Category Archives: 2008 Presidential

What’s with the tieless look?

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Obamabiden_2

As I noted earlier, the masculine equivalent of Sarah Palin’s specs and tied-up hair is to wear a coat and tie. The effect in both cases is to project seriousness of purpose.

So what are we to make of the fact that, all of a sudden, the male candidates for president and vice president are, quite deliberately, showing themselves in public without neckties?I don’t mean as a sort of occasional thing for a barbecue, but all the time. And don’t try to tell me this is just happening without somebody thinking about it; campaigns think about everything these days, as Peggy Noonan noted the other day (writing about Obama’s acceptance speech, the last time he was seen wearing a tie).

This has been coming for some time. As far back as 2006, Joe Biden was regularly appearing here in S.C. with a jacket, but no tie… sort of the Paul-McCartney-on-the-cover-of-Abbey-Road look. Here’s proof of that.

Then, I started noticing Obama doing the same. And McCain, too. And Huckabee and even Romney.

Here’s what worries me about this… those of you who are old enough to remember will recall how JFK killed men’s hats. There are some authorities that dispute it, but then there are many who believe Oswald didn’t act alone. Suffice it to say that before JFK, men wore hats. Afterwards, they didn’t.

Obama could do the same with the necktie. Biden and McCain aren’t so much of a threat, because when they go tieless, they just look like they’re been playing with their grandchildren and didn’t want them chewing on their ties. They don’t look natural that way.

But there’s been altogether too much loose talk about Obama’s charisma. No less an authority than Ted Sorensen has sat in my board room and pronounced Obama the rightful heir to Camelot. He’s already known as The One. How long can it be before he’s dubbed The Tieless One? (Note the picture above — while Biden just looks like he’s on his way to play golf, Obama is making that "early-60s, Best-and-Brightest" statement again with the white dress shirt, sleeves rolled up).

So, if the necktie industry, moribund as it is, wants to save itself, it had better do what it can to elect McCain. Because if Obama’s elected, every day will be casual Friday.

Or at least, he would get the "credit." The fact is that, as I have noted twice in recent columns, Gallup has found that only 6 percent of American men wear a tie to work every day. I, of course, am of the 6 percent, and am determined to wear the thing every day until I retire. I mean, I have to now — it’s a statement. Before, it was conformity. Now, it’s a statement of adherence to traditional values and seriousness of purpose. I’ll have you know that I bought on of the last bow ties at Lourie’s — in fact, it may have been the last bow tie they actually sold.

I also still have a Wilson Jack Kramer Autograph wooden tennis racket, although I don’t use it any more. I do use my old persimmon 4 wood, though. When I’m hitting it right, it’s the best club in my bag; the ball flies like a rifle shot. Which reminds me, I’m not working today…
Mccainhuck

What the other candidates look like

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Well, I certainly got some reactions on that last one, some quite condemnatory. It makes me wonder — would these folks have reacted so vehemently if they had heard me share that cultural association with regard to Gov. Palin, face-to-face? Probably not. Even as she was speaking — I had flipped on the little TV outside my office to listen while going back and forth getting work done — I had given her a glance and shared that observation with Cindi. Cindi paused in what she was doing only long enough to glance at the tube, and correct my facts — I had described her hair as looking as though she had quickly pinned it up atop her head to get it out of her way while getting work done, and Cindi informed me that she had paid good money to get her hair done that way.

Which of course changes nothing. The point in the end is that Sarah Palin apparently puts her hair up in a way that looks pragmatic and businesslike to ME, and wears Serious Eyeglasses rather than contacts, as a deliberate statement meant to balance her beauty. It’s a way of being taken seriously. And for those of you so deeply offended on gender grounds, men do the same thing — they wear suits.

Would it make y’all feel better if I describe some of the other figures in terms of snap judgments based on their appearances? OK, I will. It won’t be quite the same, of course, because a beautiful woman evokes a response that’s unlike any you get with a man or a less-attractive woman — something that I believe Sarah Palin understands well enough to hide some of that light under a bushel. OK, here we go:

