A Post-Cold War Military

So the NYT has the latest story in a debate stretching back to the Clinton administration about the desirability of continuing to fund the F-22. In brief, the argument goes something like this: the US armed forces are tasked with being able to fight anyone, anytime, anywhere, and they need constantly improving weapons systems to do that. No one disputes the that the F-22 is an engineering marvel, easily the most capable combat aircraft on the planet. It's also the most expensive, which segues nicely into the counterargument: the Soviet Union, the entity this aircraft was designed to defeat, no longer exists, and no force worthy of this sort of performance has emerged to take its place. In fact, setting aside the possibilities of future wars, the two existing ones we have require low-cost people skills and redevelopment work more than they require supersonic, radar-invisible fighter aircraft.

The Bush administration inherited this debate, and through a combination of deficit spending and policy neglect, never bothered to resolve it. The Bush Doctrine was entirely about foreign policy, not how we expect the military to implement it. While our troops in Iraq called out for armored vehicles and more personnel, we continued to spend billions on air superiority fighters, missile defense systems, and a new generation of nuclear weapons. I don't mean to suggest that these programs have no use. Our existing aircraft are three decades old and in need of replacement. New nuclear weapons tend to be smaller, which is at least something. But they do little to address the immediate needs of the troops actually fighting right now. Even if we do decide that, somehow, we can afford to build a military machine simultaneously geared toward to anti-insurgency work, and fighting a major land war in Europe, let's hope the Obama administration at least has the ability to articulate that vision. Or some other vision- anything. It is well past time to address the sense, creeping since 1991, that we are getting a military geared as much toward keeping production contracts in all the right congressional districts as it is toward implementing national security policy.

Public Works

President-Elect Obama has announced that at least the opening phase of his economic recovery plan will entail a massive public works program, including renovations to government buildings, rebuilding schools, rebuilding road and bridge infrastructure, upgrading broadband internet connections, and digitizing the transmission of medical records. Overall, he hopes to create 2.2 million jobs. See the story at Politico.

This is presumably the first of many announcements on this subject from Obama, as he attempts to integrate his campaign priorities with job creation, this first one feels distinctly like a 21st century reference to the programs FDR tried to fight the great depression with. Taken with the existing bailout package, and the possibility of additional packages to come, Obama is certainly working to energetically address the financial crisis. While these are certainly worthy goals for job creation programs, Obama has the opportunity to take his powerful new cabinet and address far more controversial issues in his first hundred days. With the speed and resolution Obama has demonstrated in recent weeks, it feels like the honeymoon period should be reduced from one hundred to ten days, or extended to his whole first term.

I will insert this one reservation about the announcements today, at the risk of seeming a Luddite: I do not like these programs to digitize medical records and transmit them over the internet. Firstly, at this point there is no standard format for digitized records, meaning that doctors and hospitals can send materials to one another, but not necessarily read them when they get there. Secondly, I am just bracing myself for the leaks. No network can be made entirely secure- a national network with thousands of access points and tens of thousands of users is a security nightmare. Medical records might not have the same sort of profit motive as banking info, but unlike your credit information, they really can't be repaired once leaked. Hospitals stand to save tremendous sums using digital storage, but we are asking for trouble if they start networking that information. It is quite possible that Obama will attempt to address these problems. It is probably likely that I am attempting to turn back the tide on this one.

Obama.

Ohio.

Ya came through.

Off to the party.

Magic Hour

And so we drift, or is hurdle perhaps a better word? into that golden space of time where the most insane of political allegations can be directed at one's opponent, with reasonable confidence that there won't be time to disprove them until just after the election, leaving you the longest possible time before you have to run for anything again.

I should probably put more time into coining the perfect phrase for this period- happy hour, perhaps. Actually, I think I like the Twilight Zone, although someone probably still owns the copyright to that (please don't sue me- I'm really not worth it).

It's appropriate, because this is the period where you are rewarded for just the right sort of lie- of sufficient scale to flip huge numbers of voters, aimed at the sort of character assassination that lingers even when evidence mounts that the allegation probably isn't legitimate.

