not always win, but whoever drives the betting controls the game. And the game isn’t over until someone pushes all his chips into the pot.

In his closing statement, McCain accused Obama of clinging to ideology while ignoring practical reality. “We’ve seen this stubbornness before, in this administration,” he said. “We need more flexibility in a president of the United States.”

Paul Newman in The Sting couldn’t have matched the audacity of this final, all-in move. McCain was actually comparing Obama—Barack Obama, opponent of the Iraq war, supporter of nationalized health care and abortion on demand—to George W. Bush.

For once, Obama didn’t respond with a clarification. “You know, my father is from Kenya,” he said limply. McCain had left him nothing more to gamble with. He could only shake his head, grin like the Cheshire cat . . . and fold.

-- Ethan Campbell is assistant professor of writing at The King's College in New York City and is a guest writer today at Principalities and Powers. He is co-author of the recently published Teen Challenge: 50 Years of Miracles.

Illustration from The New Yorker.

For a post of perhaps related interest to card players, see my post, "Dogs Playing Poker: A Friend in Need." Which dog is Obama and which one is McCain?

Radical Fascist Chic

Ed Driscoll has a great video piece up at his site making the following argument:

This past summer, Rick Perlstein, the author of the new biography called Nixonland, looked back on the period leading up to Richard Nixon's 1968 election and told Reason magazine that in his opinion, "Bonnie and Clyde was the most important text of the New Left", adding: "It made an argument about vitality and virtue vs. staidness and morality that was completely new, that resonated with young people in a way that made no sense to old people. Just the idea that the outlaws were the good guys and the bourgeois householders were the bad guys--you cannot underestimate how strange and fresh that was." It certainly was strange, compared with the nation's politics at the start of the 1960s.

In the latest edition of our Silicon Graffiti videoblog, we take a look back at the film, its radical chic times, and its champion--Pauline Kael of the New Yorker, who would reject traditional culture for "trash cinema." And we'll also look at Bobby Kennedy's Fascist Moment--and even a Bonnie & Clyde-related excerpt the fourth edition of Austin Bay and Jim Dunnigan's A Quick And Dirty Guide To War. Which sounds like one meaty, beaty, big and bouncy little video to me.

Tommy guns and fedoras are optional, of course.



Violence, wedded in a most ironic way to righteousness, is at the core of fascism. It is the default impulse of the powerless, as Hannah Arendt pointed out in On Violence. and also of the mindless. The Nazis glorified irrationality and will over cold, bourgeois reason. The New Left, and now the New New Left, mirror that preference: note the presence of violent agitators that has become expected at all political conventions and meetings of transnational organizations. Most of the protestors don't even know what the organizations are, what they do, or what is being discussed. They show up for the mindless violence and to join a mass expression of the will to destroy whatever exists. They are the shock troops intended to spread chaos and distrust of institutions and leaders, in order to make way for the strong man or party to step in and restore order. A fascistic order, that precludes that over-rated bourgeois value, freedom.

Political Arson

Barack Obama is out there today talking about houses burning down as an analogy with the Congress voting down the bail out bill. Well, it so happens someone has had a video compilation up at YouTube for a while now with the title "Burning Down the House."



This is a fast moving account of how this fiasco unfolded, in case you haven't had a chance to get up to speed on it. It has been removed several times already, so don't wait to check it out--these things critical of Obama and Democrats in general have a way of being censored at YouTube. Why would that be?

[DCI - Sure enough. The link in my September 27 posting of this video is dead. This one Harold has given us is live and prefaced by the suggestion that the Warner Music Group is more concerned about the electoral prospects of Barack Obama to whom they have given a lot of money than about the use of their song in a YouTube video.]

Also,--and I'll have more to say about this in a later post--this American Thinker piece, "Obama and the Strategy," gives chapter and verse on the manifold connections with the Fascist Left that Barack Obama has. Truly alarming stuff. Arm yourself with the truth--read the whole thing.

Obama Youth Brigade Sings For Change

Evidence of the political Messianism that surrounds Barack Obama continues unabated. Here is a creepy video of children singing out the One. A child sings, "We're gonna spread happiness. We're gonna spread freedom. Obama's gonna change it. Obama's gonna lead 'em. We're gonna change it, and rearrange it. We're goin' to change the world."



Obama's going to bring freedom, but not for people to pursue happiness. The freedom will come in the happiness that he provides. He will do this by rearranging the world. This is consistent with the messianic claims his more enthusiastic follows have made for him. The song's expectation that he will "rearrange" the world is consistent with his claim that it is not politics that is broken (as McCain claims), but America itself. His wife, Michelle, says, "our souls are broken." Perhaps he will re-arrange our souls.

If Obama is sworn in as President, can we expect an Obama catechism for children, either issued by the White House or initiated by the public schools with the approving sufferance of the White House?

Nazis and Communists have been known for this blend of patriotism (a thing that is healthy in itself), Utopian political hopes, and personality cult. I thank the Belmont Club blog for directing me to this nightmarish scene from Cabaret that depicts a wholesome young man singing a seemingly apolitical song expressing love for his fatherland. The scene slowly transforms into a passionate, mass devotion to the Fuhrer and his personal agency in uniting these people with what they believe to be the beautiful future they deserve. It is called "The Future Belongs to Me."



Consider also this Leninist exploitation of children for political purposes. (Thanks again to Belmont Club.)



I can't vouch for the translation in the sub-titles, but it sounds like Mao's Cultural Revolution and today's North Korea.

[Note: Actually, my colleague at The King's College, economist Alex Tokarev, is a native Russian speaker, and he says the words have nothing to do with what the children are singing in this video, and the reference to Lenin's little potatoes doesn't sound credible even for socialist propaganda of the period. Always go to the source, and to the original language if you can!]

Of course, this is quite distinct from the love of country that we instill in our children, though within measure, even through patriotic songs such as "America, the Beautiful" and the National Anthem. It's worth reflecting on the difference between the cultivation of patriotic sentiment in young hearts and the propagandizing of children in totalitarian states that we see in these videos.

There appears to have been difficulty keeping the "Sing For Change" video publicly accessible, as Belmont Club attests. ("BTW, the original YouTube video was withdrawn from public sharing and the embedded video stopped working for a time, but someone has reposted it (HT Sobieski) and I’ve re-embedded. There may be a struggle to keep the video visible to the public in the coming days. Who could have foreseen it would be harder to keep a video criticizing Obama up than one criticizing Hitler?") Perhaps the thugs from Obama's "truth squads" have been busy.

Of course, the other side of messianic political movements and figures is their actively fascistic (yes, I use the word advisedly) intolerance of any criticism. We observe this in American political liberals in general, as Jonah Goldberg has documented in his book, Liberal Fascism, and as Barack Obama himself has already begun to demonstrate. See Harold Kildow's post "The Dark Night of Fascism."