Category Archives: 2008 Presidential

Sarah’s gams, or, Our nation’s descent into fetishism

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Vice_presidential_deb_wart4

The last few weeks, I’ve noticed a kind of image moving on the AP wire that I don’t recall having run across in the annals of photojournalism vis-a-vis presidential campaigns.

Each time I see one of these, I go, Vice_presidential_deb_wart2
"legs!," because, well, that’s the sort of thing I notice. But then, trying to explain what on Earth caused a photo editor to post these (I understand fully why the photographer shot them, but it seems to me more like the sort of thing he would keep to himself, or just share with the guys), I think, "It’s gotta be the shoes." I figure maybe there’s a fashion angle to which I am oblivious. That would be acceptable to women, and therefore the sort of thing an editor might dare to post. I mean, I’ve read that Sarah Palin has had an impact on the eyewear industry; maybe there’s something special about her shoes to which I am oblivious.

But nope; it’s not about the shoes. In fact, no excuse is offered for shooting Sarah Palin in a way that it would never occur to the photog to shoot Joe Biden. Here’s the caption:

Republican vice presidential candidate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, stands at the lectern during her vice presidential debate Thursday, Oct. 2, 2008, in St. Louis, Mo. (AP Photo/Don Emmert, Pool)

I guess, despite all these decades of being bludgeoned by the sensitivity crowd, boys will still be boys. I mean, I knew that, but most of us don’t SHOW it show so blatantly.

Breathless over Sarah, but not the way Kathleen Parker meant it

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Vice_presidential_deb_wart

You may recall that in my commentary on Kathleen Parker’s "Palin-should-drop-out" column, I wrote:

Kathleen is able to cite her initial defense of Sarah, then her
breathless tension watching her and hoping she wouldn’t screw up. And
that’s something I can’t possibly identify with — worrying about
someone’s performance because I’m a member of the same demographic.
Maybe I’m too self-centered. But I have had to accept that black folks
do that with Obama, and women do that with Hillary Clinton and/or Sarah
Palin, depending on their proclivities. When I see a white guy out
there succeeding or failing, he’s on his own as far as I’m concerned. I
might agree with him or I might not, but it won’t have anything to do
with which restroom he uses or what boxes he checks off on a census
form.

Well, I found myself breathless at times during the debate — whenever Mrs. Palin was speaking — and was really glad when the whole thing was over. But it wasn’t because I wanted to see a woman succeed. And it wasn’t because I wanted to see McCain’s running mate succeed (his choice of Mrs. Palin is one of the few things about McCain I disapprove of). And it wasn’t because she’s a babe. (even though she was cute, when she wasn’t grating.)

No, it was that phenomenon that comes over me when I’m watching a movie or a TV show, and something’s about to happen that will be enormously embarrassing to the character on the screen, and even if you don’t like the character (although it’s worse if they’re likable), you cringe, because you don’t want to see it. You get embarrassed for the human race; you empathize no matter how much you try not to, and it’s painful.

And the awful part is that you see it coming. Often at such moments, I leave the room. Life is painful enough without having your nose rubbed in contrived discomfort.

As I was typing the above, I was struggling to come up with an example, but one just hit me: I’ve never watched the American version of "The Office," but I’m a big fan of the BBC original. I say that in spite of the fact that the entire second season was just excruciating; David Brent got worse and worse. But in that case, I had to keep watching.

I had to keep watching the debate, too, on account of it being my job. But in the end, it went fine for all concerned. But I was tired, from all the breath-holding.

Vice_presidential_deb_wart3

What did you think of the debate?

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My own quick take on it — WAY more interesting than the presidential debate. Higher energy, and more engaging.

Both did well. Of course, that means more in the case of Sarah Palin, because we knew Joe knew his stuff. Joe’s greatest danger was coming off as superior or condescending or ungentlemanly. Sarah’s greatest danger was coming off as she did with Katie Couric. She didn’t, and he didn’t. They both did a fine job.

But what do YOU think?

What’s so hard about speaking English?