I thinking here of, say, "evidence" of attendance at Obama's childhood mosque, or "allegations" that McCain is secretly a vegetarian. If you're reading this, you probably don't require anything like this much explanation of what I'm getting at, so I'll stop providing it.

But if either campaign has been saving up the loony juice for their last big push, it's time to start the keg stands. On the one hand, Obama may feel comfortably enough ahead...well, to be frank, I'm trying to be impartial, but Obama has run the sort of campaign that makes this sort of thing almost unthinkable from him.

Which leaves McPalin. Despite all his rhetoric to the contrary, it's hard to believe that McCain is really as confident of victory as he keeps claiming, and any move like this would have to tarnish not only the tatters of his reputation, but any hopes Palin has of emerging as the leader of the opposition in the upcoming months. Then again, I've never run for President, and the sort of motivation you must need to do it probably complicates rational analysis. And McCain has a reputation for comebacks, not least in his own mind, and seems to leave a great deal of this sort of decision making in his staffer's questionable hands.

Let's hope there's nothing more to say about this between now and the 4th. We can only wait and see.

D'oh

Following Colin Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama, I suggested that he was speaking more to his own legacy than to any real people out there in voterland, I believe going so far as to suggest that there couldn't possibly be any undecideds left in Washington DC.

I stand Corrected.

Reagan Chief of Staff Endorses Obama.

Please, Don't Quit Your Day Job

I watched the Obama ad. You can too, here.

Good lord. I can't imagine what his satellite television channel must be like.

I won't lie, this was hard to sit through. Most of it was pitched at the level of the worst moments of a state of the union address. You know the ones, where the president pauses to acknowledge some "real" person uncomfortably seated in the gallery with the secretary of state and his wife? (what do you chat about in that crowd?)

I would much rather have seen Obama actually pull out some graphs, Ross Perot style, and wade into his economic plan, or suggest some of the programs likely to be modified during his line-by-line review of the federal budget than attempt to embrace real people worried about the price of milk. He will have to worry about the price of milk, but being that personal about it isn't a good use of his limited time. The idea that it would be actually seems a little condescending. Heck, the cuts away to earlier live events at least let you revisit some of the seminal moments from earlier in his campaign, and made him look far more presidential than he did wandering around the hotel from Twin Peaks with an American flag lurking over his shoulder.

I return to a point made earlier- the real intention behind this ad was to dominate (purchase?) a news cycle, and to underscore that Obama has more money than God. It must be tearing the McCain people up something horrible to know they haven't the funding to respond.

Seriously?

So, after much fanfare earlier in the day, McPalin produced their defecting Hillary supporter who now supports their campaign: Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild.

Her problem with Obama? "...frankly, I don't like him. I feel like he is an elitist."

Oh, Lady Rothschild. Maybe if he was a Hapsburg.

You are married into one of the wealthiest banking families on Earth, a family so wealthy their credit used to make European wars possible. You were a Hillraiser, which probably puts you in the top thousandth percentile of American political contributors. There is a type of cigar named after your husband's great grandfather. Not a brand of cigar- a type.

See the story here.

Context is Key

Sean, over at 538, has an interesting perspective on the story Talking Points Memo reported earlier today of McCain outspending Obama on television ads in key battleground states. I think it’s a good take, and it reminds us of something that doesn’t get talked about much:

Readers here know that Barack Obama is dwarfing John McCain's ground operation; we've written about it repeatedly. Those thousands of paid organizers are not working for free. The field offices and the phone lines and the Blackberries and the reimbursed travel miles are not free. Moreover, Barack Obama pays his organizers out of the Campaign for Change, which is funded by Obama's own campaign; McCain's are mostly paid by the coordinated committees which in turn are funded by the RNC, RNSC and RNCC, further impacting the way spending numbers are attributed to each campaign.

