William Katz: Urgent Agenda
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SATURDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2008
FREE SPEECH FOR ME
Posted at 7:24 p.m. ET
Free speech for me, but not for thee. It's a familiar refrain of civil libertarians, warning of the attitudes of some Americans.
But those attitudes seem to be spreading into dangerous corners. In a short but important piece, Rich Lowry cautions about some disturbing trends in the Obama campaign, and the Obama movement. This is a matter of great concern to me as well, and I'll be writing about it in the future. Let's start with Lowry:
Barack Obama has already brought change. He's ended the "chilling effect."
Any restrictions on speech -- real or imagined -- were once inevitably deemed to have a "chilling effect" on people who would otherwise exercise their First Amendment rights if they weren't so frightened by the possibility of running afoul of the law. Claims of a "chilling effect" were the most reliable weapon in the American Civil Liberties Union's absolutist campaign against, say, even the most common-sensical laws against obscenity.
But the politics of free speech has been subtly shifting. Opponents of the ACLU on the Right are increasingly worried about overreaching rules against "hate speech" defining legitimate opinions as out of bounds. Meanwhile, the same people who forever decry the country's imminent descent into the dark night of fascism are now comfortable regulating political speech in federal law and banning speech on college campuses. The Left has learned to like some chill with its free speech.
Wonderfully stated. And more:
Enter the Obama campaign, which reflects the new ethos. It twice issued "Obama Action Wire" alerts for activists to call a Chicago radio station and try to shut down appearances by two Obama critics, writers Stanley Kurtz and David Freddoso. No "chilling effect" here.
And...
Enter the Obama campaign, which reflects the new ethos. It twice issued "Obama Action Wire" alerts for activists to call a Chicago radio station and try to shut down appearances by two Obama critics, writers Stanley Kurtz and David Freddoso. No "chilling effect" here.
And...
The Obama campaign's effort dovetails with the work of an outfit called Accountable America, run by a former MoveOn.org operative. It is devoted to threatening conservative donors with legal action and exposure of any embarrassing details of their private lives if they give money to groups running ads against Obama.
And...
Liberal editorial boards have apparently lost their former zest for the First Amendment. Consider this approving sentence from a New York Times editorial: "The wholesale descent into Swift Boat campaigning has been blocked -- for now -- by a federal judge in Virginia."
Those hero judges.
It's all just a taste of what's to come if Obama wins and Democrats have even bigger majorities in Congress, emboldening them to try to crush their antagonists once and for all. "Hate is not a family value" was a popular bumper sticker on the left during the 1990s. Now, the left has embraced hate as, if not a family value, the organizing spirit of its long assault on George W. Bush, and anyone else in the way, from Joe Lieberman to Sarah Palin.
Finally...
America's partisan politics has always featured its share of rancorous abuse, but there's something rancid at the heart of the new, blog-driven left that believes its bullying childishness has led the way out of the wilderness. This spirit will inevitably seep into an Obama administration. Whatever Obama's professions of his commitment to cross-partisan understanding, he's never confronted the left of his own party and has always been willing to engage in hardball when it suits his purposes.
And where is the ACLU? Are we serious?
Several years ago, one of the last of the great ACLU lawyers, a man truly devoted to the First Amendment, told me how worried he was about the anti-freedom trends in this country. He worried first about speech codes on college campuses, which teach young kids that such restrictions are permissible and desirable. Those kids will be in positions of power in 20 years, he cautioned, and will carry that logic with them. He worried about his own ACLU, and revealed that some members of the national ACLU board don't even believe in traditional free speech any longer.
The left is very good with words, far better than the right. It is also ruthless about power. It won't say it's restricting free speech when it tries to get talk radio off the air. It will say it's expanding opportunities for others, and improving the atmosphere in our nation. It will lie because it feels it has a right to lie, because it possesses "a higher truth." Among the worst offenders in the drive to limit speech will be journalists.
Remember that all totalitarian systems begin with words, not actions. If we slip into a kind of dictatorship, it won't be because the Army gets out of control or there are riots in the streets. It will be a soft ride, with assurances along the way that these "new standards" will elevate us. All dictatorial systems promise a kind of paradise to those who go along.
How many Americans will go along? Given the nature of our educational system, and the collapse of journalism's once-spirited defense of the First Amendment, I fear the answer to that question.
