I'VE MOVED

"American Debate" has moved. All archives between February 2006 and April 2008 will continue to be housed on this site. To access the new site - and to bookmark it - please proceed to http://go.philly.com/polman

John McCain's ball and chain

Behold the candidate as he tries to perform pirouettes with a dead weight chained to his ankle.

Less metaphorically, behold the candidate as he tries in vain to simultaenously defend and distance himself from a highly embarrassing compadre.

But no, this is not about Barack Obama and his former pastor. This is about John McCain and the Republican president who, five years ago yesterday, appeared beneath a "Mission Accomplished" banner and assured the American people that major combat in Iraq was over (at a cost of 138 military deaths). This would be the same McCain compadre who, just last week, set a new record for failure by posting the highest presidential disapproval rating in the 70-year history of the Gallup poll.

You can all debate amongst yourselves whether Wright or Bush is the weightier albatross, but the latest NBC-Wall Street Journal poll has the winner:

When registered voters were asked to rank their major concerns, the largest plurality - 43 percent - cited McCain's ties to the Bush administration. The Obama-Wright connection ranked fourth, cited by 32 percent. And this survey was conducted during the four-day span when Wright was all over the news, before Obama severed his ties on Tuesday.

I doubt that McCain's performance yesterday will lower his ranking. It was a small incident, but instructive nonetheless. Asked to critique the fifth anniversary of Mission Accomplished, he at first tried to give Bush the benefit of the doubt: "Do I blame him for that specific banner? I can't."

Explain that one. Was McCain suggesting that Bush shouldn't bear any responsibility for a giant slogan that was hung above his head for the express purpose of being captured on video for posterity? Didn't Truman say that the buck stops at the president's desk? Did Bush have to hang the banner personally before McCain would deem him blameworthy?

Anyway, McCain then tried to balance his exoneration with a profile in courage. He added: "I thought it was wrong at the time."

Explain that one, too. I don't recall, five years ago, ever hearing McCain say publicly that the banner was wrong. On the contrary, he indicated that the banner was just fine. For instance, during a Fox News appearance on June 11, 2003, he was asked to respond to the Bush critics who were questioning whether the Iraq conflict had really ended. McCain's retort: "Well, then why was there a banner that said 'mission accomplished' on the aircraft carrier?"

If, as he now claims, he really "thought" the banner "was wrong at the time," this means that his public defense was the antithesis of straight talk.

No wonder so many Democrats are anxious to resolve their intramural strife with all deliberate speed, firm in their belief that ultimately McCain will be dragging the heaviest chain.

-------

"American Debate" is moving. Today's entry has been cross-posted at the new site, which will become the sole place for new postings beginning on Monday. The new address, suitable for book-marking, is http://go.philly.com/polman

Reaping what they sowed

The Republicans are steamed about a pair of new TV ads - one from the Democratic National Committee, another from the liberal group moveon.org - that paint John McCain as a warmonger who wants to fight in Iraq for another 100 years. The Republican umbrage is somewhat amusing, for reasons I will soon explain, but first it's important to acknowledge that, empirically speaking, they do have a right to be ticked off.

The DNC ad plays a clip from a Jan. 3 McCain town hall meeting that shows the candidate talking about a potentially long presence for U.S. troops in Iraq ("maybe 100, that'd be fine with me"), then hitting the viewer with some brutal war footage and the latest stats about our casualties and war costs. The clear implication, for anyone connecting the dots, is that McCain was talking about another 100 years of war.

Meanwhile, moveon.org's tag line is, "100 years in Iraq? And you thought no one could be worse than George Bush." The clear implication there is that McCain as president would be even more of a hawk than the deceiver who stuck us in this quagmire after declaring - five years ago today - that "major combat operations are over." (The ad itself ends with a priceless photo of Bush and McCain in an awkward love embrace.)

Nevertheless, when McCain's town-hall remarks are read in context, it's clear that he was not talking about 100 years of war; rather, he was arguing that some troops might be need to be stationed there for backup purposes, much as we have done elsewhere in the world. Here's the context that doesn't appear in the two TV ads:

"We’ve been in Japan for 60 years. We’ve been in South Korea for 50 years or so. That would be fine with me, as long as Americans, as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed. It’s fine with me and I hope it would be fine with you if we maintain a presence in a very volatile part of the world."

