SmartRemarks

Just a month ago (although it seems like a political lifetime now), progressives, liberals, and Democrats of every stripe were wailing and gnashing their teeth at how popular Sarah Palin was with the public, and what a surge John McCain had made in the polls, and how Barack Obama would surely snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and dash everyone’s hopes. The mainstream punditocracy and the blogosphere alike were awash in armchair quarterbacking, urging free advice of every sort on the candidate:  Obama needed to be angrier, to show his passion. He needed to be more soothing, to avoid frightening (white) voters. He needed to attack Palin. He needed to ignore Palin. He needed to rebut deceptive attacks. He needed to avoid seeming defensive. He needed to move to the left, to reassure his base. He needed to move to the right, to capture independents. He needed to be all things to all people simultaneously, and yet never forget to show the strength of his convictions. He needed to reframe everything.

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Tags: Election 2008, McCain, Obama

Tonight’s second presidential debate is being billed as a “town hall” format. But here are the rules:

Tuesday’s match-up at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn., will be moderated by NBC’s Tom Brokaw, with the questions to be culled from a group of 100 to 150 uncommitted likely voters in the audience and another one-third to come via the Internet. … Brokaw selects the questions to ask from written queries submitted prior to the debate, according to the “contract.”

An audience member will not be allowed to switch questions. Under the deal, the moderator may not ask followups or make comments. The person who asks the question will not be allowed a follow-up either, and his or her microphone will be turned off after the question is read. A camera shot will only be shown of the person asking — not reacting.

While there will be director’s chairs (with backs and foot rests), McCain and Obama will be allowed to stand — but they can’t roam past their “designated area” to be marked on the stage. McCain and Obama are not supposed to ask each other direct questions.

So no follow-ups from anyone, period—not the audience, the moderator, or the candidates. That’s a pretty damn tightly controlled “town hall.” At least the first debate, with Jim Lehrer, allowed for a certain amount of give-and-take. This one sounds like nothing but a forum for reciting talking points.

(And where do they find that many “uncommitted” voters at this stage of the game, anyway?)

Nevertheless, I’ll be watching it, and coming back here later to update this post with reactions. My expectations, however, are not high.
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Tags: debate, Election 2008, McCain, Obama

Last week brought the release of DCU Decisions #2. While I was ambivalent about the first issue, I have to say I’m seriously underwhelmed by the second. Perhaps it’s just that the dramatic real-world political and economic events of recent weeks make this story seem painfully superficial by contrast… but honestly, even judged just as a comic, I think it’s heading rapidly downhill.

Neither the political themes nor the mystery story go anywhere interesting (or really much of anywhere at all), and the writing is tonally uneven and shows a poor grasp of the characters. Even the art is lackluster; Howard Porter’s work here doesn’t compare well to his own past work, much less to Leonardi’s in the previous issue. (I understand Porter is recovering from a thumb injury, though, so we can cut him a little slack.)

The story deserves no such generosity.
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Tags: Batman, DC Comics, DCU Decisions, Election 2008, Green Arrow, Green Lantern, super-heroes

Well, she absolutely had what it takes to win… if this had been an eighth-grade student council debate. Going up against a grown-up, though, Sarah Palin was mismatched.

An event like this is all about the image you convey to those inexplicably undecided voters out there—the crowd that hasn’t been following the race closely, beyond a few broad brushstrokes they’ve picked up from TV, but that nevertheless can swing an election. And with that goal in mind, just like last week, the two candidates tonight had mirror-image goals going into the evening. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Biden, debate, Election 2008, McCain, Palin

No question, it’s going to be really interesting to see Sarah Palin in a live debate Thursday night.

The latest clip from her interview with Katie Couric is just, well, flabbergasting. IMHO it outdoes “In what respect, Charlie?” and even that instant classic “I’ll try to find some and I’ll bring ‘em to ya.” Seriously,  get this:

COURIC: And when it comes to establishing your world view, I was curious, what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this — to stay informed and to understand the world?

PALIN: I’ve read most of them again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media —

COURIC: But what ones specifically? I’m curious.

PALIN: Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me over all these years.

COURIC: Can you name any of them?

PALIN: I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news.

See? Obviously, she’s much smarter and better read than Bush:  when it comes to news sources, she reads all of them! She must be wicked fast. (That’s probably why she can’t name any of them! Just zipped right past the titles…)

You really couldn’t make this sort of stuff up.