October 4, 2008. Permalink 
UPDATE AT 6:06 P.M. ET: A professionally knowledgeable reader makes the following comment about the Minneapolis Star-Tribune poll, which reported comedian Al Franken up nine points against incumbent Republican Senator Norm Coleman:
The STRIB poll showing Franken ahead of Coleman is obviously flawed. In the poll, Democrats outnumber Republicans by 17 points, 42-26. In this week's SurveyUSA poll, the Democratic advantage is only 7 points, 37-30. That poll's partisan spread is much closer to reality. Rasmussen, who just reweighted his polls based on 21,000 interviews over the last several weeks, puts the national Democratic advantage at 5.5 percent. Never have election-day exit polls shown anything like a 17-point Democratic advantage in the Minnesota electorate.
Larry Jacobs, who runs his own poll at the Humphrey Institute, has a low opinion of the polling done by Princeton Survey Associates for the STRIB. Princeton Survey Associates also does the national NEWSWEEK poll, generally considered one of the least reliable of the national polls.
So I think you can be confident about the SurveyUSA numbers this week, putting Coleman up by ten.
I will sleep more soundly tonight.
TRACKERS
Posted at 2:45 p.m. ET
The three trackers for the day are out. The news is not good. Only in Rasmussen did McCain show any gain, one point. Gallup has Obama up eight. It was seven yesterday. Hotline, which has now switched to likely voters, has Obama up seven.
There is no indication that the vice-presidential debate changed things. It's the old story: People don't vote for the vice president.
What's interesting is the actual percentages. Obama stands at 51 percent in Rasmussen, 50 percent in Gallup and 48 percent in Hotline. Even after all these months, he barely cracks 50 percent. This is not a pro-Obama vote. It's an anti-Republican vote. Unfairly, the party in the White House is taking the rap for the financial crisis, even though the Democratic Party is heavily responsible for the Fannie-Freddie collapse, and blocked any attempt at reform.
People won't blame the Democrats unless they have the information. The mainstream media doesn't seem eager to give it to them. We have still not seen a single inquiry into the convenient timing of this financial collapse, right in the middle of a presidential campaign.
And yet we must fight. This can be turned around, although the odds get longer by the day. There's a debate Tuesday. Take the gloves off, John.
The election is a calendar month from today.
October 4, 2008. Permalink
UPDATE AT 10:27 A.M. ET: From the Minneapolis Star-Tribune: DFL U.S. Senate candidate Al Franken has moved into his first solid lead over incumbent Republican Norm Coleman, according to a new Star Tribune Minnesota Poll. The survey, conducted Tuesday through Thursday by Princeton Survey Research Associates International among 1,084 likely Minnesota voters, shows Franken leading Coleman 43 to 34 percent. Independence Party candidate Dean Barkley is supported by 18 percent of respondents.
COMMENT: Minnesota has sent some fine people to the U.S. Senate. Now it's apparently ready to elect a hot-tempered comedian, and an obscene one at that. Are we going completely mad?
FURTHER UPDATE: Readers Check Zdeb and Albert Schwartz have alerted me to the historic inaccuracy of the Star-Tribune polls. Please see John Hinderaker's piece on this at today's Power Line, here.
UPDATE AT 9:49 A.M. ET: The Rasmussen tracker, just published, shows Obama up by six points, down one from yesterday. Trackers are done over a three-day period, and this one included Friday, the first polling day following the vice-presidential debate. If Rasmussen noticed a substantial change on Friday, he would have reported it on his website. There was no such report. The bailout bill was signed into law yesterday, and today will be the first full day of polling after that. Battleground doesn't report on weekends, so we have two other trackers that will list results today - Gallup and Hotline.
UPDATE AT 8:59 A.M. ET: From The Politico: In the aftermath of John McCain's decision to pull out of Michigan, Republicans in the state are expressing shock and bewilderment at his move—and aren't willing to cede the state's 17 electoral votes just yet. “We’re blindsided, along with everybody else in Michigan,” said Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson. “I feel like I woke up this morning and there was a note on my pillow.” “When the general leaves the battlefield when the fight’s still going on, it creates a lot of chaos,” he said.
COMMENT: Sarah Palin objects as well. We urged yesterday that the decision be reversed, and that Sarah be turned loose on the state. It might just happen.
