BeldarBlog

In game of "Pelosi may I [vote no]?" the Speaker's answer to Dems was "Yes, you may!"

It's a long title, but it sums up my latest guest-post at HughHewitt.com pretty well, I think.

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[Copied here for archival purposes on November 5, 2008, from the post linked above at HughHewitt.com.]

(Guest Post by Bill Dyer a/k/a Beldar)

I thought it was bad enough that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had made a deliberate decision not to make today's vote on the Democrat's economic stabilization bill a "party loyalty" vote in which the House Democratic leadership made absolutely clear that it expected loyal Democrats to vote in favor of the bill. Ignoring all of the immense power to persuade that inheres in the position of Speaker of the House, Speaker Pelosi wouldn't even offer (or threaten to withhold) so much as a choice Capitol parking spot to make up the 12-vote margin between victory and defeat of H.R. 3997, the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008.

Speaking on John Gibson's radio show later in the day, however, Karl Rove ran through, by name and often by committee or subcommittee chairmanship, the many, many Democratic members of the House whom Speaker Pelosi and the House Democratic leadership expressly authorized to vote against the economic stabilization bill. Glenn Reynolds boils this down to a succinct sentence which is almost exactly right: Pelosi gave key Democrats a pass on the bailout vote. The only quibble I have is that she didn't just give key Democrats a pass. She gave them all a blanket pass, and then some members particular and specific encouragement to take it. It is inconceivable that she didn't know exactly what the result would be.

— Beldar

Key to economic stability bill's defeat was Pelosi's refusal to make this a "party loyalty" vote on the Democratic Party's bill

It's not just, or even mostly, Republican nay-sayers who were against the bill either on principle or because they were offended by Pelosi's partisan speech. The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 was Democratic bill — not Bush's bill, not the GOP's bill, and it went down to defeat because Speaker Pelosi refused to use the tools at her disposal to persuade another dozen Democrats (out of 95 who voted against it) to vote for it. So shows my latest guest-post at HughHewitt.com.

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[Copied here for archival purposes on November 5, 2008, from the post linked above at HughHewitt.com.]

(Guest Post by Bill Dyer a/k/a Beldar)

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, the number two House Democrat in authority (behind only Speaker Nancy Pelosi), in defending his party from responsibility for the defeat of the financial stability bill today, delivered the all-time lamest excuse I've ever heard (my transcription from video on the PBS NewsHour; boldface mine):

"No Democrat that we could get to vote for the bill didn't vote for the bill."

Behind that tortured double-negative is a tautology. This is empty double-talk — delivered by the dishonest, intended for the gullible.

Here's a short civics lesson, one that any defender of the Democratic Party badly needs for you to forget today:

An indispensable part of the genius of the American two-party political system is that it provides each party's leadership with a whole range of tools to enforce party discipline. There are committee assignments. There are office locations. There are discretionary decisions on staffing and funding of staffs. There is a panoply of carrots and sticks that party leaders from both parties can and do use to influence their members' votes. There are even party officials — "whips" — whose entire position is to facilitate the application of those carrots and sticks. And this isn't even vote-trading on issues, much less any sort of overt corruption. It's just the day-in, day-out working of Congress, and such has been the grease that has permitted the great wheels of legislation to turn since the birth of the Republic. Indeed, you can find parallels to it in the Roman Republic two millennia ago.

Past masters of the practice include such legislative legends as Speaker Sam Rayburn (D-TX) in the House and Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson (D-TX) in the Senate, but these tools are quite effective even in the hands of such modern-day legislators as Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid — if, but of course only if, they choose to take those tools in hand and apply them.

Ninety-five Democrats bucked their party leadership today precisely because Nancy Pelosi made it cost-free for them to do so. By refusing to make this a "party loyalty vote" — and thereby giving a clear signal to every Democratic member of the House that there would be neither carrots nor sticks applied by the House leadership — Speaker Pelosi ensured that even the mere dozen additional Democratic votes needed for passage wouldn't be there.

The indisputable fact is that the Democratic leadership of the House consciously declined to use the tools available to them that would have ensured the passage of this bill. Period, end of paragraph, and end of the story for today. This is a matter of simple arithmetic and standard party practices. It is not a matter that can even be seriously debated. It is only a matter that Democrats like Majority Leader Hoyer can attempt to conceal, as he does in the statement quoted above, by misleading the public about how hard the Democratic leadership actually tried.

