Osler's Razor

Bill Kristol makes a lot of good points in the NYT column. I recommend a full reading of the article.

I like this quote (which would be my focus, if I were the captain of the Titanic at this point):

"And he [McCain] can point out that there’s going to be a Democratic Congress. He can suggest that surely we’d prefer a president who would check that Congress where necessary and work with it where possible, instead of having an inexperienced Democratic president joined at the hip with an all-too-experienced Democratic Congress, leading us, unfettered and unchecked, back to 1970s-style liberalism."

Bottom Line: divided government is the single most compelling reason to vote for McCain right now.
 

Hey, Farmer, you ready to go on Thursday?
 

Excellent photo to blog representation.

"Oh, wicked, bad, naughty Zoot!"
 

In re Thursday: I am chomping at the bit.

In addition to some political spewing (in which I might even take on the dreaded Mike M. in a game of history jeopardy), I also intend to offer a list as lagniappe (and to prove that I am really a man):

Ten American Films That Tell the Story of Who We Are.
 

Kristol makes some fair points, but he also perpetuates some myths about the McCain campaign that have been floatign around since at least January.

1) MYTH: McCain's team is almost eniterly made of of old Bush advisors, and that's somehow dragging him into the mud.
FACT: Bush has been president for the past eight years, and if you made a name for yourself in Republican politics at any time during that eight years, you're going to be somehow connected to Bush. A few top McCain advisors were also top Bush advisors, but the majority are simply Republicans who have been working in politics under a Bush administration. Sure, McCain has moved closer to some Bush-type positions, but I have yet to see one example of how Bush-style CAMPAIGNING (whatever that really means) has hurt him. It won him the nomination, remember, and he only started to sink when the economy did.

2) MYTH: The Obama campaign is a well-oiled machine that is rolling over McCain's rust old jalopy.
FACT: Obama has some excellent people on his team and they've come up with some great stuff (e.g., their text-message army of young voters). But they also rely heavily on the community organizer, campus rally, ACORN-style get-out-the-vote efforts that are utterly unreliable and have sunk many a local candidate. The grassroots of the campaign are very, very shallow in key areas. McCain, on the other hand, started with the Bush/Cheney GOTV mechanism that won in 2000 and 2004, and actually improved upon it. In all of the battlegrounds, practically every potential McCain voter has had solid campaign contact from the begining. Obama has just entered some of these arenas.

3) MYTH: If McCain could just be himself (or a real "centrist conservative"), he could win. FACT: This is the BS Republican pundits tell themselves as they armchair quarterback a campaign that is probably doomed. Yes, the McCain camp could have made some better choices, in the early stages and in response to the current crisis. But there are larger forces at work, forces that I don't think even the best messaging could overcome. Peoples' retirement savings have just evaporated, and Obama promises them free government money (read up on his "tax breaks"--many are really tax rebates, even for people who have no tax liability--and he talks openly of wealth redistribution). The Obama illusion may be unbeatable in the current climate.
 

McCain seems like he really needs a good night of sleep, and maybe a scotch and water.
 

4) MYTH: The campaign has degenerated into a "shouting match" that somehow profanes the political process.
FACT: This is exactly the same kind of campaigning that has shaped out political discourse from the begining. Washington and Adams were called closet monarchists (an awful insult post-revolution), just as Obama is called a closet Anti-American Muslim and McCain a closet Bush. The only difference today (maybe due to the faster news cycle and the internet) is that we equate everything the political allies and surrogates say with the candidate's own words. And notice that Kristol wants McCain the pull Rev. Wright BACK into discussion. Again, these are the bitter words of a guy who wishes he could be advising the campaign personally, but never got a phone call.
 

Wow, my typing skills took a nose dive over the last half-hour. Maybe coffee IS giving me a false sense of urgency...I hope the last couple comments are at least decipherable.
 

More importantly, where did you get that amazing picture of us?
 

Just a note in re some of Jesse's points:

I don't think Kristol asserts that the McCain campaign is top-heavy with Bushies. Rather, I am pretty sure that is Prof. Osler's interpretation.

Also, in re attacks, Kristol doesn't say that they are somehow beneath the American political conversation. He says they are not working.

Kristol:

Not because they’re illegitimate. I think many of them are reasonable. Obama’s relationship to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright is, I believe, a legitimate issue. But McCain ruled it out of bounds, and he’s sticking to that. And for whatever reason — the public mood, campaign ineptness, McCain’s alternation between hesitancy and harshness, which reflects the fact that he’s uncomfortable in the attack role — the other attacks on Obama just aren’t working. There’s no reason to think they’re suddenly going to.
 

What makes Kristol really hilarious: In his October 5 column he describes his telephone interview with Sarah Palin, during which they both agreed that the campaign must attack Obama harder on his "associations," ending with "She paused, and I was about to thank her for the interview, but she had one more thing to say. “Only maybe I’d add just a couple more words, and that would be: ‘Take the gloves off.’ ” And maybe I’d add, Hockey Mom knows best."

Then, in an October 7 Fox News appearance, he urged McCain to use Bill Ayers to attack Obama in the debate.

This was one week ago.
 

I think the big reason McCain is staying away from Rev. Wright is because he's got his own virulent preacher association in Rev. John Hagee.
 

Waco Farmer: I don't mean to say that these are Kristol's verbatim assertions, rather that this is the kind of echo-chamber process piece that has been sniping McCain for the past few weeks. The general tenor is "something's wrong with McCain's campaign/messaging/new persona," when the real problems are largely unrelated to what Kristol and others say they are.