UPDATE AT 8:09 A.M. ET: ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) -- Sarah Palin is the breadwinner and husband Todd is, well -- he takes a lot of deductions for his fishing and snowmachine racing careers, according to 2007 and 2006 federal tax returns released Friday. Sarah Palin makes $125,000 a year as Alaska governor. Plus, since she took the job in December 2006, she hasn't paid taxes on the more than $17,000 she received in controversial per diem payments for working out of the family's lakeside home in Wasilla -- some 575 miles from the capital of Juneau.
COMMENT: This is a disgracefully slanted story, typical of the AP these days. The apparent objection is that Todd Palin is middle class, building a business, and takes legitimate deducations. Compare please with the treatment of the Obamas, living in a mansion, making tons of money, no questions asked. Why was Michelle Obama paid such an inflated salary in her so-so job at the University of Chicago? Why was her salary doubled when her husband became a U.S. senator? Don't ask the AP to ask.
OPTIMISM
Posted at 7:48 a.m. ET
One key to turning this race around is keeping up troop morale. The mainstream media would love to declare the race over, give Obama his crown and celebrate the ultimate victory of the 1960s. They're not up to date, you know.
Bill Kristol, wisely, will have none of it. We can win this thing. Yes, accept the bad news as real, then determine a strategy to turn that bad into good. Kristol:
...this year's race has already--twice--moved by more than 6 points over a span of only a few weeks. The race went from McCain up 2 (these are the Real Clear Politics averages) on September 14 to Obama plus 6 on October 2, less than three weeks later. In the four weeks before that, the race had moved from Obama plus 5 on August 12 to McCain plus 2 on September 12.
So while there's reason for McCain-Palin supporters to worry, there's no reason to despair.
Exactly.
On Thursday night, Sarah Palin more than held her own in the vice-presidential debate against Joe Biden. She may well have stopped the McCain campaign's slide and, with her assaults on Obama's tax-and-spend liberalism and his willingness to lose in Iraq, set up McCain for a strong performance in Tuesday night's debate.
He's got to deliver. No more Mr. Nice Senator.
McCain can go on the offensive for the final weeks.
But what kind of offensive?
The positive component is pretty straightforward: McCain and Palin are common sense conservatives and proven reformers. The record of reform can be emphasized and contrasted with Obama's and Biden's record of conventional, go-along, get-along liberalism. And implicitly: If McCain and Palin are reformers and outsiders, it's not Bush's third term. More important is the negative message. The McCain campaign has to convince 51 percent of the voters they can't trust Barack Obama to be our next president. This has an ideological component and a character component.
You mean, we have a right to ask about Obama's character? Wait. My pills!
Character is a legitimate issue. Obama hasn't shown much in the way of leadership or political courage, and he's consorted with dubious figures. It's fair to ask whether Barack Obama is personally trustworthy enough to be president, and the McCain campaign shouldn't be intimidated from going there.
That's the key word: Intimidated. There is far too much intimidation in this campaign. The race card is played, in a subtle way, almost every day. There are whole areas of Obama's life that seem to be out of bounds, beyond a wall. Mr. McCain, tear down that wall!
But one shouldn't underestimate the ideological issue, and the potency of the fact that Obama and Biden are orthodox liberals. They're for raising taxes, federally funding abortions, naming activist judges, and losing wars. The American people may think--they do think--the country's on the wrong track, that the Bush administration has made too many mistakes and that the Republican party's no great shakes. But they haven't suddenly become liberals. And they probably aren't crazy about the prospect of a liberal administration governing unchecked, hand in hand with a liberal Congress. During the next four weeks, the McCain-Palin campaign should make this risky prospect vivid.
That's good advice.
October 4, 2008. Permalink
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2008
MICHIGAN
Posted at 6:43 p.m. ET
There are reports that Sarah Palin, who may have better instincts than anyone else on the McCain team, disagrees with the campaign's decision to pull out of Michigan. Good for Sarah.
In an interview with Fox News today, vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin said she questioned the decision by John McCain’s campaign to pull its resources out of Michigan.
According to a story posted on Fox News’ Web site, Palin she and her husband would “be happy” to campaign in Michigan, which the McCain campaign announced Thursday it would be pulling resources from to concentrate on efforts elsewhere.