Sean points out that Obama is investing more heavily in getting campaign workers in states than pretty much anyone running for president, ever. Simply, the McCain campaign has way less money than Obama, and way less ability to raise more of it. It’s easy to forget about it, but McCain’s operation is tiny compared to Obama’s. I suppose it’s anyone’s guess how this will turn out for Obama. But at the moment, Obama is spending less on ads in traditionally key states, but he’s spending money on ads in way more states than McCain, and he’s spending way, way more than McCain on people on the ground, going door to door, passing out literature and talking to people. And most importantly: McCain may still be spending all this money, but he’s still behind or tied. It’s easy to look at the narrative day-by-day and say, “Oh, Obama’s been doing badly for a few weeks” – but you have to look at the context of a much larger, longer campaign than McCain is running – or is even able to run.

Kids (and Old Men) Say the Darndest Things

In 2004, Bush was able to find a few winning lines that pushed him past the finish line, phrases that were so ubiquitous as to be nauseating. These phrases flare up like a herpes outbreak in our political culture, and then fade away, never to be heard from again. It amazes me that the media – and here I mean mostly the cable news networks and their pathetic, sycophantic lap dogs, the national networks – every year takes a handful of signifiers and stock phrases, drives them straight into the ground and then beats them to pieces. But when the next election cycle comes around, we’ve already forgotten them, we’ve moved on to the next handful of phrases and ideas that stand where thinking should be. For John Kerry, the ideas that road him to a lost election, were the ginned up image of him as being “too French,” that his military service was under some sort of question, and of course, his much reviled status as a “flip flopper.”

Four years later, we don’t hear much about flipping or flopping, despite the fact that McCain has done plenty of both. And we certainly don’t hear much about McCain’s military service – only once or twice a minute, from his supporters or himself. And, of course, despite his claims to be Georgian, we haven’t heard much about McCain’s Frenchness.

The McCain campaign is having a hard time finding a winning line of attack for Barack Obama. They’ve tried out a couple, but none of which have had quite the staying power of the classic “flip flopper.” McCain’s celebrity ads are a weird example. He’s running two ads discussing how popular Obama is among all sorts of people. If someone can explain to me how this is an attack, I’d be very grateful. As far as I can see, isn’t this what we want in a presidential candidate?

Still, the Obama campaign seems to have found it worrisome enough to produce a video of their own, claiming that McCain is the real celebrity. I think this claim has a bit more credibility, since McCain has, I dunno, hosted Saturday Night Live. McCain has also tried with tire pressure gauges, apparently implying that Obama doesn’t have a fully thought out energy plan. But the latest line of attack may just be a winner: McCain puts America first, and Obama does not.

Delivered by Joseph Lieberman, everyone’s favorite ex-vice presidential candidate, it’s a pretty disgraceful little line. The reasons why need hardly be enumerated, but my question is: is this going to be a winning strategy for McCain? Or is this the beginning of the end? It seems absurd to me that McCain is trotting out this kind of nonsense in the middle of August, when we still have a little less than three months to go. And, is there any way to counter this kind of attack with out being dragged down into a cesspool of jingoism? Is there anything to be said to someone who believes that someone running for president doesn’t love their country?

Obama Challenges

I was talking to a friend yesterday, and he brought up something I hadn't previously considered. Obviously anyone paying attention to politics is familiar with the primary argument against an Obama presidency -- he's not ready to lead, he doesn't have enough experience, etc.

What my friend mentioned and I found fascinating wasn't that he's not ready, but that he doesn't have the infrastructure around him to effectively accomplish things once he's elected. He argued that the biggest obstacle to his relatively short political career and extremely short amount of time in Washington was that there wasn't a big enough group of "Obama people" that had been cultivated in order to fill positions. In particular, he talked about the staffs of his cabinet members and those in the top layers of the bureaucracy.

The argument goes that you need a bunch of people in a bunch of different positions that are loyal to you, and that you can count on in difficult situations and that Obama hasn't been around long enough to have a high number of people that fit that description.

This wouldn't manifest itself outside the beltway, at least not in an obvious way, but might hinder his ability to accomplish his (probably very sizable) agenda in his first year.