Tags: Election 2008, Palin

So, tonight, an estimated sixty million people watched John McCain turn in a debate performance that probably left his campaign wishing he’s stuck to his promise to stay away, and that will surely cost him a few more points in the polls.

I write this before having exposed myself to any mass-media spin or blogosphere analysis:  this is straight unadulaterated personal reaction. I went to a public screening of tonight’s presidential debate at the Chicago History Museum, in an auditorium that was packed to capacity. It was, no question, a room chock-full of Obama supporters… but we didn’t have to grant the hometown guy a handicap to see him come out ahead.

Before the debate began, there was an hour-long panel discussion with a group of journalists and political scientists. It was interesting: not only the panelists but, I’d wager, most of the audience were dedicated political junkies. We’d been following the details of the campaign for months. We could, as the discussion made clear, anticipate what both candidates were likely to say, how they were likely to say it, and how they meant to position themselves by saying it that way. It was also clear that what we wanted to hear was not necessarily the same as what we expected to hear or what the candidates “needed” to say. It left me wondering… who exactly was the real target audience for this debate? Who constitutes the population that approaches such a thing in genuine suspense, not as political theater but as a source of information that could actually influence their votes? Certainly, the media covering it was and is even more jaded than those of us in the auditorium. Are there really that many genuinely undecided, “low-information” voters out there?

Then we settled in for the actual debate…

…and the best I can say for McCain is that, well, he had definite moments of lucidity.

In between them, though, were broad stretches where he was barely coherent—stringing non sequiturs together, interrupting himself with odd anecdotes, randomly repeating lines, and dropping (what were no doubt scripted to be memorable) sound bites with dull thuds at inapropos moments.

There were points where I found myself wincing in embarrassment for him. (The effort to pronounce Ahmadinejad?) McCain was clearly trying to paint his opponent as naive and unprepared, but he was the one who came across as unready and unsure of himself. He was the addled grandpa you humor and listen to because he has some interesting life stories, but whom you wouldn’t  trust to make any important decisions.

Obama, by contrast, was smart, sharp, and on point. He answered Lehrer’s questions clearly and directly. He understood all the issues. He responded to McCain’s attempted attacks in a matter-of-fact way, not returning cheap shot for cheap shot but instead keeping things serious:  e.g., the way he pointed out McCain’s absurd caricature of what it means to negotiate with adversarial heads of state. And he made some painfully accurate points about the way McCain’s current rhetoric doesn’t match his record, and about the urgent need to take a big-picture approach to setting national priorities and restoring America’s reputation in the world.

Of course, despite all this, 30% of the population out there will still be die-hards who insist that McCain was distinguished and dignified and the clear winner. We can safely ignore them. To the extent that the hypothetical audience I was wondering about really exists, though? To the extent that anyone was still undecided?… Well, I certainly can’t imagine that McCain won any of them over tonight.

Updated to add:

And the instant poll results seem to agree with me:

CBS News and Knowledge Networks conducted a nationally representative poll of approximately 500 uncommitted voters reacting to the debate in the minutes after it happened.

Thirty-nine percent of uncommitted voters who watched the debate tonight thought Barack Obama was the winner. Twenty-four percent thought John McCain won. Thirty-seven percent saw it as a draw.

Forty-six percent of uncommitted voters said their opinion of Obama got better tonight. Thirty-two percent said their opinion of McCain got better.

Tags: debate, Election 2008, McCain, Obama

What?  No, not like that!  Ick.  Get your mind out of the gutter.

What this is about is her polling numbers. In the past week, to put it succinctly, they have tanked. On September 11, people viewed her “favorably” 17% more often than “unfavorably”; by September 17, that spread had reversed to 1% less favorable than unfavorable. That’s quite a swing.

It’s interesting to observe that September 11 was the day her interview with Charlie Gibson aired, the first opportunity the public had really had to see how she handles herself off-script. (“Bush Doctrine? What’s that?”) The McCain campaign doesn’t seem inclined to let her do that any more. Indeed, they’re even dispatching their own people to speak for her and take over the spin about the investigation of her “troopergate” scandal. (And didn’t that label already get used during the Clinton years, BTW? Are we reduced to recycling -gate based scandal names now?)

Just for fun, here’s a chart of the drop. (Notice that McCain’s own favorable/unfavorable numbers aren’t doing too great either!)

Tags: Election 2008, McCain, Palin, polling

Sometimes politics and comics do cross-pollinate, notwithstanding what I wrong in my inaugural post.