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UPDATE (Mon Sep 29 @ 7:50 p.m. CST): Another thing about which there can be no disagreement is that what was defeated today was a Democratic bill. H.R. 3997 has had a complicated procedural history that was controlled at every step of the way by Congressional Democrats.

Specifically, H.R. 3997 was originally introduced by Rep. Charles D. Rangel (D-NY) as an amendment to the tax code "to provide earnings assistance and tax relief to members of the uniformed services, volunteer firefighters, and Peace Corps volunteers." By a pair of affirmative votes earlier today, however, a resolution offered by Rep. Louise M. Slaughter (D-NY) effectively converted H.R. 3997 into the "Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008." It too was drafted by Congressional Dems and their staff, varying substantially from what had originally been proposed by Secretary Paulson and the Bush-43 Administration, and incorporating only such requests and suggestions from the House GOP as the Democratic leadership decided to agree to.

This is the Democratic Congress' bill, but when it came to a roll-call vote in the House, the Democratic leadership wouldn't do what it took to get it passed even though (a) they have a huge majority and (b) a full one-third of Republicans in the House went along. Anyone who calls this "Bush's bill" or "a GOP bill" is either deliberately lying or abysmally informed about the basic workings of Congress.

— Beldar

Elections have consequences, and one of those is that Pelosi bears responsibility for the financial bill's defeat

To apportion credit or blame where due, you might want to read my late afternoon guest-post at HughHewitt.com.

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[Copied here for archival purposes on November 5, 2008, from the post linked above at HughHewitt.com.]

(Guest Post by Bill Dyer a/k/a Beldar)

My gracious host here, Hugh Hewitt, often reminds us all that elections have consequences. The consequence of the 2006 elections was to put voting control of both chambers of Congress directly in the hands of the Democratic Party, led by Nancy Pelosi in the House and Harry Reid in the Senate. In the House in particular, with its lack of debate rules like those the Senate uses to permit filibustering, when a piece of legislation passes or fails to pass, that result can be — must be, under hallowed principles of democracy — laid at the feet of the majority party.

Well, here's the result on the bill intended to restore order to our financial markets: It was defeated this afternoon in the House by a vote of 228-205. Only 140 Democrats voted for the bill. By contrast, "[a] switch of just 12 members would have reversed the outcome, and 95 Democrats, many the left wing of the party, contributed to the defeat."

Speaker Pelosi took the opportunity today to deliver a highly partisan, provocative, and frankly offensive speech immediately before voting on the bill intended to restore order to our financial markets. She found time to go out of her way to blame Republicans, including GOP members of the House, for the current financial crisis. Was her target audience the public? Perhaps. Could she be certain, though, that she would not decisively offend waivering Republicans who were considering voting for the bill? Of course not. Could she be certain that she would not also encourage members of her own party to vote against it, in a show of their own frenzy to point the finger of blame for the current crisis at the full-time object of their dementia, George W. Bush? Of course not. The occasion called for a speech displaying moderation and statesmanship, but Pelosi served up partisan venom.

What Speaker Pelosi did not, do, however, is even more significant: She did not bother to invoke the mechanisms of legitimate party discipline that have evolved over time by which party leaders can pressure their reluctant members. Per Ben Pershing of the WaPo (boldface mine):

House leaders, meanwhile, did support the bill and did whip it. But this wasn't a party-loyalty vote; lawmakers were asked to vote yes, but they weren't threatened. They (probably) weren't bribed. Add all that up, and you had a power vacuum.

Pelosi gave the members of her own party, in other words, a "pass" to make a political anti-Bush, anti-GOP statement. And make no mistake about this: When permitted by Pelosi to do so without party consequences, the Hard Left Democrats in the House put the opportunity to deliver their own raised middle finger to Dubya and the GOP ahead of the stability of the nation's financial markets.

In fairness, neither, apparently, did House GOP leaders make this a "party-loyalty vote." But once again, precisely because elections have consequences, the bill being considered wasn't the House Republicans' bill. It wasn't any longer what their party's president had submitted, either, and there's no guarantee that it will be their party's Treasury Secretary who will be administering the resulting program after January 2009. What was put to a vote did have some significant revisions that were, indeed, the result of vigorous GOP negotiations to make it more attractive to Republicans and to fiscal conservatives generally. Those revisions, plus lobbying from the GOP presidential nominee John McCain and the Bush-43 Administration, brought fully one-third of the House Republicans to vote for a bill whose particulars and ultimate fate were controlled by the Democratic majority. In a House numerically dominated by Democrats, on a bill nominally supported by Democratic Party leaders (including its presidential candidate), that ought to have been more than enough GOP support.

