Obama Lays Out His Vision for America at Presidential Forum

Letterman's Fabulous Interview With Obama

Hey Barack ... Here Is Your Stump Speech On Palin, Courtesy Of Matt Damon

On the Anniversary of 9/11: McCain and His Republican Party Should Be Ashamed

'Having Failed to Beat Them, He's Now Joined Them'

McCain picks up some Democrat Change

by Lisa Van Dusen

If you search the Wikipedia page on John McCain's 2000 presidential campaign, the word "change" doesn't appear a single time (as of Sept. 9 ... by the time you read this, that may have been, um, changed).

Back then, after eight years of Bill Clinton, McCain ran as his maverick self against (wink, wink) K Street lobbyists and special interests, but it was a campaign based on personality and unfettered media availability, not on the classic change message of "throw the bums out."

If McCain wasn't demanding change after eight years of Democratic rule in Washington, why is he suddenly running, after eight years of Republican rule in Washington, on change? If he thinks the Republicans are the bums who need to be thrown out, shouldn't he be running as a Democrat?

Welcome to the Through the Looking-Glass politics of the same GOP tactics that pulled out every stop to get the man who would become the least popular, most disastrous president in memory into the White House not once but twice.

It's a world in which Christians are really closet Muslims, family values are subject to situational redefinition, your opponent's theme can be swiped like a licence plate and the bums are always the other guys, even when they're really you.

McCain didn't always operate this way, but the transition has been so remarkably smooth, you'd think he'd been bitten by a radioactive spider that imbued him with super powers of integrity amnesia, principle subsuming and, especially, theme-swiping.

FAMILIAR PLAYBOOK

Ironically, it's the same Rovian playbook that so famously slimed McCain off the map in the notorious 2000 South Carolina primary that's been pulled out of the bottom drawer for the brutal final stretch of this campaign.

McCain has been in Washington for more than a quarter-century, with more than three-quarters of that time served as a member of the party running the country. He's now saying he's the McChanger -- not so much with a straight face, but with that cat-that-ate-the-canary grin -- because Sarah Palin, like Barack Obama, looks and acts like nobody else who has ever been on a national ticket.

In Palin's case, the reasons for that have less to do with an unprecedented historic breakthrough than with a historically unprecedented low bar and for some of the people she scares, that's why she scares them. The choice also betrays a weirdly 1960s, Mad Men cynicism among that GOP brain trust: "We'll match 'em gimmick for gimmick ... they have a black guy, we'll get a woman!" Sarah Palin's not a threat to the old boys' network, she's an instrument of it.

But to the same illusionists who brought you the 2000 recounts victory, the phantom WMDs and "We do not torture," the only measure of truth is how many people you can convince that what they're seeing is real until you've got what you want. Then you shrug, step gingerly over the wreckage and move on.

For the man who wrote Character is Destiny, questions like why he went from wanting Joe Lieberman (a pro-choice, pro-gay rights rogue Democrat who got an "F" on his NRA report card) to picking Palin (a rifle-wielding, pray-out-the-gay, pro-life-in-cases-of-rape-and-incest conservative's conservative) within a matter of days may weigh more heavily after November.

Maybe that's what he means when he says he's now the candidate of change; that those days of watching the other guys have all the fun are gone and that having failed to beat them, he's now joined them.

Food for Thought

Obama's woes have nothing to do with 'lipstick'

Howard Fineman on the candidate's pride, strategy and stump speak | MSNBC | Wed., Sept. 10, 2008

WASHINGTON - No, Barack Obama was not making fun of Sarah Palin when he talked about some Republican putting “lipstick on a pig.”

He was trying to be colloquial, and John McCain’s campaign knew as much – even as it was going theatrically ballistic.

That’s not to say that Obama hasn’t made mistakes. In fact, he’s made – and is making – a lot.

For two years, Obama played the golf course of presidential politics with the ice-cold self-assuredness of a Tiger Woods. But since securing the Democratic nomination, he’s made a series of strategic errors that could jeopardize his chances in November.