Now, I think it's worth noting that Bush, who's famous for valuing loyalty over competency, and who brought a ton of people up from Texas with him after being elected, has...struggled, but I still think the concept is worth thinking about, and I do think it might be a challenge should he be elected.

Obama VP Choice - II

Reader aaron comments:

So you're counting out Sebelius? She seems like a fairly safe pick, too.

It seems interesting to me, though, that we're talking about a campaign that might not have a Southerner for once. Sebelius and Bayh are both Midwesterners, even if they both come from some pretty conservative states. You don't count the appeal of having an additional white, Southern man on the ticket? I suppose that Obama's strengths in certain segments of the South kind of preclude that kind of appeal to the non-Obama supporting segment of the population.

To address the first point, I would really be shocked to see any woman on the ticket other than Clinton (who I believe is unlikely). I like Sebelius, and am glad to see her getting some national attention, I just don't see Obama trying to break through the gender and color gap at the same time.

The second point is quite interesting. I think, on some levels, there's simply no one to pick. The Democratic party brand was so bad over the last 15 years in the south that there really aren't any Dems with a lot of national prominence in that region. Claire McCaskill's about the best choice I can think of, and a popular senator in a swing state to boot, but again, I'm just not seeing her as having a strong chance.

I also believe that conventional wisdom about Dems needing a southerner on the ticket (or white, male, southerner) to succeed is prefaced on too few data points to be anything approaching an axiom. This is because any discussion of the "Democratic Party" prior to the party realignment that occurred during the Civil Rights movement is in many ways talking about a different party and especially a political climate that doesn't exist anymore. So for me, using in the '60 election shouldn't really count. This point is predicated upon only two people, Carter and Clinton -- not nearly enough examples to make any sort of inference. Let's also not forget Gore's 2000 run, where I think he'd really lost the "southern" label to the point that he lost his home state of Tennessee, had a VP candidate from Connecticut, and still got 500,000 more votes than Bush 43. If Gore becomes president in 2000, I think to a large extent the Democrats-need-a-southerner argument wouldn't be nearly as prominent.

My Obama VP Prediction

Most political observers expect Obama to announce his running mate in the immediate future (almost certainly before the Olympics begin on August 8th). The WaPo had a front page article today talking about those widely believed to be front-runners.

My prediction is Indiana senator Evan Bayh. As I posted recently, I think Obama sees this race (correctly or not) as his to lose. Above all, he's trying to avoid mistakes -- to be careful. Given the choice between boring and bold, he's going to choose the former. Because of this, I think some of the usual suspects don't have a snowball's chance in hell. The clouds of an infidelity scandal seem to be hovering around John Edwards. The Clinton's throw too many new ingredients into the stew, and threaten to change the focus of the Obama campaign away from the actual candidate, and Joe Biden is notoriously hard to keep on message. Jim Webb (who doesn't really seem to want the job) and Sam Nunn have both said too many stupid things in the past.

That leaves only Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, and Bayh. These choices would be a little more of the traditional politic, pick-a-candidate-that-helps-you-win-a-swing-state, strategy. It conspicuously avoids Obama picking a candidate that helps him with his foreign policy bona fides, perhaps slightly ramping up the McCain attacks on this front (which weren't ever going to stop, regardless of his VP pick). And, this is obviously conjecture, but I think Obama sees foreign policy as one of his strengths in comparison to McCain (who routinely screws up basic facts as they relate to foreign affairs), especially after his most recent trip and practical endorsement by some of the most important heads of state in the world.

So why Bayh over Kaine? Bayh is simply the most vanilla, likable, politically moderate person that's ever been born. And, he's extremely popular in Indiana, a state that I believe he could deliver, whereas I think Virginia, while winnable, is more polarized and I'm less sure Kaine puts Obama over the top there. I also think Bayh is the slightly more recognizable national figure.

I guess we'll see soon.

McCain's New Ad -- A reader comments

Reader pw writes:

McCain seems to be working here to build an anti-Obama narrative unencumbered by much consideration of actual events. But then, considering his campaign week was highlighted by cruising around with Bush Sr. in a golf cart while Obama was speaking in the Tiergarten, reality really isn't getting McCain very far. What's sad is that there are probably people who will see this ad and believe it uncritically - hopefully, most of them are just having pre-conceived notions reinforced.