If you view the bill's defeat as a good thing, which substantial numbers of Republican congressmen and their constituents did believe, in absolute good faith, then there are many to whom you can extend thanks.

If, however, you viewed passage of the bill as a good thing — which I, reluctantly, did — then there's exactly one person who bears responsibility for its defeat. Responsibility falls on Speaker Pelosi not just because of her specific actions in this matter (which were deplorable), but because elections have consequences, and the consequence in 2006 was to give her more than ample institutional power to swing at least another 12 members of her party to produce the opposite outcome on this vote. "With great power comes great responsibility" is such a truism that it can become the motto of a comic book and movie superhero. It's a shame that the Democrat who's Speaker of the House can't grasp the concept.

— Beldar

Newsweek hot for "Mr. Cool"

My mid-morning guest-post at HughHewitt.com critiqued Newsweek's critique of the two presidential candidates' temperaments.

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[Copied here for archival purposes on November 5, 2008, from the post linked above at HughHewitt.com.]

(Guest Post by Bill Dyer a/k/a Beldar)

Last week's narrative from the Obama campaign was "John McCain can't be trusted because he's impetuous and lacks a presidential temperament." Thus, when McCain recognized the urgency of the credit crisis in the nation's financial markets and returned to Washington to participate in discussions and negotiations for desperately needed legislation to address it, Team Obama had to insist that the Republican Party's presidential nominee, one of its most senior senators, had no business being in Washington to, you know, do his day job. No doubt they also hoped that McCain would, without much provocation, go unstable during the first presidential debate and do something, anything, that they could paint as rash. McCain thoroughly disappointed them.

What to do, then, if your GOP opponent won't be rash on cue? Why, of course, turn to your friends at Newsweek. The Obama campaign's friends there promptly produced a piece called The Vices of Their Virtues, whose theme is summed up by its subhead: "John McCain's impetuosity is either thrilling or disturbing. Barack Obama's cool is either sober or detached. It's clear now how each would govern."

McCain, we're told, has "emerged as Mr. Hot, a candidate who makes no apologies for his often merry mischief-making." Obama, however, is "Mr. Cool, at once impressively intellectual and yet aloof," with a "measured responses to the news of the season and his steady insistence on projecting a cerebral image." And in case that's too subtle for you, in terms of helping you make up your mind how the really smart people at Newsweek think you should vote, they spell it out:

Our view is that if you are among the 18 percent or so of undecided voters (the current figure in most national polls), we think you now have more than enough on which to decide. McCain and Obama see the world differently, and you can see how; they behave in their own skins differently, and you can see how. The drama of the autumn has served perhaps the noblest end we could hope for, shedding light on how each man would govern. McCain is passionate, sometimes impulsive and unpredictable; Obama is precise, occasionally withdrawn and methodical.

To refine that down a bit: McCain=Hand Grenade, Obama=The Sum of All That's Good and Rational.

Oh, but lest you think that even being "occasionally withdrawn" or "aloof" is a bug, the good folks at Newsweek rush to assure you that that's really a feature:

At moments during the past two weeks of dizzying market gyrations and grim economic tidings, he seemed more like a bystander than a player. This may, in fact, have been the wise choice, both for the country and for his political fortunes. He understood that, by butting into the delicate negotiations between the White House, Treasury and Congress to shape a rescue package, a presidential candidate risked injecting politics and partisanship into a situation that demanded statesmanship and discretion.

What nonsense! If the prospective president of the United States cannot be trusted to play a constructive role in a national crisis, what business does he have being his party's presidential nominee? May he not be expected — as John McCain has done — to intervene in the most partisan of disputes, working across the aisle to present the concerns of his own partisans, while twisting his own partisans' arms not to block reasonable compromises?

By all accounts, that's what John McCain did. And as he told George Stephanopoulos on Sunday morning, if the Democrats want to deny that McCain played any role in the late-night agreement in principle reached after his post-debate efforts on Saturday, that was fine with him. "They don't like him very much," Newsweek quotes an unnamed "McCain adviser" as saying of unnamed "Republican Hill leaders," and John McCain would be the first to tell you that in many cases, that's absolutely true. But likability and effectiveness are very different things, and at a minimum, John McCain did not go Missing in Action (which was the "withdrawn" and "aloof" reaction of Barack Obama).