And...
The McCain campaign did not immediately respond to questions from the Free Press whether Palin’s desire to stump in Michigan could change the campaign’s prior decision, either allowing her to visit Michigan on behalf of the ticket or possibly convince McCain’s strategists to let staff remain and TV ads to be purchased again.
Now, guys, let's get imaginative. Sarah Palin should say, very publicly, "I want to go to Michigan. People are hurtin' there. My husband is a member of United Steelworkers of America, and we don't abandon our people."
Then, she goes to Michigan with her union-member husband and tears across the state. It would be electric. Could she turn the state around? I have no idea. Would it be great campaign theater, that would excite the base, and maybe a good number of independents throughout the nation? You betcha.
Oh, wait. I'm not allowed to say that. I'm Eastern. I worked in Washington. I should have said, "I'll place a wager with you."
Yuch.
Get Sarah to Michigan. Great move.
October 3, 2008. Permalink
UPDATE AT 3:03 P.M. ET: The House has now passed the bailout package, 263-171. The key point is that the House passed the Senate version, which means no negotiating between the houses of Congress will be needed. Bush will sign.
COMMENT: The political question here is whether McCain can push the presidential debate beyond the economic tsunami we just experienced, and get back on track. The Dems will do everything they can to milk the issue, and the press will oblige with daily, breathless reports on Wall Street numbers. We hope that Americans will, in the last month of the campaign, focus on other issues as well.
TRACKERS
Posted at 2:57 P.M. ET
All four trackers are now out. The last, Gallup, has Obama up seven, a gain of two from yesterday. As previously reported, Hotline has Obama up six, Rasmussen seven, Battleground five.
Three of the four trackers now have Obama up by more than five, and moving into landslide territory. It is incredible. This question mark, about whom the media will tell us so little, could win the presidency by Reaganesque margins, and bring a leftist Congress with him.
Sarah Palin has done her part to prevent this, but I wonder if any minds were changed by the vice-presidential candidate. The next presidential debate is Tuesday. Obama won the first simply by appearing presidential. His campaign has no real substance. Even the much-heralded enthusiasm for him as "the one" has largely evaporated, except among the young, the African-American, and the fringes. Americans seem ready to punish the Republicans, yet show very little confidence in the man they may well anoint on election day. There is no reason to believe that McCain will change anything Tuesday. Obama wins just by standing there and doing a good impersonation of a president.
Add to this a financial crisis whose timing will not be investigated by any mainstream publication, and the greatest press bias in recent history, and we have a perfect storm.
I suspect McCain knows this, and it has him beaten down. I believe that the next two weeks, not four, are the most critical of the race. If McCain gets out there, uses Sarah Palin effectively, and closes to within three points by October 17th, he can close the deal. If he can't, he'll just drift, discouraged, toward defeat.
As Dick Morris points out, McCain has tactics, but doesn't seem to have a strategy. Maybe we'll see a change in the next few days. We'd better.
My audio today is on the subject of October surprises. (Go here.) There could be such a surprise, but McCain can't wait for one. We now need the fighter pilot, not the getalong senator.
As Mike Scully points out, John Hinderaker at Power Line has suggested that Sarah Palin do some talk radio every day. Great idea.
We have a month. This country has depended on John McCain before. It needs him again.
October 3, 2008. Permalink
UPDATE AT 11:18 A.M. ET: Two more trackers are out. Hotline has Obama up six. They had him up five yesterday. But Battleground, which had Obama up five yesterday, has him up three today.
UPDATE AT 9:55 A.M. ET: Rasmussen, just out, continues to show Obama up seven, unchanged from yesterday. The survey was done before last night's vice-presidential debate. Trackers are taken over a three-day period, so the first reaction to the debate won't be evident until results are posted tomorrow. Monday's results will include surveys taken entirely after the debate.
BROOKS ON SARAH
Posted at 8:12 a.m. ET
Most of the editorial comment I've researched this morning is pretty predictable. The self-righteous, self-appointed "observers" of American life continued their condescending attitude toward Sarah Palin. It will take time for the medicine to wear in. Right now, many "journalists" just hope to run out the clock on John McCain.
