Blizzard of Lies

By PAUL KRUGMAN September 12, 2008 | Op-Ed Columnist |New York Times

Did you hear about how Barack Obama wants to have sex education in kindergarten, and called Sarah Palin a pig? Did you hear about how Ms. Palin told Congress, “Thanks, but no thanks” when it wanted to buy Alaska a Bridge to Nowhere?

These stories have two things in common: they’re all claims recently made by the McCain campaign — and they’re all out-and-out lies.

Dishonesty is nothing new in politics. I spent much of 2000 — my first year at The Times — trying to alert readers to the blatant dishonesty of the Bush campaign’s claims about taxes, spending and Social Security.

But I can’t think of any precedent, at least in America, for the blizzard of lies since the Republican convention. The Bush campaign’s lies in 2000 were artful — you needed some grasp of arithmetic to realize that you were being conned. This year, however, the McCain campaign keeps making assertions that anyone with an Internet connection can disprove in a minute, and repeating these assertions over and over again.

Take the case of the Bridge to Nowhere, which supposedly gives Ms. Palin credentials as a reformer. Well, when campaigning for governor, Ms. Palin didn’t say “no thanks” — she was all for the bridge, even though it had already become a national scandal, insisting that she would “not allow the spinmeisters to turn this project or any other into something that’s so negative.”

Oh, and when she finally did decide to cancel the project, she didn’t righteously reject a handout from Washington: she accepted the handout, but spent it on something else. You see, long before she decided to cancel the bridge, Congress had told Alaska that it could keep the federal money originally earmarked for that project and use it elsewhere.

So the whole story of Ms. Palin’s alleged heroic stand against wasteful spending is fiction.

Or take the story of Mr. Obama’s alleged advocacy of kindergarten sex-ed. In reality, he supported legislation calling for “age and developmentally appropriate education”; in the case of young children, that would have meant guidance to help them avoid sexual predators.

And then there’s the claim that Mr. Obama’s use of the ordinary metaphor “putting lipstick on a pig” was a sexist smear, and on and on.

Why do the McCain people think they can get away with this stuff? Well, they’re probably counting on the common practice in the news media of being “balanced” at all costs. You know how it goes: If a politician says that black is white, the news report doesn’t say that he’s wrong, it reports that “some Democrats say” that he’s wrong. Or a grotesque lie from one side is paired with a trivial misstatement from the other, conveying the impression that both sides are equally dirty.

They’re probably also counting on the prevalence of horse-race reporting, so that instead of the story being “McCain campaign lies,” it becomes “Obama on defensive in face of attacks.”

Still, how upset should we be about the McCain campaign’s lies? I mean, politics ain’t beanbag, and all that.

One answer is that the muck being hurled by the McCain campaign is preventing a debate on real issues — on whether the country really wants, for example, to continue the economic policies of the last eight years.

But there’s another answer, which may be even more important: how a politician campaigns tells you a lot about how he or she would govern.

I’m not talking about the theory, often advanced as a defense of horse-race political reporting, that the skills needed to run a winning campaign are the same as those needed to run the country. The contrast between the Bush political team’s ruthless effectiveness and the heckuva job done by the Bush administration is living, breathing, bumbling, and, in the case of the emerging Interior Department scandal, coke-snorting and bed-hopping proof to the contrary.

I’m talking, instead, about the relationship between the character of a campaign and that of the administration that follows. Thus, the deceptive and dishonest 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign provided an all-too-revealing preview of things to come. In fact, my early suspicion that we were being misled about the threat from Iraq came from the way the political tactics being used to sell the war resembled the tactics that had earlier been used to sell the Bush tax cuts.

And now the team that hopes to form the next administration is running a campaign that makes Bush-Cheney 2000 look like something out of a civics class. What does that say about how that team would run the country?

What it says, I’d argue, is that the Obama campaign is wrong to suggest that a McCain-Palin administration would just be a continuation of Bush-Cheney. If the way John McCain and Sarah Palin are campaigning is any indication, it would be much, much worse.

McCain Trashes Palin's Qualifications to be President

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.

What Hillary Should Say Now - Ronald Reagan's Daughter Speaks Out

An open letter to the almost-nominee.
Patti Davis | Sep 5, 2008

Dear Hillary,

Where are you? We haven't heard from you since your strong and eloquent speech at the Democratic National Convention. You might be taking a well-deserved vacation--certainly you must need one after all those arduous months campaigning. But we need to hear from you right now. We need your voice to speak for all the women (and there are many of us) who are angry at the assumption that, just because Sarah Palin is female, we will fall in line behind her.
We need you to make clear that women do not automatically judge someone because of gender; we are more concerned with the quality of their character and the depth and breadth of their experience.

