Chris Matthews Has Lost His Mind

I'm not kidding. He's losing his mind in real time on MSNBC right now. He's just interrupting and tearing into every Republican that sits down with him outside of the convention. Let's just say he's having a hard time with the Palin pick.

Another One Bites the Dust

Thomas Friedman jumps off the bus. They're all waking up.

London Bridge

This is rough for camp McCain. I've always had a ton of respect for Chuck Todd, and though he's said some stupid things on occasion, Mike Murphy is both smart and insightful. When two people this smart have this compact an analysis the door's creaking shut.

RNC Day One and a Halfish

It’s telling that Bush spoke to the RNC from the White House. I know that Gustav gave him the excuse, but there must have been a sigh of relief from the McCain campaign. You can’t exactly ignore the sitting president, but that being said, the last thing McCain (or anyone in office or running for reelection, something that the RNC is notably lacking this year) wants is to be seen having your picture taken with George W. Bush this year. Bush’s speech was about what you’d expect – did you know John McCain was a POW? – with this delightful slap at the left: “Fellow citizens, if the Hanoi Hilton could not break John McCain’s resolve to do what is best for his country, you can be sure the angry left never will.” It’s unbelievably galling to hear a man who authorized torture to compare his political opponents to torturers. The eagerness of the Republicans to get Bush back behind the curtain as quickly as possible almost – well, not really almost – makes me feel sorry for him. But then I see those beady shark eyes and remember his unshakeable sense of rightness and exactly why I can’t wait for January.

Fred Thompson brought more of the red meat for the party – did you know John McCain was a POW? – and I once again find myself asking, “Fred Thompson? From Law and Order?” I remember the Fred Thompson boomlet from the winter and spring and still find myself kind of surprised about it.

Ah, Joe Lieberman. What can you say? He’s a hack, and he’s a hack who’s about to lose his committee assignments.

Admittedly, this convention was not aimed at me. The Republican Party is split and right now it seems like the only thing holding it together is Sarah Palin. In a way, it was a smart move on McCain’s part. He’s never been beloved of the Christian Right. Nominating one of their own, even if she is dangerously ill prepared is one of the only ways I can see of him overcoming their antipathy. The problem, of course, is that in nominating a dangerously ill prepared Christian cipher, he’s undercutting the other part of his base – the perpetual war, American hegemony wing of the party that rode George W. Bush into the Departments of State and Defense. Palin is George W. Bush without the daddy issues and without the steady, guiding hand of Dick Cheney whispering in his ear.

The Links

Here's Obama on the stump yesterday. It's pretty impressive. Remember he's doing this every day, nearly all day long. It's not like this was a particularly well planned event or anything.

Here's a pretty comprehensive Palin story from Time. It's interesting how he's almost reverted to primary Obama in terms of inspiring rhetoric. He's got to be loving the temporary focus on Palin.

In more Palin news, the current intrade markets are giving Palin a 15% chance of being recalled as a VP pick.

Due Dilligance

From this video, it sure looks like McCain vetted Palin pretty thoroughly.

Reform Isn't What It Used to Be

A lot of people are pointing out this article in the Washington Post. It details the extent to which Palin was indebted to earmarks. For a town of 6,700 people, she brought in $27 million worth of federal money. I think this highlights the extent to which Alaska is a different political culture than the rest of the United States. They’ve got oil, and lot’s of it. As Ezra Klein points out, “For every dollar they pay in Federal Taxes, Alaska gets back $1.87 back in services.” All of this points out that, to the extent that Palin is a “reformer,” it’s a reformer in an extremely rarified sense. In a political culture as corrupt as Alaska’s, even the reformers aren’t exactly without sin. Alaska seems more like Saudi Arabia or Kuwait than New Jersey – a tiny population dominated by a single powerful industry. And since Ted Stevens has been in the Senate so long (longest serving Republican), he has really been able to bring home the bacon – to a state that’s already well equipped with pork products.