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Joe, you just said "different than" three times in about 30 seconds. It’s "different FROM" — what’s so hard about that? "Than" expresses a comparison of DEGREE, a quantitative difference. When you’re trying to express a qualitative difference, it’s "different from."

And Sarah — what’s so blasted hard about the word, "nuclear?" Have you been studying at the W. school of elocution?

If I were Joe Biden, I’d be worried about the debate

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Eagerjoe_4Don’t get me wrong — I expect Joe to win big-time by MY standards. I’ve always liked and respected Joe,
his tendency toward blarney notwithstanding, and he’s a veteran big-leaguer, while Sarah’s never been out of the sticks. Yes, I could be wrong, I could be shown up the way Max Mercy was when he bet on the Whammer against Roy Hobbs, but I know he’s capable of knocking it out of the park at a time of his choosing.

But it’s not about me, is it? It’s about Josephine Sixpack out there. And despite that dazzling grin of his, Joe’s charm is of a kind that I think is likely to wear thin with the folks in TV land if he shows just how smart he is. And Joe has trouble resisting the temptation to show how smart he is.

We all laugh at the Tina Fey skits about Sarah (those of us who have senses of humor), but only the crueler ones among us want to laugh at her, personally, struggling against a Hall of Famer in such a public and high-stakes ballpark (let me know when you’ve had enough of the baseball metaphors).

Mrs. Palin just needs to cram enough to give a few answers that make common sense. Sure, such a forum is loaded with hurdles that she’s likely to have trouble clearing (just changed sports on you there). But Joe doesn’t just have to get the answers right (which everyone expects him to do). He has to get the tone right, at every step of the way. Now that’s tough, especially for a guy so well known for letting himself get carried away.

Updates from the Palin front

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We’ve all been so distracted with serious bidness the last few days that I’ve hardly had a moment to think about Sarah Palin. But I pause now to pass on two things:

  1. I met with Marvin Chernoff over breakfast this morning, and he asked me whether I’d seen the Tina Fey-as-Sarah Palin skit on SNL, and I said I had, but after a moment it hit me that we weren’t talking about the same skit. Turns out she reprised the role Saturday night and I missed it, while Marvin was unaware of the earlier one. Now that I’ve seen the latest (clip above), I’ve got to say it sort of fell flat by comparison, but it would have been hard to match the hilarity of the first effort. It was the funniest thing on that show in decades.
  2. Be sure to check out tomorrow’s op-ed page. Kathleen Parker writes about the tidal wave of vehement reaction she got to her Palin-should-drop-out column the other day.

‘Bailout’ vs. ‘rescue’

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This is weird. I knew I liked the way both Obama and McCain think in a lot of ways — that’s why we endorsed both of them in January. But I didn’t know I was synched with them to this degree…

I wrote, for tomorrow’s paper, an editorial on the House’s appalling failure on Monday. As I did so, I made a conscious decision to refer to the rejected plan as a "rescue," not a "bailout." I hadn’t done that before. It’s just that in the process of thinking through what ought to happen, it occurred to me that whatever the Congress eventually passes, it’s no good if it’s just a "bailout;" it needs to be a rescue.

After I was done with the piece, I checked the wires to see what the presidential candidates had said since earlier this morning. Way down in the AP roundup story, I found this quote:

"The first thing I would do is say, ‘Let’s not call it a bailout. Let’s call it a rescue," McCain told CNN. He said "Americans are frightened right now" and political leaders must give them an immediate solution and a longer-term approach to the problem.

Then I saw this separate story:

RENO, Nev. (AP) — Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Tuesday called for Americans to get behind attempts to salvage a $700 billion rescue plan for the financial sector, saying that if Wall Street fails ordinary people will also be hurt.

"This is no longer just a Wall Street crisis. It’s an American crisis, and it’s the American economy that needs this rescue plan," Obama told about 12,000 people at a rally at the University of Nevada at Reno.

Obama said Congress should put aside politics — he didn’t mention GOP rival John McCain by name during his remarks — and should act on the legislation quickly.