Newsweek strains most in searching among the great leaders of history who've been their own day's version of "Mr. Cool":

History can belong to the bold — to the Churchills and the Reagans, to men who stand when others sit or surrender, to men who seem to move through the world to a soundtrack of trumpets. But history also belongs to the careful, and to the prudent. Churchill needed FDR's caution and his competing intellectual understanding of the war and of the world that was coming into being; Reagan required George H.W. Bush's grasp of diplomacy and sense of balance to complete the end of the cold war and create a new (and, for Bush 41 and for Clinton, successful) model for American military action in a post-Soviet world.

Whoever wrote that claptrap hasn't got the foggiest clue about history. Winston Churchill's time of heroic triumph was from the fall of 1939 to December 7, 1941 — the time he was standing alone against Hitler, waiting and praying for an event that would bring America into the war. FDR's "caution and his competing intellectual understanding" is what gave us Yalta and subjected an enormous chunk of the world to Communist tyranny for another half-century.

As for Reagan and Bush-43, Newsweek has it exactly backward: It took Reagan's uncomplicated and principled worldview to prepare Poppy Bush to be a fine president in his own right. It was Reagan's example (plus a timely reminder from Lady Thatcher that Saddam's invasion of Kuwait was no time to go all wobbly) that inspired G.H.W. Bush to lead the Coalition to victory in the first Gulf War. But frankly, even on the most wobbly day of his life, fellow naval aviator Bush has had more in common with John McCain than with Barack Obama — which is to say, a spine, a willingness to take risks, and the courage to get back up even after being literally shot down.

No, the "Mr. Cool" of modern American history whom Newsweek conspicuously forgets to talk about is the "nuclear engineer," James Earl Carter. Temperamentally, it's Jimmy Carter whom Barack Obama most resembles of any recent American president. Gas lines, a combination of record inflation and unemployment, a dispirited military, America as an impotent giant being humiliated by jubilant crowds of chanting Iranian hostage-takers — that's what "Mr. Cool" brought to America the last time we tried one. As far as I'm concerned, that's enough of any example of "Mr. Cool" in the White House for my entire lifetime.

— Beldar

E.J. Dionne, Jr. offers definitive example of cognitive dissonance in debate analysis

E.J. Dionne, Jr. is an amusing fellow, often most so when he doesn't intend to be. My amusement at two of his most recent paragraphs generated my most recent guest-post at HughHewitt.com.

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[Copied here for archival purposes on November 5, 2008, from the post linked above at HughHewitt.com.]

(Guest Post by Bill Dyer a/k/a Beldar)

I promise that the following two paragraphs actually do appear back to back in an op-ed entitled McCain's Lost Chance by columnist E.J. Dionne, Jr. in today's WaPo:

An Obama adviser who was watching a "dial group" -- in which viewers turn a device to express their feelings about a debate's every moment -- said that whenever McCain lectured or attacked Obama, the Republican's ratings would drop, and the fall was especially steep among women.

But if the debate was indeed a tie — and McCain certainly looked informed and engaged once the discussion moved from economics to foreign affairs — this would count as a net gain for Obama. A foreign policy discussion afforded McCain his best opportunity to aggravate doubts about his foe. That opportunity is now gone.

Got that? McCain lost the debate because he tried to aggravate doubts about Obama on foreign policy/national security issues. And McCain lost the debate because he failed to aggravate doubts about Obama on foreign policy/national security issues. This gives new meaning to the old phrase, "can't win for losing."

Now, no one should be surprised that Mr. Dionne's objectivity is a bit compromised. That's a danger that every advocate faces whenever he puts on a pundit's hat, or vice versa. But rarely does one see a pundit whose judgment is so addled that it contradicts itself this directly in two successive paragraphs.

Step back. Yes, this debate was supposedly about foreign policy and national security, although that emphasis was terribly diluted by the moderator's decision to spend one-third of it on an urgent and timely domestic issue. I don't think that's going to matter in the long run, though. McCain's credibility on national security and foreign affairs completely dwarfs Obama's. Obama implicitly recognized that himself in his Veep selection; it's unfortunate for him that Slow Joe "All Iraq is Divided Into Three Parts" Biden is the closest thing the Dems have had to a foreign policy/national security mensch since Sam Nunn left the Senate.

No, to the extent that the election will turn on these issues — or, for that matter, on continuing opposition to the Iraq War — those voters are probably already mostly hardened in their views. And to the extent they're not, each candidate managed to get across his basic positions more than adequately: McCain was for the Iraq War, was for the Surge, and is for victory. Obama was against the Iraq War, was against the Surge, and can't permit the word "victory" to cross his lips except with reference to his hopes for his own political campaign.