When Democratic chairman was asked about his ad on NBC the other day, he insisted that it did not seek to imply that McCain wants America to fight on for 100 years. Dean said, "We don't think we ought to be in Iraq for a hundred years under any circumstances." But if the Democrats really intended to cover all circumstances, they also would have used McCain's remarks about Japan and South Korea. They didn't, of course, because they wanted to leave the impression that McCain's was talking only about the prospects of a 100-year war.

We can legitimately debate whether McCain is right or wrong to believe that America can successfully fight its way to a longterm peacekeeping role, and whether the length of time it would take is worth the cost. But that's too nuanced for your basic 30-second attack ad, which requires that words be wrenched from context and used as a cudgel.

So the Republicans' annoyance is justified. And yet...OK, here's the thing:

They're the last people who should be crying in their beer about campaign falsehoods, given the fact that, over the past 20 years, they have perfected the art of distortion.

Two random examples from recent campaigns: George W. Bush, as a new candidate in 2000, had a line in his standard stump speech about how Al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet. While trailing Bush around New Hampshire and California early that year, I heard Bush deliver that line a dozen times. Problem was, Al Gore never claimed to have invented the Internet. He'd told CNN in 1999 that, as a congressman, he had taken the "initiative" in getting the Internet created - a claim that has been repeatedly confirmed by the Internet's tekkie pioneers. But the Republicans reduced the Gore remark to shorthand, and Bush repeated it endlessly until a sufficient number of Americans judged Gore to be a deluded blowhard.

Second random example: In the spring of 2004, Bush and a slew of GOP surrogates claimed that John Kerry, as a senator, "voted 350 times for higher taxes on the American people." Then it turned out that the Republican tally was a tad too flexible (they had counted things like Kerry's refusal to repeal the windfall profits tax on Big Oil, and his refusal to cut the federal tax on cigarettes). So the GOP retooled, and came back with a new message, this time that Kerry had voted to raise taxes "98 times." And that TV ad turned out to be a gross exaggeration as well.

The point is, I don't recall any Republicans fuming when Gore's words and Kerry's actions were twisted for political purposes. Two wrongs don't make a right, as our mothers used to say, but the GOP's veteran hardball players know full well that "politics ain't beanbag," as the American humorist Finley Peter Dunne used to say...and that, as the Bible tells us, you reap what you sow.

-------

"American Debate" is moving. Today's entry has been cross-posted at the new site, which will become the sole place for new postings beginning on Monday. The new address, suitable for book-marking, is http://go.philly.com/polman

Obama and the test of leadership

With respect to his former pastor, Barack Obama decided yesterday that it was no longer enough to merely reject and denounce. It had become imperative for Obama to nuke and bury.

He had no choice. Jeremiah Wright had turned into a one-man wrecking crew, and it was starting to look like Obama was just a passive bystander, a hapless witness to his own destruction, lacking the requisite guts to take the guy down. Most importantly, that kind of passivity is hardly the kind of character trait that many Americans want to see in a commander-in-chief. A real leader has to show that he can confront and isolate his adversaries. And Wright had indeed become an adversary.

So, referring to Wright's Monday rant on national television, Obama stated yesterday: "When I say I find (his) comments appalling, I mean it. It contradicts everything that I'm about and who I am. And anybody who has worked with me, who knows my life, who has read my books, who has seen what this campaign is about I think will understand that it is completely opposed to what I stand for and where I want to take this country...I have spent my entire adult life trying to bridge the gap between different kinds of people. That's in my DNA, trying to promote mutual understanding. To insist that we all share common hopes and common dreams as Americans and as human beings. That's who I am. That's what I believe. That's what this campaign has been about.

"(Monday), we saw a very different vision of America. I am outraged by the comments that were made and saddened over the spectacle that we saw...There has been great damage (to the Wright-Obama relationship). I do not see the relationship being the same after this."

OK, maybe that wasn't exactly nuke-and-bury, but it was far stronger than anything Obama had previously said. And he had to say it. Polls indicate that Obama has lost ground in both North Carolina and Indiana, both which stage primaries next Tuesday. And while Obama had previously stated that he had not attended church on the Sunday when Wright had blamed America for 9/11, there was no way he could plead obliviousness this time, not with Wright hitting the exact same theme live on CNN.