David Brooks of The New York Times passes the sobriety test. I think he gives an accurate assessment of what happened last night:
There are some moments when members of a political movement come together as one, sharing the same thoughts, feeling the same emotions, breathing the same shallow breaths. One of those occasions occurred Thursday night when Republicans around the country crouched nervously behind their sofas, glimpsed out tentatively at their flat screens and gripped their beverages tightly as Sarah Palin walked onto the debate stage at Washington University in St. Louis.
There she was, resplendent in black, striding out like a power-walker, and greeting Joe Biden like an assertive salesman, first-naming him right off the bat.
Just as the midcentury psychologist Abraham Maslow predicted, Republicans watching the debate had a hierarchy of needs. First, they had a need for survival. Was this woman capable of completing an extemporaneous paragraph — a collection of sentences with subjects, verbs, objects and, if possible, an actual meaning?
By the end of her opening answers, it was clear she would meet the test. She spoke with that calm, measured poise that marked her convention speech, not the panicked meanderings of her subsequent interviews.
And, of course, the subsequent interviews were edited for broadcast, and you had the feeling that those doing the work were members of "Editors for Obama."
On Thursday night, Palin took her inexperience and made a mansion out of it. From her first “Nice to meet you. May I call you Joe?” she made it abundantly, unstoppably and relentlessly clear that she was not of Washington, did not admire Washington and knew little about Washington. She ran not only against Washington, but the whole East Coast, just to be safe.
To many ears, her accent, her colloquialisms and her constant invocations of the accoutrements of everyday life will seem cloying. But in the casual parts of the country, I suspect, it went down fine. In any case, that’s who Palin is.
Which is why so many "ordinary" Americans love her.
Biden, for his part, was smart, fluid and relentless. He did not hit the change theme hard enough. He did not praise Barack Obama enough. But he was engaging, serious and provided a moving and revealing moment toward the end, when he invoked the tragedy that befell his own family and revealed the passion that has driven him all his life.
Still, this debate was about Sarah Palin. She held up her end of an energetic debate that gave voters a direct look at two competing philosophies. She established debating parity with Joe Biden. And in a country that is furious with Washington, she presented herself as a radical alternative.
By the end of the debate, most Republicans were not crouching behind the couch, but standing on it. The race has not been transformed, but few could have expected as vibrant and tactically clever a performance as the one Sarah Palin turned in Thursday night.
Good, good, good.
October 3, 2008. Permalink
SARAH
Posted at 7:15 a.m. ET
The poll results following last night's debate are pretty much what we'd expected - Biden won on substance, Palin on everything else. Palin was the star, Biden the experienced debater. People talked about Palin after the debate. Biden was the other guy.
Sarah Palin saved John McCain's campaign once again, just as she saved it by being that electric figure who thrilled the conservative base of the Republican Party at the convention. No, she didn't have Biden's knowledge, and no one could say, after the debate, that she was the most "qualified" to be vice president. But she reached people and moved them. The Washington-Ivy League axis may hate her, but I'm reminded of the old political explanation for why New York City has rent control - because there are more tenants than landlords, and the tenants vote. There's a big country out there, and very few of its residents went to Princeton or work inside the Washington beltway.
Sarah won by not losing, and she did more. Again, she became the most talked-about of the four candidates, this time for doing well. Gone was the Sarah of the sit-down interviews. Back was the Sarah we loved.
I don't know if her performance will move the McCain/Obama preference polls. Voters may have a second thought and lean toward the more experienced Biden over the more exciting Sarah. Also, the mainstream media will spin this the way it's spun everything else this season, and continue its in-the-tank-for-Obama "reporting."
But Sarah has given McCain breathing room.
The question is: What does John McCain do with this moment? Had Sarah collapsed, the race would have been over. She's provided a relaunching platform for the remainder of the campaign. Now McCain must seize the chance. He's got to come alive again, take Sarah with him and go on a nationwide whistlestop tour. The two together are dynamite. The two apart are far less effective.
I'm sure McCain understands that Sarah is the star attraction. A national train tour will be a great show, and that's what McCain needs right now.
Apparently, Sarah was prepped by the McCain A-team. That A-team does good work. I hope they've got the next stage planned right now. This race can be turned around.
October 3, 2008. Permalink
"What you see is news. What you know is background. What you feel is opinion."
- Lester Markel, late Sunday editor
of The New York Times.
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