After traveling with him on the trail, watching him in Denver and talking to Democratic operatives and insiders, here’s my list of his errant shots:

Declining to take federal financing for the general election
This mistake is two-pronged. Obama stands accused of flip-flopping on the matter, saying in 2007 that he’d accept those funds and the cash limits that come along with it. In relying solely on private money, Obama appears to have ceded some higher ground to McCain, who, with his public funding, appears slightly more immune to interest groups. On a more practical level, Obama will have to leave the campaign trail more often to headline fundraising events. He’ll likely spend more time than he should in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles and less than he needs in Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Detroit.

Declining McCain’s offer to hold ten town hall debates
When Obama was leading the race in leaps and bounds, he blew off this GOP proposal. Too bad. Had Obama locked in that deal, he would now be able to confront McCain face-to-face about some of the Republicans’ more aggressive – if not to say cynically manipulative – recent television advertising claims. An Obama-McCain series would also have drawn attention away from Gov. Palin, the autumn cover girl.

Failing to go all the way with the Clintons
Yes, I know, Bill and Hillary got prime speaking roles in Denver. And yes, I know, the Clintons are difficult to deal with and probably hope Obama fails. Still, it’s Obama’s task to latch on to them, even against their will. But he was too proud. Although he’s going to see the former president this week, Obama should have broken bread with Bill months ago. Obama needs the Clintons to defend and work for him. They are not eager to do so, but it was still Obama’s task to trap them into displays of political enthusiasm. It’s just my guess, but I think Mr. Clinton would have been open to the wooing – if for no other reason than to recapture his reputation as an avatar of the civil rights cause. Obama also neglected to court Clinton fundraisers and supporters in places like Los Angeles. All they want from Obama is a phone call. They would swoon.

The 22-state strategy
For months, the Obama campaign invested advertising time and organizing money in an impressive array of red states that haven’t been on the Democrats’ radar in recent elections. This made for great press clippings. But, for the most part, it was a waste of assets. Except for perhaps Virginia, most out-of-the-way states do not seem likely to end up in Obama’s fold. He’d be more successful focusing on traditional battlegrounds.

Failing to state a sweeping, but concrete, policy idea
It is not enough to be for change – everybody is, or is trying to be. To make it stick, Obama needed, and needs, to put forth an easy-to-grasp grand proposal, one that would encapsulate what his central message. That tagline? That he is dedicated, body and soul, to advancing the economic interests of hard-working, average Americans. He has the makings of such a proposal – his tax cuts for low and middle-income families. But he has yet to package that, or anything else, in an easy-to-grasp, hard-number plan for voters. Instead, he’s got more of a laundry list than an actual rallying cry.

Remaining trapped in professor-observer speak
When you listen to Obama, it sometimes feels like you’re hearing a smart but distant analysis of the political scene. He sounds like a writer or teacher, but not the leader of a political crusade. Obama has been far too “meta” – a detached commentator on his own situation and his own country. Voters want an action plan, not an exegesis.

Failing to attack McCain early
Obama was wary of attacking a man who had suffered so much during the Vietnam War – an understandable emotion. But that wariness, combined with Obama’s natural inclination to be seen as the nice guy (one who lets others do the knifing) lead to an unfortunate result. It gave two free months for McCain to build up a head of steam as a war hero, as opposed to what Obama needed to paint him as publically: a man beholden to corporate interests and a likely clone of George W. Bush.

Does all of this mean that Obama is somehow doomed? Of course not. He is a quick study and a fast learner, and the team of McCain and Palin is capable of making their own set of mistakes.

But if I were an Obama partisan I would be worried that his mistakes have a common thread - pride.

Obama seems to want to do things on his own, and on his own terms. It’s understandable. Obama has his own crowd – from Chicago, from Harvard, and from a new cadre of wealthy, Ivy-educated movers and shakers.

“He’s an arrogant S.O.B.,” one of the latter told me today. “He wants to do it his way, and his way alone.” But politics doesn’t work that way. And has Obama should know, or is about to find out, that everyone needs a little help.