— Beldar

Ex-generals and admirals back McCain over Obama by 4-to-1 margin

My latest guest-post at HughHewitt.com compares the respective tallies of ex-generals and -admirals who've endorsed John McCain and Barack Obama to become the next commander in chief.

Obama had an impressive line-up, literally, on stage at the DNC before his acceptance speech. But the total numbers aren't remotely close.

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[Copied here for archival purposes on November 5, 2008, from the post linked above at HughHewitt.com.]

(Guest Post by Bill Dyer a/k/a Beldar)

 

America's men and women in the military are, of course, comprise a diverse group that includes conservatives, moderates, and liberals, Democrats and Republicans and others. In August, an article in Roll Call announced that a group of about 60 former generals and admirals were "helping [Barack Obama] shape his national security policies and defending the first-term Senator against charges that he lacks the experience to be commander in chief." Quite a few of those appeared on stage during the run-up to Sen. Obama's acceptance speech on the final night of the Democratic National Convention, and watching them, I thought that was one of Sen. Obama's best moments during the convention.

Sixty is a lot. But two hundred and forty is more. According to a report in Monday's WaPo, fully four times as many former generals and admirals support McCain: [# More #]

McCain has never attracted huge crowds and mass followings the way his opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, and his own running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, have. But throughout his campaign, the former prisoner of war has enjoyed the fervent backing of a fraternity of veterans and their families, who rallied to his cause even when he looked like a sure loser in the Republican primaries and now provide a key core of support in the final days of his quest for the presidency.

More than 240 retired generals and admirals have endorsed McCain, and veterans — mostly older ones who fought in Korea and Vietnam — form the backbone of his campaign's "victory centers." They travel the country to tell the story of McCain's imprisonment in Vietnam, they man phone lines, and they push fellow veterans to give McCain money and support....

Veterans along the way said they support McCain partly because of their shared experience and partly out of concern for the nation's security. Although polls show that terrorism and the war in Iraq have faded as issues for most voters, they remain prominent in the minds of veterans, many of whom said they do not trust Obama to run the military.

Popularity among the troops isn't a perfect guide to who would make the best commander-in-chief. During the Civil War, Gen. George B. McClellan was enormously popular among the troops of the Army of the Potomac, whose pride and polish he had restored after the disastrous First Battle of Bull Run. When Lincoln booted McClellan in November 1862 because he seemed unwilling or unable to close with Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia in order to bring the war to a violent conclusion, that was a very unpopular decision among those troops.

But by November of 1864, those troops had been convinced that despite the vastly higher casualty rates they were suffering under the leadership of Gen. U.S. Grant — the first general Lincoln had found who was willing to "pay the butcher's bill" needed for victory — they nevertheless preferred victory to stalemate or defeat. Accordingly, by an overwhelming majority, they voted for Lincoln's reelection, abandoning their once-beloved general, McClellan, who was by then Lincoln's Democratic opponent.

I don't know if McCain's electoral margin among all present and former military members will match his 4-to-1 ratio of endorsements by former admirals and generals. But suffice it to say that notwithstanding Obama's own impressive list of former generals and admirals, and his not insubstantial support from present and former military personnel of lower ranks, the Obama-Biden campaign is very, very glad that their electoral prospects on November 4, 2008, don't depend on winning the current or ex-military vote.

— Beldar

Smitten Pakistani president smacked by feminists at home for sexism towards Veep nominee Palin

My latest guest-post at HughHewitt.com ponders why feminists in Pakistan are able to recognize sexism (albeit of a fairly harmless sort) toward Sarah Palin in the actions of their own president, while American so-called feminists are blind to any and all sexism directed her way by themselves or their fellow Americans of the Hard Left.

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[Copied here for archival purposes on November 5, 2008, from the post linked above at HughHewitt.com.]

(Guest Post by Bill Dyer a/k/a Beldar)

How Sarah Palin Rallied Pakistan's Feminists is one of the more interesting stories I've read recently in TIME, but its author, writing from Islamabad, is either oblivious to irony or else is ruthlessly suppressing his ability to recognize and write about it.

