SECOND EVENING POST:  JUNE 26,  2008

Posted at l0:58 p.m. ET

VULGAR, VULGAR

Kathleen Sibelius, the governor of Kansas, is widely regarded as a top contender for vice president on an Obama ticket.  Now the question is whether she helped herself or hurt herself by an utterly vulgar, smear performance this week.  Maybe she considered it an audition.  If so, Obama has an obligation to comment, and distance himself.  From the Wichita Eagle:

Echoing comments by Barack Obama, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius predicts that Republicans would undertake "a major effort to try and frighten people about him" because of his race.

"That has been the Republican playbook for the last eight years," said Sebelius, an Obama ally. "'He's not qualified, he's somebody who should scare you. He's too liberal.' "

Sebelius, a two-term Democrat who is often mentioned as a possible running mate for Obama, said those were all "code words" to try to make voters uncomfortable.

"I don't think anybody's going to go directly at the race issue, but that's going to be an underlying theme," she said in an interview this week.

Obama said much the same thing to an audience in Florida last week.

"They're going to try to make you afraid of me," the presumptive Democratic nominee said. "'He's young and inexperienced and he's got a funny name. And did I mention he's black?' "

That's disgraceful.  Obama was properly rapped for his comments, which played the race card awfully early in the campaign.  Apparently Sibelius is doing some major sucking up.  They ought to get off this theme before they create a backlash.  Senator McCain has never suggested that race would or should be a factor.

Republicans respond:

Asked about those comments, the presidential campaign of Republican Sen. John McCain referred to a memo in March from campaign manager Rick Davis. It pledged "to run a respectful campaign based on the issues" and not to engage in "overheated rhetoric and personal attacks."

During the primaries, McCain prevailed on the North Carolina GOP to pull an ad attacking two Democrats who had endorsed Obama by alluding to the scandal over his former pastor's racial comments.

We knew accusations of racism would fly in this campaign, and there are certainly racists out there.  But the McCain people have honored their commitment.  The Obama people speak of a new kind of politics.  Could we please see it?  Sometime?

June 26, 2008.      Permalink          

FIRST EVENING POST:  JUNE 26,  2008

Posted at 6:54 p.m. ET

OPTIMISTIC BRIT

And now the good news.  Gerard Baker, periodically cited here, is one of the most astute observers of the U.S. currently toiling for the British press.  He insists, bucking his leftist colleagues, that we are not dying, decadent losers.  He claims, in fact, that we are winning the war on terror, and makes a cogent argument:

My centre is giving way. My right is in retreat. Situation excellent. I shall attack!”

If only our political leaders and opinion-formers displayed even a hint of the defiant resilience that carried Marshal Foch to victory at the Battle of the Marne. But these days timorous defeatism is on the march. In Britain setbacks in the Afghan war are greeted as harbingers of inevitable defeat. In America, large swaths of the political class continues to insist Iraq is a lost cause. The consensus in much of the West is that the War on Terror is unwinnable.

And yet the evidence is now overwhelming that on all fronts, despite inevitable losses from time to time, it is we who are advancing and the enemy who is in retreat.

You'll find our victories on page 61 of The New York Times.  More:

Until the US-led invasion in 2001, Afghanistan was the cockpit of ascendant Islamist terrorism. Consider the bigger picture. Between 1998 and 2005 there were five big terrorist attacks against Western targets - the bombings of the US embassies in Africa in 1998, the attack on the USS Cole in 2000, 9/11, and the Madrid and London bombings in 2004 and 2005. All owed their success either exclusively or largely to Afghanistan's status as a training and planning base for al-Qaeda.

In the past three years there has been no attack on anything like that scale. Al-Qaeda has been driven into a state of permanent flight. Its ability to train jihadists has been severely compromised; its financial networks have been ripped apart.

Then there's the other front, where we're really losing.  Aren't we?

The “surge" (in Iraq), despite all the doubts and derision at the time, has been a triumph of US military planning and execution. Political progress was slower in coming but is now evident too. The Iraqi leadership has shown great courage and dispatch in extirpating extremists and a growing willingness even to turn on Shia militias. Basra is more peaceful and safer than it has been since before the British moved in. Despite setbacks such as yesterday's bombings, the streets of Iraq's cities are calmer and safer than they have been in years.

There's actually more.  Look for a move to ban this writer from American college campuses:

The third and perhaps most significant advance of all in the War on Terror is the discrediting of the Islamist creed and its appeal.

This was first of all evident in Iraq, where the head-hacking frenzy of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his associates so alienated the majority of Muslims that it gave rise to the so-called Sunni Awakening that enabled the surge to be so effective.

But it has spread way beyond Iraq. As Lawrence Wright described in an important piece in The New Yorker last month, there is growing disgust not just among moderate Muslims but even among other jihadists at the extremism of the terrorists.

But how can that be true?  Has Barack said it?  Jimmy Carter?  The other prophets?