Obama to McCain: "Enough is Enough"

Too Cool to Fight

Washington Post | Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Thank God for Sarah Palin. Without her jibes, her sarcasm, her exaggerations, her smug provincialism, her hypocrisy about family and government, her exploitation of mommyhood, and her personal attacks on Barack Obama, the Democratic base might never be consolidated. This much is certain: Obama could never do it.

Not, anyway, the Obama who appeared Sunday on ABC's "This Week" with George Stephanopoulos. That Obama was cool, diffident, above it all -- unflustered, unflappable, unexcitable and downright unexciting. These "uns" ran on, a torrent of cool that frosted my flat-panel TV and had me wondering if, as a kid, Obama ever got a shot in the mouth on the playground, he'd glare at the bully -- and convene a meeting.

Stephanopoulos vainly tried for some genuine reaction. In choosing Palin, did John McCain get someone who met the minimum test of being "capable of being president"? Everyone in America knows the answer to that. They know McCain picked someone so unqualified she has been hiding from the media because a question to her is like kryptonite to what's-his-name. But did Obama say anything like that? Here are his exact words: "Well, you know, I'll let you ask John McCain when he's on ABC." Boy, Palin will never get over that.

And how about this silly business that she's qualified for the presidency because she's commander in chief of the Alaska National Guard? Another softball. Another slow one, right down the middle. Obama reared back . . . and told Stephanopoulos that those questions should come from the media: "It's going to be your job and. . . ." Pathetic.

What Obama does not understand is that he is being Swift-boated. The term does not apply to a mere smear. It is bolder, more outrageous than that. It means going straight at your opponent's strength and maligning it. This is what was done in 2004 to John Kerry, who had commanded a Swift boat in Vietnam. Kerry had won three Purple Hearts, a Silver Star and a Bronze Star and emerged from the war a certified hero. It was that record that his opponents attacked, a tactic Kerry thought so ludicrous that he at first ignored it. The record shows that he lost the election.

Now Obama's opponents are going straight for his strength. At least twice at the GOP convention, speakers mocked Obama's service as a community organizer. "He worked as a community organizer," Rudy Giuliani said. "He immersed himself in Chicago machine politics."

And then Palin herself followed up with one of her aw-shucks low blows: "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities."

In the biographies of both presidential candidates are episodes of pure wonderment. No man can read about McCain's time as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam and not wonder, "Could I do that?" For most of us, the answer -- the truthful answer -- is no.

For Obama, that episode has nothing to do with physical courage but much to do with moral commitment. At age 22 -- a graduate of Columbia University and already making good money as a financial researcher, he walked away to work with the unemployed and alienated in Chicago. Obama, who later went to Harvard Law School, knew precisely what a valuable commodity he was and how much money he could have made. He turned away from all that -- or, at least, postponed it, and not because community organizing was the route to political success. (Just name one.) Once again, ask yourself if you would have done it.

So, Stephanopoulos asked, what was Obama thinking when Giuliani mocked him for doing something Giuliani -- the most ambitious of men -- would never have done?

"It's a real puzzling thing," Obama said matter-of-factly. And then he went on to recount his experience as a community organizer, ending with the observation that "I would think that that's an area where Democrats and Republicans would agree."

Oy!

It is true that on the stump, Obama goes on the attack. But those are fragments -- maybe 15 seconds on the evening news. It is with extended interviews, such as the Sunday shows, that we get to visit with the man -- and that man, for all his splendid virtues, seems to lack fight. Maybe he's worried about how America would receive an angry black man or maybe he's just too cool to ever get hot, but the result is that we have little insight into his passions: What, above all, does he care about? The answer, at least to the Sunday TV viewer, was nothing much.

'Chickenshit' MSNBC Drops Olbermann, Matthews as News Anchors

By Howard Kurtz | Monday, September 8, 2008 | Washington Post Staff Writer

MSNBC is removing Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews as the anchors of live political events, bowing to growing criticism that they are too opinionated to be seen as neutral in the heat of the presidential campaign

Let's hear it for more corporate censorship! Another victory for the mindless Fox News assholes, and all of their clones!

