SJS's Opinion Counts! (As Much as that of 472 Other Likely Voters)

So, I was called by a pollster last week. That's right; SJS's opinions are a part of the new Q poll. It's an interesting experience. Of course, one of the problems of polls is that you have to give answers that fit into categories, rather than discuss all the nuances of your informed and cerebral opinions. But that's actually part of the beauty. For example, how would you answer when asked if your opinion of John McCain is favorable or unfavorable? It's a tough call. Three weeks ago, and my answer is probably favorable. I admire his service, liked him in 2000, have appreciated some of his views. But that McCain appears to be gone today, at least as long as he's running for president. So I had to say unfavorable, which was really weird. At one point, in regards to a question about nuclear energy and did I think it was a good idea, I had to ask if I could say I don't know enough about it to answer. Anyway, interesting experience.

For those of you hoping for a breakdown on the John Edwards adultery scandal, I'm going to disappoint you. I'm afraid I'm just not interested enough in the three-year-old affair of a person who's not running for anything (and likely never would have again, anyway) to be any good on these topics. Also, as you'll remember from Spitzer, I'm just not that into judging the personal lives of people I don't know, unless they involve some type of political hypocrisy (e.g. Rush Limbaugh and drugs), and even then it's usually not that interesting. In this case, the only real political ramifications is that Edwards' role as a voice for poverty will have to wait years, and can't take place in an Obama administration. Think Gary Hart, a youthful senator who ran and lost twice, had an affair, and has since re-emerged as a voice for his issues.

One thing I do want to combat, though, is the notion that every reporter in the vast liberal media conspiracy was somehow not working on this story. It's just not true. Read Chris Cillizza's accounts of his efforts, and you'll see what happened to most people who chased it. They made all the calls, checked everything, and no one would talk. When you have that (which happens sometimes in journalism), you either have to run the story without confirmation, thus potentially ruining the career and marriage of a public figure and possibly your own reputation, or not run it until you have more. Unsurprisingly, Cillizza and other chose to spend their time reporting on things other than a once-and-future-also-ran's sex life. Let's just accept that, while it may not feed our desire for scandal, that was actually the professional and even civic thing to do.

If you're interested in the religious aspect of these developments, the Post's OnFaith has a whole discussion on forgiveness this week.

And, in more dirty laundry, memos from the Hillary Clinton campaign were the basis for an Atlantic story on the inner workings, a detailed and gritty autopsy of the campaign that was never supposed to lose. As Chris Cillizza summarizes, Mark Penn comes out looking better in some regards, although just as ruthless as he seemed. He saw the Obama threat early, wanted nothing to do with likability for his candidate, and constantly fought against a team of advisers with no leader, a spouse and former president often calling shots and a candidate often unwilling to make executive decisions. Penn wanted to mount an campaign questioning Obama's Americanness, very similar to the one we're seeing from McCain now, and, to her credit, Hillary refused. Perhaps the overarching story is one of a bloated campaign, too caught up in its own mechanics to ever adapt to the changing landscape around it. Instead of showing passion and energy, the strategists (many of the same ones from Bill's team in the 1990s, and Hillary's successful Senate campaign) mostly fought amongst themselves and hated on Patti Solis Doyle's management of money. Harold Ickes was right to argue for $25 million in a post-Iowa reserve fund, but on strategy looks completely lost and make incredible comments, even internally, about how Tsunami Tuesday would be the end of the primary. We'll never know if her campaign was really lost strategically (as opposed to running into a fresh face with enormous political ability in a year about change), but when you only lose by a few percent, it certainly is tempting to believe that better management of resources and communication could have made the difference.

Reid Wilson gives his righty view on how Clinton's failure can help McCain, but I disagree with some of the conclusions. For one, I really think politicians focus on the media more than the voters do. Look, the media writes about new things; Obama is a new thing and neither McCain or Clinton are. But all we heard from Clinton and McCain camps was whining about how nice the media was to Obama. I used to be in the media, and I feel confident in saying: Shut up. If you want to get covered, do something newsworthy. No, eating in dumpy rust belt bars is not newsworthy. Drawing 200,000 people in Germany is newsworthy. Wilson's conclusion that the Clinton camp's browbeating of the press led to a re-examining of Obama in the media and thus led to the narrow Obama losses on March 4 in Texas and Ohio is kind of specious. For one thing, those states were never good for Obama. Never. And he lost Texas (where there might be a few racists) by 3 percent, and won the delegates there. So one could easily argue he did about as well there as he did in states he wasn't supposed to win where the media was "fawning" (PA, Nevada, whatever). I just don't buy the idea that the media was the reason Hillary lost, and that what McCain should take from it is to run more Paris Hilton ads. Fine, you got the media to re-examine itself for a week, like Hillary. At least people were voting at the end of her week; all youMcCain has done is annoy a major donor in the Hiltons, make a fool of himself, and change the tone of political coverage for seven days of men's synchronized diving.