"To the Democrats and Republicans who opposed this plan yesterday, I say: Step up to the plate and do what’s right for this country," he said. "And to all Americans, I say this: If I am president of the United States, this rescue plan will not be the end of what we do to strengthen this economy. It will only be the beginning."

You’ll notice that not just Obama, but the AP, was using the new official word.

So it looks like everybody got the memo. Except there was no memo. This is the kind of thing that makes disaffected people think the media — and political leaders, who after all communicate through the media — are conspiring. But it just happens.

Scattered thoughts on the debate

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First, I’ll refer you to video from the panel discussion last night, where you will find Joshua Gross and others offering their thoughts.

I was wiped out last night, and didn’t stick around to talk to folks after the discussion ended a little before midnight. Long day. I hope folks didn’t think I was rude, but I’d been fighting a cold and had no resources left. I’d told everyone at the start that I was just there to observe; it was the newsroom’s show.

On my way out I did run into our own Norm Ivey, who was there sporting an Obama ’08 T-shirt. You can see some of Norm’s recent comments on this post, and this one, and this one.

As I said last night from my Treo, I don’t think this was a debate that changed any minds — although Norm raised the interesting point that the candidates were speaking to voters who hadn’t paid attention until now, and that on that score he thought McCain did better. I can’t say, because I wasn’t looking for that while I watched.

Nor do I have an overall observation or theme. I thought each candidate exhibited some strengths and weaknesses, as follows:

McCain strengths:

  • Having been right about the Surge. There’s so much more to that than the fact that by sending those extra troops, and using them properly, we created a stituation in which we can start talking about drawing down and leaving behind a stable Iraq. It goes to the core fact that McCain was right, and Bush was wrong, for four years before the president finally got rid of Rumsfeld and switched to a strategy that would work. This narrative (and so many other things) gives the lie to the Democrats’ "McCain equals Bush" nonsense. It communicates that he won’t give up on our nation’s commitments, or let American blood be spent for nought. And it shows he knows the differences between approaches likely to work, and those not to.
  • The constant reminders of his long experience with these issues. The answer he gave to the "bomb, bomb Iran" remark was his best moment. He gave the history of his judgments of major decisions involving the deployment of our military, from being against sending the Marines to Lebanon in 83 to backing Clinton on Bosnia in defiance of many in his party. It strongly suggested the thought, "Oh, yeah — and Obama just got to the Senate…"
  • His long-held opposition to earmarks and wasteful spending, and clear willingness to use his veto and the bully pulpit to fight it. Lehrer was irritating with his constant hammering on "if the bailout passes, what will you give up," but McCain gave the best answer.
  • The reminder that he and Biden pushed through the 9/11 commission, again in spite of the Bush administration.
  • His answer on the initial economic question, emphasizing how encourage he was that Democrats and Republicans were working together finally, made Obama’s answer about "failed policies" of Republicans look petty.

McCain weaknesses

  • One overrides all others, and he did it repeatedly and intentionally — his condescending references to Obama "not understanding" issues. Obama is a smart man, but even if he weren’t, McCain’s constant attempts to put him down would have been unseemly, and beneath him. Yes, I believe there are some things Obama "doesn’t get," but that’s not a gentlemanly way of putting it, and I’m betting it created a lot of sympathy for Obama. Most of all, it was inconsistent with the sort of man McCain is — he is usually deeply humble and gracious to those who disagree with him (something that I think is all the more admirable because of his natural temper; he has chosen to be mild in disagreement, and it speaks well of him). This was artificial and offensive, and whoever talked him into taking this approach should not be listened to again.
  • As we knew already, he is not as smoothly articulate as his opponent. He lost himself in his sentences a number of times, particularly toward the end, and that did him no good.

Obama strengths

  • His argument that Iraq has sapped our resources to the point that we can’t "project force" where we need to elsewhere in the world. Yes, Democrats have long said this in regard to Afghanistan, but he took it beyond that. This remains the strongest argument that critics of our involvement in Iraq have, and he used it well, doing an excellent job of distancing himself from those in his party who are reflexively against ANY military action, and that’s something he has to do to be credible as a candidate for commander in chief.
  • Beyond exhausting the military, he also made a good argument that Iraq has enabled and strengthened Iran — a familiar argument, but he presented it well.
  • His gracious acknowledgment of the courageous leadership McCain showed in standing up to the administration on torture. The normal Democratic position is that McCain "caved" on the issue, and is no better than Bush. That’s a deeply unfair characterization, and Obama showed himself to be above that.
  • More articulate, as always (see "McCain weaknesses").

