Jules Crittenden quotes Steve Jarding:
“Are Democrats coming surprisingly close to nominating a phenomena rather than a fully vetted candidate?” asked Steve Jarding, a long-time Democratic activist. “The answer to that appears to be a frightening, ‘Yes.’
…
One of his biggest complaints is over the “gushing of the media” toward Obama.
“In my 30 years of doing this,” Jarding said, “I have never seen anything like the swooning the … primarily television media has done over Obama.”
It’s been a year of that kind of fawning coverage, you know. February of a primary contest isn’t really the best time to start moaning about it, is it?
Here’s what the media has done to itself: They’ve locked themselves into the Obama phenomenon so tightly that they don’t have any choice but to continue it right now, lest they fall victim to their own Bradley effect that will be pointed out by Democrats for decades to come. A sudden lurch towards more level headed coverage, even if it’s in March, is going to make it only more obvious how deeply they were in love with Obama last year and during the opening months of this year, and it won’t be pretty.
No, I don’t think Democrats can count on the media to vet Obama for them, those dice have been cast, and there are no do-overs. Obama’s vetting is going to come at the hands of the Republicans, specifically the hands of John McCain, and it’s not going to be gentle.
Filed under: Barack Obama, Democrats, Election 2008, Media, Politics
The emperor has no clothes. I’m hoping McCain and his people can call attention to that.
It’s possible that Obama will be badly wounded by revelations and/or attacks by Republicans and the McCain campaign during the general election contest.
It’s also possible that John McCain’s campaign will be similarly damaged, as well. By the end of this process Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran might not be the only American who gets a “cold chill up [his] spine” at the thought of John McCain as President.
The conventional wisdom is not that Obama will be wounded by attacks, but exposed. McCain has a lengthy record to run on, which can and will be used against him by his opponent. Obama has almost no record. He is running on his personality. His record will consist of not only the things he has done in his limited time in government, but the things he has said during this campaign.
Sen Thad Cochran may get a “cold chill up his spine” but I certainly don’t. McCain was right on Iraq with the surge and went out of his way to push that agenda even with the political risk. And, he’s a tax cutting fiscal conservative. So, in the two areas I’m really conservative on, he’s my guy. Best I can hope for, I guess.
From the WSJ this morning.
Errr… that link doesn’t look so good. Any way of cleaning that up? Should I use tinyurl or something?
brogarn: Fixed. Yeah, WordPress isn’t so great with long URLs, tinyurl is a good solution.
Thanks!
“McCain was right on Iraq with the surge”
brogarn, do you also think that McCain was right on Iraq? That is, on the invasion?
“And, he’s a tax cutting fiscal conservative”
Well, he’s a fiscal conservative — setting aside his willingness to spend $22 million an hour, or whatever it is lately, 24/7/365 for the next 100 years (or so) on Iraq. I happen to agree with his characterization of the Bush tax cuts as “ridiculous,” and his vote against them, and I suspect that represents his honest assessment — but I see now that was when he voted against them before he voted for them. Straight talk? Not so much.
I didn’t agree with going into Iraq only because I felt we needed to shore up Afghanistan while we had the world behind us. My protests were purely tactical and timing. Iraq has always been something I felt George HW Bush dropped the ball on and that we would eventually need to go back. Saddam had crapped all over every UN resolution thrown at him. He had gassed his own people. He was a despot by any definition. But I thought the timing was wrong. Oh well, we’re there now. We broke it, we need to fix it. It’s expensive, certainly. I wince when I see the cost. But I can not agree with any immediate withdrawal because it would leave the Iraqis in a very bad place and cause the death and suffering of thousands. My sense of honor says that we should stay and complete what we started. Thankfully, after years of botching that entire thing (no thank you, Rumsfeld), we’re getting things right. And it started with the surge and using proper counter insurgency techniques. McCain was right to stake his political career on that surge.
Sen. Pete Domenici, (R., N.M.) on John McCain, to Newsweek magazine in 2000: “I decided I didn’t want this guy anywhere near a trigger.”
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-BC-McCain-Temper.html
brogarn: Well, we agree that we should have focused on the war in Afghanistan, where the situation has only deteriorated badly since we shifted our attention to Iraq — as the latest Taliban suicide bombing there today underscores.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/17/AR2008021700233.html?hpid=topnews
As for Iraq, I agreed with Colin Powell when he said in his 1995 memoir (back when he was against the invasion, before he supported the invasion):
“[I]n 1991 we met the Iraqi army in the field and, while fulfilling the United Nations’ objectives, dealt it a crushing defeat and left it less than half what it had been. . . . Before the fighting, I received a copy of a cable sent by Charles Freeman, the U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia. ‘For a range of reasons,’ Freeman said, ‘we cannot pursue Iraq’s unconditional surrender and occupation by us. It is not in our interest to destroy Iraq or weaken it to the point that Iran and/or Syria are not constrained by it.’ Wise words, Mr. Ambassador. It would not contribute to the stability we want in the Middle East to have Iraq fragmented into separate Sunni, Shia and Kurd political entities. The only way to have avoided this outcome was to have undertaken a largely U.S. conquest and occupation of a remote nation of twenty million people. I don’t think that is what the American people signed up for…. [T]he President’s demonizing of Saddam as the devil incarnate did not help the public understand why he was allowed to stay in power…. Iraq remains weak and isolated, kept in check by U.N. inspectors.”
Or, as Barack Obama put it in October of 2002:
“I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power…. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him. But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.
I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda.
I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.”
The problem with the Iraq war goes beyond just the execution of it, although God knows that has been botched almost beyond belief. The invasion itself was a huge strategic mistake. This unnecessary fiasco was completely avoidable.
From the Talking Points Memo site, based on A.P. reports:
“Republican John McCain says there will be no new taxes during his administration if he is elected president.
‘No new taxes,’ the likely GOP presidential nominee said during a taped interview broadcast Sunday.
McCain’s ‘no new taxes’ statement marked a turnaround. Last September, he was forced to defend his refusal to sign a no-new tax pledge offered by the conservative Americans for Tax Reform.”
But did he say “Read my lips…?”
Straight talk!
twc, if you’re looking for straight talk from John McCain, you’d better have a long time to spend looking, and be a very patient man.
Never look for straight talk from ANY politician whatsoever. The last thing anyone should do is trust a politician. The Founding Fathers knew this well enough to set up all of our checks and balances. Trusting the government and those who run it is folly of the highest order. It’s why I’ve been in complete disagreement with the Right on the wiretapping business. Warrants, please, because I don’t trust a single one of you. It’s a very slippery slope with a government that looks like the UK’s along the way and Nazi Germany at the end of it. No thank you on either count.
It’s also why I’m wholeheartedly behind the 2nd amendment , even though I don’t own guns of my own.
Having said all that, I’m still voting for McCain. I’ve liked enough of what he’s done and dislike enough about the Democratic candidates that I find him the best of the options.
Of course, it’s particularly hard for a politician to talk straight when he hasn’t even begun to think through an entire broad area of policy and governance — such as, say “basic economic policy.”
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/014/751tryie.asp
twc: Then again, I’d say that McCain’s however many terms in the Senate have given him more exposure to economics (or what passes for economics in D.C.) than Obama’s half-term in the Senate has given him in foreign policy.
True enough, Joe. But I don’t think McCain’s shaky grasp of economic policy stems from a lack of exposure. More from a lack of interest, I suspect.