Polls are flying around the country in the various House/Senate/Gubernatorial elections, but it's so early there's not much to know. There have been some interesting developments, though, in primaries.

• Two weeks out, the Alaska at-large House seat has a dogfight for its Republican primary. Don Young has been there for 17 terms, but Lt. Governor Steve Parnell is within the margin and ahead in some polls. Young is corrupt and under indictment, so Parnell would be bad for the Dems in a usually-Republican district. If Young holds on, though, he will go up against former state Rep. Ethan Berkowitz, who's currently trouncing 2006 nominee Diane Benson in his primary. That's a seat the Dems could pick up, given Young's problems.
• The Tennessee 9th is based in Memphis, where Rep. Steve Cohen (D) has just defended his nomination by 60 points in a primary against challenger Nikki Tinker. Who cares? Well, Tinker is a former congressional aide and a black woman in a district that is 60% black. In case you think anything we've seen in the presidential campaign counts as contentious yet, this seat reminds us how low things can get. Tinker's campaign included ads about the KKK and this despicable piece of junk about the fact that Cohen doesn't want school prayer (Get it? He's JEWISH!). Her tactics inspired a smackdown by everyone, including EMILY's List, which had endorsed her. Cohen, to his credit, took the high road and will likely retain his seat.
• Missouri takes some pride in being a bellweather state, and it's poised to be a battleground this year. Rep. Kenny Hulshof (R) won the primary to take on state AG Jay Nixon (D) for governor, with Nixon being a slight favorite right now. In Hulshof's old district, the 9th CD, we'll have a leans-Republican battle between State Rep. Judy Baker (D) and Republican Blaine Luetkemeyer, who is one of the best election names this season. Why do I find it amusing that he was the state tourism chief?
• Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick got out of jail, but the bigger news is that his mother, Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, survived a tough three-way primary to defend her Detroit -based Congressional seat in the Michigan 13th. She's the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, but she needed big money and big names to pull out the victory, and she'll have another battle in her future. The good news for her is that it's two years away, since there are no Republicans in Detroit. The bad news it that that gives her son two more years to do embarrassing stuff.
• The most interesting news, though, comes from Kansas, where Lynn Jenkins beat a famed and overfunded ex-Rep. Jim Ryun to win the nomination against Rep. Nancy Boyda (D) in the 2nd CD. Jenkins is a moderate and Ryun was a track star who was not, but she won handily and the Dems will have real trouble holding onto the seat. A quick look at Jenkins' site shows a slew of rational and moderate viewpoints, including education, reduced spending, and a diverse energy portfolio, with no real mention of "cultural" issues. Usually, conservative is the way to win a GOP primary in Kansas, but Reid Wilson makes the point:

  Perhaps, though, it is not surprising that Kansas Republicans would choose a more moderate candidate. A serious schism has existed between conservatives and moderates over the past decade, handing Democrats the ability to pick off seats here and there. Governor Kathleen Sebelius won both her elections over Republican rivals by exploiting those divisions and picking moderate Republicans as running mates, sending conservatives into apoplectic fits.

• And the Morning Call fired everyone, but thankfully we still have John L. Micek, who rode the Straight Talk Express this week. He appears to have gotten on and off without an irrepressible need to talk about what a great American John McCain is, so maybe he's got some insight into what, exactly the magic of that bus is.
  

Drilling for Votes

So yes, I've been MIA, and for that, I apologize. But the recent campaign has, shall we say, not put me in the mood to talk politics. That mood was further put off when I met a McCain supporter who thought the best way to talk up his candidate was to call my girlfriend a not-very-nice term for female canines. Hey, to the supporter's credit, it's the way McCain's team is trying to win the election; when you have no arguments, just be meaner. So much for the "respectful" campaign McCain promised us in April. Also, and more actually the reason I've been not blogging, it's Musikfest in Bethlehem, so I've been having fun outside.

The McCain camp, and Republicans in general, do actually have one issue that sort of works for them now, and that's energy. The line is one word: "DRILL." It's like "surge" or "9-11," when all else fails, the GOP candidates are running to the "We must drill everywhere right now and forever or gas will keep getting more expensive. Stupid Democrats won't let us drill in your backyard!"

Let's get some facts out of the way before we actually evaluate the issue, shall we? This CNN article from June gets the basics right, if you want more detail than my bullet points. But these are kind of important facts if we want to talk about an issue like energy and oil consumption.