  • Let’s start with Joe Biden. Joe’s a nice-looking guy, don’t you think? He’s got a smile that couldBiden_grin_2
    light up a stadium (what does he use on those teeth?). Joe sort of radiates "politician" — more specifically, Irish politician. Loads of Blarney, but I mean that in a good way — I enjoy hearing Joe talk, up to a point (the point is when — and I’ve had this happen a couple of times — I speak to him more than once in a week, and he starts telling me the same anecdote that he told me the other time). Beyond that, he projects something else that apparently is inconsistent with his working-class background: He looks Patrician. If he’s Irish, you think, he’s certainly not shanty Irish. Lace-curtain all the way. Shows how looks can deceive.
  • John McCain looks like what he is — the aging fighter jock. He’s got the build, the bantam-rooster feistiness, however wracked by old wounds. He has a pretty bright grinMccain_grin
    of his own, but it’s of a different quality from Biden’s. Biden’s grin is of the master salesman about to close a deal. McCain’s is about cockiness, the cockiness of the Naval Aviator. That cockiness seems to have gone into his pick of his Veep candidate. He’s saying, I don’t particularly need a vice president; I plan on sticking around, so experience and qualifications didn’t matter. Might as well pick somebody who pleases all those whiners in my base and maybe peels off some of the more emotional HIllary supporters, the ones for whom it was all about her being a woman. This is a quality that strikes his supporters as reassuring confidence, and his detractors as obnoxiousness.
  • Barack Obama… well, my first reaction is that he does not fit a type at all. He’s unique. He, too, has a winning grin, but he doesn’t use it all that much; his stock persona isObama_serious
    deeply serious. But then I remember that there is ONE sort of character that he does sometimes remind me of, and it’s completely in tune with that seriousness. I mentioned it to my wife the other night: He looks like something out of the early 60s, particularly one of the young Best and Brightest of the Kennedy Administration. I had trouble saying WHY he looked that way — was it the cut of his suits? Were his ties that narrow? Was it the way he rolls up the sleeves of his white dress shirts? My wife said it was his thinness — people are bulkier than that these days. His thinness makes him look like he’s from another era. Maybe. Of course, if you wanted to play on the race thing, you could say he’s like Sidney Poitier (60s again) in either "To Sir With Love" or "In the Heat of the Night." The "black" guy who comes across as whiter, as more Establishment, more conservatively attired and carefully spoken, than any white guy you ever saw.
  • If you want to go farther afield, you could say Hillary Clinton is the "Smartest Kid in the Class (Just Ask Her; She’ll Tell You)," the one who absolutely has to get the best grades — also the one who takes names of those who misbehave if the teacher leaves the room, and gives a full report when the teacher returns. BILL Clinton is the clever wastrel who is probably at the top of the list of defaulters she gives the teacher — the kid who’s just as smart, but wastes it on trying to be the class clown, or the most popular kid in the school. Funny thing about Bill — I had seen him around for years. I first saw him in person back in 1978, and he had this manner about him that caused me to read him all wrong. I would have pegged him as the child of privilege, the fair-haired one who could do no wrong and loved life because everything went his way. It really shocked me to learn that he didn’t come up that way, because he projects that kind of guy. That’s one thing he and Joe sort of have in common.

So there you go — shallow, quick-impression assessments of all the major characters. None of them are exactly sitcom characters, but I worked with what I had.

Yelling at the television

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By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
THE DEMOCRATIC convention forced me to an unpleasant realization: I’ve become one of those crotchety old guys who yell at the television in helpless frustration: “Lies! How can they say such things? How can anyone sit still for this stuff?”
    And this week, I’m in for more of the same with the Republicans.
    What sets me off? Oh, take your pick — the hyperbole, the self-importance, the us-against-them talk, the stuff that Huck Finn called “tears and flapdoodle.”
    Take, for instance, this typical bit from Hillary Clinton’s speech:

    My friends, it is time to take back the country we love. And whether you voted for me or you voted for Barack, the time is now to unite as a single party with a single purpose. We are on the same team. And none of us can afford to sit on the sidelines. This is a fight for the future. And it’s a fight we must win together. I haven’t spent the past 35 years in the trenches… to see another Republican in the White House squander our promise…

