McCain's Possible Campaign Pitstop

Here’s a theme I’ve been hearing from despairing Republicans, something they think that McCain should be laying out for voters, since his other attacks don’t seem to be gaining much traction. Bill Kristol today:

And he 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.

I actually do think this is a solid argument for people with a rightward tilt to their politics. Or, at least, it would be, if we hadn’t just lived through eight years of the Bush administration and six years of “conservative” governance in the Congress. Whatever conservatism means – and I’m content to leave it up to others to dish that out for themselves – we certainly haven’t seen any of that from the current crop of Republicans in Washington. Which, of course, includes one John McCain, Maverick. McCain lacks the judgment and temperament to be any sort of check on anyone, as his campaign this far has made perfectly clear. At some point or another, the public in this country is going to have to wrap their heads around just how far to the right the entire body politic has drifted since Goldwater. It’s been a long time since Reagan put on the “no vacancy” sign on the Great Society and even longer since the Roosevelt coalition held sway.

In another election cycle, that kind of advice might have gained some traction. I think the last month or so of McCain’s antics, starting with his selection of Palin as his running mate, has more than amply demonstrated McCain’s unfitness for the presidency in specific and for national office in general. It just goes to show you how far a great background story and a winning way with reporters can get you, even if you are temperamentally unfit to be in charge of nuclear weapons.

Nate Silver thinks that this might be Kristol laying the groundwork for McCain to radically shake up his campaign. Perhaps, but I honestly can’t imagine a worse campaign strategy. Ditching your entire campaign staff three weeks before the election? Maybe, if McCain is running for “most unstable candidate for high office.” If McCain and company spend a whole week trying to link Obama to terrorists and then to simply say, “Hey, look over there! A blimp!” and run away would be a pretty shocking turn of events.

Frank Rich and the Mystery of Hyperlinks

Frank Rich and the Mystery of Hyperlinks

Frank Rich has a pretty thorough destruction of McCain’s Palin pick in today’s Times. It’s worth a read – especially since, as Matt Yglesias often points out, Rich actually includes hyperlinks to the articles that he discusses. It’s amazing the extent to which something as simple as that can help make an editorial so much more readable. One of the great features of the Internet is the ease with which you can send people to all sorts of information. I’m glad to see at least one writer from the Times following up on this potential. It makes his editorial a great round of on just why McCain’s pick is so disturbing.

She didn’t say “no thanks” to the “Bridge to Nowhere” until after Congress had already abandoned it but given Alaska a blank check for $223 million in taxpayers’ money anyway. Far from rejecting federal pork, she hired lobbyists to secure her town a disproportionate share of earmarks ($1,000 per resident in 2002, 20 times the per capita average in other states). Though McCain claimed “she has had national security as one of her primary responsibilities,” she has never issued a single command as head of the Alaska National Guard. As for her “executive experience” as mayor, she told her hometown paper in Wasilla, Alaska, in 1996, the year of her election: “It’s not rocket science. It’s $6 million and 53 employees.” Her much-advertised crusade against officials abusing their office is now compromised by a bipartisan ethics investigation into charges that she did the same.

In the original piece, this paragraph is chockablock with links to relevant articles so that one my inform oneself as to what Rich is talking about (I’m too lazy to put them all back in, so you’ll just have to head over there). I really can’t understand why the NY Times doesn’t simply make this standard for their articles and (especially) their editorials and opinion columns. If nothing else, it should make William Kristol’s columns a bit more entertaining. But good for Frank Rich for going the extra mile.

The Way the Wind Blows

William Kristol, today in the NY Times:

And Obama supporters can’t get too indignant about Palin’s inexperience. She’s only running for the No. 2 job, after all, while their inexperienced standard-bearer is the nominee for the top position. And McCain doesn’t need a foreign policy expert as vice president to help him out.

[…]

The Palin pick already, as Noemie Emery wrote, “Wipes out the image of McCain as the crotchety elder and brings back that of the fly-boy and gambler, which is much more appealing, and the genuine person.” But of course McCain needs Palin to do well to prove he’s a shrewd and prescient gambler.

I spent an afternoon with Palin a little over a year ago in Juneau, and have followed her career pretty closely ever since. I think she can pull it off. I’m not the only one.

William Kristol, last week in the NY Times:

If not Pawlenty or Romney, how about a woman, whose selection would presumably appeal to the aforementioned anguished Hillary supporters? It’s awfully tempting for the McCain camp to revisit the possibility of tapping Meg Whitman, the former eBay C.E.O., Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, or Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska. But the first two have never run for office, and Palin has been governor for less than two years.

William Kristol is not obliged to keep consistent views of the things he discusses. He’s a man very committed to conservative ideas, and it would make sense that he try and spin the narrative in the ways best suited for to the goal of ensuring conservative governance. He’s not required to hold the same belief from one week to the next – or even from breakfast to dinner. I do wonder, however, how the New York Times can justify giving one of their most prominent columnist jobs to someone with a nasty habit of false statements and who can’t hold a consistent opinion from one column to the next. The Times should obviously present opinions from all over the political spectrum – but I think they owe to their readers to pick columnists who aren’t simply presenting the most recent talking points, no matter how they may differ.

I’m also surprised that Kristol dismisses the idea that people would worry about the experience of a vice presidential pick by a seventy-two year old man with a history of cancer. Dick Cheney has certainly changed our views of the vice president’s office, but the primary responsibility of the office is still as a designated president-in-waiting. Obama never subscribed to the notion that he was inexperienced. That was and always has been a conservative talking point. The fact that McCain choice a woefully inexperienced running mate doesn’t reflect poorly on Obama.

And finally, perhaps this is just me, but doesn’t the phrase “fly-boy and gambler” signal dangerous recklessness and arrogance? Isn’t that the last kind of person we’d want in the White House?