• US Oil companies currently have leased well over 100 million acres of land that they may drill on. 90 million of those are offshore. The oil companies aren't drilling on those lands because that costs money, and, with an oilman as president, they'd like to get land closer, so it's cheaper.
  
• Even President Bush says that more land for the oil companies will not help gas prices in the short term (less than 5 to 7 years), only maybe a little psychologically.
• We consume about 21 million barrels of oil per day, and we produce, currently, about 8 million.
• We argue over how much new drilling could give. Some say as much as 5 million barrels/day, but the oil companies suggest it's closer to 2 million.
• The top three nations that we buy oil from, in descending order: Canada, Saudi Arabia, Mexico. The next two are Venezuela and Nigeria.
  
• The U.S. currently produces more oil (8.4) than any other country not named Saudi Arabia (10.7 million barrels/day) or Russia (9.7). After us, there is an immense dropoff, to Iran at 4.1.
• The rise in gas prices can be basically quantified for an individual. Let's say you have a 20 mpg car and you drive 10,000 miles per year (both fairly standard numbers, probably conservative for my readers). That means you use 500 gallons of gas per year. When gas was $1.50 gallon in 2002, you paid $750/year, or about 14.50 per week. Now you pay about $2000, or $38.50/week, which is a serious difference. But the price is dropping just a little bit, and most people aren't comparing their gas now to their gas before the Iraq War (it was $1.73 in most of 2003), they're comparing it to the $2/gallon prices of 2004, the last time we elected a president. The difference between $2 gas and $3.50 gas (which is where it'll probably be in November) is still significant, at $750/year or $12/week, but probably a little easier to handle. If you buy a car that gets 25 miles to the gallon, by the way, that number drops to $600/year.
  

Okay, so what do these numbers tell us? Three major things.

1. We already make a TON of oil, and most of our imports are not from Middle Eastern countries.
2. Even the oil companies say that drilling will make, at most, a 10% difference in about five or seven years. They also believe that the price of oil will go down, otherwise they'd be using the land they already have.
3. The cost of rising gas for us is, no matter how you crunch it, far less than the cost of smoking a half a pack of cigarettes a day (over $900/year), or spending $15/week on alcohol.
   

I understand that high gas prices are bad, and for a family that was already struggling to make ends meet, it could easily be the difference. Also, as someone who does the grocery shopping for a household, I am aware of how it has driven up the cost of everything else. So I'm not saying that rising gas prices are something that we should just walk off and stop whining about (thanks, Phil Gramm). I'm saying that the fear of rising gas prices is far, far more devastating than the actual effects on most American families. This is a problem, but it is one with which most of us could cope if we felt we had to.

And my problem with the McCain-GOP solution is that it's telling you we don't have to. The message is that, if we just give the poor oil companies land that will make them a teensy bit more profit, then we can all have lower gas prices again. And I'm here, staring at numbers and thinking, if we believe that, then ExxonMobil deserves to make another $13 billion next quarter, because they've successfully played us all for suckers.

People are fond of throwing around the statement that "we are addicted to foreign oil." I find that line kind of stupid, because a) we're not and b) real addiction isn't something I like to equate with large policy problems. We're not addicted to anything. We have grown accustomed to an unsustainable convenience that is not good, on the whole, for our economy, national security, or planet. The only thing that's like an addiction is the rationale we're hearing for why it's not that bad, from the drillophiles. Oh, if we just get a little more, then we can cut back later.

If you read this blog at all regularly, then you know I have several recurring themes. One is that we write our own narratives, regardless of whether there is a causal relationship between events or not. Another is that easy answers to hard problems deserve skepticism. The only thing we're "addicted" to here is being told that oil is cheap and consequence-free, when in reality it has rarely been either of those things and never both of them. And I don't want my public servants to prolong the lie, I want them to, well, serve the public. Read a book, talk to an expert, and then don't tell me that it'll all be okay if we give your buddies a few million more acres of land. Tell me it's time we get efficient cars or live with the fact that inefficiency is more expensive. Tell me that driving on full tires will save me $100/year that I can put toward bills or a Wii. Tell me that my government will be able to help me with some of the transition, and that we're investing in a diversified energy portfolio, but that this is America, and in the end we're responsible for our own consumption.

If my part of the American Dream is having a Denali that gets 12 miles to the gallon, that's terrific, and I should get a night job or cut back on drinking to afford the additional $400/year or so. Perhaps accountability won't sell when you're running for President. I guess people would rather hear that your opponent is like Britney Spears than a real solution to a problem they have. But I think the right messenger can get a tough message across in way that empowers us; Reagan was good at this, as was FDR. Drilling might be part of a long-term solution to a national security problem, but giving away more land to the oil companies isn't a solution; it's just a fire sale. It's a last-ditch effort by oil corporations to get just a little more, because there's a decent chance their guys are leaving office in fall.