In recent weeks, most of the commentary (mine included) has focused on whether the Obama-Wright relationship would scare off a lot of white voters. But, based on an encounter I had late yesterday, I now think that, potentially, Obama's problem has much broader resonance.

I'm currently down in southern Mississippi, working on a long-scheduled freelance assignment totally disconnected from politics, but I did run into a Democratic strategist (yes, there are still a few in Mississippi), and naturally the Obama-Wright issue came up in conversation. His concern was Obama, by failing for so long to assail Wright in the strongest possible terms, was starting to look weak.

More specifically, this strategist feared that, in the eyes of swing voters (including the racially enlightened), Obama was starting to look weak; that many voters were perhaps starting to ask themselves whether this new phenom on the political scene was really tough enough to take on the likes of Ahmadinejad when he seemed so reluctant to handle Wright with the ruthlessness that is sometimes required of a chief executive.

So the question now is whether, for many voters, Obama's remarks yesterday come too late...and whether his severing of the relationship appears less principled than poll-driven.

--------

By the way, my road work in Mississippi may well mess with my blogging rhythm for the rest of this week. If new posts show up at odd times, or not at all, you'll know why.

-------

This entry has been cross-posted at the new "American debate" blog, which can be book-marked at http://go.philly.com/polman

Jeremiah Wright, honorary Republican mole

While watching the Rev. Jeremiah Wright hold forth yesterday at the National Press Club, I began to entertain the notion that perhaps the guy was a Republican mole - trained in secret and dispatched by Karl Rove, or by one of his proteges, with instructions to inflict maximum damage on the Obama campaign.

But no. There is no need for GOP mischief-makers to lift a finger, not when Obama's spiritual mentor seems capable of doing the work all by himself.

Here's Obama, trying to get his sea legs again after suffering a third consecutive big-state defeat, trying to convince downscale, modestly-educated whites in Indiana and North Carolina that he's not some scary apparition...and there's Wright, crashing into the news cycle four days running, offering up new provocative soundbites to replace the old.

Twenty years ago, Michael Dukakis, the Massachusetts governor and Democratic presidential candidate, was dragged down in part because the GOP hung Willie Horton around his neck. (Horton was the black con who committed rape and murder while participating in a Massachusetts prison furlough program.) But as scary symbols go, at least Horton wasn't out there on the stump, commanding a national audience, talking up the benefits of that Dukakis furlough program.

Obviously, I'm not equating Wright with Horton, or trying to demean the former by citing the latter. Suffice it to say that any beleaguered candidate would prefer that his albatrosses, whoever they might be, remain totally mute.

But not this guy. Clearly he seeks to defend his honor and reputation, admirable goals. But this is difficult to do in the midst of an unusually intense presidential campaign, where there is no guarantee that a black pastor's statements will be treated with the context that he demands. AIn political terms, all Wright managed to do yesterday was pour fuel on the fire and provide new material for YouTube.

For instance:

When asked whether he really believed that the government might have plotted to inflict AIDS on black people, he replied: "I believe our government is capable of anything."

When asked whether he wanted to back away from his 2001 assertion that America had to share the blame for what happened on 9/11, he replied: "You cannot do terrorism on other people and not expect it to come back on you."

And when asked about Obama's repeated attempts to distance himself from Wright, the pastor replied: "Politicians say what they say and do what they do because of electability...He had to distance himself because he's a politician."

For Republicans (and perhaps for Hillary Clinton), those first two statements are the equivalent of hot fudge sundaes with cherries on top. And the latter statement about Obama is arguably just as bad, because Wright was implying that Obama was merely distancing himself for reasons of tactical calculation, and not necessarily because of what the candidate might believe in his heart.

The Obama people have been knocked off their game by all this. It's evident by their multiple forms of response. One tactic, of course, is to simply blame the media (naturally); as strategist David Axelrod said last night on CNN, "I don't think it's taking (Obama) off message. Maybe it's taking you guys off message."

At another point, early yesterday, the Obama people insisted that the candidate would not say anything further about Wright. Then they decided, late yesterday, that Obama did need to say something, lest Wright own the day's news cycle. So he did, urging voters to focus on him, not on "folks in my past."

But it might be hard for voters to heed that advice, given Wright's insistence on crashing into the present.

