SmartRemarks

Palin in a $2500 Valentino jacket

As The Politico has reported and The Huffington Post’s Sam Stein has elaborated (complete with a slideshow), the Republican National Committee has spent over $150,000 on clothing and makeup for Sarah Palin and her family since the beginning of September, including a single Needless Markup Nieman Marcus spree that ran to over $75,000.

Now, this may seem like a trivial issue to raise in the final weeks of a high-stakes political campaign, when genuinely important issues are on the table (and at least one side has been trying to talk about them)… but remember, these are the people who raised a hue and cry about John Edwards’ $400 haircut. This is the campaign that’s pulling out of swing states and crying about how it can’t afford enough advertising. And this comes when McCain and Palin are trying their damnedest to relate to “Joe the plumber” and other working-class, middle-American voters.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s amazing the kinds of things that can share a single news cycle sometimes.

On the one hand, Joe “the Plumber” Wurzelbacher is discovering that he was no better prepared than Sarah (“Bible Spice“/”starbursty winks“/”ethical violations“) Palin to be plastered all over the media as a symbol of “ordinary Americans,” and it’s really not much fun. Turns out he doesn’t have a plumbing license. And he doesn’t make anywhere near $250k/year. And he owes back taxes. And he’s a distant relative of Charles Keating. In light of all this, the McCain campaign (after kicking him into the spotlight in the first place) has developed instant amnesia about poor Joe… and even though he not only opposes the very concept of graduated income taxes but even thinks Social Security is “a joke,” he’s now realizing that he was “used by the Republican Party as a pawn to make their point.”

Say it ain’t so, Joe.

Meanwhile…

In that media niche that actually concerns itself with matters of substance, it turns out that Joe also was registered to vote under a misspelled name. Which makes him exactly the kind of Ohio voter the GOP was trying to purge, until (as the Washington Post reports) the Supreme Court put the kibosh on that today.

Continuing in a substantive vein, the Post also endorsed Barack Obama today, in a piece that summarizes his qualities accurately and concisely:

There are few public figures we have respected more over the years than Sen. John McCain. Yet it is without ambivalence that we endorse Sen. Barack Obama for president. …

Mr. Obama is a man of supple intelligence, with a nuanced grasp of complex issues and evident skill at conciliation and consensus-building. At home, we believe, he would respond to the economic crisis with a healthy respect for markets tempered by justified dismay over rising inequality and an understanding of the need for focused regulation. Abroad, the best evidence suggests that he would seek to maintain U.S. leadership and engagement, continue the fight against terrorists, and wage vigorous diplomacy on behalf of U.S. values and interests. Mr. Obama has the potential to become a great president. Given the enormous problems he would confront from his first day in office, and the damage wrought over the past eight years, we would settle for very good. …

Mr. Obama’s temperament is unlike anything we’ve seen on the national stage in many years. He is deliberate but not indecisive; eloquent but a master of substance and detail; preternaturally confident but eager to hear opposing points of view. He has inspired millions of voters of diverse ages and races, no small thing in our often divided and cynical country. We think he is the right man for a perilous moment.

There’s endless debate about whether endorsements carry any weight with the voting public, of course, but this one is notable nevertheles for how succinctly it reflects public sentiment at this historical moment.

Along which lines, suspense is still mounting over whether the Chicago Tribune will break with 150 years of loyalty to Republican presidential candidates and endorse Obama. That would definitely make news.