Obama weaknesses

  • Continuing to be wrong on the Surge, and not acknowledging it, hurts him with everyone else except his base. Trouble is, that base will go nuclear if he acknowledges it. (The thing is that logically, he could still assert it was wrong to go INTO Iraq, but that the Surge was the thing to do.) The "worked beyond wildest expectations" earlier helped, but McCain turned that against him well, noting that it was no surprise to HIM.
  • Probably no one else noticed this, but when he tried to excuse his failure to hold hearings on Afghanistan (a weakness in itself), he said that’s not the practice on the committee chaired by his veep candidate. That made me fully realize, in a way I hadn’t before, just how upside-down the ticket is in terms of qualifications — the number two guy on the ticket is the number one guy’s CHAIRMAN. If I had been McCain, I might have succumbed to the temptation to point out the irony.
  • This is a silly one, but the "professor" was much in evidence in his pedantic insistence on trying to pronounce foreign names and terms the way natives of those countries might, but doing it with such an obvious American accent (the bad guys in Afghanistan were the "Tollybon," said as only an English-shaped tongue could say it). Maybe you couldn’t hear it; it’s something from my childhood when I lived in South America and was bilingual — even though I can hardly speak it now, hearing other gringos try to be SO proper in their pronunciation and fail still grates on my ear.

Yeah, I know — I gave McCain more strengths, and Obama more weaknesses. But each item does not have equal value, and overall, I think they came out even. That’s bad news for McCain, because the subject of most of the debate was his personal area of strength, and he needed to clearly win this one.

I don’t think he did that, but then I can’t speak for all independent voters.

Kathleen Parker says Palin should drop out

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I thought y’all might want your attention drawn to the Kathleen Parker column on today’s page (our first syndicated column in the hallowed space previously reserved to editorial board members) in which she concludes:

What to do?

McCain can’t repudiate his choice for running
mate. He not only risks the wrath of the GOP’s unforgiving base, but he
invites others to second-guess his executive decision-making ability.
Barack Obama faces the same problem with Biden.

Only Palin can
save McCain, her party and the country she loves. She can bow out for
personal reasons, perhaps because she wants to spend more time with her
newborn. No one would criticize a mother who puts her family first.

Do it for your country.

But you should really go read it and see how she gets there. Wanting to make sure readers did that, I didn’t put the slam-bang conclusion in the headline. I DID put it in THIS headline, on account of the blog being all about provoking discussion.

An interesting thing about the column: Like Nixon going to China, you sort of needed a "conservative" (which I put in quotes because that oversimplifies Kathleen, but in this context it’s about widespread perception) woman to say this, assuming it needed saying. Sort of like nobody but fellow veterans could have criticized John Kerry’s service in the war.

Kathleen is able to cite her initial defense of Sarah, then her breathless tension watching her and hoping she wouldn’t screw up. And that’s something I can’t possibly identify with — worrying about someone’s performance because I’m a member of the same demographic. Maybe I’m too self-centered. But I have had to accept that black folks do that with Obama, and women do that with Hillary Clinton and/or Sarah Palin, depending on their proclivities. When I see a white guy out there succeeding or failing, he’s on his own as far as I’m concerned. I might agree with him or I might not, but it won’t have anything to do with which restroom he uses or what boxes he checks off on a census form.

That’s why it took Kathleen to write this piece. For my part, I haven’t had any particular expectations of Mrs. Palin. Y’all know what I thought when I first saw her, and all she had to do was give a reasonably competent convention speech to exceed my expectations.

But that’s me. What do you think?

So now there WILL be a debate…

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No sooner had I hit the button on this last post, but this came in:

AP-APNewsAlert/12
BC-APNewsAlert

WASHINGTON (AP) _ Republican John McCain will attend debate.

