SECOND EVENING UPDATE:  JUNE 12,  2008

Posted at 6:57 p.m. ET

OBAMA THE VAGUE

Gary Andres, at Real Clear Politics, has a cutting, analytical look at the Obama campaign, and comes to some chilling conclusions.  I consider this a companion piece to Tony Blankley's essay, published here last night, demanding greater press scrutiny of Senator Obama.

...I'm unsatisfied with describing 2008 as a "change" election. Every election is about change. When was the last time you heard candidates describe themselves as "champions of the status quo?" Or, "I'm the person who will keep everything just the way it is?" Some kind of change is promised in every campaign. What will the candidate do differently? How will he or she tackle a problem? How can we improve?

And...

Start with the substance of change each offers. Democratic strategists know Mr. Obama possesses a huge vulnerability here. America is a center-right country. According to the latest Rasmussen poll, only 25 percent of voters describe themselves as "liberal." And based on the same Rasmussen surveys, 67 percent believe Mr. Obama is a liberal. By way of comparison, only 53 percent viewed John Kerry as a liberal at the end of the 2004 campaign. It's hard to imagine a center-right country - once voters focus on the candidates' ideology - will elect a person who nearly seven out of 10 believe is a liberal....

...Only 47 percent viewed Mr. Obama as a liberal in December, according to the same Rasmussen surveys referenced above - meaning a 20-point climb in just five months. That reality is like fingers scratching a blackboard for the Illinois senator's partisans.

Obama supporters know he can't win if his real political views become widely known, and they are taking pre-emptive steps to bat down that perception. Blogger John Henke writing at TheNextRight.com noted earlier in the week that one tactic among liberal bloggers will be to pre-emptively delegitimize criticisms of Obama as "racist."

And...

And Americans should care about his ideology. Teamed up with a Democratic Congress, an Obama administration could usher in the most liberal, special-interest-dominated period in American history. Power will shift to Washington as labor lobbyists, trial lawyers and environmental activists will have a heyday pulling all the levers of power.

There is no evidence that Mr. Obama would move to the center on any of his policies. We certainly don't hear about it in his campaign rhetoric.

Finally...

One of the best teachers I ever had - Leland Ryken, professor of literature at Wheaton College - likes to say that every good story tells the reader what happens in the plot. But a great story shows us how, in concrete ways. The same is true when it comes to politics. Everyone agrees we want change in America. But Mr. Obama has not answered the fundamental question of how.

If he thinks partisan difference will melt away, he's naive. If he believes he can bludgeon conservatives and moderates to adopt his liberal policy agenda, he's dangerous. Neither sounds like the type of person a majority of Americans want as their next president.

That's well put.  However, Mr. Obama is also filtered to us through a media that is hopelessly biased.  The glaring liberalism can be softened in news reports.  The "post-partisan" image, and it's only an image, can be underlined. 

And Mr. Andres is right that the race card will be played, and played.  It won't just be that critics will be accused of racism.  The entire nation will be made to feel a bit "racist" if we don't give this man to the world.  After all, we'll be asked, what will America look like the day after the election if Obama is defeated?   What will Africa think?

This will not be a pretty campaign.

June 12, 2008.      Permalink          

FIRST EVENING UPDATE:  JUNE 12,  2008

Posted at 6:19 p.m. ET

POLLS

Gallup did not publish a tracker today.  Rasmussen did, showing Obama up six over McCain:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Thursday shows Barack Obama attracting 47% of the vote while John McCain earns 41%. When “leaners” are included, Obama still holds a six-point advantage, 50% to 44%. Obama has clearly received a modest bounce since clinching the nomination. Prior to his final victory on June 3, he was essentially even with McCain. Now, Obama has enjoyed a five-to-eight point advantage on each of the past seven days (see recent daily results). New polling shows that the Obama bounce has also given the Democrat his largest lead of the year in Iowa, Washington, and Michigan.

Other polls also show Obama up about six points.  He must now be assumed to be the frontrunner.

The election is four and a half months away.  There'll be many changes in the polling, but McCain must develop a sense of urgency.  Conditions this year do not favor him, and Robert Novak commented yesterday that the press is more in the tank for Obama than it was for Kennedy in 1960.  The election seems to be about Obama.  Sometimes, the way some outlets cover it, you'd think he was the only candidate.

June 12, 2008.      Permalink          

THURSDAY:  JUNE 12,  2008

Posted at 6:58 a.m. ET

NEVER CHANGES

We've been trying to nudge Libya back into the "family" of nations for some time, but apparently there's been a relapse:

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi said on Wednesday that U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's expressed support for Israel stems from his fear that the Mossad would assassinate him, just as it did President John F. Kennedy.

"We suspect he may fear being killed by Israeli agents and meet the same fate as Kennedy when he promised to look into Israel's nuclear program," Gaddafi said.

And...

"We fear that Obama will feel that, because he is black with an inferiority complex, this will make him behave worse than the whites," Gaddafi told a rally at a former U.S. military base on the outskirts of the Libyan capital Tripoli.