There ought to be no surprise here. It's only their apologists in the Western media who really failed to see the intrinsic evil of Islamists. Those who have had to live with it have never been in much doubt about what it represents. Ask the people of Iran. Or those who fled the horrors of Afghanistan under the Taleban.

Finally...

The right response to the loss of brave souls such as Corporal Sarah Bryant, the first British woman to die in Afghanistan, is not an immediate call for retreat. It is, first of all, pride; a great, deep conviction that it is on such sacrifice that our own freedoms have always rested. Then, defiance. How foolish is the enemy that it might think our grief is really some prelude to their victory? Finally, confidence. We are prevailing in this struggle. We know it. And everywhere: in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and among Muslims around the world, the enemy knows it too.

This Gerard Baker is dangerous.  Dangerous, I say.  Why, Barack tells us the war in Iraq should never have been fought.  How can anyone disagree with Barack?  Baker sows disunity, doubt, and a questioning of progressive ideas.  I propose that he be dragged before John Conyers's committee in the House and asked one blunt question:  "Are you or have you ever been an optimist?"  That should put him away.

June 26, 2008.      Permalink          

AFTERNOON POST:  JUNE 26,  2008

Posted at 4:36 p.m. ET

TRACKERS

The tracking polls are steady.  Rasmussen has Obama up four over McCain, and Gallup continues to show a tie.  Averaging, that's a two-point lead.

But is it?  The chatter about polls that I hear today deals more with the gap between the tracking polls and two standard polls showing Obama well ahead.  Newsweek has him 15 points up and L.A. Times/Bloomberg shows him with a 12-point lead.  The obvious question:  Why the large gap between these polls and the trackers?  And the pretty obvious answer is that each poll has its own specifications for who gets polled.

If you'd like to read one pollster's view of the gap, Scott Rasmussen has an article today here, trying to explain it.  Please remember that Rasmussen is defending his own approach, and has a vested interest in it. 

Rasmussen argues that the gap derives from how each pollster sees the importance of party loyalty.  Just about all pollsters agree that party identification is one of the strongest indicators as to how voters vote.  Rasmussen:

However, the challenge lies in finding the “right” mix of Republicans, Democrats, and unaffiliated voters. Some pollsters, including many academic and media pollsters, argue that partisan identification is fluid and changes frequently. This approach suggests that whatever partisan mix falls out from the results of a random sample is the “right” answer. In the case of the recent L.A. Times poll, this mix was 39% Democrats and 22% Republicans.

Polls that use this approach tend to produce a more volatile set of results (during Election 2004, one national firm reported results days apart that showed more than a ten-point swing in voter preference).

Others, including most political polling firms and Rasmussen Reports, argue that people rarely change their partisan affiliation (how many people do you know who consider themselves a Republican one day and a Democrat the next?). This approach produces more stable results. During Election 2004, Rasmussen Reports polling data never showed either candidate ahead by more than 3 points in our weekly data. Week-to-week changes were never bigger than a point-and-a-half.

This stable view of the electorate seems more intuitively correct. It is unlikely that large segments of voters change their views frequently during the campaign.

And that is one explanation.

By the way, the most interesting polling result of the day, also from Rasmussen:

Just 37% of voters nationwide think that Hillary Clinton wants Barack Obama to win the White House this November. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 33% disagree and say that Clinton does not want an Obama victory. Thirty percent (30%) are not sure.

I have a different take.  I'm shocked that as many as 37 percent of Americans think Hillary Clinton wants Barack Obama to win.  Where is their political acumen?  Where is their judgment of her character?  Where is their common sense? 

If Hillary Clinton truly wants Obama to win, it would constitute one of the greatest religious conversions in history.  Hillary Clinton, if she's a normal pol, with blood still flowing from a pumping heart, has only one thing in mind, mumbled just before she sleeps each night - 2012, 2012, 2012.  Holy, holy, holy.

June 26, 2008.      Permalink          

THURSDAY:  JUNE 26, 2008

Posted at 6:58 a.m. ET

ALL ABOUT BARACK

Well, it won't star Bette Davis, but, according to Karl Rove, this campaign could be a movie called "All About Barack."  It isn't meant as a compliment.  True, Rove is an intense partisan, but he makes some excellent points about the increasingly egotistical campaign of the young Illinois senator:

Many candidates have measured the Oval Office drapes prematurely. But Barack Obama is the first to redesign the presidential seal before the election.

His seal featured an eagle emblazoned with his logo, and included a Latin version of his campaign slogan. This was an attempt by Sen. Obama to make himself appear more presidential. But most people saw in the seal something else – chutzpah – and he's stopped using it. Such arrogance – even self-centeredness – have featured often in the Obama campaign.

Correct.  And if McCain can bring that out, it can wound Obama.  Character, personality, a sense of modesty, all play key roles in a candidate's appeal, or lack of it.  Rove notes a revealing moment.  When Obama's pastor repeated anti-American remarks at the National Press Club, Obama didn't throw him under the bus because of those comments:

Instead, Mr. Obama complained, "I don't think he showed much concern for me."

Translation: Rev. Wright is an impediment to my ambitions.

And...