Well, that simplifies the rest of this day. It makes it a little longer, and it screws up Saturday, but at least I’m not about to waste time writing a placeholder column, so that’s something…

Getting cheesed off at McCain

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OK, I’m already past the point at which I’m normally supposed to have a column for Sunday. Trouble is, so much of what’s happened this week points to the debate tonight as a sort of nexus, a climax of the week’s news, what with the presidential election and the Wall Street bailout conflating.

So I had decided that the thing to do was to watch the debate tonight, and write a column tomorrow for Sunday — which means bringing in another editorial board member to read behind me (I can sub it out on the page myself, but I don’t put anything into the paper without an editor), but it seems the best plan, especially since none of the syndicated stuff moving today will reflect what happens in the debate.

IF there is a debate. And that’s the rub. Not knowing, I’ve got to construct an entire other column from whole cloth, just to hold the space — and to fill it if there is no debate. And I’m not happy with any of my ideas, but I’ve got to go ahead and write SOMETHING at hyperspeed.

So nice going there, John.

Meanwhile, back in the world: We’re now having firefights with Pakistan

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Folks who have been looking back and forth between the presidential election and the crisis on Wall Street, only to see the two merge, may be surprised to know that things have gotten hairier over on the Afghan-Pakistan border. We’ve been sending commandos and other assets after al Qaida over there (you may recall that’s where Osama bin Laden is supposed to be hiding out), and Pakistan has been getting madder and madder over it.

And now, apparently, we’re shooting at each other … although Pakistan claims it was just shooting flares at our helicopters — to start with, anyway .

I just thought I’d mention this in case there is a debate tomorrow night, and in case anybody thought there wasn’t anything important besides the economy to talk about.

Bill Clinton explains why Palin is ‘hot’ (and praises McCain, too)

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Clintonbill

Consider this post to be a taste of sorbet to cleanse the palate between courses of history-making political/economic news.

Katherine Q. Seelye on the NYT’s Caucus blog says "Barack Obama might be forgiven for wondering which side Bill Clinton is on," since the former president has taken advantage of several opportunities to praise John McCain this week. Finally he DID say some good stuff about Obama, but still…

This reminds me of a tidbit I read in the WSJ this morning, in which Bill had some nice stuff to say about Sarah, too:

"I come from Arkansas. I get why she’s hot out there, why she’s doing well. People look at her, and they say: ‘All those kids. Something that happens in everybody’s family. I’m glad she loves her daughter and she’s not ashamed of her. Glad that girl’s going around with her boyfriend. Glad they’re going to get married. . . .’ [Voters will think] I like that little Down syndrome kid. One of them lives down the street. They’re wonderful children. They’re wonderful people. And I like the idea that this guy does those long-distance races. Stayed in the race for 500 miles with a broken arm. My kind of guy."

Seems to me Bill had best hush before he gets himself into some more trouble with Mamanem.

So I guess we’ll have a debate now

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If one views McCain’s decision to suspend campaigning as a campaign gambit — and it’s hard, in this cynical world, to see it outside that context — it appears to be one that paid off.

Congress reaches a deal, he appears at the White House with an air of having gotten the job done (WITH Obama, thereby emphasizing bipartisanship over grubbing for personal electoral advantage), and he goes ahead with the debate Friday night, having made the gesture to put the nation’s business first, yet not having the painful choice of either a) blinking first and showing up without a deal on the bailout or b) being the cause of the absurd spectacle of Obama standing there facing an empty lectern.

If nothing else, he’s shifted the focus to himself more than otherwise — which can easily work against him still, of course. Instead of "leader who puts the country ahead of politicking" he can look like "reckless gambler who will risk it all on a throw of the dice."

But we’ll see. Things are moving fast today.

Bipartisan bailout deal reached

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Maybe this did turn out to be our fiscal 9/11, pulling Democrats and Republicans together to act in the interests of the country rather than their respective parties. If so, kudos all around. We’ll no more later in the day after the historic confab at the White House with congressional leaders and both presidential candidates.

