Assertions by some Democrats of hysterical tendency that a McCain presidency would be like a third term of Him-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named are of course absurd, and even morally offensive.
But David Brooks — in a column that I did NOT pick for tomorrow’s op-ed page because Robert Samuelson has a piece on why Wall Street is falling apart, and that seemed most relevant — provides a reasonably erudite exploration that Sarah Palin would be like W. Redux.
I like it because of the way it takes apart the bogus egalitarianism of the term limits movement, and other impulses that militate against competent government, to wit:
This populist tendency produced the term-limits movement based on the belief that time in government destroys character but contact with grass-roots America gives one grounding in real life. And now it has produced Sarah Palin….
I would have more sympathy for this view if I hadn’t just lived through the last eight years. For if the Bush administration was anything, it was the anti-establishment attitude put into executive practice.
And the problem with this attitude is that, especially in his first term, it made Bush inept at governance. It turns out that governance, the creation and execution of policy, is hard. It requires acquired skills. Most of all, it requires prudence.
What is prudence? It is the ability to grasp the unique pattern of a specific situation. It is the ability to absorb the vast flow of information and still discern the essential current of events _ the things that go together and the things that will never go together. It is the ability to engage in complex deliberations and feel which arguments have the most weight.
He acknowledges that "experienced leaders can certainly blunder if their minds have rigidified (see: Rumsfeld, Donald)," but on the whole, having experience is better than not having it.
(And yes, the same can be said about Obama, but here he was talking about Palin, specifically within the context of the debate going on now within conservatism over whether experience matters. Worth reading.)
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Still not touching this Cohen piece:
“Following his loss to George W. Bush in the 2000 South Carolina primary, John McCain did something extraordinary: He confessed to lying about how he felt about the Confederate battle flag, which he actually abhorred. “I broke my promise to always tell the truth,” McCain said. Now he has broken that promise so completely that the John McCain of old is unrecognizable. He has become the sort of politician he once despised.”
And:
“McCain has turned ugly. His dishonesty would be unacceptable in any politician, but McCain has always set his own bar higher than most. He has contempt for most of his colleagues for that very reason: They lie. He tells the truth. He internalizes the code of the McCains — his grandfather, his father: both admirals of the shining sea. He serves his country differently, that’s all — but just as honorably. No more, though.”
And, of course:
“…McCain lied about his lying and maybe thinks that if he wins the election, he can — as he did in South Carolina — renounce who he was and what he did and resume his old persona. It won’t work. Karl Marx got one thing right — what he said about history repeating itself. Once is tragedy, a second time is farce. John McCain is both.”
But keep telling us how honorable he is, Brad, and how Mr. Reach Across The Aisle is going to change things.
I will. I’ll keep telling you that about both Mr. Reach Across The Aisles, McCain and Obama.
I thought for a moment, when you said "Cohen," that you meant Roger Cohen with the NYT. But then I read some of it and thought, "I don’t think so."
Following your link, I’ve familiarized myself a little with this OTHER Cohen.
In his last column, he was ticked that Obama is "too cool to fight." He wrote "Thank God for Sarah Palin," apparently because he hoped she might get the Democratic base whipped up, which he believes Obama is too big a wimp to do.
I’m guessing he would have preferred Hillary be his nominee. In other words, there’s not a great deal of likelihood that this Mr. Cohen and I will see things the same way. You DEFINITELY won’t see me wishing somebody would get either party’s base charged up.
By the way, the headline of the piece you bring to my attention, "The Ugly New McCain," is misleading, as
it’s not new to Mr. Cohen. In May, he wrote one headlined, "McCain in the Mud." That piece lacked intensity of the most recent one, possibly because back then, Ms. Palin had not yet gotten him and the rest of the base whipped up.
As I read a little further through Mr. Cohen’s archive, I begin to detect that he’s not quite as enthusiastic about the Republican base getting stirred up and motivated. I gather he’d like that one to stay calm and dormant. In that, he and I are alike. I’d just like to see BOTH parties’ bases be sedated, and let the rest of us choose a president.