-------

This entry has been cross-posted at the new "American debate" blog, which can be book-marked at http://go.philly.com/polman

Electability and the race factor

This is a very sensitive issue, but it needs to be discussed. When the unpledged Democratic superdelegates finally look hard at the electability factor, they will be compelled to judge whether Barack Obama would be a risky nominee because of his race.

In the end, this may not be a deal breaker. But right now it can hardly be ignored – not after what we learned in Pennsylvania, where, according to the final exit polls, 12 percent of white Democratic primary voters said that race mattered in their choice of candidate...and, of those whites, a whopping 76 percent chose Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama.

Think about that for a moment. If 12 percent of the white Pennsylvania Democratic electorate – in a closed primary, with no independent or Republican participants – were willing to tell exit pollsters eye to eye that race was an important factor, to Obama’s detriment, then it’s fair to surmise that the real percentage, recorded in private behind drawn curtains, was surely higher.

This race factor didn’t just surface for the first time in Pennsylvania; a similar, but less precise, statistic was recorded on March 4 in Ohio. In that primary, the exit polls reported that 20 percent of all Democratic voters saw race as important to their choice...and six in 10 of those voters picked Clinton over Obama.

A Democratic victory in November may well hinge on who wins the working-class whites in the Rustbelt states, and there will be much superdelegate chatter (though little of it in public) over whether Obama’s "post-racial" message can sufficiently resonate with those voters - especially after the flap involving Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Unfortunately for Obama, his former pastor has opted to spend his early retirement on the public circuit, chatting with Bill Moyers, addressing the NAACP in Detroit last night, and holding forth this morning at the National Press Club. (Bill Clinton's chatter has hurt Hillary during this campaign, but, potentially, he's chump change compared to how Wright's chatter could damage Obama.)

Superdelegates don’t want to believe in the Bradley Effect – so named for the black Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley, who in 1982 was thought to be a shoo-in for California governor until the election returns rolled in. They might prefer to believe in the Wilder Effect, so named for black Virginia gubernatorial candidate Doug Wilder, who was expected on election eve to win by 10 points but wound up winning by less than one. The basic theory is that a lot of whites will want to sound enlightened when talking to pollsters, but will yield to their baser instincts when alone in booth.

So I was curious how Obama would address that issue during his Sunday interview on Fox News, since it would surely come up. And it did. Chris Wallace cited the aforementioned Pennsylvania primary figures, and asked whether such sentiments impeded his "post-racial" message – and, presumably, his candidacy.

He immediately responded with an evasion: "Look at the general election polls. We are doing better against John McCain than Senator Clinton is."

Wallace asked about the worrisome results of an actual election that had just taken place, but Obama wanted to talk about the polls for an election that is still seven months away. He implied, in his response, that these polls are reliable indicators of November strength. But what worries some Democrats is that Obama’s poll numbers may overstate his actual performance once the votes are finally counted.

On Fox News Sunday, Obama never did address that Pennsylvania statistic. He settled on a simple optimistic assertion, without explaining his grounds for optimism: "Is race still a factor in our society? Yes. I don’t think anybody would deny that. Is it going to be the determining factor in a general election? No....What (people) are looking for is somebody who can solve their problems (and) pull the country together....I don’t think race is going to be a barrier in the general election."

But the race factor, which so many Democrats are loathe to contemplate, will loom even larger (at least backstage) if Obama loses big among the white working-class voters of Indiana, Kentucky, and West Virginia. And if some of those voters are wondering whether Obama ever sought out Rev. Wright to protest any of his sermons, it’s doubtful that the candidate allayed their concerns yesterday.

When Wallace asked Obama whether he had ever stated any objections to Wright, Obama evasively replied: "Keep in mind, it’s not as if his sermons were constantly political." So he never answered the question.

And so the unpledged superdelegates will continue to squirm. They may ultimately decide, arguably for good reason, that the Bradley Effect does not apply to Obama. But there are also these words, from the famed essayist Henry David Thoreau, writing in 1854: "Public opinion is a weak tyrant, compared with our own private opinion."

-------

Speaking of Wright, he got off a good line this morning at the National Press Club. When asked whether he was sufficiently patriotic, he replied, "I served six years in the military. Does that make me patriotic. How many years did Cheney serve?"