American leftists who style themselves "feminists" — a label they would permit only to people who believe both in equal rights for women and a bundle of liberal social causes, especially (but not limited to) abortion on demand — demonstrated not only immediate derangement, but blindness to both sexism and irony in their reactions to John McCain's pick of Sarah Palin as his running-mate. Is it asking too much now that some of them might possibly recognize the irony that the (fairly harmless) sexism displayed toward Gov. Palin by the president of Pakistan has gotten him into hot water with his own country's feminists — who seem to still understand that term to actually have something to do with equality of rights and treatment for both men and women?

Naw. Never mind.

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UPDATE (Mon Sep 29 @ 2:10 a.m. CST): "The Plumber" comments below that it looks from this photo as if Gov. Palin has a strong handshake. I agree, and that reminds me of a story, and one of my very favorite photos of Gov. Palin, which both come from Kaylene Johnson's excellent biography of her, Sarah: How a Hockey Mom Turned Alaska's Political Establishment Upside Down. I got permission to reprint that photo as part of my lengthy review of the book on my own blog back in June, and you can see it there. But here's a bit from the book (from pages 37-38) which I didn't quote there:

During the summers after graduation and throughout college, Sarah helped Todd fish commercially in Bristol Bay. They fished from a twenty-six-foot skiff with no cabin, a boat that could carry 10,000 pounds of salmon in eight holding bins below deck. It was the most physical and dangerous work Sarah ever had undertaken. On calm days, with Bristol Bay glittering in the sunshine, the surge of migrating salmon felt like a miracle. The work was staggering, however, and on stormy days, with cold saltwater spraying the deck, it took every fiber of Sarah's resolve to stay standing....

One day Sarah was holding onto the rail of their fishing boat as it sidled up to a tender to which they were delivering a load of fish. As the boats made contact, Sarah's hand was smashed against a railing. She broke several fingers. Todd skiffed Sarah to shore, went back out fishing, and returned to pick her up the next day. Even with a bandaged hand she climbed back on board to help.

"I couldn't disappoint him," Sarah said. "No matter how cold or nauseous, you just didn't complain."

— Beldar

From Bill Kristol's lips to John McCain's ear: Free Sarah!

I couldn't quite bring myself to cross-post my Treebeard & Botox post below at HughHewitt.com, so my latest guest-post there is once again on the subject of Gov. Palin. Long before whatever handlers and aides from the McCain team started advising her and planning her schedule, she was kicking butt and taking names in Alaska. It's time for her to cut loose again and dance with who brung her, instead of trying to dance some cautious gavotte to please whatever tight-orificed folks have been orbiting her since the Republican National Convention. A plea to John McCain: Free Sarah!

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[Copied here for archival purposes on November 5, 2008, from the post linked above at HughHewitt.com.]

(Guest Post by Bill Dyer a/k/a Beldar)

Bill Kristol was among the earliest conservative pundits with a national following to predict that John McCain would choose Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running-mate. Today on Fox News Sunday, he made this impassioned plea (my transcription, but italics reflect his verbal emphasis):

Some in the McCain camp are nervous about Gov. Palin, but they shouldn't be. They've totally mishandled her for the last week or two. Free Sarah Palin! Free Sarah Palin, that's what I say! They have surrounded her — look, McCain picked her because she is a good governor, a good politician, a good communicator. Let her be a politician! Let her communicate. Put her on TV, put her on radio. Let her relax. Let her go into the debate and try to win the debate!

They've surrounded her with former Bush White House aids, who (if I might say) in a way typical of the Bush White House, have gone into a total defensive crouch: "Oooh, let's not make mistakes. Be very careful! Katie Couric, nine-thousand part interview. Don't talk to any conservatives on talk radio or on television, that would be just talking to the people who might vote for you. Go get quizzed by Katie Couric, and don't make a mistake!"

They really — I think she's strong enough to overcome the very bad advice and the very bad staff work that's surrounded her recently. I gather that Senator McCain isn't happy with the way his own team has been dealing with Governor Palin. I hope they free her over the next few days, and I hope they tell her, "Go win the debate with Joe Biden! Don't be defensive!"

I concur 100 percent with this advice.

One thing that struck me while I watched the first presidential debate was that both candidates surely did not need any intense preparation to be able to adequately respond to any of the questions that were asked. Partly that's a function of Jim Lehrer's genial and vague questions, but mostly — to Lehrer's credit — it's because he stuck to important topics on which the candidates do indeed have well-formed views and substantial depths of knowledge.

Gwen Ifill, who will moderate the vice presidential debate again, as she did in 2004, is Lehrer's colleague and protege. Her questions then were crisper than Lehrer's on Friday night, but they weren't unfair, and they ought not be studied for this time like a final exam in organic chemistry in which exactly the right formulae must be committed to memory for regurgitation on-stage.

