GOP rebound

UNION-TRIBUNE EDITORIAL

September 5, 2008

On Sunday, the outlook for this week's Republican National Convention appeared grim. Many questions – some legitimate, some ridiculous – swirled around Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, GOP nominee John McCain's surprise choice for running mate. Another massive potential distraction came from Hurricane Gustav. The storm not only threatened to take the spotlight away from the convention in St. Paul, Minn., but it also reminded voters of the Bush administration's disastrous response three years ago to Hurricane Katrina.

Many Democrats looked on with glee, assuming McCain had little chance to establish himself as an agent of change who could be trusted to shake things up in dysfunctional Washington – the core message which the GOP hoped its convention would impart.

What a difference five days make. After Gustav faded, the convention – to the surprise of even many party insiders – left Republicans invigorated. Far from being daunted by Democratic nominee Barack Obama – a genuine political phenomenon – speakers such as Rudy Giuliani effectively lampooned him as nothing more than an inexperienced, exotic version of elitists like Sen. John Kerry, the last Democratic nominee.

Far more important, Palin emerged not as a liability but as a plus for the ticket with an electrifying speech which introduced a formidable politician to the national scene.

Palin's jabs at Obama – especially her potshot about politicians who tell voters in Scranton one thing and those in San Francisco another – set the stage nicely for McCain's speech last night. The Arizona senator echoed the criticism of Obama as tax-happy and an unqualified commander-in-chief.

But McCain also offered a welcome acknowledgment that his party had in recent years betrayed its supporters in many ways – especially by becoming enmeshed in Washington's culture of corruption. That would end, he vowed, with his election: “I understand who I work for. I don't work for a party. I don't work for a special interest. I don't work for myself. I work for you.”

Except for his rousing finale – in which he implored Americans to join him in the fight to shape the nation's future – McCain's delivery wasn't sharp. Still, he exited the stage to huge cheers, and a bump in the polls looks likely. In a year in which the overall political climate strongly favors Democrats, America may see a third straight close presidential election.

We look forward to a vigorously contested race over the next two months – one in which such vital issues as the economy, the war on terrorism and energy policy are center stage. We fear, however, that the campaign could soon deteriorate into a substance-light, consultant-dominated slugfest, and we see hints of such a turn in the rhetoric from both sides.

For the good of the nation, this must not happen. In their best moments, McCain and Obama offer strikingly similar views of how Washington has lost its way, and how sweeping, fundamental change is crucial. This must be their focus for the next 60 days – not sound-bite sideshows.

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me@rescam.org

The Democrats' worst nightmare

By David E. Johnson and Holly Robichaud

September 5, 2008

Republicans were wary of the veteran war leader that they had nominated for president. He was seen as a maverick who had too often worked with Democrats to advance programs. His nomination was seen as a setback for conservatives.

To their delight, he chose a young conservative running mate that he had only met briefly. The media and the Democrats knew that they could not attack the presidential nominee. The vice presidential nominee must be the point of attack. He was too conservative, in their view, and if elected would be set up as the heir apparent.

Then the media were alerted that he had a secret fund to pay for expenses not covered by his Senate salary. The media frenzy began. Calls from Democrats and even some Republicans for him to quit the ticket began. Wild rumors swept the media.

The presidential candidate advised his running mate to take his case to the people and tell them everything. He agreed, and anticipation built for his television speech with some media speculating he would quit the ticket and who his replacement would be.

Rather, he spoke to the nation and laid everything bare. It was an instant triumph. The public rallied to the Republican ticket, which was swept into office in a landslide leaving Democrats and the media stunned. The winning ticket? Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon.

Why is this so relevant today? Because the media frenzy surrounding Sarah Palin most closely resembles the attacks on Nixon in 1952, and just as with Nixon, the stage is set for the Republican comeback.

The news has been filled this week with Republican presidential nominee John McCain's selection of Alaska Gov. Palin. Every aspect of her life and her family's has been opened up by the media, Democratic politicians such as Robert Wexler and liberal bloggers (like Adlai Stevenson in 1952, Barack Obama and Joe Biden are trying to take the high road in public, saying that this all should be off-limits).