    Let’s deconstruct that a bit.
    Take back the country? From whom? Did I miss something? Did the Russians roll right on through Gori and into Washington? No? You say Americans are still in charge, just the “wrong” Americans, of the wrong party? But your party controls Congress! Take it back from whom?
    … a single party with a single purpose. Now there you’ve hit on the biggest lie propagated by each of the major parties, the conceit that there is something coherent and consistent about such loose confederations of often-incompatible interest groups. Did you not just spend the last few months playing with all the force you could muster upon those very differences, those very tensions — between feminists and black voters, between the working class and the wine and cheese set? What single purpose, aside from winning an election?
    This is a fight… No, it isn’t, however much you love to say that. Again, I refer you to what the Russians are doing in Georgia — that’s a fight, albeit a one-sided one.
    … that we must win together. Actually, that raises a particularly pertinent point, which is that the only “fights” that “must” be won are the ones in which “together” is defined as all Americans, or all freedom-loving peoples, whereas such divisive factions as your party and that other one that will meet in St. Paul militate against our being able to win such fights together.
    I haven’t spent the past 35 years in the trenches… You’re absolutely right; you haven’t. So spare us the war metaphors.
    … to see another Republican in the White House squander our promise… Like that’s what matters, the stupid party label. Like there isn’t more difference between you and Barack Obama in terms of philosophy and goals and experience and what you would bring to office than there is between John McCain and Joe Biden. Come on! Please!…
    Sigh. Fume. Mutter.
    This stuff wouldn’t upset me quite so much if not for the fact that this was to be the year that we rose above this stuff. That’s why I so happily supported both John McCain and Barack Obama in their parallel bids for the White House. Both men offered themselves as alternatives from the incessant, bitter, destructive partisan warfare of the Clinton-Bush years.
    John McCain is the man the GOP’s partisans love to hate, the guy they call a “Republican In Name Only,” the man they stooped to new lows to destroy in 2000, the senator who’d just as soon work with Democrats as Republicans, the candidate who, coincidentally, has been giving Sen. Clinton a lot of love in his latest campaign ads.
    Barack Obama was the Democrat who made it abundantly, eloquently clear that he was not running in order to “fight” against his fellow Americans. So all week, I looked forward to his acceptance speech, and when it came I was… disappointed.
    Maybe I had built it up too much in my mind, depended too much on it to wash away the bad taste of all those boilerplate party speeches I had heard. He said many of the right things. He said “Democrats as well as Republicans will need to cast off the worn-out ideas and politics of the past,” but as for most of it — well, read David Broder’s column on the facing page.
    When he said “part of what has been lost these past eight years… is our sense of common purpose,” I thought, yes, but it’s been happening a lot more than eight years, and you know that. But he said it that way because of his audience. That’s what made the speech flat, by Obama standards. He had to avoid offending the kind of people who love the bitter politics that he had been running against.
    What I had wanted to hear was the kind of thing that caused me, while blogging on live TV the night of his South Carolina primary victory, to write “What a TREMENDOUS victory speech!” A sample of what impressed me so that night:

    “We are looking for more than just a change of party in the White House…. We are up against decades of bitter partisanship that cause politicians to demonize their opponents… That kind of politics is bad for our party, it’s bad for our country, and this is our chance to end it once and for all.”

    That sort of anti-partisan vehemence would not have played well in Mile-High Stadium. Maybe, as he escapes the gravitational pull of Denver, the Obama of January will come out to inspire us again. I hope so. In the meantime, on to the Republicans….
    Just moments ago as I write this, as he announced he’d chosen Sarah Palin as his running mate, Sen. McCain promised the GOP crowd that he’d “fight for you.”
    Lord help us.

Go to thestate.com/bradsblog/.

You know who Sarah Palin reminds me of?

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Palinbw

Those of you who did not like my referring to Sarah Palin as a "babe" yesterday probably won’t enjoy this post, either. But I am honor-bound to be honest with you, my readers. Also, I have a journalistic duty to tell y’all as much as possible about a candidate about whom so little is known, even if it’s based on nothing but my overactive imagination.

I had never before seen a picture of Sarah Palin, and yet from the first moment I saw her, she looked familiar. Did she to you? If so, you’re dating myself. It’s not so much that Gov. Palin looks like a particular individual. But she’s a dead-ringer for a stock character that frequently appeared in sit-coms back in the ’50s and ’60s. If you’re my age, you’ve seen that character dozens of times.

Here’s a summary of a "Beverly Hillbillies" episode which featured that character (I’ve bold-faced the relevant part):

It’s Spring Tonic time, and Granny hands it around to the family, giving Jed a double dose because he made a mean comment on it. Meanwhile, at the bank, the secretary Gloria Buckles, who has worked on the Clampett account, has said she can take the paper work to Jed. When she gets up there, she transforms herself from a plain secretary to a gorgeous one, with her sights set on Jed’s money. She flirts with Jed, telling him that she needs a mountain man to make her happy. The family is worried about this young gold digger, and the fact that Jed has had a double dose of tonic. They call Drysdale and he rushes over, not recognizing Gloria. She reveals that her and Jed have discussed marriage, and when questioned, Jed says it is true. Gloria asks when they should set the date, and Jed says a few years, because that is when Jethro will be of marrying age. Jethro runs off with Gloria, and Jane runs after them to get her man back. Elly asks her father why he doesn’t want to marry her, and he says you have to start worrying when the bait starts chasing you.