We do not see rudeness and snarkiness and sarcasm as admirable; in fact, most women teach their children not to treat others in that manner, and they tend to steer clear of adults who never learned that lesson.

We respect the right of other women to raise and educate their children the way they see fit. We also respect their right to make their own child-bearing decisions with no interference from the rest of us. We ask for that same respect in return. We don't want the government in our homes or our wombs. It is, in the simplest sense, a respect for privacy, a word vehemently used by the Republican Party in reference to Sarah Palin's family. But it's not just families in the public eye who deserve privacy; we all do.

There are many definitions of toughness. Most women would probably define it as meeting the daily challenges of raising a family in an increasingly treacherous world. They would think about the nights with no sleep sitting up with a sick child, or a race to the emergency room with a child in pain. Most would not define toughness as the ability and willingness to shoot and kill an animal. Nor are they impressed by seeing a woman brandishing an assault weapon, or sitting on her couch with the skin and head of a dead grizzly bear behind her.

Hillary, you have a more prominent voice than the rest of us. We need to hear your voice reminding people that women are smart and perceptive, and perfectly capable of doing research on a candidate who chose to be snippy rather than informative about her political record.

Many of us are frightened about the future of this country. You once said, with tears in your eyes, that running for president was very personal to you--that where America goes from here was deeply personal. It's personal to us also. Please help us communicate that putting a woman on a presidential ticket is only a good thing if it's the right woman.

Certainly, those of us who watched the Republican convention saw a woman who knows how to throw zingers. But few of us, if any, were encouraged by that. America is in trouble. We need hope, we need solutions, we need dignified, compassionate leadership. If we want zingers we'll turn on Comedy Central.

Respectfully,
Women who are waiting to hear from you

Gender Politics

For Movie Lovers Out There

New Superhero: McCain the Reckless!

McCain's pregnant pause

By LISA VAN DUSEN | 9/4/08

The Republican Party has been busily spending its convention week trying to shrink George W. Bush, in the rear-view mirror, to half his normal size while at the same time inflating Sarah Palin to something approaching national stature.

The Alaska governor was picked as John McCain's vice-presidential nominee for her gender, her plucky frontier carny narrative (she can change a diaper, shoot a bear and skin a moose with her teeth ... all at the same time!) and her all-American, pageant-pedigree glamour.

Her story, which includes the first-ever born again, anti-abortion, pro-gun, scorched earth campaign for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, is emerging in the leftie blogosphere as the right-wing Manchurian Candidate nightmare equivalent of the liberal Manchurian Candidate nightmare circulated by the raging right about Barack Obama early on.

If John McCain can be thankful for anything this week it's that chatter-wise, Palin has stomped all over Bush in her black go-go boots, though the upstaging comes at a price. As a word-association prompt, Sarah Palin continues to evoke a single buzzword: "Seriously?!"

McCain's short-term Palin problem is about how it's never good to have your agenda overtaken by talk of teenage pregnancies and Lucy-and-Ethel baby switching stories, shady car washes and abuse of gubernatorial power.

HIS PROBLEM

McCain's long-term Palin problem isn't about Sarah Palin, it's about John McCain.

Because this was such a -- for lack of a more subtle but equally accurate term -- crazy choice, the assumption last week was that Palin must have been vetted to within an inch of her life.

(Saying she has more experience than Barack Obama is no less crazy: University of Idaho vs. Columbia and Harvard Law Review; occasional local sportscaster in Alaska vs. community organizer on the South Side of Chicago; Mayor of Wasilla vs. four-term Illinois State Senator; thwarted burner of Wasilla library books vs. author of two bestsellers; 20 months as CEO of a state whose biggest problem is how to spend all that oil money vs. three years in the U.S. Senate and 19 months as CEO of arguably the most successful presidential campaign operation in U.S. history; staring down the junkyard dog Murkowski machine vs. staring down the Godzilla Clinton machine).

But Palin wasn't vetted until the last minute, which means, for the purposes of this job, she wasn't vetted at all. McCain made his most important pre-presidential choice on impulse and from weakness, which is precisely what it looked like: Hail Mary Barbie. That was proven by the subsequent boom-boom-boom of all those the land mines in her background that would have been tripped sooner if the media had thought she was qualified enough to even make the short list.