From the ludicrous that she was once cited for fishing without a permit to the fact that her 17-year-old daughter is pregnant, Palin's life and McCain's decision-making process are under a microscope. The New York Times (the gray lady of journalism) has devoted at least four articles on Palin's life and what it views as her skeletons. The NBC news show “Today” even had Dr. Phil discussing Palin and her teenage daughter. Her home phone number and Social Security number have been published.

Then there is the criticism of not having appeared on “Meet the Press.” One publication has even speculated that with McCain's age he may die in office, elevating Palin to the presidency (which also has echoes of Eisenhower and Nixon, as Adlai Stevenson raised the same issue in 1956).

Why this attack on Palin? Unlike Nixon in 1952, Palin has not earned the hatred of Democrats by attacking their sacred heroes and sending promising Democrats such as Alger Hiss to jail.

Then why this attack? Because the Palin selection by McCain is monumental for Republicans just as Eisenhower selecting Nixon in 1952 or Ronald Reagan selecting George H.W. Bush in 1980. It sets the stage for Sarah Palin to be the heir apparent as Nixon and Bush senior were in their day.

But Palin is a true conservative who will be viewed as the heir not so much to John McCain but the Reagan Revolution. She is attractive, a reformer, well spoken, and driven by conservative principles. And, yes, she is a woman.

Sarah Palin is the Democratic nightmare come to reality, a young, charismatic, conservative female who can fulfill the Republican conservative revolution started by Reagan.

The Democrats have feared this day since Reagan rode off to California at the end of his second term. They were never worried about Bob Dole or George H.W. Bush because they were old-fashioned Republicans who paid lip service to the Reagan Revolution. Their fear was a young, charismatic conservative would rise to carry the Gipper's mantle. In Palin, they see such a person. And worse, she is a female.

Overnight, Palin has energized a defeated Republican base in the same way Reagan did in 1976 when he addressed the Republican National Convention after losing the nomination to Gerald Ford.

Obama and Biden have been swift to say some of the attacks against Palin are unfair. Why shouldn't they? They have the media, the liberal blogs and zealot politicians such as Wexler (and perhaps some jealous Republican politicians) to do the dirty work for them.

But just as with Nixon or Reagan, they fail to realize that such attacks are bound to reverberate against them with Middle America. To Middle America, Palin's story is one they can share and sympathize with. She is as Nixon and Reagan were “one of us.” The attacks against her are viewed by some as an attack against all of us.

Democrats who say they love what is happening and want to run against McCain and Palin should remember what they got the last time they got their wish in their opponent in 1980 and Reagan started the Reagan Revolution.

Our prediction is that Palin will be the new leader of the conservative Reagan movement.

- Johnson is chief executive officer of Strategic Vision LLC, and a veteran Republican pollster and strategist. Robichaud is president of Tuesday Associates and a senior Republican fund-raiser.

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me@rescam.org

Forget the issues; just look at us

EUGENE ROBINSON
THE WASHINGTON POST

September 5, 2008

ST. PAUL, Minn. – Talk about role reversal. The Republican Party, which scoffs at the nonsense of “identity politics,” has staked everything on the compelling life stories of its presidential and vice presidential candidates. The Democratic Party, ever conscious of the diversity of modern America, is doing everything it can to blur the lines of race, class and gender.

As if anyone thought otherwise, this is going to be an interesting few weeks until Nov. 4.

I guess I didn't drink enough Kool-Aid before Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's convention speech, which was received inside the Xcel Energy Center here as if Ronald Reagan had returned from the great beyond. I heard criticism of the Democratic ticket, demonization of the media, praise of John McCain's war record, characterization of Washington as an evil place, promises of lower taxes and a firm but nonspecific pledge to enact thoroughgoing reform.

None of that is exactly groundbreaking at a Republican convention. But the point wasn't the speech. It was the speaker. Palin told the nation very little about what she stands for or even what she has accomplished. Instead, her aim was to show the nation who she is.

