Here's Mud in Your Eye

I'm glad this election is going to be over in slightly less than a month now because at the rate we're going, if it lasted much longer the Republican candidates would really start slinging mud. I mean that literally. I'm picturing a debate where John McCain takes a handful of mud and throws it at Barack Obama. That seems to be the next logical step in the ever-increasing virulence of attacks directly on Obama.

The latest round comes as polls show McCain is getting clobbered in the election. So what's a maverick who pledged to run an honest, positive campaign to do? Well, it must have seemed pretty obvious to the team of mavericks, because they're going for the low blows.

Over the weekend, Palin said, "We see America as the greatest force for good in this world. Our opponent though, is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country."

This is from the campaign headed by a guy who said he would never question his opponent's patriotism. Isn't that what just happened? Isn't she saying that Obama not only hates America but that he's friends with terrorists who target America?

Of course, the McCain campaign sticks by the comments saying that it's a matter of fact. Never mind that the CNN fact check said this claim was false (as does everyone else who's seriously and honestly looked at the issue). What's important here is that people are hearing the words Obama and terrorist in the same sentence. That's not calling into account his judgement, that's just an outright smear. I really hope that people see this for what it is.

As Expected

I just typed out a full, brilliant blog post that my computer decided to replace with the letter C. Hopefully that's not an omen for the day.

Anyway, I thought that last night's debate went exactly as I thought it was going to. I know that people usually see what they think they're going to see, so perhaps my rightness isn't exactly surprising. But I really was right about last night.

First, Biden cam across as calm, prepared, and ready to go. He had the facts ready to go and continually hit McCain as being the second coming of George Bush. For the most part, he pretty much ignored that Palin was even on the ticket, which was probably a smart choice. I thought Biden did a great job presenting his case. His "John McCain is not a maverick" series was just great.

Palin was exactly what I thought she would be. There was never a point where she was reduced to the babbling that has become her hallmark during network television interviews. That being said, I did think she came across as someone who'd spent the night cramming for a test rather than someone who actually understood the basic facts and realities. Her down-homeness was on full blast as every answer seemed to incorporate "ya know", "you betcha", "darn right", and a talking point that had little to do with the actual question being asked.

I liked the moment in the debate where Palin said something along the lines of how Biden kept looking backward to the Bush years rather than focus on McCain. Of course, Palin never once during the debate offered a single instance in which McCain differed from Bush on major foreign or domestic policies. I wish Biden had made a bigger deal of that.

The CNN post-debate poll showed that people mostly agreed with me. A majority said that Biden won the debate, but that Palin was more likable. The most telling detail, though, was that while 87% of people thought Biden was qualified for the job, only 42% said the same for Palin. You betcha there's a leadership gap there. I'm just surprised that she got up to 42%.

Don't Expect Tina Fey

I missed my chance to say this before Sarah Palin's convention speech and was kicking myself for it, so I'm not going to make that mistake again. I'm going on record right now to say that Palin's debate performance tonight is going to be quite strong. Given her recent record at interviews, I know that I'm going out on a limb here, but I really think she's not going to blow it the way that many (me included) are hoping she will.

First of all, as Jack Shafer has pointed out, the debate format for tonight isn't really conducive to an actual debate in the traditional sense where the candidates engage each other on a series of issues. Rather the format is more akin to a dueling press conference where each side gets a sound bite sized length of time to make their case and then it's on to the next point. No question that Palin can hit her marks, it's when she's pushed beyond the usual talking points that she gets into trouble. As Katie Couric has learned, using the phrase "what specifically ..." is pretty much like flipping a switch on the Sarah Palin gibberish answer machine. But again, the format of the debate doesn't really allow for anyone to push for specific answers on things like what newspapers she reads.

The fact is that Tina Fey is not going to be showing up for the debate tonight. Instead, we're going to have a well-prepped, chock full o' sound bites Sarah Palin. Given how low the expectations are for her tonight, pretty much anything other than drooling on herself or removing herself from the ticket in the middle of the debate is going to be considered a victory. That's a pretty low bar to get over.

P.S. My new favorite Palin interview moment is her response to a question about the bailout. Her answer occasionally borders on coherence, but sounds much more like a list of talking points got put into a blender and were then recited in a stream of consciousness manner that would make James Joyce say, "Huh?" Don't expect to see a repeat of that one.

Democracy and Term Limits

Mayor Bloomberg wants to have an elected office at the end of 2009 and since the presidency doesn't look too likely, it's looking like he's going to settle for a third term as New York City Mayor. The only problem is that New York City voters have voted to create and uphold term limits twice over the last 15 years and that limits office holders to only two terms in office. This is ordinarily the kind of thing that would present a problem for someone seeking a third term. But showing the bold, visionary thinking for which he is renowned, Bloomberg has a solution: have the City Council overturn term limits. By some quirk of legislative maneuvering, the elected officials whose power was checked by voter referendum have the power to uncheck themselves. Weird, I know, but that's the way it is.

Let me say that on the face of it, I'm not a big fan of term limits. I think that in a democracy we get to vote every four years on whether someone is doing a good enough job representing us that we want them to stay or not. That's a pretty good term limit to me: four years. If someone is doing a good enough job that a majority of the people they represent want them to stay, why should there be a rule saying that they can't? It really is pretty undemocratic.

I also love it when people post on message boards things like: "All politicians are corrupt. Throw the bums out." Term limits have been in place for long enough that the bums were thrown out. They were apparently just replaced by more bums. I think that's endemic to politics no matter what kind of limits are put in place.

