Iz Gold
Culture War Armageddon
Kevin Drum on what John McCain is doing to American politics:
John McCain has obviously decided that he can't win a straight-up fight, so he's decided instead to wage a battle of character assassination, relentless lies, and culture war armageddon. So what happens on November 5th?
If McCain wins, he'll face a Democratic congress that's beyond furious. Losing is one thing, but after eight years of George Bush and Karl Rove, losing a vicious campaign like this one will cause Dems to go berserk. They won't even return McCain's phone calls, let alone work with him on legislation. It'll be four years of all-out war.
And what if Obama wins? The last time a Democrat won after a resurgence of the culture war right, we got eight years of madness, climaxing in an impeachment spectacle unlike anything we'd seen in a century. If it happens again, with the lunatic brigade newly empowered and shrieking for blood, Obama will be another Clinton and we'll be in for another eight years of near psychotic dementia.
Am I exaggerating? Sure. Am I exaggerating a lot? I don't think so. McCain, in his overwhelming desire for office, is unloosing forces that are likely to make the country only barely governable no matter who wins. This would be very bad juju at any time, but George Bush has so seriously weakened the country over the course of his administration that we don't have a lot of room for error left if we want to avoid losing the war on terror for good and turning America into a banana republic while we're at it. We need to start turning the ship around now.
McCain doesn't seem to care much about this anymore, but the rest of us ought to. Unfortunately, no one asked us. I'm afraid we have some rocky times ahead.
Judith Warner on “The Mirrored Ceiling”
Why does this woman -- who to some of us seems as fake as they can come, with her delicate infant son hauled out night after night under the klieg lights and her pregnant teenage daughter shamelessly instrumentalized for political purposes -- deserve, to a unique extent among political women, to rank as so "real"?
Because the Republicans, very clearly, believe that real people are idiots. This disdain for their smarts shows up in the whole way they’ve cast this race now, turning a contest over economic and foreign policy into a culture war of the Real vs. the Elites. It's a smoke and mirrors game aimed at diverting attention from the fact that the party's tax policies have helped create an elite that's more distant from "the people" than ever before. And from the fact that the party's dogged allegiance to up-by-your-bootstraps individualism -- an individualism exemplified by Palin, the frontierswoman who somehow has managed to "balance" five children and her political career with no need for support -- is leading to a culture-wide crack-up. . . .
One of the worst poisons of the American political climate right now, the thing that time and again in recent years has led us to disaster, is the need people feel for leaders they can "relate" to. This need isn't limited to women; it brought us after all, two terms of George W. Bush. And it isn't new; Americans have always needed to feel that their leaders were, on some level, people like them. . . .
There's a fine line between likability and demagoguery. Both thrive upon manipulation and least-common-denominator politics. These days, I fear, this need for direct mirroring -- and thus this susceptibility to all sorts of low-level tripe -- is particularly acute among women, who are perhaps reaching historic lows in their comfort levels with themselves and their choices.
Sarah Palin’s Speech
Fred Hiatt on Sarah Palin's speech:
There was a flutter of attention when McCain campaign manager Rick Davis told a group of Post reporters and editors yesterday that his team was having to rework the vice presidential acceptance speech because the original draft, prepared before Gov. Sarah Palin was chosen, was too "masculine." While we all wondered to ourselves what might make a speech masculine or feminine, no one batted an eye at the underlying revelation: that the campaign was writing the nominee's speech before knowing who the nominee would be.
Never mind the prehistoric days when a politician might be expected to write his or her own words; speechwriters have been around since long before television. But traditionally their job was to channel their bosses' thoughts and ideas into poetry, or at least comprehensible English. Nowadays, apparently it's naive to expect a speech even to reveal something of the essential views or character of the speaker. Instead, campaigns -- not just the McCain campaign -- draft their speeches with an eye to which demographic groups need to receive which messages, and then we in the media rate the speeches based on how well we think they hit those targets.
So when you watch Sarah Palin tonight, expect to learn something about how well she handles a Teleprompter. Expect to learn something about the McCain campaign's assessment of its political standing with women, or working families, or social conservatives. Whether you're learning what Sarah Palin really thinks or feels is anybody's guess.
Bumiller: “Disclosures on Palin Raise Questions on Vetting Process”
Aides to Mr. McCain said they had a team on the ground in Alaska now to look more thoroughly into Ms. Palin's background. A Republican with ties to the campaign said the team assigned to vet Ms. Palin in Alaska had not arrived there until Thursday, a day before Mr. McCain stunned the political world with his vice-presidential choice.
Although the McCain campaign said that Mr. McCain had known about Bristol Palin’s pregnancy before he asked her mother to join him on the ticket and that he did not consider it disqualifying, top aides were vague on Monday about how and when he had learned of the pregnancy, and from whom.
While there was no sign that her formal nomination this week was in jeopardy, the questions swirling around Ms. Palin on the first day of the Republican National Convention, already disrupted by Hurricane Gustav, brought anxiety to Republicans who worried that Democrats would use the selection of Ms. Palin to question Mr. McCain's judgment and his ability to make crucial decisions.
At the least, Republicans close to the campaign said it was increasingly apparent that Ms. Palin had been selected as Mr. McCain's running mate with more haste than McCain advisers initially described.
Who Chose Palin?
This should be our refrain, our only talking point about the selection:
Who chose Palin?
Well, it certainly wasn't John McCain.