The reason for framing her introduction to the American people this way is obvious. Palin, unlike most Americans, would like to see abortion banned even in cases of rape or incest. Her record as a mayor and a governor is that of a talented rising star, but it's a politician's record, full of reversals and compromises. And nothing we know about her suggests that a rhetorical stroll through the minefields of foreign policy would have been a good idea.

Instead, she offered one message: Here's who I am. Career woman, mother (specifically, lipstick-wearing hockey mom), loving wife, avid hunter, caring daughter, fierce fighter, product of her own spunk and determination. After the speech, Republican strategists were rapturous over her potential appeal to women voters who perform similar feats of multitasking every day without complaint or recognition. The hope was not that these women would agree with Palin's views, but that they would see their lives reflected in hers.

Until Palin's star turn, this convention had been primarily about another biography – McCain's. Again and again, speakers have reminded us of his military service and the torture he endured as a prisoner of war. Perhaps because McCain is still not fully in line with the Republican Party's activist base on a number of issues, praise of his record in Washington has pretty much been confined to national security issues and his newly appreciated status as a “maverick.”

Delegates to this convention, by the way, seem to have convinced themselves that they are all mavericks. Whatever happened to the old truism about how Democrats fall in love while Republicans fall in line? And if everyone in the party becomes a maverick, then aren't they all just conforming to a new “maverick” norm? But I digress.

The McCain-Palin ticket is threatening to become the Biography Channel of this election. The thing is, though, that Republicans don't have much of a track record at this kind of identity politics. They're good at driving wedges. But creating empathy? Feeling our pain?

That's what Democrats are supposed to be good at. This year, however, the Democratic Party has a standard-bearer whose biography is different from that of any other major party presidential candidate in history. Barack Obama's success has come not from convincing voters that his is a quintessentially American story – though he is working hard to send that message – but from appealing across demographic lines.

Obama's pitch isn't: “Here's who I am.” It has to be: “Here's the promise of a brighter future.” That's what his set-piece speeches, such as the one at Invesco Field in Denver last week, seek to accomplish: They invite people to envision a better nation and a better world.

The two parties haven't completely changed places. Democrats will have Joe Biden spend lots of quality time in Pennsylvania reminding voters that he was born in Scranton. Republicans will hammer home their promise to keep America safe, with the implication that the Democrats might not.

But after the two conventions, it looks as if Obama and Biden are going to do their best to focus voters' attention on issues – the economy, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, energy and the environment. And it looks as if McCain and Palin have decided to run on a platform of personal history.

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me@rescam.org

McCain and Palin: change agents?

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER
THE WASHINGTON POST

September 5, 2008

“There are two questions we will never have to ask ourselves, 'Who is this man?' and 'Can we trust this man with the presidency?' ”
– Fred Thompson on John McCain, Sept. 2.

This was the most effective line of the entire Republican convention: a ringing affirmation of John McCain's authenticity and a not-so-subtle indictment of Barack Obama's insubstantiality. What's left of this line of argument, however, after John McCain picks Sarah Palin for vice president?

Palin is an admirable and formidable woman. She has energized the Republican base and single-handedly unified the Republican convention behind McCain. She performed spectacularly in her acceptance speech. Nonetheless, the choice of Palin remains deeply problematic.

It's clear that McCain picked her because he had decided that he needed a game-changer. But why? He'd closed the gap in the polls with Obama. True, that had more to do with Obama sagging than McCain gaining. But what's the difference? You win either way.

Obama was sagging because of missteps that reflected the fundamental weakness of his candidacy. Which suggested McCain's strategy: Make this a referendum on Obama, surely the least experienced, least qualified, least prepared presidential nominee in living memory.

Palin fatally undermines this entire line of attack. This is through no fault of her own. It is simply a function of her rookie status. The vice president's only constitutional duty of any significance is to become president at a moment's notice. Palin is not ready. Nor is Obama. But with Palin, the case against Obama evaporates.

So why did McCain do it? He figured it's a Democratic year. The Republican brand is deeply tarnished. The opposition is running on “change” in a change election. So McCain gambled that he could steal the change issue for himself – a crazy brave, characteristically reckless, inconceivably difficult maneuver – by picking an authentically independent, tough-minded reformer. With Palin, he doubles down on change.