To return to the point about democracy, though, the inescapable fact of the matter here is that twice, via direct referendum, the citizens of New York voted to establish term limits. Clearly this was no accidental law that happened to wind up on the books. The people have spoken. No matter how much I may like the job Mayor Bloomberg is doing and no matter how much I may dislike the notion of term limits, overturning them without going to the citizenry for a referendum on the issue is simply and completely undemocratic. There's a right way and a wrong way to do things. On this issue, Bloomberg is going the wrong way.

Political Tourette's Syndrome

First of all, I'm pretty shocked that the bailout bill failed to get approval in the House yesterday. When they announced on Sunday that a deal had been struck I just kind of assumed that, well, a deal had been struck. Usually that means that people agree. Apparently, this time it meant something else. So we'll stay tuned and see how things go today, but yesterday was not a glorious day in the history of U.S. finance or politics.

I wish I could say I was shocked (though I'm not) about the McCain campaign's immediate attacks against the Obama campaign. As a McCain advisor said, "This bill failed because Barack Obama and the Democrats put politics ahead of country." Funny, I thought it was the huge number of Representatives voting against the bill that caused it to fail. But what do I know? Somehow McCain is trying to claim credit for the bulk of the substance of the bailout (despite not really being involved in the negotiations) and then blame Obama for it not passing. I'm not even sure what the supposed logic on this is. And the putting politics ahead of country line is just ridiculous.

It seems lately that the McCain campaign has been suffering from a form of political Tourette's Syndrome. At random times they just burst out with "Obama puts politics ahead of country!" or "All attacks on Palin are sexist!" It's like they can't help it. Facts and circumstances don't matter because "Obama is going to raise your taxes!"

My favorite example of political Tourette's from the McCain campaign is their labeling of the first Tina Fey as Sarah Palin sketch as sexist. As explained by a top McCain advisor, "The portrait was very dismissive of the substance of Sarah Palin, and so in that sense, they were defining Hillary Clinton as very substantive, and Sarah Palin as totally superficial. I think that continues the line of argument that is disrespectful in the extreme, and yes, I would say, sexist in the sense that just because Sarah Palin has different views than Hillary Clinton does not mean that she lacks substance."

To be clear, the argument goes that because Palin is being parodied as less substantive than Clinton, it is a sexist parody. Maybe someone missed the word that Clinton is also female. Saying one female is less qualified than another is not sexist. The argument doesn't even make sense on the face of it. Never mind that there's a pretty good case to be made that in fact Clinton actually is more qualified than Palin.

I write this, but I know that it doesn't really matter. Tourette's is not something that you can help. It just happens. Hopefully when this election is over the McCain campaign will have a nice, relaxing four years to sit back in Arizona and look for a cure.

And the Winner Is

After having watched the first presidential debate on Friday night and then having to full days to think about it, I have to say that from my completely objective perspective that Barack Obama was the clear winner.

Actually, that's not true. I thought (along with tons of pundits) that the debate was pretty even down the line. Neither candidate particularly dominated the debate either with his ideas or his personality. On the one hand, that didn't make for the most dramatic debate in presidential history. On the other hand, it finally provided the kind of substantive look at the candidates that I've been lamenting as missing for months now.

I'm mostly inclined to think that in a foreign policy debate, a tie favors Obama. It was supposed to be John McCain's comfort territory and Obama is supposed to be the new, inexperienced, naive one. The fact that he could hold his own with McCain on the topic of foreign policy indicates that a lot of the weaknesses he's attributed with might not be present after all. I think it was Josh Marshall who wrote that despite McCain saying that Obama "doesn't understand" several times, he sure gave the appearance of knowing what was going on.

My hesitation in saying that Obama won last Friday night is that it's based on an artificially low bar. Unlike Sarah Palin's struggles in interviews, no one seriously expected Obama to make any major mistakes. He's a tremendously intelligent person who's been running for president for over a year now. He's had plenty of time to organize his facts, figures, and arguments. The thinking that he would come off as unprepared was just wishful thinking. The flip side of this is that I would anticipate McCain coming off just as well in the economic debate at the end of this cycle. If we say that the underdog who holds mostly even is the winner in this debate, we have to be prepared to do it in that one too. That may not necessarily be wrong, but I think we should at least try to base our analysis on more than partisan spin and media hype.

I'm Just Asking

I have to say that I'm shocked - shocked - that John McCain's presence in Washington hasn't immediately led to a resolution in the negotiations for a Wall Street bailout plan. I mean, he suspended his campaign, people. What does it take? Just shocking.

In the meantime, we may or may not be having a debate tonight. On the off chance that McCain doesn't declare war on Japan to try to get us out of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, here is a list of questions that I'd love to see asked at the debate tonight, which is supposed to focus on foreign policy. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but if these got asked I think we'd have a much clearer view of the candidates.

* So, is this debate actually happening?
* How do you define victory in Iraq?
* What is the greatest threat facing America right now and how would you address it as president?
* What conditions need to be present for you to authorize the use of the military?
* Do you support the Bush Doctrine, which calls for the preemptive use of military force?
* What role should our allies play in addressing global threats?
* Given the situation on the ground right now, what is your plan for the war in Iraq?
* Is it proper for the president to sit down to negotiate with leaders of hostile countries? What would such negotiations hope to accomplish?
* How does our trade policy need to be adjusted to cope with the rising economic power of countries like India and China?
* Are we safer now than we were eight years ago?

That's just the list off the top of my head. I don't think that it's too slanted in one way or another. Hopefully the questions the moderators ask tonight take on a similar tone.

That is, assuming McCain hasn't gone off and done something else.