Yesterday DC Comics released the first issue of DC Universe: Decisions, a four-issue mini-series in which the Justice Leaguers find themselves involved in the political intrigue of a presidential election. There was some controversy (and outright derision) when this title was first announced, centering around the idea that the book would at best be wishy-washy and pointless, and at worst would wind up offering insultingly simplistic caricatures of both serious political ideas and DC’s characters.

DC’s pantheon of super-heroes has always included a handful of characters with overt political identities. On one end of the spectrum is Green Arrow, an outspoken leftist (at least since Denny O’Neil gave him a personality back in 1970), who once even won office (in his civilian identity) as mayor of his hometown Star City; on the other end is Hawkman, a law-and-order conservative. For the most part, however, DC’s characters remain carefully apolitical. While fans can argue at length about why Superman or Batman is liberal or conservative (and there’s at least some persuasive evidence either way), the publisher has no interest in resolving the ambiguities: a large part of the appeal of DC’s most popular characters lies in audience identification, and there’s no percentage in alienating half of your fans by stripping that away. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: continuity, DCU Decisions, Election 2008, Green Arrow, Lex Luthor, Superman

And how did it get that way?

To my surprise and amusement, out of the reams of commentary produced over the last year or two, one of the best summaries I’ve seen showed up attached to the Semiannual Report from the mutual fund company behind some funds I own. In a “Message from the President” attached to the report, MainStay Investments president Stephen Fisher, attempting to explain why customers shouldn’t panic just because every sector of the market is tanking at once, offered a impressively succinct and logical account of just what chain of events and combination of factors created this mess. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: economy, Election 2008, financial crisis, housing, inflation, investing, unemployment

It’s been interesting times since Sarah Palin was chosen as John McCain’s running mate two weeks ago—political theater at its highest and lowest. Coming in the wake of the Republican Party’s rebuke of any of McCain’s even remotely moderate policy leanings in its hard-right official platform, it was little surprise that the party also pushed him away from his preferred choices for a running mate, someone like Joe Lieberman or Tom Ridge, and forced him to choose the more ideologically doctrinaire Palin in order to shore up the “base” of the GOP, the die-hard 28-percenters who still support Bush.

And it’s no surprise at all that the party has completely ignored McCain’s earlier vows to keep the campaign itself dignified and serious. From the repeated lies about Palin’s record regarding the “Bridge to Nowhere” and other earmarks, to the sleazy attack ad distorting Obama’s record on sex education, to the faux outrage over Obama’s “lipstick on a pig” remark, any pretense of dignity is long gone.

I find it disappointing that the McCain campaign is stooping to such bottom-feeding, Rovian tactics… disappointing, yes, but not at all surprising. He’s not even pretending to take the kind of stands he ran on eight years ago, and anyone who still imagines that he could be any kind of “maverick” in office with the GOP power structure cracking the whip like this just hasn’t been paying attention.

What I find really interesting, though, and indeed genuinely surprising, are two other trends. One, from all appearances the only people (in public or in the larger media) really buying into the sycophancy toward Palin are the hard-right ideologues, the diehard Bush supporters who would never have voted for Obama under any circumstances anyway but now have a fresh face they can support with more enthusiasm than they had for McCain himself. (I think any recent shift in the polls is largely due to Palin bringing a lot of the lunatic fringe off the fence and back into the “likely voter” camp; and even so the recent evidence of a “swing” seems largely due to overcounting Republican voters.)

Two — and this is the reassuring thing, in the wake of much wailing and gnashing of teeth and armchair strategizing from the blgosphere last week provoked by the fear that Palin might be a “game changer” — the media’s not playing along this time. Its enchantment with McCain seems to have worn off since his campaign dragged the media itself into the line of fire, and suddenly everywhere you turn someone’s calling out his misleading, deceptive, diversionary, and generally sleazy tactics for what they are. And it’s not just liberal pundits like Paul Krugman. I mean, when such a died-in-the-wool creature of the Beltway establishment as Time’s Joe Klein starts complaining that you’re taking cheap shots, you know you’ve crossed a line. Or Jim Lehrer calling the campaign “dishonest” and “dishonorable.” Or the Associated Press. The hosts of The View. Even Bill O’Reilly (!). Really, pretty much everyone is talking about about how McCain’s reputation for “straight talk” has derailed.

That’s the narrative that’s emerged in the last few days, and that’s the narrative the rest of the public, aside from the true believers, is going to pick up. Both Obama and McCain promised to run a different, more serious kind of campaign. Only one of them is sticking to it.

Tags: Election 2008, McCain, media, Palin