Of course, maybe it’s just the evangelical part of the GOP base that he finds distasteful. I base the impression on his piece about Billy Graham and son Franklin ("Put them out to pastor," July 1) and "Haters without a cause," from June 10.
But wait! I take it back about him being a Hillary fan, in spite of his laudatory piece "Why She Fights On." He also wrote about her on April 15:
I guess he just likes a scrapper…
So, since Richard Cohen has twice expressed his disappointment in McCain, it’s invalid? I just don’t understand how people can continue to delude themselves about this guy.
Believe me, back in 2000 I drank the Straight Talk Kool-Aid, too, though I didn’t cross the aisle all the way and vote in the GOP primary. Earlier this year, however, I did urge my wife to vote for him – because I mistakenly believed we might actually have a civil discourse if the nominees were McCain and Obama. Silly me.
Alas, McCain 2008 bears no resemblance to McCain 2000 – or to Senator McCain. He has sacrificed his integrity in pursuit of the presidency. All candidates, unfortunately, distort and exaggerate; but McCain tells outright lies. Sometimes he even acknowledges that they are lies, but then repeats them anyway.
Given that, a President McCain couldn’t reach across the aisle if he wanted to because of the absolute bitterness he – and he alone – has injected into this campaign.
“Bears no resemblance?” He looks just LIKE him to me — they’ve gotta at least be brothers, don’t ya think?
Define “absolute bitterness.” I’ve been seeing some bitterness — that was the subject of my Sunday column — but surely it’s not yet absolute, in the sense of Absolute Zero.
What I have also been seeing is a lot of hyperbole. But not absolute hyperbole; it would be an exaggeration to say that.
I’m sorry, I’m sorry; I shouldn’t see this stuff as funny (and I don’t always; some days all this anger just depresses me). But I just can’t work up all the dudgeon you can over — let’s see — some ad about sex education and kindergarten or whatever it was, or another ad about a guy who can’t lift his arms over his head not using a blackberry, or whatever. I find that stuff distasteful. It’s not what I’m looking for in my next president. But it doesn’t get me into high dudgeon. It just doesn’t.
Maybe I’ve seen too much. Maybe it’s the same thing that kept me from being outraged over Don Fowler’s comment about the hurricane. I guess I expect a certain amount of human behavior. I’m not bitter toward McCain over — oh, name something else besides the sex-ed thing; how about tax cuts — just as I’m not bitter toward Obama over all those years listening to the “God Damn America” guy (besides, I have a good explanation for that; it’s one of many things I plan to squeeze into that “Barack Like Me” column).
If I were bitter, I’d be clinging to God and guns. OK, so I AM clinging to God, and I like beer, and I used to be an avid bowler. But I don’t hate a guy who bowls a 37, even though I still don’t see how that’s possible…
I’ll agree with Cohen on one thing: Choosing Palin was “opportunistic and irresponsible.” It was irresponsible, anyway. As for the opportunity part, that was a crap shoot. It could have boomeranged on him. Still could.
If I made up my mind on the basis of veep choice, which I can’t remember when I did, that would tear it. As I believe I said previously, it seemed like a fit of pique. He seemed to be saying to the party types who didn’t want my man Joe, “Here, maybe THIS is more what you like.” Which they did.
He seemed to be saying, “I don’t feel the need for a partner (since I can’t have Joe), so I don’t care who it is; might as well pick somebody who’ll shut up those whiners on the right.”
You know what, though? I wonder how I would have reacted if he HAD picked Joe. Much as I like Joe, would that not have been an almost narcissistic choice for vice president — “I’ll pick my buddy, who’s just like me”? Might it not have shown an impracticality about the realities of electoral politics, since Joe would ahve ticked off both the nuts on the right and the nuts on the Left who HATE Joe for breaking with party orthodoxy? Mmmm… Nah. I would have liked it, big time.
Keep the faith, Brad: God and beer. Beer was supposedly invented by some monks and my brother-in-law from Natchez, Mississippi calls beer, simply, liquid bread.
