McCain's Bulletproof War Record

syn·ec·do·che (sĭ-něk'də-kē) n. A figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole (as hand for sailor), the whole for a part (as the law for police officer), the specific for the general (as cutthroat for assassin), the general for the specific (as thief for pickpocket), or the material for the thing made from it (as steel for sword). --The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition


The Obama Bloggers are something to behold. They are convinced that their man has superpowers. Here's Josh Marshall's take on how Obama should deal with the gauntlet thrown down by Wesley Clark:

He can keep repeating his praise for McCain's service and time as a POW, which he should do and is not in conflict in any way with anything that Clark said. What his campaign should not be doing is lending its imprimatur to the proposition that because McCain saw combat in Vietnam and suffered as a POW that he has the judgment to be an effective president.

Obama can't thread that needle. John McCain's war experience is political synecdoche. It calls to mind his years of post-Vietnam national security experience. He may be a scary neocon, but he's put in his time. The follow up question--What has Obama done?--Well, I don't think Barack wants to go there.

This economy is so very bad that Obama's best best is to try and ride it to the White House. He doesn't need people delving into his record as chairman of the Senate Subcommitte on European Affairs. That won't take long.

Everybody's out to smear me!

Barack Obama certainly needed to launch a preemptive strike against the Republican attack machine, though I think the credibility of his anti-smear website would be enhanced if it were not written at a grade-school level.



His campaign is firing a concurrent warning shot at the mainstream media. We know from the primaries that Obama's message of change doesn't wear well. Hillary Clinton was able to smoke him out on substance, and many voters found him wanting. His problem is that even if you like what he says he's going to do, there's no reason to believe he can do it.



It's essential that Obama not allow reporters to seriously question his qualifications. He can't let himself be morphed into Dan Quayle with a bigger vocabulary. To that end, his surrogates, like vice presidental wannabe Kathleen Sebelius, are beginning to suggest that every criticism along such lines is a racist smear. His bloggers can be counted on to chime in from the cheap seats.


You can't seem to get elected president these days without effectively exploiting the media's spinelessness. Biographical smoke and mirrors are necessary but not sufficient.

Countdown Follies

There's not much I can add to Glenn Greenwald's takedown of this nonsense. But if you want to see an amazing display of sheer pundit audacity, watch the boys at 3:37. Greenwald:

Moreover, Alter's own explanation is self-contradictory. In the course of praising Obama's FISA stance, he says that a politician looks "weak if you're flip-flopping" and "you look weak if you don't fight back against your political adversaries." But that's exactly what Obama is doing here -- completely reversing himself on telecom amnesty and warrantless eavesdropping, all in order to give the right-wing of the GOP everything it wants on national security issues in order to avoid a fight. By Alter's own reasoning, what Obama's doing is "weak" in the extreme, yet Alter bizarrely praises Obama for showing "strength."

Jonathan Alter is far from the most egregious gasbag in Washington. He's actually not afraid to say something intelligent. That he's eager to debase himself in such a ridiculous manner--by characterizing a blatant political flip-flop as a profile in courage--shows the depth of the media's current bias toward Obama. Even Olbermann seems embarrassed.

We haven't seen such sycophancy since Bush after 9/11. That didn't turn out very well.

"Mister Axelrod will see you now. . ."

Open Left has been a parody of itself for months now, but it's essential reading for devotees of the Washington suck-up. Chris Bowers:

And yes, the Obama campaign must be extremely confident if it is using presidential-seal iconography as part of the backdrop of its campaigns events. But you know what? Good. I am glad that the Obama campaign is acting like it is going to win, because the current polling results speak for themselves: he probably is going to win. Obama might be criticized for being arrogant or elitist, but a lot more people are going to vote for a candidate who seems determined, self-confident, cool and acts like a leader than a candidate who is constantly apologizing for his very existence. Obama is clearly acting like a winner, and he will help make Democrats feel like winners, too.

Even Barack's universally ridiculed Obama Seal is fine with Bowers. (I guess he thinks if you don't act like an asshole, people will assume you're a loser. Ah, the politics of hope!) He ends up scolding his hero for wearing a flag pin, but does anybody think Obama is worried about the wrath of Chris Bowers and his ilk? He'll just freeze them out.

Obama's premeditated capitulations

After 9/11, George W. Bush put the country on a permanent war footing and created a new role for himself--The Decider. In so doing, he revitalized his presidency and greatly expanded and solidified his political base. His core supporters now saw little difference between Osama bin Laden and Harry Reid. They were both enemies of Bush and needed to be defeated by any means necessary. In this domestic war, confrontation was unavoidable and to be welcomed. His base demanded it, and Bush was happy to oblige. It was the source of his power.