The problem is the inherent oddity of the incumbent party running on change. Here were Republicans – the party that controlled the White House for eight years and both houses of Congress for five – wildly cheering the promise to take on Washington. I don't mean to be impolite, but who's controlled Washington this decade?

Moreover, McCain was giving up his home turf of readiness to challenge Obama on his home turf of change. Can that possibly be pulled off? The calculation was to choose demographics over thematics. Palin's selection negates the theme of readiness. But she does bring important constituencies. She has the unique potential of energizing the base while at the same time appealing to independents.

This is unusual. Normally the wing-nut candidate alienates the center. Palin promises a twofer because of her potential appeal to the swing-state Reagan Democrats that Hillary Clinton carried in the primaries. Not for reasons of gender – Clinton didn't carry those because she was a woman – but because more culturally conservative working-class whites might find affinity with Palin's small-town, middle/frontier American narrative and values.

The gamble is enormous. In a stroke, McCain gratuitously forfeited his most powerful argument against Obama. And this was even before Palin's inevitable liabilities began to pile up – inevitable because any previously unvetted neophyte has “issues.” The kid. The state trooper investigation. And worst, the paucity of any Palin record or expressed conviction on the major issues of our time.

McCain has one hope. It is suggested by the strength of Palin's performance Wednesday night. In a year of compounding ironies, the McCain candidacy could be saved, and the Palin choice vindicated, by one thing: Palin does an Obama.

Obama showed that star power can trump the gravest of biographical liabilities. The sheer elegance, intelligence and power of his public presence have muted the uneasy feeling about his unreadiness. Palin does not reach Obama's mesmeric level. Her appeal is far more earthy, workmanlike and direct. Yet she managed to banish a week's worth of unfriendly media scrutiny and self-inflicted personal liabilities with a single triumphant speech.

Now, Obama had 19 months to make his magic obscure his thinness. Palin has nine weeks. Nevertheless, if she, too, can neutralize unreadiness with star power, then the demographic advantages she brings McCain – appeal to the base and to Reagan Democrats – coupled with her contribution to the reform theme, might just pay off. The question is: Can she do the magic – unteleprompted extemporaneous magic, from now on – for the next nine weeks?

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me@rescam.org

UC Berkeley begins felling disputed trees

Sep 6, 12:38 AM (ET)

BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) - The University of California, Berkeley has begun cutting down trees at the center of a dispute over its plans to clear the area to make way for a new sports center.

Protesters sitting in a nearby redwood tree on Friday refused to move.

University spokesman Dan Mogulof says school officials want to make it difficult for the tree protesters to remain, although they do not want anyone to get hurt or to get into a confrontation.

"The last thing we want to do is to get to that forcible extraction," he said.

The tree felling will continue over the next few days, Mogulof said.

He added that university officials have not decided what they will do if the protesters do not come down peacefully.

Protesters swatted at the workers in cherry pickers with sticks. Officials say a worker was hit on the head by a bottle from the tree-sitters' perch but was able to keep trimming.

"It's surreal to see the grove finally be cut down, after so much energy and effort and spirit was put into protecting it," Daria Garina, a UC Berkeley junior and supporter of the tree-sitters, told the San Francisco Chronicle. "It's tragic and awful." .

The cutting began after the California Court of Appeal on Thursday denied a request from two citizens groups for an injunction barring construction of the athletic training facility. The groups say they plan to take the case to the state Supreme Court.

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Concern about.

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愛﹐仁﹐忍﹐善﹐勇
Any people can sense their die just a couple of their live

Bailout a first step - Mortgage giants' dissolution should follow

UNION-TRIBUNE EDITORIAL

September 9, 2008

The Bush administration's bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the country's largest mortgage finance companies, is a potentially costly but absolutely necessary action to stabilize not only the U.S. housing market but the broader world economy. Yet the bailout should be only the first step. The ultimate solution is to dissolve these two half-government, half-private entities, which have become dangerously obsolete mastodons in a globalized economy.

Together, Fannie and Freddie own about half of the country's home mortgages, an amount exceeding $5 trillion. Their sheer size and outsized impact on the economy alone warrant breaking them up and privatizing their holdings.