In my opinion, this is where media coverage so often falls flat on its face. Issues such as the veracity of McCain's ad claims are far too often presented as a dichotomy, e.g. McCain's interpretation is X, while the Obama campaign is arguing Y.

Nevertheless, and perhaps it's just my political disposition, I can't really imagine someone who had genuinely not decided who to vote for using this as the basis for hopping over to the McCain side of the fence. It might work the last week of October, but with over three months until the election? It just seems like too much time for Obama to expose the ad for what it objectively is: a disingenuous slander.

It also begs the question of where does McCain from here? Will those aforementioned late October ads make veiled references to a secret Obama/Bin Laden sex tape?

On a more serious note, I believe this strategy originated from the fairly decided change in tone HRC embarked on in the middle-end of the primary season, and which it could be argued yielded some results. The difference of course is that the primary season is a lot more fluid. You get a very limited amount of time to craft a message (be it yours or your opponents) and then you move on to address the dynamics of a completely different electorate in a completely different state.

Meet the Press Review

I don't know how many loyal watchers of MTP there really are out there, though here in the District I'm sure there are more than a few. As I watch pretty regularly, I'll be doing a sort of MTP roundup/review on Sundays. MTP, and sometimes This Week with George Stephanopoulos (which I can't watch because I'm currently without a DVR) are almost the only programs on MSM I regularly watch. Other than anything with Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity of course.

Guest: Barack Obama (for the full hour)
Host: Tom Brokaw

Commentary: Seems like Obama's trying to be amazingly careful. I've always thought of him as a pretty opinionated guy with a sharp intellect, but I thought he was really thoughtfully (and not very successfully) trying to weigh his words to such an extent that his statements and occasionally even his message started to sound a little muddled, particularly in the foreign policy section.

Also: This surge stuff is not a winning rhetorical angle for him. It feels like he just wants it to be yesterday's news, which is impossible as McCain's entire campaign revolves around the issue. The politically expedient thing to do is to try to minimize it. Here's what you say if you're Obama:

"Thankfully, the security situation in Iraq has significantly improved. I don't think it's possible for anyone to know whether those improvements were due to increased troop deployments in Baghdad, the Sunni Awakening, internal Iraqi politics, or any number of other factors. Certainly, and I'm sure Senator McCain would agree with me on this, it was due to a large number of different factors, and trying to attribute it to one, whatever it might be is the same kind of simplistic X = Y, black-and-white mentality that's served us so poorly under the Bush administration. I will say this though -- I was skeptical as to whether increased deployments in Baghdad would be productive, as were a great many number of others, both inside of politics and out, including a majority of the American people. And, if my skepticism was unfounded I'm glad. I want increased security for our troops in Iraq, far, far more than I want to score a political point, which was exactly why I opposed our initial involvement in the Iraqi war, another in a long list of issues where John McCain found himself without skepticism -- in that same black vs white, good vs evil mentality that has characterized Bush/McCain policies over the last eight years .

But more importantly, and this is the crux of the issue, I believe the situation as it stands now, for whatever reason, is such that we can successfully redeploy our troops to Afghanistan; the central front in the War on Terror, and back home to the United States so that their long and deeply appreciated service can be applauded by those that care the most -- their families, friends, neighbors, and communities."

A little long maybe, but I think it's a lot better than the meandering response he's been offering up on his "surge" stance as of late.

My last MTP point is about Tom Brokaw. I'm not a fan of him hosting at all, to the point that if it's ever announced that he's doing it on anything other than an interim basis (I know he's at least doing it again next week) this might become the "This Week With GS Review" instead. I don't think he's dynamic, and I think his lines of questioning and mannerisms are plodding. Full disclosure, I've been pretty sour on him since he wrote "The Greatest Generation" which I found to be really...how shall I put this...uncompelling. Why can't they give Chuck Todd a chance? Does he not want to? He's their chief political guy for god's sake. Or even David Gregory, who I feel pretty ish about (though I loved him in the White House press corps) but who is better than Brokaw and has guest hosted for Russert in the past. What does anyone else think? Am I wrong about Brokaw? Who would you like to see?