Do you recognize her now? Yes, she’s the frumpy secretary who first appears in a conservative business outfit, wearing glasses, with her hair tied up on top of her head, who, at a critical moment in the plot, suddenly removes her jacket, whips off the glasses and lets her hair come tumbling down, and immediately looks like Miss America.

Of course — and this was the really cheesy thing about this plot device — she looked like Miss America when you first saw her, just Miss America with glasses and her hair done up. I never could decide whether the sitcom writers really thought America was stupid enough to be surprised by this plot device, or whether we were supposed to see through it, and see the transformation-to-glamour coming — you know, so that the folks at home would say, "I know what’s going to happen — watch this!"

That’s what made me realize that’s who Gov. Palin reminded me of. She IS beautiful, obviously so, and the specs and the tied-up hair are simply devices meant to say to us, "I’m serious; I’m not just a babe; you can vote for me."

The bad thing about this is that on some level, deep down, some of us who grew up on 50s and 60s TV are thinking, "This is gonna be good — watch this!" (And subconsciously, we’re expecting a scene in which she suddenly lets her hair down and removes the glasses, and of course, Cindy McCain walks in at that moment and says, "John! Who is THIS?" and a befuddled McCain goes "Hominahominahomina," and the laugh track plays.) Or maybe that’s the GOOD thing, in terms of keeping voters interested in the ticket. I don’t know.

By the way, I couldn’t find a picture to illustrate what I was talking about, but here’s video of the relevant part of the Beverly Hillbillies episode. The transformation of Gloria Buckles occurs toward the end of the first part:


LikeTelevision Embed Movies and TV Shows

TIME magazine features Anton Gunn

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Just got a heads-up that Anton Gunn — Democratic nominee for Bill Cotty’s House seat, S.C. political director for Barack Obama — has been featured in TIME magazine. A sample:

Anton Gunn is a first-time delegate to the Democratic National Convention from South Carolina, and he has never so much as watched a political convention on television before. Even Barack Obama’s famous keynote address in 2004 didn’t grab his attention (he sheepishly admits he still hasn’t listened to it). In fact, until two years ago, when Gunn ran for a state house seat in Columbia and lost by 298 votes, he’d never been involved in electoral politics.

Obama’s candidacy has brought a wave of new voters and volunteers into the Democratic Party, but even among them, Gunn, 35, stands out. In addition to being a Democratic delegate and a candidate once again for the state legislature, he now has a line on his political résumé few can match: political director for the Obama campaign in South Carolina, the state that more than any other launched the Illinois Senator’s successful candidacy.

You know, I don’t think I would have singled out Anton as one of those people brought into politics like Obama. I saw a number of such folks back in the state primaries, and some of them were real novices. Anton was relatively NEW to politics, but he was already in it before he met Obama. That doesn’t take away from his achievement helping Obama win the primary, a job for which he was quite inexperienced.

I guess this sort of exposure is kind of hard to match if you’re David Herndon, Mr. Gunn’s opponent in November. Of course, it remains to be seen to what extent TIME magazine readers are a factor.

Choosing Sarah Palin

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Mccain_veepstakes_pal_wart

Folks, I’m absolutely swamped, this being Friday morning, but I thought I’d give those of you with the time a place to discuss McCain’s choice of … let me go check her name again… Sarah Palin to be his running mate. Here are some conversation-starters:

  • One thing’s for sure, I don’t have any video to share with you of Gov. Palin. Never met the woman.
  • For a brief moment this morning, I thought maybe Bobby Jindal was back on the short list, when I saw this piece by him in the WSJ. (I know that’s not logical, but the human mind is susceptible to the suggestion of coincidences.) That would have been cool, because it would have made the two tickets perfectly symmetrical — McCain playing the role of Biden on the GOP ticket, and Jindal (young, charismatic, ethnic) playing Obama.
  • Do you think McCain made a big mistake not beefing up his ticket’s economic cred with Romney?
  • Not that I want to attach a lot of importance to her gender, but it would seem that McCain is really, really serious about going after those disaffected Hillary voters, the ones who took HER gender very, very seriously.
  • Where’s Wayne Campbell when you need him for expert commentary on whether she, if elected, would qualify as the first babe to be a heartbeat from the presidency?

Talk amongst yourselves.

How about that Obama speech?