This is a challenging time, and we have many problems. Pretending they are easy to solve will get us nowhere. What we need now are serious women and men who are up for serious work. I can handle not agreeing with their views, but I am tired of a government whose solutions to problems are to think less, scare more and go shopping. The Republican Party was once about solving problems with reason and data; now it appears to be about telling you everything will be okay when you know it won't, and just hoping you're desperate enough to swallow the lie. I hoped John McCain would be different, and instead we got this:

John McCain's First Awful Ad

Okay, so as I was typing my post yesterday, predicting that McCain was going to devolve into a creepy, mudslinging lie monster, he was already at it.

First, let's clear up the Obama-doesn't-visit-the-troops-at-Landstuhl thing, some of which I got wrong. All the following information comes via the very reliable Andrea Mitchell. Obama was in Germany, had a stop to visit the troops scheduled. Contrary to what I said, he actually was never going to bring cameras or campaign people; he intended to bring one adviser, who was a former military commander. The regulation prohibiting cameras/campaign stuff was old, and they were going to comply with it. What the Pentagon did was call him repeatedly telling him how they did not want the troops to be politicized. They did this enough, Mitchell reported, that the Obama camp, which never intended to politicize the trip, saw they were in a no-win situation. If they went, it was clear, the Republicans would say he politicized the troops. So he canceled, and McCain said he snubbed them.

Okay, you can quarrel with Obama's decision, and I do. So what if the Pentagon is setting you up to take a shot at you? If the troops want to see you (and they did), and you can visit, visit. I understand the thinking, and I can even respect deference to the Pentagon's wishes on all things military, but in this case I would have made the visit anyway. Okay. If Mac said that, I'd be all behind him. Instead, he ran this ad:



It's just awful, crappy lying. The snide remark about the Pentagon not letting him bring cameras is, as I said, wrong. The image in the ad of Obama at "the gym"? It's him playing basketball WITH AMERICAN TROOPS in Kuwait. I suppose the only good thing about this ad is that it's John McCain deliberately misleading people about his opponent, not a 527. There are things John McCain has done that are admirable, and there are things he has done that can be defended by his staunch supporters. This ad isn't one of them, and I have a feeling this is just the beginning.

The Politico says this is part of a McCain plan to get tougher, and more active, rather than the slow, reactive camp they've been so far. If this is the campaign's response to criticism that they've been too reactive, they're missing the point. Driving the agenda means that you are a leader on issues and actions, not just that you can attack harder and earlier and more unfairly than the other guy. Where is the McCain that denounced this stuff eight years ago? Even four years ago, he issued tepid condemnations of the Swift Boat Vets. Now, he's running around with a Swift Boater and running ads that are aimed at nothing other than questioning patriotism. Maybe it's good strategy; it seems unlikely McCain can win on the issues, so going after Obama on vague, personal, negative grounds might be the way to beat him. After all, that's how Hillary Clinton beat him. Wait a minute...

You're Either With Me or You Want to Lose

So I watched Barack Obama on MTP and McCain on This Week, and it was a fairly unremarkable week, except that I think it marked the beginning of two things, for me. One this is the moment from which we can expect McCain to descend into a downward spiral of unfair, negative, dirty trickster politics. Two, a corollary, this is the moment from which people like me - who are okay with negativity and hard campaigning but not okay with lying and cheap shots - will view McCain with ever less respect.

McCain, in the past week, has had a rough time. While the world focused on ObamaQuest overseas, McCain looked older than ever and visited Wilkes-Barre and Kennebunkport. To combat this, he has said some things. One of them was the last post I did, about how the surge is working in every time, in every universe, at every point throughout history, and Obama won't admit that he was wrong to ever doubt it. This is a claim open to several arguments (e.g. how well would the surge be working if Mookie al-Sadr decided he was sick of us and let his guys out on the town?), and seems to be based in an "I was right, you were wrong" campaign strategy, but such is politics. Another thing McCain said is that he, Grampa Mac, would rather win a war than win an election, and Obama would rather lose a war than lose an election.

This is, of course, an amazing statement on several levels: 1. You are charging that your opponent, a US Senator, would work for his country's defeat if it would help his campaign. 2. You are saying that you do not believe anyone who disagrees with you on a complex military issue could possibly do so for genuine reasons. If anyone disagrees with Mac on tactics, it follows, they want to lose the war. No one might, for example, think that withdrawing some troops would ease Iraq's issues with us in their country, or free our troops up for other fights in the global War on Terror, and therefore be a smarter strategy as far as WINNING. Nope, if you disagree with Mac, you want to lose, and are therefore just out for yourself, because everyone knows that being in favor of losing is great in politics.