John McCain is a gambler. When he picked Gov. Palin instead of someone dull and safe, he was not relying on his staff's ability to brief her into something they think she ought to become, but on the qualities which have made her a phenomenally successful campaigner and popular governor in Alaska. There is no way that she will ever get a remotely fair reception from those who are already in the tank for Barack Obama, which includes essentially all the old-media dinosaurs, certainly including everyone at the three creaky old TV networks, the New York Times, and the Washington Post.

So quit trying to convert them! Go over their heads, directly to America — and have some fun while doing so!

To conservatives, I say this: Remember, folks, that before Gov. Palin's convention speech, Democrats from the Hard Left had convinced themselves that they had already mortally wounded Sarah Palin, that she was a laughing-stock, that McCain was about to say "oops!" and withdraw her from the ticket at any moment. And all she did in response was hit a grand slam with her acceptance speech, the undisputed high point of either convention and the most remarkable moment so far in 21st century American politics. Now the self-absorbed echo chamber on the Hard Left is again convinced that nobody could possibly take Gov. Palin seriously. They're in exactly the same position as was Paulene Kael of the New York Times, wailing incredulously after Nixon slaughtered McGovern in 1972: "But how could Nixon possibly have won? Nobody I know voted for him!"

To undecideds, I say this: Watch as much of Gov. Palin as you can between now and Election Day, especially in unscripted settings, certainly including the vice presidential debate. Make up your own minds.

To liberals, I say this: You're absolutely right. You've got Gov. Palin on the run along with John McCain, and you're obviously much, much smarter than the rest of us. You should continue to invest all your efforts in mocking Sarah Palin between now and November 4. Keep doing exactly what you're doing. Don't change a thing. Please. I'm counting on you, and I know you won't let me down.

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UPDATE (Mon Sep 29 @ 2:40 p.m. CST): Kristol's advice on Fox News Sunday was of a piece with broader, similar advice he's given the McCain campaign in an op-ed in today's NYT entitled "How McCain Wins." I agree with it, too: Playing it "safe" is a prescription for defeat. Kristol also expands on one reference he made on TV:

I’m told McCain recently expressed unhappiness with his staff’s handling of Palin. On Sunday he dispatched his top aides Steve Schmidt and Rick Davis to join Palin in Philadelphia. They’re supposed to liberate Palin to go on the offensive as a combative conservative in the vice-presidential debate on Thursday.

— Beldar

Treebeard & Botox

As is my wont, I'm using Sunday evening to watch recordings of the morning's talking head shows. Right now I'm watching Sens. Lindsey Graham and John Kerry, neither of whom I'm particularly fond of, being quizzed by Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday (having already watched a remarkably good performance by John McCain on the ABC News program, in which he delivered a heartfelt and rousing defense and continued endorsement of Gov. Palin, among other strong moments).

But I can't concentrate on what Sen. Kerry is saying because I can't stop watching for any signs of normal human movement in his face at eyebrow level and above. He looks considerably less craggy and wrinkled now than he did in 2004. But his eyebrows and forehead look paralyzed. (His hair, of course, has always been blow-dried and plasticized into inertness, and that remains the same.)

I've got the sound turned off, fully aware of the narcoleptic dangers of prolonged exposure to his voice. And I'm just running the segments showing him, in HDTV on a 50" screen, at various speeds to see if I can track any movement. There's absolutely none: smoother skin, yes, but deathly still. It's far more creepy than looking at Joe Biden's hairline.

What a sad, vain punchline John Kerry is. Is there anyone in America to whom this cannot be completely obvious by now, even if they voted for him in 2004?

How the candidates spent the day after the first debate

My latest guest-post at HughHewitt.com could have been devoted to Joe Biden's facial expression in the photograph above. Instead, it's devoted to the fact that while John McCain worked the phones on the day after the first presidential debate to try to save the financial security of the country, Biden and Barack Obama spent the day promoting The One's presidential ambitions.

When I suggested three weeks ago that the McCain-Palin campaign ditch the "Country First" motto, I didn't realize Barack Obama would provide quite so many vivid counter-examples during the actual campaign.

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[Copied here for archival purposes on November 5, 2008, from the post linked above at HughHewitt.com.]