In the wreckage of the Bush presidency, Barack Obama has chosen a different means of obtaining power. He would end the political wars and declare himself The Uniter. In this role, confrontation is his enemy and must be avoided. (This does not apply in Obama's current struggle with Hillary Clinton, because she is seen as a Divider. She and her supporters just don't get it. Once they are disposed of, Obama can begin bringing us together.)

President Obama will be under tremendous pressure from his base to fulfill his role as a uniter. They trust him to worry about the details and are unlikely to push him in any particular direction. On policy, Obama's path of least resistance will be to the right. Confrontation will sap his power. (The mainstream media will provide an additional check on Obama's liberal impulses. For them, Republican rule is the natural order of things. Democrats must be bipartisan.)

Premeditated capitulation will likely be the legislative strategy of Obama's administration. This helps account for his disturbing language on health care and Social Security.

I posted this analysis on another blog back in February. Now that Obama has secured the nomination, he's going out of his way to make me look smart. Take it away, Joe Klein:

When I asked him specifically if he would want to retain Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense, Obama said, "I'm not going to let you pin me down ... but I'd certainly be interested in the sort of people who served in the first Bush Administration." Gates was George H.W. Bush's CIA director — and he has been a superb Secretary of Defense, as good in that post as his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, was awful.

Change we can believe in, indeed--back to the glory days of Gulf War I. And I love this: "I don't want to have people who just agree with me," he said. "I want people who are continually pushing me out of my comfort zone." Your comfort zone seems pretty big already, Barack. It might take Brian Urlacher to push you out of it.

Obama doesn't have to concern himself with the American Left. As Ross Perot used to say, "It's good dog food if the dogs will eat it," and liberal Democrats will gladly chow down whatever the first African-American President in history slops into their dish. Nobody wants to be the next Geraldine Ferraro. But Obama does have to worry about the media. They love bipartisanship.

If Bob Gates won't report for duty, how about getting Dick Cheney to re-enlist? He wasn't so bad in 1990.

Rewarding bad behavior

If you want to know why rank and file Democrats should be in no hurry to swear fealty to Obama, read this.

Hardball politics may be the only thing that will get through to him.

Eyes and beholders

In January, after experiencing one of Barack Obama's speeches, Ezra Klein wrote:

He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair. The other great leaders I've heard guide us towards a better politics, but Obama is, at his best, able to call us back to our highest selves, to the place where America exists as a glittering ideal, and where we, its honored inhabitants, seem capable of achieving it, and thus of sharing in its meaning and transcendence.

I'm not quite sure what this means--there are echoes of Ronald Reagan's "Shining City On A Hill"--but it sure sounds good, and it quickly became the standard media explanation for Obama's rise. Millions of people were voting for him, not because of his policy prescriptions (they're on his website, goddammit!) but because--as Michelle Obama put it in an unfortunate moment of candor--he finally made them feel proud of their country and of themselves.

But there are other ways of seeing Barack Obama. The incorrigible Paul Krugman got sent to bed without supper for suggesting that Obama-ism might be a cult of personality, and many of us persisted in not believing the hype. We weren't inspired by his empty rhetoric. We didn't like the slash-and-burn racial politics he employed when his back was against the wall in South Carolina. We were disgusted by the sexism practiced by his most fervent disciples. Perhaps most shocking of all--we actually preferred the candidacy of Hillary Clinton!

The media would have none of it. Obama math became sacrosanct. Any Democrat who expressed reservations about the party's "inevitable" nominee had to be a closet racist, an angry old battle-axe or a low-information cretin. Then, for a few hours one night in April, ABC News decided not to play along. Obama Nation was not amused.

When I first saw the finger video, I knew it would be very difficult for me ever to vote for its star. He exhibits a level of narcissistic arrogance I find disturbing. Even his cheering supporters seem startled at the ease with which he disrespects and then brushes off a woman of Hillary Clinton's stature. He's laying it on the line to his base: This campaign is about me and about your loyalty to me. Unbelievers in our midst get the finger. I won't speak for them or even to them. (The passage of time has not mellowed my view. If anything, Obama comes off worse in this clip today than he did in April. His pious pledge to get beyond the "say anything, do anything" style of politics Clinton supposedly learned while battling Ken Starr looks ridiculous in the wake of his own recent promise to bring a gun to a knife fight.)