In the wake of Sarah Palin’s revival of the unconscionable smear that Obama is “palling around with terrorists” (and Joe Lieberman’s shameful abandonment of any and all scruples by defending that smear as raising “legitimate questions”—about the candidate who put his own progressive cred on the line to endorse Joe in Connecticut’s 2006 Senate race!)…

…this public statement is worth sharing. It’s reasonably well documented at this point that Obama’s relationship with Ayers was a relatively casual professional one, and that Obama does not support the vandalism the Weather Underground committed decades ago. What’s not getting heard is that there’s nothing wrong with Bill Ayers, period. While Ayers himself is keeping his profile prudently low, 900-plus fellow educators and scholars are speaking up to make that point:

We write to support our colleague Professor William Ayers, Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who is currently under determined and sustained political attack. Ayers is a nationally known scholar, member of the Faculty Senate at UIC, Vice President-elect of the American Educational Research Association, and sought after as a speaker and visiting scholar by other universities because of his exemplary scholarship, teaching, and service. Throughout the 20 years that he has been a valued faculty member at UIC, he has taught, advised, mentored, and supported hundreds of undergraduate, Masters and Ph.D. students. He has pushed them to take seriously their responsibilities as educators in a democracy – to promote critical inquiry, dialogue, and debate; to encourage questioning and independent thinking; to value the full humanity of every person and to work for access and equity. Helping educators develop the capacity and ethical commitment to these responsibilities is at the core of what we do, and as a teacher he has always embraced debate and multiple perspectives.

…

The current characterizations of Professor Ayers—“unrepentant terrorist,” “lunatic leftist”—are unrecognizable to those who know or work with him. It’s true that Professor Ayers participated passionately in the civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s, as did hundreds of thousands of Americans. His participation in political activity 40 years ago is history; what is most relevant now is his continued engagement in progressive causes, and his exemplary contribution—including publishing 16 books— to the field of education. The current attacks appear as part of a pattern of “exposés” and assaults designed to intimidate free thinking and stifle critical dialogue. Like crusades against high school and elementary teachers, and faculty at UCLA, Columbia, DePaul, and the University of Colorado, the attacks on and the character assassination of Ayers threaten the university as a space of open inquiry and debate, and threaten schools as places of compassion, imagination, curiosity, and free thought. They serve as warnings that anyone who voices perspectives and advances questions that challenge orthodoxy and political power may become a target, and this, then, casts a chill over free speech and inquiry and the spirit of democracy.

To right-wing ideologues still trying to refight the battles of the ’60s, of course, there’s no room for forgiveness. (Except for the players who were demonstrably on the wrong side, like John McCain’s “good friend,” ex-con G. Gordon Liddy.) Those people will never vote for Obama anyway; they’re too determined to stay on the wrong side of history. For reasonable people open to considering actual relevant information, however, it’s important to offer opposition to the kind of widespread propaganda this election season has brought forth.

Every once in a while I run across something online that cries out for broader exposure, and this is just such an item. Hilarious. Enjoy and share!

General McClellan Responds to Sarah Palin

Dear Governor Palin,

George B. McClellan here. I am writing you urgently about last evening’s goddamned debate, where you cited my comments on Afghanistan as a defense for Senator McCain’s proposed “surge” in Afghanistan. The goddamned media is really all over you. They say you didn’t mean to refer to me. That I’ve been dead since 1885, and you clearly meant General David D. McKiernan. They say you don’t know what you’re talking about. Don’t worry Palin, you stick to your guns. They said the same things about me after Antietam, goddamn sunken road. You’ve got a good future ahead of you.

The problem though, Palin, and I’ll be blunt, is that history has not remembered me kindly. They say that I couldn’t put away Robert E. Lee. They say I was a coward. They say I was elected Governor of New Jersey and didn’t even know it. I’m pretty fucked.

Accordingly I respectfully ask that you refrain from quoting me or implying my support in this campaign. People just don’t like you guys. It won’t do.

…

Seriously Sarah, just leave me out of this. I fought hard and I loved those men of the Potomac. I know from strategies that work and strategies that keep you on a goddamned bloody lane years longer than you need to be. You’re on the wrong side of history here, just like me. You’re running against goddamned Abe Lincoln. You can’t win this and you shouldn’t.

Give John my best.

Sincerely and most respectfully,

General George B. McClellan

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 »

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.

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!)

Palin

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.