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Obamaspeech

On the Sarah Palin post, Wally said he wanted to know what I thought about Barack Obama’s speech last night. Well, here’s PART of what I have to say about it in my column coming up Sunday:

    Barack Obama was the Democrat who made it abundantly, eloquently clear that he was not running in order to “fight” against his fellow Americans. So all week, I looked forward to his acceptance speech, and when it came I was… disappointed.
    Maybe I had built it up too much in my mind, depended too much on it to wash away the bad taste of all those boilerplate party speeches I had heard. He said many of the right things. He said “Democrats as well as Republicans will need to cast off the worn-out ideas and politics of the past,” but as for most of it — well, read David Broder’s speech on the facing page.
    When he said “part of what has been lost these past eight years… is our sense of common purpose,” I thought, yes, but it’s been happening a lot more than eight years, and you know that. But he said it that because of his audience. That’s what made the speech flat, by Obama standards. He had to avoid offending the kind of people who love the bitter politics that he had been running against.

Don’t just go by me; be sure to read the Broder column I mention above (it’s embargoed until Sunday). Frankly, I was a little worried that I was the only one (other than David Brooks) left flat by the speech, until I saw what Broder had written.

But don’t just go by him, either. What did y’all think?

Robert’s ‘sexist’ cartoon

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Hillarys_delegates

Robert’s in trouble now! He mentioned to me a few minutes ago the negative attention his cartoon from yesterday about Hillary and Barack has garnered, particularly on a blog called "Feminist Law Professors."

That blog took time out from considering "Which Wine Should I Bring To A Party At My Dean’s House?," a post that demonstrates at least a sense of humor of a sort, to bristle over "Political ‘Humor’ in the South Carolina MSM," which features Robert’s cartoon. It was filed under the category, "Sexism in the Media."

Key commentary from that blog:

That’s the same cartoonist that produced this and this and this and this.

Now I invite your commentary…

Meanwhile, over in the Hillaryverse…

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As the Clintons prepare to engage in catharsis tonight and tomorrow, it seems fitting to see what’s going on over in the alternative universe in which the diehard Hillary supporters live and move and have their being. We’ve visited it before, but it remains a strange place to the uninitiated, a place where people can say the following without a trace of irony:

Open Letter To SuperDelegates:

Rarely is one person given the opportunity and the responsibility to make a decision which will affect the future of their country. This is indeed such a time. It is as important a decision as the decision that citizens of this country made to revolt against the British government. It is as important a time as the moment that John Hancock decided to prominently sign his name, knowing that his signature would be considered treason punishable by death. Soon, each superdelegate will make a decision that will irrevocably usher in a time of corruption and political cheating or prosperity and a stable productive government. Such is the choice you have before you: whether to nominate Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton.

Barack Obama has no substantial experience in government, no distinguished voting record, and no history of patriotic service to this country. Further, he has no leadership experience, having accomplished little during his tenure in Illinois or the Senate. His only experience is as a community organizer, a woefully inadequate preparation for the presidency. However, due to positive exposure from the media and the DNC, he has managed to catapult himself beyond far more qualified candidates. Further, he won many delegates from caucuses, a troublesome sign given that widespread caucus cheating has been documented and caucuses do not fairly represent the will of the voters. He has alienated key groups of traditionally Democratic voters. Do not be lulled into thinking that new younger voters will compensate for such voters, as they represent a huge block of moderate voters who elected Bill Clinton president. Do not think that empty phrases of change and hope can substitute for hard-core experience and a love of this country. Barack Obama’s only agenda is to get elected. He neither knows how to run this country or to be loyal to it. His loyalty is to himself alone, and to the goal of being elected president.

Hillary Clinton has substantial experience and a desire to do what is right and good for this country. While the media and the DNC abandoned her, she stood firm and strong, propelled by the loyalty and needs of eighteen million citizens. With her perseverance and policy knowledge, she demonstrated that she can lead this country while she weathered adversity and stood alone against the media and the political establishment…

Really. You can find that at justsaynodeal.com. But there is more. There is, as I say, a whole universe to explore — a universe where IT’S NOT OVER:

  • You can, for instance, find that Obama "was registered as a Muslim in Indonesia" from the video above, at hillaryclintonnews.blogspot.com.
  • Or read denunciations of the "Democratic National Coronation" at hireheels.com (motto: "We adore shoes, but we love Hillary," which at least shows the ability to poke fun at oneself).
  • Or read that "McCain Gets It" at hillaryorbust.com.

Here’s a longer list of such sites. Enjoy.

Did Obama’s position on Iraq just change?