There's a Reason It's Called "Gambling"

Man, your internet goes out off for twenty hours and things go crazy.

This afternoon, I checked out the news only to find that Palin had become embroiled in even more scandals than when I went to bed last night. She’s lawyered up on the trooper firing scandal, she was once a member of an Alaskan secessionist party, the media finally picked up on her (and Alaska in general’s) love of earmarks. That’s a hefty dose of problems for one news cycle.

TPM is discussing whether or not Palin will be seeing the door a la Eagleton. I think this is wildly unlikely. It’s just too late in the season for McCain to pick someone else. He’s made a mavericky gamble and he’s going to have to ride it out. Eagleton was offered the VP slot on July 1st, and withdrew on August 1st. McCain waited until after Obama made his pick, and for obvious reasons, Obama waited to make his pick. This obviously shows weakness on McCain’s part – he is in a reactive mode. The NY Times reports that McCain was ready to go for Lieberman and Ridge, but the people from the base in the know were set to go out of their minds. So, he did the next logical thing – he picked a woman beloved of the base, about whom he knew almost nothing. So far, it seems to have worked out really well for him.

I know what you all are thinking: how is this bad for Obama? After all, everything is good news for McCain. The only downside I can see is that there’s so much coming out all at once, it will be hard for people to absorb it all. They’re likely to simply throw their hands up at it all. How will the stories play?

Palin’s daughter: Like Obama and a lot of other bloggers, I tend to think this kinda stuff has no real relevance to politics, so let’s just drop it entirely. Obama did well in his statement, and I hope his surrogates stay away from it.

Troopergate: Like DP, I think this is an important story. What I’m not sure about, though, is how well it will play over all. The issues are somewhat muddied by the fact that her ex-brother-in-law does, in fact, seem like a real sleaze ball. It certainly seems like she’s abusing her powers, but the optics of it are a bit off.

Alaskan Independence: I think this one is a bit more interesting. It has pretty much everything a Democrat could love in a scandal and nothing to dislike. It has a GOP vice presidential nominee participating with a group that’s committed to having a vote for succession. I think this one is a winner.

And finally, of course, there’s the earmark thing. I think this is the single biggest problem with Sarah Palin. Palin comes from an incredibly corrupt political culture. It’s telling that, by Alaskan standards, she’s considered a reformer. She lied about the Bridge to Nowhere in her very first speech on the national stage. “Thanks, but no thanks” doesn’t mean, “Thanks, but I’m going to keep the money for other stuff.” She was involved in actively lobbying congress for more earmarks, and she had a close relationship with earmark king, Sen. Ted Stevens. I think this is and the Alaskan Independence are the issues the Democrats really need to push. The rest of it, while certainly important, is a distraction.

Extinct Blog of the Day

I don't really know how extinct this blog is, but it simply had to be featured. You're doing yourself a disservice if you don't take a moment and check it out. My favorite part: At least now I don't need to worry about what to get everyone for Christmas (just scroll down to the third post).

I would've had to make this place up if it didn't already exist.

Handing Over

Unless I get inspired tonight, this will be my last post as the site administrator at TPBP. It will also be the last post in which I offer an opinion about most domestic or international political issues. Though, I just realized I don't really have any opinions to give...perhaps I should get it all out of my system:
Funding schools with property tax revenue is a terrible idea.
FISA worked by all accounts.
Iraq having a budget surplus isn't a bad thing.
God save me, but T. Boone Pickens is right, drill or don't drill, but the question itself is largely irrelevant.
McCain made a horrible mistake with Palin. I think things might get so bad that he dumps her.

Antonin Scalia is a bad, bad man, and an even worse Supreme Court Justice.
Torture is ethically wrong and practically unproductive.
War with Russia would be a terrible idea.
War with Iran would be a terrible idea.
Public sabre rattling with Russia is inherently destabilizing.
Making abortion illegal is a bad policy idea, regardless or your ethical leanings.
You should vote for Obama in November unless he subsequently kills a drifter while campaigning in Michigan.
No, really, please vote for him. I don't know what I'll do if he loses.