(Guest Post by Bill Dyer a/k/a Beldar)

John McCain spent the morning after the first general-election presidential debate working the phones:

Senior adviser Mark Salter said the Arizona senator spent the morning at his campaign headquarters placing calls to congressional leaders and White House officials involved in finalizing a multibillion-dollar deal to bail out failing financial firms. Earlier in the week McCain suspended most campaign activities to help develop a bipartisan agreement....

"He can effectively do what he needs to do by phone," Salter said Saturday. "He's calling members on both sides, talking to people in the administration, helping out as he can."

Once again, faced with the choice between country and career, John McCain chose country. He'd rather lose a campaign than risk our country's fundamental economic security.

No legislator wants to admit that he had to be cajoled into doing the right thing for his country, and so probably both McCain and everyone he influenced will keep mum on how much effect McCain's vigorous phone campaign actually had. But USA Today reports that a bipartisan coalition of "House and Senate negotiators [announced that they had] worked out a tentative deal with the White House late Saturday."

By very sharp contrast:

Obama, meanwhile, stuck to his campaign schedule which will take him and Biden from here to two other swing states this weekend: Virginia and Michigan....

Though he has dismissed the presidential candidates' intervention in the bailout talks as counterproductive grandstanding, Obama expressed forceful opinions about what the deal should — and should not — include.

"I will not allow this plan to become a welfare program for Wall Street executives," he told the crowd here. And he suggested an additional $50 billion in aid for the unemployed and investments in infrastructure should be part of the deal.

"Washington has to feel the same sense of urgency about passing an economic stimulus plan" as it does about rescuing mega-investors, said Obama, who spoke by phone Saturday about the state of the negotiations with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass.

Got that? Obama spoke only to the real leaders of his own party on this matter, who obviously have not needed or particularly wanted his involvement, along with the Bush-43 Administration's representative (who is already scrambling to get a deal in place). The nation's financial future is at risk, but The One can only manage to make time for a total of three phone calls, and none of those were even to people who needed to be persuaded to support a bill.

We don't yet have details on what is and isn't included in the compromise agreement in principle reached late Saturday night. Based on what he told the public, however, even in those three calls, Obama wasn't urging his colleagues to make compromises that would trim the pork-and-graft potential which has so disturbed fiscal conservatives from both parties. Instead he wanted to hold the deal hostage to a $50 billion giveaway, plus drum up a little more class warfare (as if Main Street and Wall Street are competitors in a zero-sum game, instead of mutually dependent components whose health is essential to sustain economic growth).

That would frighten me a lot more if I actually thought Obama had any substantial influence on this deal or any of the actual decision-makers. My expectation is that it will include some sorts of salary-related restrictions on some private-sector executives who are involved in the implementation of the plan — that much was already under discussion before Obama even returned to Washington on McCain's heels last week — but I remain hopeful that it isn't heavily larded with pork.

You may or may not support the deal. I'm not certain myself, and won't be until I see the details, of course. But of one thing I'm very certain: In this crisis, as so often before, regardless of whether you or I think he was in the right or in the wrong, John McCain has consistently put duty ahead of ambition.

Barack Obama can't point to a single instance in his entire life in which he's put his ambitions at risk for any higher cause. Not one. And that does frighten me.

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UPDATE (Sun Sep 28 @ 1:00 p.m. CST): This useful summary of the terms of the tentative deal (h/t InstaPundit), compared side-by-side to the original Paulson proposal and the Pelosi-Frank proposed add-ons, does not include Obama's $50 billion in pork, anything for ACORN, or the bankruptcy law changes. The restrictions on executive compensation apparently don't affect companies and industries other than those directly involved in the plan's execution, so the restructions can be justified as fiscal restraint rather than class warfare.

This confirms that Obama wasn't ever a meaningful player in the negotiations, and although it's impossible to be "happy" about it, this describes a bill that I can support. Hugh makes the very good point above that if it indeed passes as described, this bill will be an example of responsible governance for which both the Bush Administration and congressional leaders deserve due credit. To that, I would only add this: Among the leaders who also deserve credit are those fiscal conservatives and grown-ups from both parties from outside the Pelosi and Reid camps — certainly including at least some House Republicans among them — who, in response to constituent objections, appear to have shorn away at least the most egregious give-aways.

To say "It could have been so much worse!" may be damning by faint praise, but Hugh's absolutely right that elections have consequences, and a consequence of 2006 is that occasions for even faint praise are rare enough now. If Obama should win, we'll still have some occasions to celebrate restraint dictated by a loose and shifting coalition of Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats — but not very many, and the trends are likely to be disappointing. 

— Beldar