Libya was recently president of the UN Security Council.  Why doesn't that surprise me?

If Obama were smart, he'd publicly reprimand Gaddafi over his statements.  It could be a great moment, but I don't think it will happen.  The loony left would go nuts.

June 12, 2008.      Permalink          

CANADIAN "FREEDOM"

Adam Liptak, in The New York Times, writes an excellent piece on freedom of speech and press, and what's happening to it in "progressive" countries.  The hook, of course, is that Mark Steyn, one of the best columnists of our era, is on trial in Canada for writing impure things.  Canada is a country where freedom is being squeezed by leftist concepts of how people should think and act:

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — A couple of years ago, a Canadian magazine published an article arguing that the rise of Islam threatened Western values. The article’s tone was mocking and biting, but it said nothing that conservative magazines and blogs in the United States do not say every day without fear of legal reprisal.

Things are different here. The magazine is on trial.

And...

The Maclean’s article, “The Future Belongs to Islam,” was an excerpt from a book by Mark Steyn called “America Alone” (Regnery, 2006). The title was fitting: The United States, in its treatment of hate speech, as in so many other areas of the law, takes a distinctive legal path.

“In much of the developed world, one uses racial epithets at one’s legal peril, one displays Nazi regalia and the other trappings of ethnic hatred at significant legal risk, and one urges discrimination against religious minorities under threat of fine or imprisonment,” Frederick Schauer, a professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, wrote in a recent essay called “The Exceptional First Amendment.”

“But in the United States,” Professor Schauer continued, “all such speech remains constitutionally protected.”

And...

While the Ontario Human Rights Commission dismissed a complaint against Maclean’s, it still condemned the article.

“In Canada, the right to freedom of expression is not absolute, nor should it be,” the commission’s statement said. “By portraying Muslims as all sharing the same negative characteristics, including being a threat to ‘the West,’ this explicit expression of Islamophobia further perpetuates and promotes prejudice toward Muslims and others.”

A separate federal complaint against Maclean’s is pending.

Mr. Steyn, the author of the article, said the Canadian proceedings had illustrated some important distinctions. “The problem with so-called hate speech laws is that they’re not about facts,” he said in a telephone interview. “They’re about feelings.”

“What we’re learning here is really the bedrock difference between the United States and the countries that are in a broad sense its legal cousins,” Mr. Steyn added. “Western governments are becoming increasingly comfortable with the regulation of opinion. The First Amendment really does distinguish the U.S., not just from Canada but from the rest of the Western world.”

I'll take that distinction and run with it. 

Another problem with hate-speech laws, possibly the greatest problem, is that they can easily be used as political weapons, punishing groups the government doesn't like, and protecting those it does. 

Harvey Silverglate, a civil-liberties lawyer quoted in the article, told me some time ago that he was worried about the future of freedom in the United States because of the example set by colleges, many of which have speech codes ostensibly designed to create a cordial atmosphere, but which are selectively enforced, depending on who is offended. 

The First Amendment, as Steyn says, really does set us apart.  We should remember that the next time we get a lecture from "human rights" activists in other countries.

June 12, 2008.      Permalink          

THE LEARNING OBAMA

Obama just got burned again. He had to let go Jim Johnson, one of the vetting party he'd selected to examine v.p. prospects.  Jim Hoagland of The Washington Post examines how Obama handled this latest crisis.  The seasoned Hoagland, who's seen many come and go, is not overflowing with praise:

After Johnson was portrayed in the Wall Street Journal as having received favorable treatment from Countrywide Financial Corp., a mortgage company Obama has frequently attacked, the Democratic presidential candidate immediately labeled Johnson as being only "tangentially related to our campaign."

Shifting into overdrive, Obama added that "these aren't folks who are working for me," referring to Johnson and his two associates on the vice presidential vetting team, Caroline Kennedy and Eric Holder.

It was enough to make you wonder if the three had somehow broken into Obama's office, stolen his letterhead stationery and appointed themselves to interview the capital's good and great about who should join Obama on the Democratic ticket.

Bull's eye.  And more:

But what is important here is what this incident says about Obama, not about Johnson. The senator's initial reaction was to portray himself as too busy to keep up with the obscure financial doings of people who are not significant to the campaign and to belittle the media for asking him to "vet the vetters."

To treat Johnson, Holder and Kennedy suddenly as mere fact-checkers is as disingenuous as it is ungracious. Obama is clearly the most intelligent candidate of either party since Bill Clinton. But he can outsmart himself if he goes on expecting the media and the public to accept just about any explanation he gives.

Well put, but I wonder if Obama is "clearly the most intelligent candidate of either party since Bill Clinton."  On the basis of what?  His college transcript?  The comparison itself damns with faint praise.  Clinton got into plenty of trouble, and got himself impeached, despite his grade-point average.  Political intelligence is not the same as academic intelligence.  Obama has to learn that, and his handling of this latest episode indicates that he's only just begun.

June 12, 2008.      Permalink