For now, here’s what The Wall Street Journal is reporting.

Here’s The New York Times version.

And here’s AP’s:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Key Republicans and Democrats reported agreement Thursday on an outline for a historic $700 billion bailout of the financial industry, but there was still resistance from rank-and-file House Republicans despite warnings of an impending panic.

"I now expect we will, indeed, have a plan that can pass the House, pass the Senate, be signed by the president and bring a sense of certainty to this crisis that is sill roiling in the market," Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, said as members of both parties emerged from a two-hour negotiating session.

Negotiators planned to present the outline at a White House meeting later Thursday with President Bush and the rivals to replace him, Republican John McCain and Democrat Barrack Obama.

"We’re very confident that we can act expeditiously," said Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., the Banking Committee chairman.

Not everyone in the closed-door talks was as optimistic. Rep. Spencer Bachus of Alabama, the only House Republican in the bargaining meeting, stopped short of saying he agreed with the other lawmakers on an imminent deal.

"There was progress today," said Bachus, the senior Republican on the House Financial Services panel.

Later, he issued a statement saying he was not empowered to strike any deals and there was "no agreement other than to continue discussions."

Both houses’ Republican leaders, Rep. John Boehner and Sen. Mitch McConnell, also issued statements saying there was no agreement.

Still, the White House called the announcement "a good sign that progress is being made."

"We’ll want to hear from (Treasury) Secretary (Henry) Paulson and take a look at the details. We look forward to a good discussion at the meeting this afternoon," said Tony Fratto, the deputy White House press secretary.

A Treasury spokeswoman said the proposal was being reviewed there.

On Wall Street, stock prices were up late in the trading day, but not by as much as earlier in the day.

The core of the plan proposed by the administration just a few days ago envisions the government buying up sour assets of shaky financial firms in a bid to keep them from going under and to stave off a potentially severe recession.

Obama and McCain called for a bipartisan effort to deal with the crisis, little more than five weeks before national elections in which the economy has emerged as the dominant theme.

McCain on Wednesday asked Obama to agree to delay their first debate, scheduled for Friday, to deal with the meltdown. Obama said the debate should go ahead.

Congressional negotiators said Thursday there were few obstacles to a final agreement, although no details of an accord were immediately available.

"There really isn’t much of a deadlock to break," said Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.

But there were fresh signs of trouble in the House Republican Caucus. A group of GOP lawmakers circulated an alternative designed to attract private money back into the credit markets with less government intrusion.

Under that proposal, the government would provide insurance to companies that agree to hold frozen assets, rather than purchase them directly as envisioned under the administration’s plan. The firms would have to pay insurance premiums to the Treasury Department for the coverage.

"The taxpayers haven’t done anything wrong," said Rep Eric Cantor, R-Va., adding that rather than require them to bear the cost of the bailout, the alternative "pretty much puts the burden on Wall Street over time."

Boehner, R-Ohio, the minority leader, was huddling with McCain on the rescue. When asked whether the GOP presidential nominee could corral restive Republicans to support the plan, Boehner said, "Who knows?"

Bush told the nation in a televised address Wednesday night that passage of the package his administration has proposed was urgently needed to calm the markets and restore confidence in the reeling financial system.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Bush’s agreement with Democrats on limiting pay for executives of bailed-out financial institutions and giving taxpayers an equity stake in the companies cleared a significant hurdle.

It was not immediately clear how lawmakers had resolved differences over how to phase in the unprecedented cost — a step demanded by Democrats and some Republicans who want stronger congressional control over the bailout — without spooking markets. The idea of letting the government take an ownership stake in troubled companies as part of the rescue, rather than just buying bad debt, also has been a topic of intense negotiation.

Frank told The Associated Press Thursday both elements would be included in the legislation.

Bush acknowledged Wednesday night that the bailout would be a "tough vote" for lawmakers. But he said failing to approve it would risk dire consequences for the economy and most Americans.

"Our entire economy is in danger," he said.

Should Friday’s debate be postponed?