More stunning, though, was that, when presented with the pleasantly softball opportunities of a George Stephanopoulos interview, McCain entrenched himself further. George asked him if that wasn't questioning Obama's patriotism, and McCain refused to answer, making some snide comments about judging Obama by his actions. This occurred three more times, each time with George getting more incredulous, and each time with Mac saying that Obama took a view "that was popular with his base" (unlike McCain, who only ran to the right for personal reasons, I suppose), and that the voters would judge him based on that. Nowhere did he acknowledge that Obama might want to win the war via different strategy. He didn't even allow that Obama might be secretly French, and have a deep personal desire to surrender that would be unconnected to politics. No, in Grampa Mac's world, we are either with him, or trying to pander to our political base.

George then, of course, accepted McCain's ridiculous "I'm not saying he's unpatriotic just because he looks like a flag burning Communist terrorist" rhetoric. Then he turned to the question of getting into Iraq, where he pointed out that McCain had said that this war would engender good relations with the Arab world, and that we be greeted as liberators. Would McCain, perhaps, like to admit that he was wrong on this issue?

No, McCain responded, the Iraq War has helped us in the Arab world, and we were greeted as liberators.

Read that again.

We're back to this, it seems.

McCain followed that up by saying that Obama snubbed wounded troops in Germany by not visiting them. Interestingly, Obama was going to visit them, but then the Pentagon told him that morning that he couldn't, as long as he was accompanied by anyone from the campaign (new regulation, doncha know?). So, since all of the press, campaign, etc., already had it on the agenda and he couldn't very well tell them all to not show up, he canceled the stop. McCain made some snide comments about how he made it there, and there was no Pentagon regulation that he knew of to keep Obama from going there without press and campaign.

Perhaps Obama could, in fact, have visited the wounded troops and canceled the event for the entourage. Knowing campaign logistics on a much smaller scale, that strikes me as unlikely, but who knows? My point is, even Obama could have visited, and even if you take issue more with his cancellation than with the Pentagon's obvious politicizing of wounded soldiers to cheap shot the Democratic nominee, then be upfront about it. Say you really think he should have gone, and you don't question his patriotism, you question his decision. McCain is doing the things that drove me away from Hillary in the primary; he is engaging in an especially transparent form of snide point-scoring, followed by fake smiles. He's charging things he doesn't even believe, and, just like Hillary, you can tell even he doesn't believe the things he's saying.

In any case, this is the moment, for me, when the anticipated downward spiral begins for Mac. I admit to hoping that he was going to pull it out, somehow, and tell the religious right to go to hell and run like the charming reformer we saw in 2000. I knew it wasn't going to happen, but I hoped, because, hey, it's politics and anything can happen, right? Anyway, a more cynical person might have just been waiting for the moment he started with the cheap shots and gave up with the integrity, but either way we've reached the point. In case you're hoping, by the way, that this election season will progress without the GOP saying some of the most vile things ever said about a candidate, you should give up that dream. I fear we will see some of America's true colors this fall, and I expect them to be absolutely shameful.

There is, of course, a more substantive, but equally scary element, to McCain's last two weeks, and it has to do with my growing concern that, beyond being a phony politician, he isn't a real expert on national security. I know, I know, he got shot down and tortured, he went to the Army War College, he's been on committees for decades. Perhaps what I mean is that he is no longer an expert. Obviously, one shouldn't confuse Slate.com with objective analysis, but this article pretty much sums up what I'm worried about (thanks Erica for the link). He's referred to Czechoslovakia, gotten Sunni and Shia wrong multiple times, screwed up the timeline in the war he says his opponent doesn't understand, and referred to a geopolitical border that doesn't exist. These weren't simple misspeaking moments; I don't think any of them were, but certainly not all of them. And not one news organization (outside of the Daily Show and Slate) seems to think this is fair game, presumably because they'll be accused of picking on the old guy.

McCain wants to kick Russia out of the G8. He wants to form a League of Democracies (which is really just a league of countries John McCain likes). He doesn't know how to get on the Internets (he thinks there might be multiple ones). He calls his wife the c-word. He thinks the Surge is a model for military success everywhere, and anyone who doesn't agree with him could only be a traitor to America. At what point are we allowed to question whether he is stuck in the Cold War? At what point are we allowed to ask if his extensive military experience, rather than preparing him for the challenges of the presidency, has instead conditioned him to a point of intransigence? I know, I know, just because he's old, that doesn't mean he's cranky and stuck in the past and unwilling to change. I agree. But it doesn't mean he's not, either. In this way, I wonder if his age is acting as a shield. I mean, if he was 50, would we be so hesitant to recognize that this is a man who still thinks the Russians are our ultimate bad guys? The world has changed, and it increasingly appears as though McCain either can not or will not.