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Michelle Obama just said* something that made me say, "huh?" She was listing all the wonderful things that would happen if her husband were elected — the arrival of the millennium, dogs and cats living together in peace, the usual hyperbole you hear from people on such occasions, nothing remarkable — when she said:

"… See, that’s why Barack’s running: to end the war in Iraq responsibly…"

Say what? The Obama position, I thought, was an end, without modifiers, to our involvement in Iraq. Not and end to the war, of course. Democrats to whom Obama’s Iraq position (my one beef with him) appeals just want the U.S. to leave, never mind what happens in Iraq (at least Obama wants to leave "carefully" and "responsibly"), even though they use the phrase, "end the war." (Some of them, if you can fathom it, actually imagine that there will only be violence while Americans are there — I suppose they would also answer "no" to the Zen question about the tree in the forest.)

Well, we have been ending the war, quite responsibly and honorably, under the leadership of Gen. Petraeus over the past year. But I thought Obama was against that. I thought he just wanted us to leave.

When did that change? Or did it not change, and his wife is laboring under a misconception?

* Continuity note: I wrote this last night a minute or two after she said it, but didn’t post until now because I couldn’t find a transcript to confirm that I’d heard the quote right. It was one of those things where you hear something, and don’t right it down, but over the next few minutes you think, "Wait a minute… what did she just say?"

The ‘Clean’ Team

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Of course, the very best reason for Obama to have made the veep selection he did is that in Joe Biden, he has someone "who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy."

No, wait — that’s what Biden said about Obama.

It speaks well of Obama that he didn’t let that remark, which cast a shadow on Biden’s candidacy from the day he announced, get in his way. Evidently, Obama understood perfectly well what Joe meant — rather than more nefarious, paranoid interpretations that some may have chosen to apply — and agreed with me that Joe was absolutely right. From my column of July 29, 2007:

    Poor Joe Biden, who’s even older than I am, got into all sorts of trouble for calling Obama “clean,” but that’s just what he is. And for those who are focusing on details of the latest 24/7 news cycle’s scandal or whatever, it’s easy to forget how appealing “clean” can be to the fresh-faced.

Up-close and personal Biden videos

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Maybe now that Obama has pulled Joe Biden back into the spotlight, some of you may want to look at some of the video clips of our editorial board interview with him back in October, when he was still trying against all odds to be at the top of the ticket.

If so, here they are:

Over the next few days, I’ll try to find time to mine the rest of my video to see if there was anything that didn’t seem interesting then that is more interesting now that he’s the running mate.

Oh, and I also have some older video of Joe. Here he is at the Galivants Ferry Stump Meeting (being introduced by Fritz Hollings), and here is some poor-quality phone video of him really getting worked up talking to the Columbia Rotary about immigration.

Oh, and in case you want to see video of the other guy on the Democratic ticket, here’s a post I did with a bunch of clips from our January interview with Obama.

Welcome back, Joe

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Biden1

    All right, let’s try one more time — I wrote this post twice this afternoon and had it crash both times right when I stored it for the last time, and the whole thing disappeared, despite the fact that I had saved drafts along the way. You’d think with the subject being an Irishman, a bit of luck would rub off on me. Here goes…

So Obama picked the one guy he needed to pick, the one running mate with all the strengths that perfectly match his weaknesses. And so we welcome Joe Biden back to the limelight.

Well, not "back" exactly, since my man Joe didn’t get any of the light that was his due the first time around. Despite all that time spent paying dues here in South Carolina — starring at the Galivants Ferry Stump Meeting in 2006, and doing the rubber-chicken circuit with great regularity, he couldn’t get any attention, and no love from S.C. Democrats. Why? Because the Beltway media had decided it would be about Obama and Hillary, and apparently S.C. Democrats were spending all their time staring at 24/7 TV "news" instead of looking around them, and they mistook what they saw on the Tube for reality, until it became reality.

Never mind that Joe Biden was easily the best-qualified candidate in the field. By the time January rolled around, he was down, out and forgotten.

That made things at tad easier for us on The State‘s editorial board in the end. By the time Obama came in and dazzled us in his endorsement interview — and Hillary had refused to come in and try to give us a reason not to endorse Obama — the choice was easy. But if Joe had still been in it, I suspect I would still have been pulling for him, and who knows where we would have ended up? It might have been like 2004 all over again, when I persuaded a very divided board to go along with me (talked them into exhaustion is what I did, in a three-hour marathon after which I lost my voice for about a week) and endorse my other man Joe.

As it was, though, we reached a very quick consensus, much as we had done earlier in the month with John McCain.

Joe Biden, of course, had been in to see us months before, just as McCain had done. And those were not the first visits we’d had from either of those veterans.

So now Joe’s back in it. Good. This will be interesting.

