Body Parts

Ah, John, We Hardly Knew Ye'. Hobbits indeed.

It ill behoves John McCain to belittle Tea Party political positions on the recently concluded debt ceiling debate, calling Tea Partiers "hobbits", as McCain admittedly knows nothing about economics. A little ignorance is a dangerous thing, because he doesn't know that he doesn't know anything. He lost the election, because he had absolutely no ideas about the crisis in September 2008. He ran around with his pants down--and this was the candidate I supported--on the crisis of the time. Obama had no ideas either, but had the political sense to keep his mouth shut. Why does McCain think he has any idea about what the debt ceiling is about, or what the failure to raise it would bring? Because he sits in the Senate, where, isolated from reality, egos inflate to fit the size of the media forum available. It matters not that McCain was referring to a Wall Street Journal editorial. The Journal editors understand the fiscal and economic issues involved, if not the social. McCain understands nothing. That his insult was borrowed is no defense for his obtuseness. It's time for McCain to shut up and become a bigger political leader. 

Palin Campaigns for McCain

A very nice post about her efforts here, and her sporting a leather jacket.

McCain Defends Palin: She's Not A Quitter, She's Absolutely Qualified To Be President

McCain finally stepped up to the plate and defended his running mate. And defended her ably and without reservation. About time.

Defend Palin; Dump McCain From the Republican Party

The slash and kill attacks of McCain campaign staffers on Sarah Palin are as appalling as genocide in Africa. I say, good riddance to McCain and his campaign staffers. They don't represent a winning future for the Republican Party. Sarah Palin does. She's as intuitive, gifted a politician as Reagan. She's a living conservative, with an aptitude for governance in the mixed politics of America's legislatures and so for the White House. She's a winner. McCain could burnish some luster onto his heroic statue if he would step in and halt these dreadful attacks, but he hasn't; that makes McCain a real loser.

The Bush vision of the Republican Party becoming a Big Government party in the style of the Democratic Party has been harshly rejected by the voters, who unfortunately want the real thing from the Dems, who will give it to them. McCain would not have changed Bush's vision; indeed, as the great bipartisan senator, he will probably help Obama usher in the new New Deal. We should want Republicans to be a governing party, but clearly we new a vision of how and what such a party should look like. I for one surely don't want the Republican Party to simply be a backbench minority, with no effective political power, sputtering mindlessly about its political philosophy.

The loss of the election has forced upon the Republican Party an opportunity to think from the fundamentals, how a modern conservative party should look and behave.  Palin is precisely the kind of politician, like Thatcher, to bring a new vision and a new party into practice. And she'll attract new talent and brains, with ideas and visions, to join her. Goodbye, John. Good riddance to your moronic campaign staffers. Hooray for Palin.

History's Road Turns a Dark Corner and Our Auto Headlamps Are Out

The second presidential candidates debate. For me the most interesting question was the last one, to both candidates. What don't you know? Obama typically didn't own to not knowing anything; but McCain did. He said, he--meaning all of us--doesn't know what new world crisis will come up, perhaps in a country few people know of. Perhaps in the economy, in ways we can't predict. He thought that uncertain, unknown future meant we should elect a candidate with a record of dealing with crises with a steady hand on the tiller. I give him that. I would have phrased it differently; I would have preferred he say directly, rather than hinting, we need a president whose integrity and character we can trust.

I would also have thought it might be a moment to be a bit philosophical; but neither candidate is the kind of person to be thoughtful in that way.

I would prefer that one of them have said, in foreign affairs, we face an Islamist War against the West and against Western values of freedom that will be long and costly. We don't know where we will be fighting it. Obama said that terrorism originated in Afghanistan, in that section of the world, and will end there; but both statements are wrong. It demonstrably didn't begin there. And it won't end there. Islamist Jihad and terrorism is large and growing in Indonesia, the Philippines, southern Thailand, eastern Africa. It will come to remote sections of South America. Any one of those areas could be the next staging ground for attacks against the US. We need to take an enlarged view of our future, similar to our long-view of history in the Cold War against  the Soviet Union. We have to remember our values, remember what we are fighting for, and not lose sight of those values at election time. Someone should have said that.

I would have preferred that one of them have said, in domestic affairs, we are entering a new world, in which the old political ideologies of collectivism are passing as they prove inadequate, and we shouldn't resurrect them. He should have said that we don't know what new political philosophies we will need to navigate the future, but we should know and hold onto the values of the nation's founding tradition and make sure than any future political philosophies hold those values at its center. We should remember that political freedom is useless without economic freedom, that individualism is empty without the right of private ownership of property, that freedom of speech is empty when citizens are dependent upon the government for their welfare, that freedom of religion is empty when government refuses to fight religious evil, Islamism, that ends religious freedom everywhere it triumphs. Look at Europe, where the will to fight Islamist totalitarianism has shrunk as European culture has drifted away from Christianity into secularism and pacifism.