Meanwhile, his choice of an understudy commander in chief who has been so blankly incurious about the rest of the world as to have lived 42 years without a passport has got to be generating an epidemic of groany jokes in five languages in all the other seven G8 capitals.

McCain spent August convincing Americans of his fitness as commander in chief on foreign policy and national security issues and of his competence as a decision maker. So far, September is making him look reckless, small-time and most of all, not very serious.

Memo to Obama Supporters: Like It Or Not, The Race Is Now Between Barack Obama And Sarah Palin

They Raise Children, Pray and Support Palin

September 5, 2008 | By KIM SEVERSON

WASILLA, Alaska — People here in Sarah Palin’s hometown learned science from her father. They remember how she led the Warriors to an unexpected high school basketball championship, her success as a beauty queen and how her family grew along with the Wasilla Bible Church.

So when Ms. Palin, then a young mother, ran for the City Council in 1992, of course they voted for her. And they kept doing so, for mayor and then for governor — especially the women who, like her, had small children, hated abortion and prayed every day.

“I admire her intelligence and I admire her integrity, but first and foremost she’s a mom, and she has an understanding of what being a mom is,” said Janet Kincaid, a grandmother and Republican who last summer opened her lakeside Wasilla home for a $20,000 Palin fund-raiser.

As Ms. Palin, a first-term Republican governor, sampled the curried tuna puffs and gave her speech, Ms. Kincaid recalled, even the woman who cleans Ms. Kincaid’s house decided to give money.

Although some liberal Democrats dismiss them as “Palinbots” for their reflexive devotion, these women are as dedicated to Ms. Palin as the women Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, called her sisterhood of the traveling pantsuits were to their very different version of the modern female politician.

These are women who dip in and out of the work force, believe in prayer and spend their days trying to keep the crayon off the walls. They feel they have been looked down on by Clinton feminists and ignored by the power structure in the Republican Party. The fact that Ms. Palin has five children, including Trig, a newborn with Down syndrome, only makes her that much more part of the sisterhood.

“I’m not that into politics,” said Delores Field, an Alaska Inupiat from Eagle River, near Anchorage, who does not consider herself a Democrat or a Republican. “I’m just going to vote for Trig Van Palin’s mom.”

This segment of Ms. Palin’s supporters are not the women of Phyllis Schlafly’s deeply conservative generation of Republican women, nor are they the polished women who might have enjoyed lunch with the first lady, Laura Bush, in her Texas days.

Like many women in the valley where Ms. Palin comes from, her appeal here, and in recent days across the country, is more about who she is — that is, a devout Christian with a husband who supports her career, but a person who is not afraid to show up in public with a baby on her hip.

“She didn’t create this, but she showed up at the right time,” said Darla Shine, whose Happy Housewife Club franchise includes a talk radio show, a book and a Web site that receives millions of hits a month. “She represents a huge pocket of women who have been the ignored community for so long.”

Although strong opposition to abortion and an evangelical approach to Christianity are often shared traits among the Palin women, they do not necessarily walk lock step with Republican politics, said Serrin M. Foster, president of Feminists for Life, a lobbying group with 28,000 members, including Ms. Palin.

Some of the group’s members are vegans who might not appreciate Ms. Palin’s penchant for hunting moose. Others might consider themselves moderates who could vote for either party.

“There is a spectrum within the pro-life movement,” Ms. Foster said, “and Sarah is proof that you can be pro-life and pro-woman.”

Rick Mystrom, a Republican who was the mayor of Anchorage when Ms. Palin was Wasilla’s mayor, said other women in Alaska who are politicians, like Senator Lisa Murkowski, also a Republican, are seen differently, as part of the Alaska political machine. (Ms. Murkowski supports abortion rights.)

“Sarah’s appeal,” Mr. Mystrom said, “is that she is everywoman and she became what every woman thinks she can become.”

Ms. Palin’s evangelical Christian beliefs were an asset in this conservative state, and they also helped propel her to the Republican ticket as Senator John McCain’s running mate. She is part of a generation of Christian women who began serving on school boards and small governmental bodies in the 1990s, and often look out for one another.

When she bucked her party and then ran against the Republican governor in 2006, she did not get much support from the traditional channels. So Republican women’s clubs around the state came through by raising tens of thousands of dollars for her campaign.