Both agencies were created as quasi-government instruments to promote home ownership. But the hybrid model had serious shortcomings. The principal one was that lenders and owners of Fannie's and Freddie's shares stood to reap the profits while taxpayers shouldered the risks.

Indeed, Fannie and Freddie ballooned out of control precisely because their mammoth operations greatly lessened the risks for other key players, primarily banks and mortgage companies. Here's how:

Fannie and Freddie bought up half of all the loans offered by banks and mortgage firms, on the notion that this would free lenders to offer even more loans, which indeed occurred. But when banks could be confident that Fannie and Freddie would soon take over their loans, banks were largely shielded from the risks of bad loans. This spurred the subprime scandal and other unsound lending practices, such as “no docs” loans in which borrowers did not even have to document their income. Why should a banker worry about whether the borrowers could repay the loan if he was going to sell it at a profit within 90 days to Fannie or Freddie?

As the volume of bad loans escalated in recent months, the damage was intensified for Fannie and Freddie because they owned such a large share of the mortgage market. What's more, the damage quickly spread globally because foreign banks had purchased large amounts of the packaged loans sold by Fannie and Freddie. None of the big purchasers of Fannie's and Freddie's packaged loans had ever assessed the enormous risks posed by individual borrowers who recklessly took out gimmicky loans they could not repay.

In the end, the federal government had to step in and stem the losses, effectively making taxpayers ultimately responsible for the risks that should have been borne by the private sector. At least in the short term, the bailout appears to have brought stability to the panic-stricken housing market and given a boost to the stock market. Over the longer term, the government rescue should promote lower mortgage rates, further helping to bolster the housing market.

Under the bailout, Fannie's and Freddie's shareholders will receive no more dividends, and the value of their shares has plummeted to pennies. So, the shareholders also have shared belatedly in the bad risks of the past. Dissolving Fannie and Freddie would ensure that a mortgage fiasco on this scale will never be repeated.

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me@rescam.org

In Italy we say that profits are private and losses are public. That is how the Berlusconi gov't is trying to save Alitalia by selling it to private investors while charging its losses to a "bad company" which is public. I hope that the European Commission protests, but I doubt.
Tullio

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Weirdness (i.e., McCain) wins

DAVID BROOKS
THE NEW YORK TIMES

September 10, 2008

None of us have ever lived through an election at a time when 80 percent of voters think the country is headed in the wrong direction. But now that we're in the thick of it, a few things are clear. From voters, the demand is: Surprise Me Most. For candidates, the lesson is: Weirdness Wins.

Last winter, Barack Obama succeeded by running a weird campaign. He wasn't just a normal politician aiming for office, he was going to cleanse the country of the baby boom culture war mentality. In his soaring speeches, he denounced the mores of both the Clinton and Bush eras and made an argument for unity and hope over endless partisan warfare.

But over the course of the spring, Obama's campaign got less weird. The crucial pivot came when he failed to seize on McCain's offer to do a series of joint town hall meetings across the country. Those meetings would have elevated the race and shown that Obama is willing to take risks in order to truly change the way things are done.

Instead, Obama's speeches became more conventional, more policy-specific and more orthodox. His Denver acceptance speech was different from his Iowa speeches. It was more traditionally anti-Republican and pro-Democratic. In the speech's crucial contrast, Obama declared: “It's time for them to own their failure. It's time for us to change America. You see, we Democrats have a very different measure of what constitutes progress in this country.”

As David Broder noted, Obama's speech “subordinated any talk of fundamental systemic change to a checklist of traditional Democratic programs.”

It is easy to see why Obama might tack this way. Democrats have a huge advantage in a straight-up issue contest. McCain is vulnerable on health care and the economy.

But by campaigning in this traditional way, Obama ceded the weirdness edge to McCain.

The old warrior jumped right in. Think about how weird last week was. The Republican convention was one long protest against the way the Republicans themselves have run Washington. McCain's convention speech barely mentioned his own party. His vice presidential nominee came out of the blue and seems totally unlike the regular crowd of former eighth grade class presidents who normally dominate public life. McCain's campaign ideology, exemplified in a new ad released on Monday, is not familiar conservatism. It's maverickism – against the entrenched powers and party orthodoxies.