Double Standard

Over the last several weeks and months there has been a lot written about the degree to which John McCain can regularly screw up commonly known facts about a wide arrange of issues (especially as they relate to foreign policy), such as repeatedly referring to Checkoslovakia (it hasn't existed in around 2 decades), talking about Iranian support of Al Qaeda (they vehemently dislike one another), referring to Iraq as the first post 9/11 conflict (what about Afghanistan?), messing up the basics of the "surge" timeline, etc. etc. Steve Benin at the Carpetbagger Report has done some good reporting and discussion of these rhetorical slip ups.

Most of these misstatements have not been of much interest to MSM outlets, and the ones that have generally haven't had much staying power. It seems to be a near consensus in the liberal blogosphere that had Barack Obama issued similarly incorrect statements, nearly any of them would have been on 24 hour news rotation, and cumulatively they would have ended his presidential chances. I mostly agree with this assertion.

Unfortunately, many liberals have simply noted this apparent double standard and moved on. I'd like to discuss (1) if this assertion is true, and (2) why that might be.

I'll bypass '1' for the time being, as I've weighed in, and ultimately it's fairly subjective, but for '2', as much as I've thought about it, I can't seem to wrap my head around it. I've often read that MSM executives tend to be disproportionately conservative, and that producers and reporters are often disproportionately liberal, which made some intuitive sense to me. But, I have a pretty hard time believing in some conspiracy theory wherein the executives of the country's largest television stations and newspapers sit around a table and agree not push the "why does McCain keep spouting overt nonsense" angle.

Ultimately MSM is in the business of making money, so I'm wondering how it could be that promoting Obama as a bumbling fool would be profitable (admittedly a conjecture), but doing the same to McCain would not be? Is it as simple as media narratives being self perpetuating? McCain is a foreign policy guru and conveying anything else isn't consistent with our previous position/reporting? I'm at a loss, and would love to hear anyone's thoughts.

German Village Blues

I know there's been a lot of discussion about the political dichotomy created by Obama's overseas trip vs. McCain's faux-German tour, but there's an angle of McCain's strategy that I don't really understand.

While Obama has been doing the "this-guy-in-no-way-reminds-me-of-George- Bush" European rock tour, McCain has decided to participate in a string of "mirrored" events where he visits a bunch of towns in the U.S. with the name Berlin, or stopping by German Village in Columbus, OH yesterday and eating in a German restaurant/deli. I've heard people like Chuck Todd (who I like) talk about how McCain should have spent his time doing a comprehensive tour of a battleground state like Michigan instead, and how that would have been an excellent juxtaposition with Obama's events. Instead, what McCain has done makes his events look almost like parody (and total fodder for shows like the Daily Show and Colbert).

Though I agree that the outcome of these mirrored stops has been less than favorable for McCain, I think it was potentially a great idea. What has ruined it has not been the concept but the rhetoric. Here's the thing, and it's the thing that has been most responsible for McCain's poor general campaign thus far. He sounds petty. The entire point of stopping in a bunch of small towns and speaking to a couple hundred people while your opponent gives foreign speeches attracting 10's or 100's of thousands of people is that it makes you look grounded by comparison. But...it only makes you look grounded if the message is implicit. If your out there literally saying "we don't need a rock star, we need a president" and trying to throw some more gasoline on the "Europeans suck" campfire, all while directly attacking the patriotism of your opponent, it just makes you look like a nasty old man, an image that McCain should be desperate to avoid. Instead he needs to not intermittently say he's above the fray, but actually try to be above the fray. That makes you look experienced and presidential, which should be the exact image he's trying to perpetuate.

All of this back-and-forth rhetoric is simply off what should be McCain's core message (experience, familiarity, and trust), but even more than that it's counter to his actual day to day strategy.