Notes:

Reid Wilson has his odds on the McCain Veep; he, too, likes Pawlenty (who's beating the drum today) and Romney. Incidentally, SJS speculation lust object Sarah Palin is at 75-1. Yikes.

Chris Cillizza didn't do a Veep line, instead doing a double House seat rundown. Rather than delve into the details of his list, the point is in better perspective on a grand scale. Of his top 10 seats likely to change hands, 9 are currently Republican (the exception being the Texas 22nd, I think overrated at #4). Of the top 20, 14 are GOP. One can quarrel with his specific choices, but the overall scene remains a grim one for Republicans.

I d0 not understand why the Times hired Bill Kristol to be its conservative voice. There are good conservative writers out there; why not hire one of them? In case you were wondering, the impetus for this thought is Kristol's latest column, which I will sum up for you: "I thought about Obama winning and that made me sad. Then I thought about McCain winning, and that made me happy." Seriously. If you don't believe me, click on it and read the inanity for yourself. It reminds me of the type of things I used to see from freshmen would-be columnists on my college paper, and those were the freshman columnists we didn't hire. Hey, man, you work for the Times, write a column about something other than your thoughts.

Incidentally, Michael Calderone reports that a latest study by the Libertarian George Mason University shows media coverage has been much more favorable to Obama than McCain. The first three commenters on the blog say colorful things along the lines of "This is wrong! I have no data to back up my completely partisan views, but I am sure this study is wrong! Science sucks, my opinion matters!" That is bad. Look, everyone has opinions. I like Obama more than McCain, for one current example. But refusing to acknowledge data in favor of what you think is not admirable.

Opinions, our teachers told us, can not be wrong. That may be true, but our reasoning can be bad, which makes our opinions worth less. If you like McCain, and you doubt the study, I can respect that, but wait for the study to be released, then look at it and disagree with the methodology. Closing our eyes and ears to things that do not fit our comfortable view of the world is not serving anyone, least of all ourselves.

This Blog is Like an Information Surge

You know a story is big if it gets me to read a New Yorker before the next one comes out. And Ryan Lizza's story about Barack Obama was made big by the in/famous cover of the Obamas. So I made it a point to read this story, which had given rise to the cover that inspired such controversy.

The story is huge, accusatory, and minor in its findings. I will summarize it for you: Barack Obama is a politician of some ambition and ability. He rose in Chicago by taking on a somewhat-entrenched older generation of black politicos, lost an ill-advised race for Congress, learned a great deal from it, and has since become a first-rate strategist. He always champions a new kind of politics without forswearing the old (or current) kind, which he usually uses better than his opponents.

Anyone find any of that revelatory? Then skip the article unless you're a Chicagoan who will find the names in his network interesting. Look, you don't run for president without having ambition, and you don't achieve Obama's success without being good at it. For the New Yorker to treat this story as a big deal (for reasons unclear, the whole tone of the article is one of "gotcha"), and then to make it a bigger deal with the cover, was just irresponsible and puzzling. Is the New Yorker trying to assert it's neutrality? Are they trying to show they can go after Obama? If so, they did a lousy job of finding anything interesting. In the same issue of the New Yorker, both of the other articles I read (one about a surfer physicist who might have found a theory of everything, and one about children's literature and the battle over E.B. White) are better reported and more interesting. Especially odd is that this piece came from the normally good Ryan Lizza, who has to be an Obama supporter (he's a regular guest on Keith Olbermann's show Countdown). On the whole, it's been a bad week for the New Yorker.

Meanwhile, McCain seems to have one line lately, and I will need some conservative reader to explain it to me. He has now taken the Bush admin's mantra of "the surge is working" and expanded it to "the surge is working, has always worked, will always work everywhere, and Barack Obama won't admit it!"

I do not understand this fascination with the surge. We had a lousy operation run badly, we added 30,000 troops to make it less disastrous, violence went down because of many factors including the extra troops, we're now back where we should have been years ago, still with no agreement on what to do next, how to leave, or what we do if the Sunni decide they've taken enough of our bribe money. The surge did not succeed in any of the things it was supposed to do, politically; it combined with other things to make the military side of things (years after we supposedly accomplished the mission) less of a strategic failure. Fine, good, okay. What does it have to do with things now?