Ms. Palin’s political career has grown along with her church, which began with a few families and recently moved to a new building that seats 400 and hosts three services on Sunday.

Steve Menard, a member of the church who is running for Wasilla mayor next month, said that although the church helped Ms. Palin’s rise, a political climate ready for someone like her was helping her national profile.

“You needed the right candidate at the right time,” Mr. Menard said, “to open doors for working women who share a set of values.”

Her ability to mix church, family and politics is part of the draw. Through connections with other longtime family friends, including political allies and members of her church, she was able to raise the sales tax in Wasilla as a way to help finance a $15 million sports complex that featured a new hockey rink for her son Track to play on.

This summer, several Christian groups came together for a day of prayer at the arena. Ms. Palin was there with her infant Trig in her arms and a daughter, Piper, nearby.

Some of Ms. Palin’s critics say that her popularity, to a degree, is superficial.

Mike Doogan, who for 14 years was a columnist with The Anchorage Daily News before he became a Democratic state legislator, said he understood her appeal to a certain type of female voter.

But Mr. Doogan said her image was carefully cultivated to do just that.

“There is no more unlikely hockey mom on this planet,” he said. “They are usually not this politically ambitious or cut-throat.”

Anne Kilkenny, who said she voted for Ms. Palin in city elections, said she became disillusioned with her after participating in Wasilla city government and seeing Ms. Palin up close.

“You’ve got to remember,” Ms. Kilkenny said, “we are not much bigger than a high school and she is the homecoming queen.”

None of that matters for the women who see Ms. Palin’s rise as their rise.

“Sarah Palin is a different kind of feminist,” said Joy Ng, who lives in Kodiak with her husband of 35 years. “She is a strong woman who can wear a skirt and be proud of it.”

Get a grip, America! Perspective from Joe Biden

Sarah Palin's speech to the GOP Convention last night...

...felt like a coming out party for unrepentant fascism, like the KKK convening without sheets, all ushered in by a small town debutante, their beauty queen...a devout demagogue in her own right -

zjm

GOP...Liars, Liars, Pants on Fire - Pay Attention America!

By JIM KUHNHENN, Associated Press Writer

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and her Republican supporters held back little Wednesday as they issued dismissive attacks on Barack Obama and flattering praise on her credentials to be vice president. In some cases, the reproach and the praise stretched the truth.

Some examples:

PALIN: "I have protected the taxpayers by vetoing wasteful spending ... and championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. I told the Congress 'thanks but no thanks' for that Bridge to Nowhere."

THE FACTS: As mayor of Wasilla, Palin hired a lobbyist and traveled to Washington annually to support earmarks for the town totaling $27 million. In her two years as governor, Alaska has requested nearly $750 million in special federal spending, by far the largest per-capita request in the nation. While Palin notes she rejected plans to build a $398 million bridge from Ketchikan to an island with 50 residents and an airport, that opposition came only after the plan was ridiculed nationally as a "bridge to nowhere."

PALIN: "There is much to like and admire about our opponent. But listening to him speak, it's easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform — not even in the state senate."

THE FACTS: Compared to McCain and his two decades in the Senate, Obama does have a more meager record. But he has worked with Republicans to pass legislation that expanded efforts to intercept illegal shipments of weapons of mass destruction and to help destroy conventional weapons stockpiles. The legislation became law last year. To demean that accomplishment would be to also demean the work of Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, a respected foreign policy voice in the Senate. In Illinois, he was the leader on two big, contentious measures in Illinois: studying racial profiling by police and requiring recordings of interrogations in potential death penalty cases. He also successfully co-sponsored major ethics reform legislation.

PALIN: "The Democratic nominee for president supports plans to raise income taxes, raise payroll taxes, raise investment income taxes, raise the death tax, raise business taxes, and increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of dollars."

THE FACTS: The Tax Policy Center, a think tank run jointly by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, concluded that Obama's plan would increase after-tax income for middle-income taxpayers by about 5 percent by 2012, or nearly $2,200 annually. McCain's plan, which cuts taxes across all income levels, would raise after tax-income for middle-income taxpayers by 3 percent, the center concluded.

Obama would provide $80 billion in tax breaks, mainly for poor workers and the elderly, including tripling the Earned Income Tax Credit for minimum-wage workers and higher credits for larger families.