-------

And speaking of Indiana, it has been noted lately that the Hoosiers haven’t hosted a meaningful Democratic primary since 1968, when Robert Kennedy successfully battled Eugene McCarthy and a favorite son, Indiana Gov. Roger Branigan. I just ran across this anecdote about RFK:

While addressing an audience of white, affluent medical students at the University of Indiana, Kennedy spoke at length about the importance of providing better health care for the poor. An angry student challenged him, "Where are you going to get all the money for these federally subsidized programs you’re talking about?"

RFK’s instant retort: "From you."

The audience booed. Whereupon he proceeded to quote a French existentialist named Albert Camus: "If you do not do this, who will do this?"

Can you imagine any candidate replying in that fashion today?

-------

"American Debate" is moving. Today's entry has been cross-posted at the new site, which will be fully operational in early May. The new address, suitable for book-marking, is http://go.philly.com/polman

The "maverick" and elitism in action

I've spent the past few days monitoring the "maverick" - after all, the presumptive Republican nominee deserves some equal time in this race - and it's appropriate to conclude this burst of coverage by noting another example of how career Washington politician John McCain says one thing but does another.

Several weeks ago he skewered Barack Obama for uttering a few "elitist" words about small-town voters, but here, courtesy of McCain, we have a vivid case of elitism in action:

Last summer, when his original campaign organization imploded and he was severely strapped for cash, some observers wondered how McCain would keep himself in the race. After all, a candidate can't stump very effectively unless he has the means to travel. Theoretically, however, he did have one ace in the hole: his wealthy wife.

Cindy McCain, chairwoman of one of the nation's largest Anheuser-Busch distribution firms, and daughter of the rich guy who financed McCain's political career in 1980, just happened to own a midsized corporate jet. Flying in that jet would be a very effective way to slash costs and keep hope alive. But McCain last July specifically insisted that he would not tap his wife's assets in order to salvage his candidacy. He publicly stated: "I have never thought about it. I would never do such a thing..."

Well, apparently he was against "such a thing" before he decided he was for it - because he started flying on his wife's jet last August, and kept doing it all winter, well into the new year.

It should be emphasized that flying in a family jet is not illegal. The feds, however, have been trying to level the playing field, to ensure that rich candidates with their own planes don't have an unfair advantage. The feds are (slowly) working up some new rules that would require candidates enjoying such elitist assets to at least pay for the privilege - by ponying up roughly the same amount of money that it would cost to fly on a chartered corporate jet. But those rules have not been finalized yet, so McCain over a seven-month period reportedly paid a relative pittance for his plane travel.

Result: As a member in long standing of Arizona's economic elite, McCain landed in a comfortable safety net and seriously slashed his overhead costs when he needed it most. A less-endowed candidate with the same campaign financial headaches might have simply pulled the plug.

With the help of some family/corporate welfare, McCain was able to pull himself up by his bootstraps and weather his political crisis. The rest is history. These days, as the '08 GOP nominee, he's busy telling downscale voters that the key to their future prosperity hinges on making permanent the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy.

So, for the sake of argument, which is worse: Obama's elitist words, or McCain's elitist actions?

-------

But the big news is still the Democratic death march, and my Sunday print column deals with that.

-------

This entry has been cross-posted at the new "American debate" blog, which can be book-marked at http://go.philly.com/polman

He was against guilt-by-association before he was for it

Career Washington politicians such as John McCain sometimes violate the high standards they have supposedly established for themselves.

For instance, here was McCain yesterday, waxing indignant about Barack Obama's Chicago neighbor, academic William Ayers, the former '60s Weather Underground bomber. During a phone call with some conservative bloggers, McCain played the guilt-by-association game, demanding that Obama say he's sorry for knowing the guy:

"I think not only a repudiation, but an apology for ever having anything to do with an unrepentant terrorist is due the American people."

Yet here is McCain's chief strategist, Charlie Black, talking on MSNBC last month:

"What Sen. McCain has said repeatedly is that these candidates cannot be held accountable for all the views of people who endorse them or people who befriend them....(what) John McCain believes is that Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton should be held accountable for their public policy views, the things we've described before, big government versus smaller government...He believes that people who endorse you, people who befriend you, are entitled to their own views, but you are not held personally accountable. That when somebody endorses you or befriends you, they're embracing your views, the candidates' views, not the other way around."

-------

"American Debate" is moving. Today's entry has been cross-posted at the new site, which will be fully operational in early May. The new address, suitable for book-marking, is http://go.philly.com/polman