And it all worked. McCain got a huge post-convention bounce in the polls.

Now the campaign has become a battle between two different definitions of change. The Obama camp has become the champion of policy change – after eight years of failed Bush-McCain policies, it is time for different, Democratic ones. The McCain campaign is the champion of systemic change – after two decades of bickering and self-dealing, its time to shake up the whole system in order to get things done.

The Obama change is more responsible and specific, but it has all the weirdness of a Brookings Institution report. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.) The McCain promise of change is comprehensive and vehement, though it's hard to know how it would actually work in office.

It will still be hard for McCain to win in this environment, but his emphasis on broad systemic change may appeal to swing voters. Independent voters do not believe the country's problems can be solved merely by replacing Republicans with Democrats. They cast a pox on both houses. That's why they're independents.

Furthermore, the maverick theme allows McCain to talk directly about character. Obama can hint at his values when he describes his tax cuts and health care plans, but he is indirect. Most voters, especially ones who decide late, vote on character over policies.

If I were advising the candidates, I'd tell them to double down on weirdness. Obama needs to occasionally criticize his own side. If he can't take on his own party hacks, he'll never reclaim the mantle of systemic change. Specifically, he needs to attack the snobs who are savaging Sarah Palin's faith and family. Many liberals claim to love working-class families, but the moment they glimpse a hunter with an uneven college record, they hop on chairs and call for disinfectant. Obama needs to attack Bill Maher for calling her a stewardess and the rest of the coastal condescenders.

If I were McCain, I'd make the divided government argument explicit. The Republicans are intellectually unfit to govern right now, but balancing with Democrats, they might be able to do some good. I'd have McCain tell the country that he looks forward to working with congressional Democrats, that he is confident they can achieve great things together.

The candidates probably won't take this kind of advice. But remember: Weirdness wins. Surprise me most.

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me@rescam.org

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More news on the next VP that could become President: http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/10/palin.investigation/index.html?iref=mpstoryview.

You know what gets me. The reason I was thinking about voting for McCain was his major point ... I have more experience. However, a man of his age has to consider that he may die in office so you would think he would pick a VP with the same level of experience. Not one with less than Obama. So all those negative things he was saying about Obama he just did.

Now I have to admit I am in the Obama camp ... Even with that nasty, nasty nasty quote that his stole from McCain ... you know the lipstick one.

Chris.

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However, a man of his age has to consider that he may die in office

Depends on how much DNA he inherited from his mother. She's still going strong at 92.

VP with the same level of experience. Not one with less than Obama.

The vote for president matters most. You can't worry about "what ifs". Worry about the here and now. If you don't care about that then worry about Pelosi. She's 3rd in line.

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me@rescam.org

WOW! You clearly don't care about your reproductive rights, I guess that's not so bad but damn why worry about Pelosi when you could worry about Palin?

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I am, therefore I think.

WOW! You clearly don't care about your reproductive rights, I guess that's not so bad but damn why worry about Pelosi when you could worry about Palin?

I'm not reproducing with either. Although Palin...

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me@rescam.org

More news on the next VP that could become President: http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/10/palin.investigation/index.html?iref=mpstoryview.

You know what gets me. The reason I was thinking about voting for McCain was his major point ... I have more experience. However, a man of his age has to consider that he may die in office so you would think he would pick a VP with the same level of experience. Not one with less than Obama. So all those negative things he was saying about Obama he just did.

Now I have to admit I am in the Obama camp ... Even with that nasty, nasty nasty quote that his stole from McCain ... you know the lipstick one.

Chris.

So you would now vote for someone that could never become an FBI agent, because he would fail the background check. He has used drugs and had an association with self confessed bomber. You don't know who he would tell about US secrets.

both of them would not get to fbi, but they are not even trying, they are trying
to become president of usa

Aren´t there seven plagues being expected? I read something about seven plagues, or was it seven fat/thin cows? Just wondering.
P.S.I do not consider Mrs.Palin a cowgirl.

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