Barack Obama hasn't held down a political job long enough for anybody to see what really makes him tick, so we're stuck evaluating his oratorical persona. But the Ezra Klein interpretation is not the only valid one.

6/14/08 7:43AM

"Barry? Dave."

"My man! Did you hear my speech last night? I eased up on the change riff. It worked great. They went crazy anticipating--"

"Never mind that. How's Michelle? Is she on board? I'm hearing stuff."

"Absolutely. She loves Hillary now. She'll kill on The View. Don't worry."

"I get paid to worry, and right now I'm worried about Whoopi. Remember how her big mouth got Kerry into a jam in '04? We don't need your wife getting sucker punched."

"Relax. That media coach you found makes Bobby Knight look soft. I wish I'd met him years ago. Michelle's finally got her head on straight. Besides, I talked to Oprah."

"You did? Frankly, I'm not sold on that woman's backbone. A few lousy ratings points and she hides under a desk."

"Well, Oprah's back. She had a nice little chat with Whoopi and gave her about two and a half billion reasons why I totally rock."

"Excellent."

Is this a great country or what?

One of the nice things about living in the United States as opposed to Australia or the old Soviet Union is the absence of mandatory voting. Never has the right to sit on the sidelines and complain seemed more precious.

The Democratic Party Politburo has thrown all caution--as well as all standards of fair play--to to the winds by ensuring that our best candidate get steamrolled in favor of the Money Machine from Chicago. (But really--can you blame the sniveling bastards in Washington? Obama's donor list was encrusted with too much bling. Protecting the people's right to be heard is fine, but let's not get carried away. Nancy Pelosi has mouths to feed in Congress.)

While a McCain presidency is problematic, there's really nothing I can do to keep him out of the White House. (Howard Dean could have helped the cause by running an honest party, but it's too late for that now.) And isn't at least possible that Harry and Nancy have learned something about outmaneuvering a future Republican president. That's a stretch, but still. . .

Why should I vote for Barack Obama? He doesn't have any qualifications that I care about. He appears to be an ideological shape-shifter more likely to cozy up to Ben Nelson than to Russ Feingold. I don't trust him to manage the difficult and dangerous withdrawal of our troops from Iraq. And in voting for him I'd be rewarding--at least in my own mind--the corrupt leaders of the DNC.

If by pulling the lever for Obama I could magically make him president, I guess I'd do it. He seems marginally better than McCain. But I don't have that power.

I'll probably take a pass in November.

In the Heraclitean flow of time. . .

. . .it's important to have a few reeds to cling to, and here's one:

Every night between 5:00 and 6:00 PM you can switch on MSNBC and watch Chris Matthews lying, usually about his erstwhile meal ticket, Hillary Clinton.

This evening he treated us once again to the thoroughly debunked "Obama's-not-a-Muslim-as-far-as-I-know" slander. As is often the case, his lie was slathered with a heavy coating of unintended irony--the topic of discussion being Barack Obama's new anti-smear web site and war room.

Shockingly, the rest of the Hardball panel failed to point out Tweety's hypocrisy. Maybe next time.

Pennsylvania, Shmennsylvania

AP's intrepid Charles Babington looks for racists in the Keystone State and can't find many. But that doesn't mean they're not there:

All three women are middle-aged, work for an accountant and admire Clinton.

But only Iezzi took a hard stand against Obama."I think he's a snake oil salesman," she said. "He's a little too slick and smooth." "He just doesn't appeal to me, and not because of race, definitely," she said in an interview in which race had not been mentioned.

Such comments are all too familiar to Richard Akers, who phoned dozens of prospective Pennsylvania voters as an Obama campaign volunteer in April. Democrats often explained their opposition to Obama with "excuses that were not rational or valid, as I saw it," said the retired bank director from Johnstown, another hotbed of Clinton support. "To me, it was almost a code," Akers said. "'He doesn't wear a flag pin.' It seemed like code for 'He's not one of us.'"

So let me get this straight: Barack Obama runs a campaign based on vague promises of change. Some voters in Pennsylvania reject the empty rhetoric, one even going so far as to call it "snake oil". Conclusion: They must be racists. Heck, that's what Richard Akers of the Obama campaign thinks.

The Excuse Machine at work.

Why will this Democrat vote for President?

It certainly won't be because I can affect the outcome. Obama supporters who guilt-trip me with dire scenarios of a McCain Apocalypse are wasting their time.


Voting is a supremely selfish act, but the best politicians are able to persuade people to partake of something greater. For a lot of us, Barack Obama has not done that. Far from it.


That's the starting point of this blog.