Biden2

Peggy gets in some good ones

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First, a confession — I’m backdating this. I meant to post it on Saturday, but ran into technical difficulties, and when I was finally back to where I could do something, the Biden stuff was a higher priority. But I just saw yesterday’s WSJ on the table, and it reminded me that I wanted to call attention to Peggy Noonan’s piece yesterday.

The thrust of it was why McCain had suddenly pulled even with, or ahead of, Obama in polls. She posited that it was because the American people had just started paying attention, and what they saw was:

The Rick Warren debate mattered. Why? It took place at exactly the moment America was starting to pay attention. This is what it looked like by the end of the night: Mr. McCain, normal. Mr. Obama, not normal….

She, like some others, thought Obama really backed himself into a corner on abortion, to wit:

As to the question when human life begins, the answer to which is above Mr. Obama’s pay grade, oh, let’s go on a little tear. You know why they call it birth control? Because it’s meant to stop a birth from happening nine months later. We know when life begins. Everyone who ever bought a pack of condoms knows when life begins.

To put it another way, with conception something begins. What do you think it is? A car? A 1948 Buick?

Then there was her little shot at W. As a former speechwriter for his Dad, she’s always been sort of amiably disapproving toward the current POTUS:

(The number of men who’ve made it to the top of the GOP who don’t particularly like making speeches, both Bushes and Mr. McCain, is astonishing, and at odds with the presumed requirements of the media age. The first Bush saw speeches as show biz, part of the weary requirement of leadership, and the second’s approach reflects a sense that words, though interesting, were not his friend.)

Her way of doing that provokes a thought: Don’t you think the Bush-haters would get a lot farther if they could tamp down the virulence enough to be able to criticize the kinder, gentler way she does?

But while the piece had some good bits, I had to disagree with her conclusion, which was that McCain should make the one-term pledge:

A move that would help him win doubtful voters, win disaffected Democrats, allow some Republicans to not have to get drunk to vote for him, and that could possibly yield real results for his country. This seems to me such a potentially electrifying idea that he’d likely walk out of his convention as the future president.

In other words, she’s saying, it would be a great gimmick for winning the election. She said his political ambition prevents him from making the pledge. But wouldn’t the ultimate evidence of political ambition, of desire to win this election at all costs, be pulling just such a stunt as she suggests?

Had you heard McCain had taken the lead (according to Zogby)?

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Well, I had seen the WSJ/NBC poll showing a dead heat, and the Winthrop/ETV poll showing McCain with a big lead in the South (big surprise, huh?), but having fallen behind in my e-mail, I had missed this until Kathleen Parker’s latest column brought it to my attention:

Reuters/Zogby Poll: McCain Makes a Move, Takes 5-Point Lead Over Obama – Video Commentary By John Zogby Available Now

Obama loses ground among Dems, women, Catholics & even younger voters

UTICA, New York – As Russian tanks rolled into the Republic of Georgia and the presidential candidates met over the weekend in the first joint issues forum of the fall campaign, the latest polling includes drama almost as compelling – Republican John McCain has taken a five-point lead over Democrat Barack Obama in the race for President, the latest Reuters/Zogby telephone survey shows.

McCain leads Obama by a 46% to 41% margin.

And McCain not only enjoys a five-point edge in a two-way race against Obama, but also in a four-way contest including liberal independent candidate Ralph Nader and Libertarian Bob Barr, the poll reveals. In the four-way contest, McCain wins 44% support, Obama 39%, Barr 3% and Nader 2%.

This latest Reuters/Zogby poll is a dramatic reversal from the identical survey taken last month – in the July 9-13 Reuters/Zogby survey, Obama led McCain, 47% to 40%. In the four-way race last month, Obama held a 10-point lead over McCain.

That’s according to Zogby.

Do you find this surprising? I did.

Obama has a secret, and he’s not telling

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Robertwagner3

Barack Obama is playing very coy with his veep selection, saying "I’ve made the selection, and that’s all you’re going to get." At least until Saturday. Unless you’ve joined the secret club.

That Obama, he’s such a tease.

On a serious note, I’m hoping for my man Joe. No, not that man Joe, my other man Joe. No, and not that man Joe, either! I mean the one from Delaware. Sheesh. (Y’all know I like Joes.)

He is the perfect complement, just chock full o’ experience, thereby compensating for Obama’s greatest weakness. Yeah, Joe can talk you to death, but he’s a smart and thoughtful guy, and about the only Democrat who was putting forth a real plan for Iraq back when it was the thing to talk about. (You’ll notice that now that the surge has succeeded, and we actually can talk about timetables for withdrawal, they’re a lot quieter on the subject.)