He also would raise income taxes, capital gains and dividend taxes on the wealthiest. He would raise payroll taxes on taxpayers with incomes above $250,000, and he would raise corporate taxes. Small businesses that make more than $250,000 a year would see taxes rise.

MCCAIN: "She's been governor of our largest state, in charge of 20 percent of America's energy supply ... She's responsible for 20 percent of the nation's energy supply. I'm entertained by the comparison and I hope we can keep making that comparison that running a political campaign is somehow comparable to being the executive of the largest state in America," he said in an interview with ABC News' Charles Gibson.

THE FACTS: McCain's phrasing exaggerates both claims. Palin is governor of a state that ranks second nationally in crude oil production, but she's no more "responsible" for that resource than President Bush was when he was governor of Texas, another oil-producing state. In fact, her primary power is the ability to tax oil, which she did in concert with the Alaska Legislature. And where Alaska is the largest state in America, McCain could as easily have called it the 47th largest state — by population.

MCCAIN: "She's the commander of the Alaska National Guard. ... She has been in charge, and she has had national security as one of her primary responsibilities," he said on ABC.

THE FACTS: While governors are in charge of their state guard units, that authority ends whenever those units are called to actual military service. When guard units are deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, for example, they assume those duties under "federal status," which means they report to the Defense Department, not their governors. Alaska's national guard units have a total of about 4,200 personnel, among the smallest of state guard organizations.

FORMER ARKANSAS GOV. MIKE HUCKABEE: Palin "got more votes running for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska than Joe Biden got running for president of the United States."

THE FACTS: A whopper. Palin got 616 votes in the 1996 mayor's election, and got 909 in her 1999 re-election race, for a total of 1,525. Biden dropped out of the race after the Iowa caucuses, but he still got 76,165 votes in 23 states and the District of Columbia where he was on the ballot during the 2008 presidential primaries.

FORMER MASSACHUSETTS GOV. MITT ROMNEY: "We need change, all right — change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington! We have a prescription for every American who wants change in Washington — throw out the big-government liberals, and elect John McCain and Sarah Palin."

THE FACTS: A Back-to-the-Future moment. George W. Bush, a conservative Republican, has been president for nearly eight years. And until last year, Republicans controlled Congress. Only since January 2007 have Democrats have been in charge of the House and Senate.

___

Associated Press Writer Jim Drinkard in Washington contributed to this report.

Palin: Abuse of Power?

Also check out 'George Washington's Cousin' for an excellent piece called:
Children, Politics, and "Family Values"

More Zealous Religious Fascism Is Not What The World Needs

Live from St. Paul: America is Safe!

And Now, Appearing at Your National Carnival in St. Paul!

Talk about long overdue!

The War Crimes of the victors are never punished - they simply disappear into the fanciful weave of cultural folklore.

That no serving U. S. president has ever visited Hiroshima is scandalous...that no apology has ever been extended, a mockery of international justice.

Hats off to U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who on Tuesday, became the highest-ranking serving American official to pay respects at the memorial site of the world's first atomic bomb attack.

zjm

More on the GOP VP pick...

Sarah Palin: "conduct unbecoming a human being, never mind a governor" - Vice President, or God Forbid, President? PLEASE!

Palin's responses on radio talk show very unbecoming

DAN FAGAN | COMMENT | 1/27/08

The governor's appearance on KWHL's "The Bob and Mark Show" last week is plain and simple one of the most unprofessional, childish and inexcusable performances I've ever seen from a politician.

Anchorage DJ Bob Lester unleashed a vicious, mean-spirited, poisonous attack on Senate President Lyda Green last week while our governor was live on the air with him.

When we played the tape on my show the day after it happened, we received 130 calls. Even some Palinbots were disgusted.

The Daily News posted the recording on its Web site and it fired up bloggers.

The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner editorial writers demanded the governor apologize. The Juneau and Ketchikan papers also ran the editorial.

The Daily News opinion page addressed the governor's gaffe. They wrote "She came off looking immature herself, almost high-schoolish. It was conduct unbecoming a governor."

It was conduct unbecoming a human being, never mind a governor.

The governor's office eventually tried to spin the public relations disaster, releasing a statement reading, "Governor Palin was caught off guard by Bob Lester's reference to Senate President Lyda Green."

I don't buy it. Early on in the conversation before Palin started to crack up, Lester referred to Sen. Green as a jealous woman and a cancer. Palin, who knows full well Lyda Green is a cancer survivor, didn't do what any decent person would do, say, "Bob, that's going too far."