Bottom line, if you're not already a conservative or Republican voter, there is very, very little that McCain can do to get you on his side of the fence right now. And we can't really fault him for that.
 

Justin:

I think probably most of us know about Barack Obama's twenty year association with Rev. Wright--but can you tell us more about the relationship between John McCain and John Hagee?

I may be a little foggy on what all that entails?
 

Rev. John Hagee made statements condemning the Catholic church as a "Godless theology of hate," as well as many controversial comments about Judaism and Islam. John McCain accepted the endorsement of Rev. John Hagee. McCain, like Obama, repudiated the comments Hagee made. However, McCain continued to accept the endorsement. While he may not have had the same type of relationship that Obama had with Rev. Wright, he certainly doesn't want to harp on this, lest voters (particularly Catholic ones) be reminded that McCain's religious endorser isn't much better.
 

Jesse:

No worries. You make a lot of cogent points. I am with you on 4 wholeheartedly, agree on 1 for the most part, hope there is some truth to 2, and agree with 3 to the extent to which I understand your point.
 

McCain is going to lose and people like Kristol are going to start jumping off the ship so they can seem like they saw it coming all along. Nothing new here. I'm with Jesse.

Just a quick note from a couple of days ago regarding the discussion we had about dirty campaigning and whether it was a recent phenomenon. I found this article to be a very interesting read:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/12/AR2008101201966_pf.html

I know, the author isn't a political science professor so that calls into question everything he says, but I still think the anecdotal evidence* is strongly in my favor.

*Anecdotal evidence in this case being juxtaposed against random assertions, paranoia, and hatred of any press that dares question liberal dogma (Fox News).
 

In re jumping ship: Bill Kristol does have a history of "always being right" (just ask him).

Another sure sign that this one is in the refrigerator for Obama is the advent of the Clintons unconflicted and unabashedly for Obama.

Having said that, nobody knows anything. This has been the most fluid election in my memory. I expect McCain to make a hard charge in the next few weeks. The question is whether he can come back far enough in so little time. Unlikely--but not impossible....
 

First a minor point.... McCain's association with Hagee is tangential at best. McCain never attended his church.

My observation is that McCain has lurched from theme to theme ever since the convention. He started with "Country First," and the notion that we should put personal desires to the side and think of a cause greater than our own individual self interest.

But then the campaign started running weird attack ads against Obama for sex ed program votes and something else that got negative attention.... and the attacks on Palin got pretty fierce.

The economy started to tank and McCain looked both blindsided and opportunistic.

During the debates, he looked angry and pissy, not happy and relaxed. I have no brief for George Bush, but I am convinced that his ability to look unfazed by Gore and Kerry during their debates helped him win.

And much to my irritation, he didn't respond to Obama's shots at his tax plan and his health care plan. There are good points in favor of both.. the difference is philosophical, but McCain let Obama shoot them down without firing back.

I have to agree, things don't look good for him right now. But I gotta say that his economic proposals unveiled today look a heckuva lot better than the proposals Obama unveiled yesterday.

Obama wants to allow us to take money out of our IRAs without penalty. Idiotic if you ask me! Isn't one of the big problems that people are not saving enough? Talk about robbing Peter to pay Paul.

I believe Obama will cut middle class taxes just as much as Clinton did when he promised to do so in '92... In other words, he won't, just like Clinton did not.
 

I wasn't laughing at the Prius, just at your lame attempts to do a doughnut in the neighbor's front lawn -- a lost art as rear wheel drive goes they way of the dinosaur.
 

Yeah-- apologize to them for me and replace the divot, 'k? Stupid Prius. My attempt to outrun cops on 95 failed, too. That always works in my regular car...
 

As I've back-channeled to IPLG, I used to be a member of the GOP, and I voted for McCain in my state's 2000 primary. I liked *that* McCain very much.

But I don't really recognize the John McCain of 2008, nor do I believe his running mate is any kind of asset at all. I do not understand this need to kowtow to "the base," because I can't conceive how "the base" would have voted against him.

Besides, it seems to me that, through the process of the primaries, the party as a whole said it did not want to be defined as, or by, "the base." Had McCain chosen someone like Bloomberg to run with him, I might have given that ticket serious consideration.
 

As The Prof and TT know, I've done lots of politics. And although the so-called "base" of both parties is a small percentage of the electorate, candidates need them. These are the folks who knock on doors, put bumper stickers on cars, make phone calls and do the so-called "grass roots" work that we all admire in a vacuum, but abhor when confronted with in person.

And yes, they will stay home if not enthused. I've seen it happen.

What's interesting here is how far to the middle Obama has moved since last winter. He was FAR LEFT on a lot of issues, like the war in Iraq, nuclear energy and off shore drilling. He's not anymore. But the Democratic base is sufficiently charged up with hatred of Bush and the GOP that it doesn't matter.
 

IPLG:

The ideological positions of Obama on the "far left" (what we call the far left here is sort of middle left in other cultures) were what drew me to him. But, as the campaign has run on, I still find myself unable to support John McCain in any way. Obama moderated some of his ideological/legislative stances, I think, in a move to appeal to a broader spectrum of voters.

Lefties like me know that we're not going to get candidates at any level that truly support our positions, not in a country that still considers "communism" and "Marx" dirty words. More to the point, we also know that we're not going to get an executive with the kind of carte blanche to push ideological positions through the legislature and get socialistic or communistic laws. So instead, we tend to support the guy that might not run as far in the opposite direction from our views as possible.