Another sad day in the History of America.

Another loss of nuanced and intelligent reporting - Edward R. Murrow is turning over in his grave.

Not a day for pride!

zjm

Palin has party revved for victory

by Lisa Van Dusen | Sun Media | 9/7/08

The Republicans are, to swipe a phrase from that other campaign, all fired up and ready to go. They are more fired up than they've been since Ronald Reagan's Morning in America in 1980, only this time their hopes are pinned not on a controversial former California governor but a controversial Alaska governor.

The GOP, per its convention, is running a hiding-in-plain sight, anti-incumbent incumbent campaign that essentially has it running against itself, which isn't half as painful as its sounds and which, in many corners of America, may just work.

In St. Paul last week, Sarah Palin won the hearts and hopes of a party that had, six months ago, so resigned itself to losing this election that it was willing to hold its nose and run the bete noir of both the far-right opinionators and the party's Capitol Hill gang, John McCain.

But Palin, the 44-year-old cheerily telegenic, ideologically orthodox vice-presidential nominee, delivered a speech Wednesday night that was such an Obama-knocking stem-winder that, watching the ecstatic faces in the crowd as she spoke, you could almost hear what they were hearing: "Wah wah wah WIN...wah wah wah WIN..."

For McCain, who along with Obama had dangled the dreamy prospect of a post-partisan, issues-oriented campaign, Palin is more than a breath of fresh air, she's a sarcastic, bad-cop Scud missile aimed at the Obama caravan of hope, and that will mobilize the conservative base of the Republican Party more than any culture war flashpoint ever could.

For all of us who thought Wednesday morning that McCain had picked Palin on impulse, it was clear by halfway through her speech that we were wrong: If this was an impulse, it wasn't a reckless one, it was a tactical one that would relieve McCain of the burden of attacking the Obama/Biden ticket at the expense of his integrity brand.

In his speech Thursday night, McCain promised an end to partisan rancor, which, in the home stretch of a dead-heat campaign with a newly unveiled attack weapon, is the Rovian-reversal version of, "Let the rancor begin!"

The second flank of the Palin deployment is the pre-emptive demonization of the media to discourage drive-by hits against the national novice that might expose her inexperience on foreign policy and national security issues.

MEDIA BATTLE

That battle began in Palin's speech Wednesday night, when she established the fact that the media are against her for a Republican base that loves to hate the latte-drinking liberal elites of the Eastern establishment punditocracy.

"I've learned quickly, these past few days," Palin said, "that if you're not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone."

As a short-term tactic, running against the media may be as disingenuous as running against your own party and its own president, but it's a sure-fire crowd pleaser.

At the convention, the battle lines were already being drawn on the cable sets, with rattled Newsweek reporter Howard Fineman looking like he'd just been mugged as he recounted tales of intimidation tactics by Republican operatives against anyone questioning Palin's credentials.

The most vociferous complaints about coverage seem to be aimed at the reporting on Palin's pregnant daughter, a story which, if it had broken about a female Democratic running mate, would have been on a 24-hour loop on Fox News.

The celebrity glossies have had a field day, notably the "Babies, lies and scandal" cover of US magazine. If John McCain wanted to use "celebrity" as a political slur, he should have factored in potential push-back from the industry stakeholders.

As a long-term strategy, running against the media rarely works because sooner or later, even a Republican press secretary may want the New York Times to return his text message.

But the sudden possibility of snatching back the change tag and all the energy that goes with it can rewrite the rule book, even the white-out- filled rule book of the most tactical operatives around McCain.

As his campaign manager, Rick Davis, told an interviewer Friday morning about the likelihood of Sarah Palin doing Meet the Press, "We're going to do what we think we need to do to win. Access to the press is not directly related to success in politics."

From the campaign of the man who once cockily referred to the media as his base, them's fightin' words.