But as the conversation moved on, Lester intensified his attack on Green.

Lester questioned Green's motherhood, asking Palin if the senator cares about her own kids. Palin laughs.

Then Lester clearly sets the stage for what he is about to say by warning his large audience and Palin. He says, "Governor you can't say this but I will, Lyda Green is a cancer and a b----." Palin laughs for the second time.

What were teenage boys thinking when they heard the governor laugh at someone being called a b----? How about the teenage girls who look up to Palin. What did they think when they heard her laugh?

But there is more. Lester then describes Green's chair as big and cushy. A clear reference to the senator's weight. Palin laughs a third time. She's just having a grand old time.

Palin was clearly enjoying every second of Lester's vicious attack on her political rival.

But it gets worse.

Lester asks Palin point blank: "Do you have any idea of what you did, to make Lyda Green dislike you, hate you?" How does Palin respond? Does she do the right thing? What you would expect from a mature leader, a governor and say, "Bob, Lyda doesn't hate me."

No, she responds like a 13-year-old and says, "Um, you know once and a while I try to figure that out but I can't figure that out."

The Palin camp says the governor did call Green and apologize. That was the right thing to do. But the governor's statement shows the apology a half-hearted one.

The statement in part reads: "The Governor called Senator Green to explain that she does not condone name-calling in any way and apologized if there was a perception that the comment was attributed to the Governor."

But there's strong evidence Palin did condone Lester's name-calling. At the end of Lester making fun of Green as a mother, calling her a cancer, twice, and saying she has to go; after calling the senator a b----, making fun of her weight, and accusing Green of being jealous and hateful; after all of that, Lester ends the conversation offering to visit Palin.

How does Palin respond? "I'd be honored to have you."

The statement released by the governor's office also called Palin's action bad judgment.

But bad judgment is when you stay up late the night before a big test, order steak at a Chinese restaurant or wear blue jeans to a black tie affair.

What the governor did was wrong.

Not only did she sit by and watch a decent public servant get thrashed in front of tens of thousands of people, she actually enjoyed it.

This is our governor, for goodness sake.

Our leader. I wonder.

Dan Fagan is a radio talk show host on KFQD 750 AM

Have a listen for yourself...

A woman - but why this woman?

Susan Reimer | 9/1/08
So. This is what being pandered to feels like.

John McCain picked Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska and mother of five, to be his running mate to woo women like me.

He seems to think that my girlfriends and I are so disappointed that an utterly qualified woman is not going to be president that we will jump at the chance to vote for an utterly unqualified woman for vice president.

You gotta love a guy who thinks things are that simple.

Women already outvote men in this country, and it isn't because we like voting for all those women on the ballot.

Does McCain think we will be so grateful for a skirt on the ticket that we won't notice that she's anti-abortion, a member of the NRA and thinks creationism should be taught alongside evolution?

His selection of Sarah Palin is insulting on so many levels that I am starting to feel like the Geico caveman.

You want to look like a maverick and like you think outside the box? Pick a woman for a running mate.

You want to look good to the evangelicals? Choose a running mate with a Down syndrome child.

(When James Dobson, the conservative Christian radio host who fancies himself a kingmaker, jumped up to say that the selection of Palin means he can now "pull the lever" for John McCain, I almost felt sick. I don't know what I'll do if she trots out the story of her 5-month-old baby to shore up the Republican base.)

Palin's personal story is very compelling, but it reads more like a movie pitch than a resume for national leadership.

Champion high school athlete, beauty queen. Married to her high school sweetheart. Car-pooling supermom who went from PTA activist to mayor of her tiny (population 9,000) Alaskan town.

Fisherman, sportswoman, hunter. Speaks truth to power in a state corrupted by oil. Has a son headed to Iraq. A woman who made the decision to carry to term a baby she knew to be developmentally disabled.

She makes John McCain, Naval Academy graduate, fighter pilot and prisoner of war, look like just another grouchy, old, rich white guy.

Oh. Right. He is.

And that's the other point here. McCain is 72. He has had at least four go-rounds with melanoma, a deadly cancer.

Under the circumstances, the decision to choose this woman over the likes of, say, Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson looks less like a stroke of genius than a stroke. It looks crazy. It looks wacky.

And that's the other part of this decision that is so infuriating.

If you are going to pick a woman for the sake of picking a woman, can you at least make it a credible choice?