McCain said it was going to be a model for how we succeed in Afghanistan, which is, oh, how do you say, A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT SITUATION THAT IS NOT AT ALL ANALOGOUS. The only thing they have in common is that they are American military efforts mismanaged by the same poeple. What is McCain hoping to prove by just repeating that Obama won't admit the surge worked? Is it simple pride and political point-scoring? Is it just "I was right nana-na-nana"? If so, that's fine. But I'm beginning to worry it's not just that.

When asked in Jordan, Obama said that he believes the surge was not as responsible for the security success as much as the Sunni Awakening (where the Sunnis threw out the Al Qaeda guys) was. I agree, but this is one of those things people can debate, since we don't really know. McCain in an interview, caught later by Olbermann, responded that Obama was an idiot who didn't know what he was talking about, and that the surge caused the Sunni Awakening. That is not something we can argue about, because it's just plain wrong. The Sunni Awakening occurred in September of 2006; the surge a couple months later. One thing can not cause another without coming before it. This is a big mistake for a guy who's supposed to be an expert on this. And it's not the first. I am really getting concerned that it's McCain who doesn't have the grasp on these issues that he claims to. And it's made worse that he's gotten more and more dismissive of Obama's views, which so far haven't included any major factual errors. Disagreement is fine, but it's starting to sound like McCain just doesn't want to hear anything he doesn't already believe, whether or not facts back it up.

Some notes:
I sit behind a computer and type things I think. But there are bloggers who are real, brave reporters doing amazing things. Like get bombed at a picnic in Kabul. Keep up with my friend Mike as he avoids death en route to and from Nepal and Bhutan at The Hawk Has Landed.

In the Veepstakes, Bobby Jindal appeared to campaign for the job, then appeared to take himself out of the running. As the kids say, WTF?

New Millennium Negro was very unhappy with the CNN "Black in America" special. You know what this made me realize? How much CNN has just faded from my TV watching. I DVR Fareed Zakaria's show, and that's all I watch from Wolf Blitzer 24-7 network now. Not that long ago, it would have been unthinkable that a news junkie could do this, but now my first choices are MSNBC and FOX, because at least I know what I'm getting. I read more CNN.com than I watch CNN.

Michael Jackson, The Beer Hunter, has donated his collection to Oxford.

Sam Zell is cutting one-third of the reporters in my hometown paper, one of his most profitable. If any of my readers are billionaires and want to make more billions, I feel confident that I could run a very profitable media empire much better than idiots like Zell. Buy a newspaper, put me in charge, and I'll show you.

And, finally, some good news: After 13 years on the run, the arrest of Radovan Karadzic, the "Butcher of Bosnia," was a great moment for the Balkans, Europe, and the world.

Okay, this is final: AMC's first original series, Mad Men, begins its second season Sunday at 10 p.m. The show, about ad executives in the early '60s on Madison Avenue, is brilliant, and painstakingly designed. Watch it and you will love it.

Playing With House (Election) Money

Sorry for the disappearance last week. But it's July, and even Charles Osgood is on vacation. Seriously, it's the slow time for politics. I mean, sure, Barack Obama raised $52 million in June and Phil Gramm is technically not McCain's economic adviser anymore, but you can sense everybody knows that people will start paying attention to the election again when the leaves turn. Hey, given global warming, that could take a few decades.

A few media recommendations for you.

1. I've been listening on CD to The Nine, by Jeffrey Toobin. Toobin is a great writer and reporter who finally came out with this critically acclaimed book (it was on everyone's 2007 top ten list) about the Supreme Court justices who, from 1992 to 2003, spent the longest time together of any group of justices on the Bench. It could be boring, but instead is entertaining and informative. It's changed the way I view both the justices and their decisions. Not that my vote should count more than the more reputable pulbications, but I encourage you to make it a priority to read the book if you haven't already. Even if you're not into politics, it's fascinating to understand the personalities behind some of the most important issues in the country. And yes, it's actually funny at times: Sandra Day O'Connor and salsa dancing will be forever joined in my mind.

2. I think I plugged it already, but Wall-e is a delightful post-apocalyptic robot romance about why nerd like crazy chicks. In an age when every movie needs to be too long and too filled with bells and whistles, Wall-e is short, funny, and resists the temptation to be an action movie. It's stunningly well-written, especially since there are so few words.

3. My friend Justin last week introduced me to a song called "Handlebars" by the hip-hop band the Flobots. I liked it. The next day, I had it in my head, so I downloaded it. I've been listening to it nonstop, and it remains stuck in my consciousness. In addition to being a well-crafted song that even anti-hip-hop listeners will find driving, it is a haunting message about how quickly excellence can turn into tragedy. Both celebratory and funerary, it's perhaps the best 3-minute musical summary of how all of the promise of late-20th century progress was squandered by the belief that excellence was justification for dominance.