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McCain wants to postpone Friday night’s debate until a bipartisan consensus can be reached on the bailout plan. Obama wants to go ahead. Both are meeting with President Bush Thursday.

Should they debate the next night? What do you think?

Here’s a story on the subject:

The economic crisis and raw politics threatened to derail the first presidential debate as John McCain challenged Barack Obama to delay Friday’s forum and unite to help Washington fix the financial mess. Obama rebuffed his GOP rival, saying the next president needs to "deal with more than one thing at once."

The White House rivals maneuvered Wednesday to claim the leadership role in resolving the economic turmoil that has overshadowed their campaign. Obama said he would proceed with his debate preparations while consulting with bailout negotiators and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. McCain said he would stop all advertising, fundraising and other campaign events and return to Washington and work for a bipartisan solution.

"It’s my belief that this is exactly the time when the American people need to hear from the person who, in approximately 40 days, will be responsible for dealing with this mess," Obama said at a news conference in Clearwater, Fla. "It’s going to be part of the president’s job to deal with more than one thing at once."

But McCain said they must focus on a bipartisan solution as the Bush administration’s $700 billion bailout proposal seemed headed for defeat. If not, McCain said ominously, credit will dry up, people will no longer be able to buy homes, life savings will be at stake and businesses will not have enough money to pay workers.

"It has become clear that no consensus has developed to support the administration’s proposal," McCain said. "I do not believe that the plan on the table will pass as it currently stands, and we are running out of time."

President Bush invited both candidates to the White House on Thursday, along with congressional leaders, in hopes of securing a bill to rescue the economy. Bush took the unusual step Wednesday night of calling Obama directly to invite him, White House press secretary Dana Perino said. An Obama spokesman said the senator would attend.

In a joint statement Wednesday night, the candidates said the country faces "a moment of economic crisis," and called for political unity to solve it because "the jobs, savings and the prosperity of the American people are at stake." Both said the Bush plan was "flawed."

"We cannot risk an economic catastrophe," they said. "Now is our chance to come together to prove that Washington is once again capable of leading this country."

Sen. Lindsey Graham, McCain’s representative in debate negotiations, said McCain will not attend the debate "unless there is an agreement that would provide a solution" to the financial crisis. Graham, R-S.C., told The Associated Press that the agreement would have to be publicly endorsed by Obama, McCain, the White House and congressional leaders, but not necessarily given final passage by the House and Senate.

Asked whether the debate could go forward if McCain doesn’t show, Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said: "My sense is there’s going to be a stage, a moderator, an audience and at least one presidential candidate."

Anybody ELSE want to be on a debate panel?

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Passing through the newsroom this morning, I checked with Leroy to see what kind of response he’s gotten on the reader panel for the presidential debates.

He says he’s gotten eight applications from among the fine, upstanding citizens who frequent this blog, and 15 from the general public, via a notice they put in the paper Sunday.

One problem — so far, the respondents are heavily supportive of Obama, so he’s in the hunt for balance. Need more McCainiacs and independents.

That would describe some of y’all. So hurry up and sign up to be considered — the first debate’s Friday night.

To help you remember, here’s Leroy’s original message:

Colleagues,

The government team is assembling a panel of voters in our community
to watch the presidential and vice presidential debates with us and,
afterward, serve as a focus group on how the debaters fared during a
roundtable discussion we’ll have here at the newspaper. We will feature
this panel on thestate.com and include it in our debate coverage.

Know somebody who’s mad for McCain, crazy for Palin, in love with
Obama and rooting for Biden? Know somebody who is undecided? Please,
send them my way. Especially the undecideds.

We, of course, want diversity — men, women, young, old, political,
apolitical, Democrat, Republican, independent, black, white, brown,
etc. Keep that in mind as you think of folks who might be interested.

Anticipating a fun experience. Please let anyone who is interested
know we would like for them to sit on the panel for all four debates.

Thanks for your help 

Write to him at [email protected].

FYI, if there are enough folks from the blog, I might even show up to say hey.