Can you at least make a choice that doesn't give the gag writers for Jay Leno and Jon Stewart the month off?

(The jokes started immediately: She won't be able to hold her own against Joe Biden in a vice presidential debate. But wait until the swimsuit portion of the competition.)

Can you at least make a choice that doesn't have Rush Limbaugh panting? (He called Palin a "babe." It was another memorable moment in the ascent of women in this country.)

Barack Obama was the editor of the Harvard Law Review, for heaven's sake. And the best McCain can do is a woman who minored in poly-sci at the University of Idaho?

Palin might do just fine during the campaign. And she might do an excellent job of going to diplomatic funerals. (Which McCain once said is the only job description for the vice presidency.)

But it is more likely that she will be in over her head, and all the women McCain thinks he is courting will be cringing for our sister instead. And then we will be furious at him for setting one of us up to fail.

It isn't just that Palin might look bad campaigning against the likes of Biden or Obama.

It's that she already looks bad compared to the likes of Hillary Clinton.

Best Stay in Alaska, Governor

Bill Maher on the choice of Sarah Palin

Eyes of World on American Election

I was privileged to spend most of the first 15 years of my life growing up in the Philippines. My view of the United States was formed through a lens looking back at the white picket fences of my country, as opposed to having those white picket fences serve as blinders to keep the rest of the world at bay. I came to understand the difference between the love other peoples of the world have for Americans and the American Dream...and the disdain they hold for the often provincial and myopic political leadership that wars against that very American Dream, as well as the best interests of all nations.

Lisa Van Dusen has penned a column this morning that brings to life the importance of Barack Obama, and his campaign, to all of us who inhabit this tiny planet at this critical juncture in history. It is a column of wisdom that reflects the perspective of the world I came to know as a child looking out over the South China Sea.

zjm

Eyes of World on American Election

by Lisa Van Dusen, Sun Media

One thing about U.S. presidential campaigns that doesn't apply anywhere else on the same scale is that when America picks a president, the whole world is watching.

If there was any doubt elsewhere that progress has a life of its own in America, 45 years after Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech and 40 years after Bobby Kennedy predicted it could happen within 40 years, the first black candidate claimed the mantle of presidential nominee of a major party.

When Barack Obama accepted the Democratic Party's nomination Friday night, it meant something not just to African Americans and to all Americans, but to people watching around the world, many of whom doubted that it could actually happen.

For all the hits Obama took this summer from the Republicans for his international popularity, it was no accident that 200,000 people came out to hear him speak in Berlin in July, and it's no accident that he's equally popular elsewhere, including Canada.

It isn't, as the attack-ad mongers would have you think, because foreigners are foreign and so is he. Obama's race didn't matter to those people who stood in Berlin that day; Germans have their own historic traumas to heal. But they know his race does matter to some Americans, and that if he becomes the next president of the United States anyway it will be in part because enough of those voters overcame the very fears of change, of the unknown and of the "other" that his international popularity has been used to stoke.

It may be that Obama is popular elsewhere not just because, in Canada for instance, we tend to favour Democratic presidents but because an Obama victory would somehow represent the end of that era of post-9/11 insularity and fear that, projected as Bush foreign policy, became neurotically anti-diplomatic and objectifying to the countries in its crosshairs.

Because of the way he talks about America's role in the world and maybe because outsiders suspect that, as an African-American, he has a more nuanced relationship with power than previous presidents, foreigners see in Obama a potential dialing down of the big-stick Bush overkill of the last eight years.

As so many polls have shown in the years since the invasion of Iraq, foreigners still make the distinction between America and its leadership.

People still see and love those things about America that have lured, for more than a century, so many who know that to take your chances on an American experience you have to actually drink the water and for them, Obama represents more than the sum of his parts even as a symbol of racial reconciliation.

There may be a sense that if enough Americans can overcome that downright un-American reflex to stick with the safe and the inward, especially after the kind of shock that would understandably make you wary of the unknown, then there may be light at the end of the post-9/11 tunnel.

Even before Obama's speech Friday night, the rest of the world got hints from Denver that this election process might hold something close to the promise of a new normal.

SOMETHING LARGER

When Hillary and then Bill Clinton overcame the campaign baggage of seeing their own dream slip away to unify the party by endorsing Obama, it not only reminded Democrats that something larger is at stake, it reminded the world that there was a president before the last eight years who knew something about how to communicate in a way worthy of a great power, that there could be another one and that that unfortunate interlude was more about a man than about a country.