Kathleen Sebelius is cool — very UnParty — but he really doesn’t need another fresh new face on his ticket.

Unfortunately, I have reason to believe that it will be neither Biden nor Sebelius. Apparently, the folks at the WashPost know something, and they’re giving us a hint with their headline: "Obama Says He Has Chosen His No. 2."

Obviously, that means he has chosen veteran actor Robert Wagner.

Remember, you read it here first.

Lieberman Agonistes

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Mccainjoe

Let me admit straight up that that headline wasn’t my idea. It’s lifted straight from a Wall Street Journal editorial today, which chides both left and right — especially the right — for their antagonism toward my man Joe.

The specific occasion is the chatter about Lieberman as running mate for John McCain. While justly dismissing the hysterical reaction such talk generates on the right, the WSJ agrees with me that veep candidate would not be the best role for the independent from Connecticut. More coincidentally, the newspaper suggests a role that I had been thinking of in connection with Mr. Lieberman not an hour before I read the editorial:

    Our own view is that Mr. Lieberman would make a fine Secretary of
State, and that, given the political risks, making him vice president
would probably be too great an election gamble. But Mr. Lieberman’s
national security credentials are first-rate…

Good thought, there. Perhaps Mr. McCain should talk it up.

Aw, that’s OK; I can wait a few minutes

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Just got this come-on from the Democrats :

Dear Brad [they always call me "Brad"],
    Barack Obama is about to choose his running mate, and you can find out who it is before the press, the pundits, or his opponents.
    Sign up to be the first to know and you’ll receive an email the moment Barack makes his decision.
    Or you can text VP to 62262 to receive a text message on your mobile phone.
    Thanks to the energy and efforts of Democrats like you, we are in a great position to elect a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.
    And if we stand together behind Barack and his nominee for Vice President, we won’t have to worry about another Dick Cheney playing the role of tie-breaker in the Senate.
    No campaign or political party has made a VP announcement like this before, and you can be part of this important moment.

Click here to be the first to know who Barack picks.

    After you’ve signed up, forward this message to your friends and family and tell them about this special opportunity.
    Barack’s campaign is transforming politics in this country and helping Democrats up and down the ballot in all 50 states.
    Thanks for everything you’re doing to bring the change this country needs,
J.B. Poersch
Executive Director
Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee

Hey, at least I forwarded it to my friends, right?

I wonder which of the following is true:

  • People are so wired now to know things right this second that they’ll subject themselves to future fund-raising come-ons to be among the first few million to know.
  • People think it’s cheesy, but will sign up anyway to be part of the Inner Circle.
  • This is way off base, and won’t get a single bite.

As for me — I can wait; thanks. I’m sure someone will tell me soon enough.

What would we do without those wonderful media watchdogs?

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Speaking of self-absorbed… Just got this e-mail from Romenesko with PoynterOnline — a site about media on the subject of media — with a link to a media site reporting on what media watchdog groups say about the media.

Did you follow that? You could leave out a couple of the "medias," and you’d still probably get the idea.

Anyway, Romenesko somewhat whimsically reported on both of the following at the same time:

  • The conservative Media Research Center claims that not only do the media obsess about Obama, but "34 percent of the stories about Obama were positive and 5 percent negative. The rest were characterized as neutral."
  • Set that alongside this report from the liberal Media Matters, telling us that "for more than a decade, John McCain has been the media’s favorite
    politician. Even conservatives have long acknowledged that McCain
    enjoys a special place in the hearts of the Washington press corps."

Yadda-yadda.

People see what they want to see, hear what they want to hear. I’ve had fun with these "media watchdog" groups on the blog before.

Want to know the truth? The "media" — to the extent that you can talk about anything so diverse and numerous — like Obama. They also, to the same extent, like McCain. The "favorite" of most media types won both parties’ nominating contests.

Hey, even I like ’em both — and I am very seldom in tune with the "collective wisdom" of the MSM.

WOW but we’re self-absorbed

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The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in
Journalism sends out a weekly tracking report on news coverage of the presidential election, which I generally glance at. This week’s floored me:

    Last week, for the first time in nine months, another event generated more media attention than the presidential campaign. The conflict in Georgia filled 26% of the newshole from August 11-17 while campaign coverage registered at 21%, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.
    The election generated its lowest level of coverage since December 2007….

"…for the first time in nine months!"

Folks, the presidential election IS very important. But that’s not ALL that’s important. Sheesh. I guess I should take some comfort from the fact that for one week at least, we acknowledged it.