How could you go wrong?
Brad, I just don’t understand how you find the comparison between McCain and Bush (which although not entirely accurate has a significant factual basis) to be “morally offensive” yet you don’t care at all about McCain’s ads that are straight-up lies.
Krauthammer’s evil twin, Victor Davis Hanson, slaps Richard Cohen around a bit:
Nope, they didn’t.
And Laura Ingraham blasts her old buddy David Brooks. You really have to read the whole thing, but here’s a highlight:
Yurrip? Yuck! But they do have good beer.
Wonderwoman Sarah Palin is the core human female men love, and even catty women respect.
McCain choose well, maybe he thinks he will not finish his first term, and knows with seasoning, Sarah Palin will be Thatcher and Meier to right the world as the leader of the USA.
The hate whitey, America the oppressor, negro slaves built this country and deserve reparations, black panther and black separatism, black on white crime, affirmative action etc is like stink on defecation with the obamaoid.
Talks slick but stinks like sh***tuh.
Not American anyway, african kenyan luo tribe slave seller daddy, mama teenage kansan girl in hawaii hot for the oppressed negroid, and raises the offspring as white, and he decides he is black like the black mentor jeremiah wright:
he was judged by the content of his character, gd American, the KKK of America comments, but we had to apologize because of the color of his skin, he said was black.
Er, great points, Joe. Hope you’re not drivin’ tonight.
However the elections turn out, some argue that Sarah Palin will be regarded as the most Heinleinian candidate for Vice-President of the United States in this country’s history.
Whatever the case, Heinlein’s strong female characters were likely based on wife Virginia. Her obituary is here. Ya oughtta read it. She saved Robert’s life at least once.
Brad believes McCain actually did help invent the Blackberry. He’ll probably write a piece on it explaining how it allows McCain to cross the political divide and he’ll remind us what a swell guy McCain still is.
When confronted with the facts, he’ll side step and talk in generalities about politicians. Then he will bring up Al Gore and the Internet and say he doesn’t keep up with the various biased media reports because he’s too busy fending off animal rights activists and lobbying for smoking bans.
Thanks for the Heinlein-related links, Mike.
You made my day.
An appointed Republican Attorney General rejects cooperation with legislative subpoenas looking at executive misconduct because the subpoenas are “political” and the issue could be “better reviewed by an exectutive agency.” I assume Lindsay Graham will be the first to condemn such action. If not I guess those are the arguments that Clinton should have used in the 90s. Chief Ditto was indignant about this then-wonder how he stands now.
That state trooper was charged with hitting a woman and using a Taser on a 14-year-old boy who was trying to defend his mother.
Why didn’t his supervisor fire him?
Federal law, sponsored by Joe Biden, REQUIRES that such officers be disarmed and removed from patrol duty, until they are found innocent and a judge removes the order.
History has provided us with lots of examples of how time in office has corroded the character of formerly good people.
Just look how time at the New York Times has corroded the form conservative David Brooks.
In our own state, Lindsay Graham’s desire to join the club and seek higher office led him to sell out America to illegal immigrants. There are a lot worse examples, of course.
President Bush’s problems all stem from his willingness to compromise with Ted Kennedy and create a $38 BILLION education cost, up 50% in 7 years; his tiring of standing up to a Democrat press corps which lied about there being no WMD, the war being “a quagmire”, our soldiers being “war criminals”; and his expansion of Medicare, Medicaid and other welfare programs by running a deficit.
Real conservatives despise this weakness in Graham, Bush and others. They know that every opportunity to reverse the socialist failures, from Clinton back to FDR, must be seized. Democrats are not willing to compromise their principles – they only compromise to stall and prepare for total domination of their opposition in the long run.
In a very non-hysterical way I’d like to ask Brad this question: Given John McCain’s roll in the Keating 5 incident and his choice of Phil Gramm as his chief economic advisor how does he expect the American public to respect his claim that he will reform the nation’s economic policy?
Giving more power to the elites means watching the United States become more and more like Europe.