If Obama loses on merit; if his campaign somehow derails on the ground at this late stage or if Republican running mate Sarah Palin succeeds in rustling those die-hard Hillary voters to greener pastures on the rebound or he makes the sort of huge, unforeseeable gaffe that can't but disqualify him, then the rest of the world will turn the page.

But if he were to lose because not enough voters were ready to remember that witnessing history isn't always a bad thing, the reaction elsewhere may be regret over a reunion sadly postponed with an America that people would rather not stop waiting for.

History Made Once Again: The First Siamese Twins Candidate for President!

What? Who? It's okay... go ahead and have a good laugh!"

Introducing the New Republican Vice Presidential Candidate: A Heartbeat From the Presidency?

A Speech for the Ages

Only in America

Dignity, Grace, Strength, and Vision: The Next First Lady

The Lion Roars One More Time

Obama Chooses Biden -Joe Wastes No Time in Taking on McCain

Clinton Factor Lives On

Lisa Van Dusen | Sunday, August 24, 2008

I can't speak for all women who've given birth, but when I did it, there was a definite over-under moment about six hours into the contractions. As I was pacing around my coffee table cursing the words "creative visualization" and the womb-less bugger who thought them up, I looked down at my stomach, did the quick math on the situation and thought, "Okay, how do I get out of this?"

Then, just when it seemed I couldn't go to the next level, my pain threshold magically re-set itself like a jimmied odometer and I was able to get through the last bit.

As Barack Obama ponders the last 18 months of room service club sandwiches and hog-calling contests and looks ahead to the next few days in Denver, he could probably use just that sort of superhuman second wind.

This next bit for Obama will be a convention week that might have been entirely about hope and change -- and history -- but instead will also be about The Clintons, who, in this melodrama, come with an upper-case "The," and their own spine-chilling organ flourish.

Hillary, as runner-up, will deliver a prime-time speech Tuesday night and Bill, as the former two-term Democratic president and rightful big dog of the party, will speak Wednesday.

She will be nominated and put to an ostensibly symbolic roll call vote because her supporters will have come to Denver, to hear her tell it, in search of catharsis, and political convention roll call votes are famous for their purgative properties.

Observers at the more dubious end of the Clintonology spectrum know that the range of plausible scenarios might include something more sinister and that the process, cleansing though it may be, might also serve to devalue Obama's currency as the nominee.

HILLARY'S VISION

Because the general assumption among Clintonologists of every height, weight and paranoia class is that Hillary, rather than process her belated primary concession as a character-building loss, has seamlessly shifted her gaze toward her own catharsis in 2012, everything she says and does in Denver will be magnified.

In the weeks since Hillary conceded in June, she has been, except for that somewhat unnerving catharsis crack, an absolute trouper.

Bill, on the other hand, has made it known that he is pouting over his perceived mistreatment as a race-baiter during the campaign and that he has doubts about Obama's readiness to lead that couldn't possibly have anything to do with his wife's presidential ambitions. And when Bill Clinton is pouting, we are conditioned to know, anything can happen.

Because Hillary can't afford to do anything that could be construed as disloyal to a Democratic party she'll need in about two years if her universe unfolds as it might, her speech will likely be gracious, unequivocally supportive and wistfully humble about her own destiny.

But Bill's will be parsed for how long it takes him to mention Obama, how much of it is about Hillary, how much of it is about him, whether he uses the word "ready" and whether it's delivered by his voluble, generous inner dog or his gnarly, grudging, thwarted-entitlement inner dog.

If their famously double-edged political instincts haven't been entirely doused by anger over losing the nomination (and especially if, by the time this runs, she happens to have been named the longshot/shock-and-awe VP choice), they'll both give genuinely unifying speeches.

It's fun, right?

Obama, meanwhile, has to look like he's having fun again. He has to remind Democrats of why they wanted change in the first place and what that has to do with John McCain. He has to either explain why he won't fight dirty or decide that he will. And he has to revisit the issue of race in a way that establishes the act of transcending the wrong kind of doubt as a patriotic thing to do.

If he does buy into creative visualization, I'd suggest he picture a Denver boot; that big ugly metal clamp used to thwart scofflaws and carjackers. It was invented in 1953 by Frank Marugg, a violinist with the Denver Symphony Orchestra and a man who clearly possessed a fine appreciation of both artistry and muscle.