I know that McCain knows such things in his heart, but he didn't express them. He is a fighter, a maverick fighter, not a philosopher. Obama doesn't know such things; to the extent he is aware of such connection between the founding values and the conditions of our future, he is prepared to relinguish the values to secure material comforts in the future. He thinks of himself as a lawyer for the oppressed, the wretched of the earth; that makes him a keeper of the archives, not a visionary of the future, no matter how much he talks about change. 

Over and over again, I fear, in electoral politics we are driving into the dark night of the future without our car headlights on.

McCain and Obama Positions on Nuclear Weapons Issues Compared

The two candidates are far apart on the big issues, including whether nuclear weapons can be or should be eliminated from the world, how to enforce the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, and continued development of nuclear weapons.

Obama desires and thinks possible a world free of nuclear weapons. This is an old, pacifist fantasy. It was proved wrong after World War I--think of the naval disarmament treaties. But the pacifist left is immune to fact and evidence.

Nuclear weapons are relatively cheap and easy to develop, deploy, and use. They are now widespread. The only effective means to prevent their use is US possession of such weapons, US superiority in their development and deployment, and US commitment to use them when necessary, i.e., deterrance.

Without nuclear weapons we would be held hostage to every enemy we have, and our weakness would multiply our enemies greatly. Nothing creates bullies faster than our weakness.

The old bumper slogan is correct as applied to nuclear weapons:

When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.

When nukes are outlawed, only outlaws will have nukes.

Read the careful, full statement and comparison of McCain's and Obama's views in this article by Stephen Schwartz. (Thanks to Danger Room for the reference.) 

Obama's and McCain's Views on Israel Contrasted

Obama's views on Israel are contrasted with McCain's point-by-point by an expert on Middle East affairs. Supporters of Israel should be cautious about voting for Obama.

Who Was the Old Man and Who the Young Man at Debate 1?

I thought the debate was a win for McCain, not in his campaign against Obama, but in his campaign against the old-man image of himself. The image of McCain as an old man, the crippled hero, cancer survivor, tired out, confused at key moments, has stalked his campaign. Obama's campaign has occasionally referenced this image of their opponent, but generally, to my impression, they have let the doppelganger do the work, weakening McCain's candidacy, by itself. McCain's performance routed the unwelcome stranger. McCain was steady, confident, standing his ground, often verbally vigorous, knowledgeable, the image of a seasoned veteran and politician, proud of his reputation as a maverick, eager to continue the electoral combat. One could easily see the determination of his youth that kept him alive in the Hanoi Hilton. He was comfortable with the responsibilities his career has given him and with the responsibility he is asking voters to trust him with. McCain is a man ready to be president.

I was struck how much Obama looked like a middle-aged man. There was no flash of the youth, or youthfulness, that is portrayed in his stylized campaign photos and posters. His face pulled down. He didn't look light on his feet. He didn't sound verbally nimble. He enumerated his points, as if he needed to get through them and was not, at the moment, sufficiently sharp to summarize them briefly. He seemed tense and uncomfortable, a man out of his element. In his heart, he appeared to want this debate to be over as soon as possible. Obama did not radiate an inner conviction that he is ready to be president. And he is not.

McCain Is 15 Minutes Away From Losing the Election

The financial meltdown on Wall Street and other global finance markets has now become case #2 of governmental incompetence, following the devastation of New Orleans by hurricane Katrina as case #1. Whether rightly or wrongly, President Bush and the Republican Party are being blamed for both by Democrats. The electorate will probably buy into the accusation, regardless of the complicity of the Democratic Party in Congress or in the Clinton administration.

McCain can rescue his campaign, I believe, by only one strategy. He needs to step above the debate about who is at fault and take a large view of the American economy. He needs to sound like FDR in 1932 and 1933. He shouldn't be proposing a new New Deal or another 100 days of emergency legislation. The economy isn't in that much trouble--surely we hope, anyway. Rather, he needs to provide a general account of the troubles of the nation and the strength of the nation. He needs to frame remedies in terms of the strength of America. He needs to reassure Americans about what they, what we, can do, and how what we do will turn out. 

If the fundamentals of our economy are sound and strong, he needs to spell out:

• What these fundamental are and how they are strong and sound;

• How the fundamentals, such as private property, free capital, free labor, and free markets, can be made more secure and strong; and 

• How reform of current regulation of them could invigorate them.

McCain needs to make clear that Obama and the progressives and the Left's solutions to our financial meltdown will weaken the fundamentals of the economy. He must put Obama on the defensive on this matter and set up Obama to be taken down on the issues in the debates. If McCain doesn't take control of the issue, he is going down and going down fast.

Revised.

Obama's Blundering Jibe At McCain About E-mail

This is so delicious a blunder by Obama that it has to be read. It's all over the web, but Little Green Footballs has it best. But it probably wasn't a setup. Why should the McCain campaign go to all the trouble of a setup, when the Obama campaign trips all over itself without any assistance?