-Laura I.
That would be the Europe where everyone has access to health care. The same Europe that’s decades ahead of us in developing alternative energy. The same Europe that has a life expectancy 5 years longer than we do in the U.S. A Europe that largely avoided foreign policy entanglements. The same Europe that put leisure time ahead of high-stress work just to produce more worthless junk. The same Europe that has largely abandoned landfills since they recycle virtually everything. A Europe that has a fast, efficient rail system for transporting people. A Europe that has seen it’s currency, the Euro, increase in value compared to the U.S. at an astonishing rate over the past few years.
Sorry Laura. You need to find someone else to compare us to. How about China? Now there’s a real capitalist country we can identify with.
Interestingly, yet not surprising, in her acceptance speech in St. Paul, Sarah Palin quoted the populist Westbrook Pegler when she said, “We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity and dignity.”
Pegler, who is apprently on Palin’s list of favorite writers, is also known for his statement that ‘some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his spoonful of brains in public premises before the snow flies,’ in reference to Robert Kennedy who was considering a run for the presidency in 1965.
Pegler was an avowed racist and anti-semite. He was also a strong opponent of FDR’s New Deal programs which saved this nation from the crash resulting from the unfettered capitalism and greed perpetrated by Republican leadership of the 1920’s… a scene frighteningly reminiscent of today’s financial crisis.
Was Palin’s Pegler reference just a strange coincidence, or was the Republican VP candidate speaking in code on behalf of her party to the American electorate?
I think it is the latter.
It is the studied opinion of many economists that the Great Depression was acting deepened and prolonged by the ideological meddling of FDR and his hordes of socialist, fascists and communist appointees and bureaucrats.
The early part of the New Deal came was the implementation of Herbert Hoover’s platform, which Roosevelt had ridiculed during the campaign.
The second phase came from Mussolini, and much of it was struck down by the Supreme Court.
Fighting the unConstitutional seizure of power and property is a good thing, to be applauded. It is the duty of our generation to undo the mess of the New Deal, Great Society, Clintonomics, and to defeat the worst Democrat yet, the socialist and racist, Barack Hussein Obama.
About 20 to 25% of the people in Europe and Canada ( 100% of those who can afford it ) buy private medical insurance in order to receive quality care that they are denied under socialized medicine.
bud:
Regarding the Keating 5, we’ve covered that before on this blog a week or so ago:
By my count, that’s three Dems who interfered, and one Dem and one GOP who were stooopid.
As for your fixation with Phil Gramm, OpinionJournal’s James Taranto points out that the majority of the Senate passed the bill that you’re so p*ssed about; Graham-Leach-Bliley passed the Senate on a 90-8 vote, with both Reid and Obama running mate Joe Biden casting “aye” votes.
Finally, While I don’t think that Obama’s situation is this bad, I am a fan of recycling and offer it to tickle your funnybone.
FWIW, I think we’ll find that politically motivated laws and regulations that encouraged loose lending coupled with inadequate oversight of Fannie and Freddie caused the mess we find ourselves in. One example: the $250K / $500K capital-gains-tax exclusion on selling one’s primary residence encouraged too many folks (and one is too many) to try to maximize their gain by buying as much house as they could barely afford. But they could afford it with lenders willing to make negative amortization loans because the booming real estate market in some parts of the country would let everybody make more than a couple of bucks when the property was sold after five years. (50% appreciation on a $600K house is more than 50% on the $200K house one could really afford with conventional financing.) The really great part was that Fannie and Freddie would buy the flaky loan! Yes, a government guarantee! They’d then pass it on as a security. Nobody loses unless and until reality hits the real estate market and appreciation turns into depreciation, forcing holders to mark their holdings to market, turning what were valuable assets into poop.
The Community Reinvestment Act played a really big role too: it forced some lenders to issue quite risky loans if they wanted to expand.
AIG has several successful, well-run business lines that could not rescue the parent. What real value AIG has can’t be realized because nobody’s too interested in paying for value today, they want discounts. The real question is simply how far the discounting will go.