That's all folks. Fear not, as TPBP will continue on and will be better than ever in the coming days and weeks.

Put in Two Tbls of Palin and Let Simmer For 72 Hours...

After reflecting on the Palin pick for a couple of days...

This pick was impossibly risky. I believe I understand the thought process behind it, but there were so many things that had to break McCain's way for this gambit to be successful that the odds became collectively minuscule.

This trooper gate thing is a problem. If you'd like more background, check out TPM Media, which has been all over this story. It appears certain that her staff pressured this Commissioner to fire her sister's ex-husband, and likely that it was with her knowledge and participation. As this has been news since the moment she was announced, the McCain campaign knew as well. Did they also know she had to be deposed because of a formal legislative investigation sometimes between now and the general election? It's almost inconceivable that they didn't know that as well. So, what made this risk (that the scandal would get some real legs and spiral out of control) acceptable? In other words, what was the best case scenario? The only answer I can think of (and I'm not trying to be unserious) is that 1) she was completely innocent and the investigation amounted to a political witch hunt and that 2) nobody (including the media) would care. Since they presumably had all the information that's out there now (god help them if they didn't) it's not unfair to state that they had absolutely no reason to believe that either of those conditions would be met.

There aren't enough as-yet-undecideds that will vote for a Presidential ticket because one of the VPs is a woman. All of the die-hard Hillary Clinton supporters are already either 1) voting for Obama with varying levels of enthusiasm (which is the vast majority) or 2) so pissed off they're staying home or voting for John McCain.
Palin's addition won't make the stay at home's come out -- they're staying at home because they can't bear to pull the lever for anyone but Hillary, not because they're waiting for McCain to impress them. And, of course, he already had the vindictive, dissatified former Clinton vote.

There was no reason to believe that the addition of Palin would bring additional former Clinton supporters on board.

McCain has now illustrated why judgement and character are more important than experience, which is probably fatal.

Obama has always rejected the experience argument, refusing really to even engage in that debate. I'm sure he avoided this for obvious political purposes, but I think he did it at least in part because he personally believed that he was a more thoughtful and better decision-maker than John McCain and would correspondingly make a better president.

Sarah Palin shows us why experience can't simply be reduced to one variable, time in government. Josh Marshall expressed best the stupidity of comparing Barack Obama's experience to that of Palin's:

When asked about criticisms of Sarah Palin's readiness to serve as president, McCain responded: "If they want to go down that route, in all candor, she has far, far more experience than Senator Obama does."

Set aside the bravado. Can McCain possibly believe that? And if he does, what are we supposed to think of his own fitness to serve? Sen. Obama is certainly new on the national scene. But he's serving his fourth year in the US senate. He's run a successful national primary campaign. He's deeply versed on all the relevant policy issues. Palin has been the governor of one of the smallest states in the country (by pop.) for 18 months. As recently as 2006, she said she hadn't focused enough on Iraq to have an opinion one way or another about the surge. Even now, her off-hand comments about Iraq are completely at odds with Sen. McCain's.

If this argument sticks (and I think there's an excellent chance that it will) it reinforces the argument that McCain has to desperately avoid: that Obama is special. Palin and Obama have been governing for similar amounts of time and just look how much more capable a leader he seems like he'll be. Forgetting ideologues on either side, swing voters will make this connection when they think, "I wasn't sure whether or not Obama was too inexperienced until I compared him to her (a comparison McCain camp is encouraging by the way) and understood what inexperience looks like. Now I'm sold on Obama."

McCain must have thought that either 1) Obama is smoke and mirrors; he has no ownership of change, the youth-vote, liberalism or Progressivism, or that 2) Palin was in the Obama mold; young, dynamic, likable, and politically brilliant.

Neither of these things are impossible, but I personally don't believe either one of them, and think the odds of either one being true are slim.

Given all of this, I'm still baffled by the logic and reasoning behind this pick.

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?