Last month he replied "anywhere, anytime" to John McCain's invitation to have joint town hall appearances. Last week he changed his mind. Fearing 10 impromptu town halls, Mr. Obama parried the invitation by offering two such events – one the night of July 4, when every ambulatory American is watching fireworks or munching hot dogs, and another in August. His spokesman then said, "Take it or leave it." So much for "anywhere, anytime."

And...

Mr. Obama has now also played the race card, twice suggesting in recent weeks that Republicans will draw attention to the fact that he's black. Who is unaware of that?

Yeah, it's hard to miss, although TV sets do vary in rendition.  More:

Mr. Obama's alpha-male attitude was evident even as he stumbled towards and over the primary finish line. First, his campaign announced in May it was talking to Patti Solis Doyle after Sen. Clinton fired her as campaign manager. This served only to pour salt in the Clintons' wounds.

Then, after the primaries ended June 3, Mr. Obama's campaign leaked word that Leon Panetta (a Clinton supporter who'd apparently angered the Clintons by persistent criticism of their performance) and Ms. Doyle would conduct its outreach to the Clinton camp. Ms. Doyle was named chief of staff to the as-yet-to-be-chosen vice presidential running mate. All this was pointless, but reveals a disposition certain to manifest itself in other ways.

I'll be he makes his staff eat health food.  More:

Mr. McCain will be helped if he uses Mr. Obama's actions to paint his opponent as someone driven by an all-powerful instinct to look out only for himself. In a contest over who is willing to put principle above personal ambition and self-interest, John McCain, a war hero and a former POW, wins hands down. That may not be the most important issue to voters in electing a president, but it's something they will rightly take into account.

They'd better take it into account, unless they want 40-foot-high pictures of the president mounted on the White House lawn and hanging from the Lincoln Memorial.

June 26, 2008.      Permalink          

JUST AN ORDINARY MAN

More scrutiny of the sainted Illinoisan.  Mr. Obama now claims that, underneath, he's just an independent:

Clout and corruption scandals that have plagued Chicago and Illinois politics in recent years have not laid a glove on Barack Obama, he told reporters here Wednesday.

"You will recall that for my entire political career here, I was not the the endorsed candidate of any political organization here," the Democratic presidential hopeful said at the Westin Hotel downtown. "I didn't go around wielding a bunch of clout. My reputation in Springfield was as an independent."

Now wait.  This guy holds the trophy for being the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate, and he's suddenly an independent?  When did this occur?  Was there a cleansing?  A baptism?  And something else:  I read in the paper - I just looked it up again - that one William Daley, former Clinton secretary of commerce, is a key adviser to Obama.  The mayor of Chicago is Dick Daley.  You don't think they're related, do you?  Like brothers?  Well...yeah.  Isn't that kind of a political machine?  Well, maybe it's a civic society.  Convince yourself.  Oh, the story kind of says it:

Obama did run (for State Senate) as an independent Democrat but worked closely with state Senate President Emil Jones, an old-school organization Democrat. Obama runs for president with the full blessing of Mayor Daley.

Just blessings, though.  No political affiliation whatsoever.  Why, these men hardly know each other.  They're as distant as Obama was from Rev. Wright.

Maybe that's not the thing to say.  Not nice.

June 26, 2008.      Permalink          

THE BEAR IS BACK

Something else that MoveOn.org won't be concerned about.  It seems the Russians are going back to an old technique:

Russian bombers have stepped up provocative flight exercises off the Alaskan coast, reminiscent of Cold War incursions designed to rattle U.S. air defenses.

U.S. Northern Command, which protects North American airspace, told The Washington Times that TU-95 Bear bombers on 18 occasions the past year have skirted a 12-mile air defense identification zone that protects Alaska. The incursions prompted F-15s and F-22 Raptor fighters to scramble from Elmendorf Air Force Base and intercept the warplanes. The last incident happened in May.

The venerable propeller-driven TU-95 came to symbolize the Cold War, as did its counterpart, the U.S. B-52 Stratofortress.

And...

Moscow's sophisticated show of force has some in the Pentagon paying more attention to the long-term goals of a Russian military, which is being rebuilt with proceeds from the country's huge oil and gas revenues. NORAD is more sensitive than ever to wayward aircraft, given the Sept. 11 attacks by hijackers and the lack of military coordination at the time to track, and perhaps destroy, the planes.

And...

"Putin is trying to get the military rejuvenated and trying to show they are a military power," said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas G. McInerney, who commanded NORAD's Alaska region. "He's doing it for a whole host of things. It's really muscle-flexing."

And...

The retired general called the exercises "coordinated attacks coming into our air defense identification zone. They are very sophisticated attack training maneuvers. These incursions are far more sophisticated than anything we had seen before."

Please remember two things:  First, Russia has been supportive of Iran.  It's in Russia's long-term interests that we face a belligerent Iran while Moscow rebuilds its forces with oil money.  Second, Barack Obama is widely expected to try to cut the defense budget substantially.  Add that to the reasons he must not be elected.

June 26, 2008.      Permalink