Obama, Ayres, and another kind of ‘school choice’

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Now that everyone has been totally desensitized by the ranting of Lee et al. about Obama, probably not much attention will be paid to an accusation of substance that appeared in The Wall Street Journal today. But if you do pay attention, it’s intriguing — and disturbing. It’s an op-ed piece headlined "Obama and Ayers Pushed Radicalism On Schools."

Basically, it provides fairly strong evidence to believe that Bill Ayres — unrepentant Mad Bomber and live-in of Bernardine Dohrn — has been considerably more than "a guy who lives in my neighborhood" to Barack Obama. Sen. Obama was the chairman, from 1995-99, of a foundation that the author, Stanley Kurtz, describes as Ayres "brainchild":

The Chicago Annenberg Challenge was created ostensibly to improve Chicago’s public schools. …. Mr. Ayers co-chaired the foundation’s other key body, the "Collaborative," which shaped education policy.

… The Daley archives show that Mr. Obama and Mr. Ayers worked as a team to advance the CAC agenda.

… Mr. Ayers was one of a working group of five who assembled the initial board in 1994. Mr. Ayers founded CAC and was its guiding spirit. No one would have been appointed the CAC chairman without his approval.

The CAC’s agenda flowed from Mr. Ayers’s educational philosophy, which called for infusing students and their parents with a radical political commitment, and which downplayed achievement tests in favor of activism. In the mid-1960s, Mr. Ayers taught at a radical alternative school, and served as a community organizer in Cleveland’s ghetto.

In works like "City Kids, City Teachers" and "Teaching the Personal and the Political," Mr. Ayers wrote that teachers should be community organizers dedicated to provoking resistance to American racism and oppression. His preferred alternative? "I’m a radical, Leftist, small ‘c’ communist," Mr. Ayers said in an interview in Ron Chepesiuk’s, "Sixties Radicals," at about the same time Mr. Ayers was forming CAC.

Until now, the Obama/Ayres connection had been a minor worry at the back of my mind. This rachets that up a notch.

On a less serious note, I was amused to see that Ayres shared with Gov. Mark Sanford the goal of divorcing school funding from the institutional model: "Instead of funding schools directly, it required schools to affiliate
with "external partners," which actually got the money. Proposals from
groups focused on math/science achievement were turned down. Instead
CAC disbursed money through various far-left community organizers, such
as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (or Acorn)."

No, it’s not the same as what Sanford would do. Of course, if we did have vouchers and tax credits, parents would be free to spend it on Mr. Ayres’ idea of a good education, or some other loony alternative, with no accountability to the public from whose school coffers that funding would be diverted. Maybe that’s why I was reminded.

WHAT election?

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As anyone who was paying attention knows, the crisis on Wall Street pushed aside the presidential election in news coverage last week — for only the second time this year, according to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, which reports:

The Wall Street
meltdown captured more media attention than the presidential campaign last week,
and the crisis re-directed the campaign narrative toward a focus on economic
issues, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.

For only the second
time this year, another event eclipsed the campaign as the top story. Market
woes led the press agenda for the week of Sept. 15-21, filling 37% of the
newshole. Additionally, the state of the economy became the leading campaign
narrative last week, accounting for 43% of the campaign newshole. The previous
week (Sept. 8-14), the economy only accounted for 4% of campaign
coverage.

The sudden burst of
coverage of the economy marks only the second time since early June that the
issue has been a top weekly campaign theme. Indeed, last week was only the
fourth time that a policy issue has been the No. 1 storyline in general election
coverage…

Why even I, in spite of my extreme reluctance, have been writing about it, which probably accounts for a slight dropoff in blog traffic the last few days. Mind you, it hasn’t dropped to anywhere near pre-Sarahmania levels, but it’s tapered slightly — 15,010 page views last week, compared to 15,128 the week before, and 15,981 the week before that. Before the day that the Palin choice was announced, 11,000 a week was about our speed here. The drop I speak of seems hardly worth mentioning, except that it matches my intuitive belief that we’re on the cusp of a significant drop, unless something more arresting to the attention of normal people occurs in the next few days. One can take only so much of intense back and forth between Bernanke and Paulson and Chris Dodd et al.