So those of us here who used credit responsibly, whatever their political preferences may be, will pay some price for folks who jumped on the leveraged bandwagon.
That price is growing daily…
Gosh, Brad, it sure is a shame you wasted Drew McKissick’s insightful guest column, “Batten down the hatches, Sarah” — http://www.thestate.com/satopinion/story/522605.html — on nothing but Saturday cyberspace, yet you wasted genuine tree-product on Columbia College Distinguished Professor Emerita Paula Shirley’s “Gushing fans don’t see real Sarah Palin.”
Yes, Dr. Shirley, Gov. Palin is “worthy of being elected to the second-most important position in the land,” which, by the way, the vice presidency isn’t.
But, if it were, she deserves it because she seems one of us, not someone who’s spent years and years suppressing common sense for the sake of mindless political correctness, schmoozing and pure self service, like the Democratic nominee for the vice presidency.
And, no, Dr. Shirley, Barack Obama having debated presidential candidates for a year and a half doesn’t prepare hime to lead anything, any more than your directing Women’s Studies at Columbia College prepared you, apparently, to write a letter to The State.
This is just too funny. Apparently the latest trooper-gate story is that Palin fired DPS Director Monagen for, drum roll please, attempted to securing federal funding to fight crime. And not just any crime but crime involving sexual assualt. If the Obama campaign is smart they’ll run with this. Palin fired the Safety Director for attempting to fight sex crimes. I say let her off the hook and accept her explanation. And this woman might be a heartbeat away from the presidency? McCain, what were you thinking old man, the woman’s a kook. From Muckracker:
Trooper-Gate: Palin’s Shifting Stories
By Zachary Roth – September 16, 2008, 3:51PM
There’s a moment in a lot of political scandals when the contradictions and inconsistencies in the story being put out by the figure accused become so glaringly obvious that they themselves turn into an important part of the story. We may now have reached that point in Trooper-Gate — especially as regards Sarah Palin’s stated reasons for firing Walt Monegan.
A court filing made yesterday by Palin’s lawyer, Thomas Van Flein, asserts that Palin fired Monegan as the state’s public safety commissioner because of a series of instances of Monegan’s insubordination on budget issues, including Monegan working with an Alaska legislator to seek funding for a project Governor Palin had already vetoed. This alleged pattern of “outright insubordination” is said to have culminated in Monegan planning a trip to Washington to go after federal funds for an initiative to fight sexual assault crimes, which had not yet been approved by the governor. (Van Flein’s account was in sync with the line taken last night by a McCain campaign spokesman at a press conference in Alaska.)
If you went somewhere, pretending to represent your agency, without permission from your boss, don’t you think you would be insubordinate, and they would be justified in firing you?
Hint: the answer is, “YES”.
Lee, you don’t understand how political spin works. So what if her story is true, thus exonerating her, in a legal sense, for firing Monegan. That’s completely irrelevant. She was accussed of firing Monegan for a personal vendetta. But that could be defended on the grounds of serving the public interest. That is, she wanted to get rid of the scum ex-brother in law who tazered a child and did all sorts of other rotten stuff. Legally she may have been on shaky ground but in the eyes of the public this was not out of line and it fit with her maverick persona.
And now we have her defense. She claims she fired Monegan for …… trying to protect women from sexual assault. This is great. A woman who has played the sexist charge is now making it more difficult to apprehend rapists. This troopergate mess is a gift from the McCain campaign to Obama. A gift that just keeps on giving.
I understand smear campaigns work, and how Obama is running a campaign of smears, lies, and promises of money to his greedy followers.
Doesn’t Obama’s dishonesty give any of his supporters pause?
Even the dumbest Obamoron knows that Governor Palin did not “fire Monegan for trying to protect women from sexual assault.” That’s an outright lie.
She fired him for a series of insubordinations and refusals to discipline officers.
If those officers had been slapping women and using Tasers on children in their states, the Democrats would be calling for a federal prosecution.
That straw you’re clutching at, bud, has it worn through yet?