September 2008

I completely missed what the blogs are saying, that McCain would not look at Obama during the entire 90 minutes.  Hmm.  I thought it was a draw, the instant polls and Diane said it was an Obama win.  I can’t tell.  I’m into the minutia.  I am a bad judge.

I watched CNN and I found myself following the realtime reactions of a focus group instead of watching the participants.  I had to force myseld to look away from the meter many times.  Nice experiment, but I don’t think I liked that or the pundit meters that were visible along the sides in the HD broadcast.

I’ve been meaning to revisit this issue, but to be truthful, it is embarassing to watch the interviews with Sarah.  This is not a funny joke.  This is a sick joke that is being played on the American people by that old white-haired dude that is putting politics first.  Honest conservatives are now calling for her to be replaced.

I will link to the interview, but it is too creepy for me to include the video in this space.  Far stupider than W.

 James Fallows:

At face value, this is incomprehensible. More than that, it suggests a person whose previous two decades of adult life have not equipped her to absorb the briefings she is no doubt receiving about the big, obvious issues in the campaign: the market crash, health care proposals, tax plans.

Two natural reactions are: to laugh at the “Putin rears his head” part, and simply to avoid concentrating on the rest. But given her candidacy for national office, neither of those is enough.

I am not aware of any other current figure in national politics — by which I mean any member of the Senate or House — who would do a worse job under questioning. There could be some I don’t know about. But they’re not on a national ticket.

After thirty years of meeting and interviewing politicians, I can think of exactly three people who sounded as uninformed and vacant as this. All are now out of office. One was a chronic drunk.

Joe Klein from Time used to piss me off more often than not. He once defended McCain’s maverick status.  No more.  During this election cycle he has gone as ballistic as a spurned lover.  He is writing blog entries in the Time site, Swampland faster than McCain changes positions.

One entry today takes on the so-called right wing intellectuals who defend the indefensible:

(N)eoconservatives style themselves as intellectuals, but they shy away from proper conversations about facts and ideas. Though some are erudite, and some even polite, their public face in magazines like the Standard and Commentary–with a few notable exceptions–is quite different: they are, at base, ideologues not intellectuals, propagandists not journalists, thugs not thinkers.

These were the boys that brought us that wildly successful Iraq War.  Why are they even given a forum in the media?

The sphere is exploding today after the beginning of the Palin interview.  God save our republic.  James Fallows from the Atlantic has a different take here.  Upshot if you liked Bush, this one is looking very similar:

The truly toxic combination of traits GW Bush brought to decision making was:

1) Ignorance
2) Lack of curiosity
3) “Decisiveness”

That is, he was not broadly informed to begin with (point 1). He did not seek out new information (#2); but he nonetheless prided himself (#3) on making broad, bold decisions quickly, and then sticking to them to show resoluteness.

We don’t know for sure about #2 for Palin yet — she could be a sponge-like absorber of information. But we know about #1 and we can guess, from her demeanor about #3.   Most of all we know something about the person who put her in this untenable role.

Now this is the Red Meat I like. 

Politics is visceral.  It has got to be served with some anger appealing to the limbic system.  Republicans understand that.  Before I voted for Obama in the California primary, I strongly considered Hillary because I didn’t think Obama would fight back against the Republican slime machine.  With Biden, Obama can stay above the fight except when necessary.

My favorite liberal hawk, George Packer, has a  blog in the New Yorker which fits with my observation of the Republican Convention.  The Republican establishment wouldn’t allow John to make his own VP selection. 

John McCain became a P.O.W. this week, at the hands of his own Party. It was Sarah Palin’s Convention, not McCain’s. His speech last night was so out of sync with the vituperative tone and stale, hard-right cultural populism of the Convention’s other headliners—above all, Palin—that he sounded less like a Presidential nominee than one of those token speakers given a spot on the program just to prove that the Party welcomes diversity.

Levi Johnston, the Bristol’s baby daddy says he is “in a relationship,” but states, “I don’t want kids.”

Oops. The self proclaimed “fuckin’ redneck” doesn’t know My Space is public. No the real question doesn’t McCain and his crack team of vetters? Married with Children family values must appeal to a segment of the Republican base.

And just now McCain is sending 20 vetters to Alaska. Decision making America can be confident in.