4. If you like art, or care about art in culture, read "Imperial Clothing" an essay by Donald Frazell on art in America, reposted on the ArtNews blog.

Okay, some politics.

• In the Georgia 10th, Constitutionalist Paul Broun kept his seat with a stunning 71%, so I guess that poll that had him behind in the primary was a touch off. Just to the south, John Barrow (R-GA 12th) defeated his black Democratic challenger, Regina Thompson, by about the same margin.
• Reid Wilson at RCP did his rundown of the various FEC filings for the quarter (first one is linked here, you can navigate around if you want the full rundown). Some big notes include the New York 20th (Eastern NY, up the border with Vermont and NH), where freshman Rep. Kristin Gillibrand (D) has raised $3.6 million (!) to defend her seat so far.
  
• Before delving into the rest of the country, I'll spend a moment on PA. After looking at the races, most do not seem that likely to change hands, though there are lots of competitive districts. I've mentioned Jim Gerlach (R-6th), Joe Sestak (D-7th), and Patrick Murphy (D-8th) before; they're all in close races they'll probably win. Jack Murtha (D-12th) has a netroots-funded opponent, but no one ever beats Jack Murths, right? Likewise, my current rep, Charlie Dent (R-15th), has a well-funded opponent in Samantha Bennett, but I just don't see him losing. And I'd love for Phil English to lose the PA 3rd, but he probably won't, regardless of what this poll says. So while Reid Wilson has an exhaustive list, I really think the interesting races are:
• Jason Altmire (D-4th), who ousted Melissa Hart in 2006, is a stud fundraiser and moderate Dem, but he's in a GOP district and Hart is a familiar name. Incidentally, I believe Hart is actually Rick Santorum with a wig on.
• Paul Kanjorski (D-11th) has lots of money. He is also running against the best-known idiot mayor in America, Lou Barletta, who famously banned all people who don't look like him from Hazleton. The fact that Hazleton's economy subsequently collapsed has not in any way damaged his approval there, though, and the anti-immigration vote may just be enough for Barletta. Humor value: John Micek writes his Barletta updates in Spanish.
  
• Chris Carney (D-10th) won his seat two years ago from an embattled and scandal-plagued Don Sherwood. Sherwood was a moron, but businessman Chris Hackett isn't, and he's got lots of his own money to spend. The district is so heavily Republican that Carney's 15 minutes may be up.
• The key, of course, to all of that, is that it's still a good year for Dems on paper. In general, it will be harder for the GOP to pick up a seat, just because they've still got the White House and most people think the direction we're going in stinks. But PA was such a good state for the Dems in 2006 that they probably overperformed and are vulnerable in seats like Carney's and Hart's now. Similarly, there are seats in Texas that the Dems just won't hold. Okay, across the rest of the country:
  
• Some familiar names: Up on the shores of Lake Ontario, Dan Maffei (D) looks like he'll pick up the seat he lost by 3,400 votes in 2006. In Connecticut, Rep. Chris Shays (R) remains a massive target, since his district keeps going Dem for president. The DCCC is throwing lots of money at him.
• In nearby Jersey, the 3rd (Cherry Hill down to the coast) and 7th (basically rte 78 and south as you drive from PA to NYC, including towns like Westfield, where there's a Trader Joe's that sells alcohol) both look like toss-up seats where Dems have some money advantages. More interestingly but less likely, the 5th (North end of Jersey) has challenger Rabbi Dan Shulman (D) raking in an impressive $300,000. He's still outgunned, money-wise, but the somewhat-Republican district could get tight if he keeps up the fundraising.
• The Virginia story, as Wilson sees it, is one of a state that isn't changing quite fast enough for the Dems to make big gains. Still, the VA 11th (Southwest DC suburbs of Fairfax County) has Dem Gerry Connolly surviving a primary battle and beloved by the DCCC. He's running against businessman Keith Fimian, so there will be lots of money spent there, but Connolloy is currently CRUSHING Fimian.
  
• Two similar districts with all-female races: The Colorado 4th hasn't been in Dem hands since 1973, but it's looking more and more like incumbent Marilyn Musgrave's time is up. Her opponent is a former congressional aide named Betsy Markey who can apparently raise money like a demon. Likewise, the Ohio 2nd's Jean Schmidt is an unpopular candidate in a GOP district against well-funded physician Victoria Wulsin.
  
• Keeping with the all-female theme, West Virginia has one Republican rep, Shelley Moore Capito, in the second district. She's running against Anne Barth, a former aide to Sen. Robert Byrd (whose name is spelled G-o-d in West Virginia), who's raising more money and trying to turn WV completely Dem in Congress. There is, of course, approximately a zero percent chance the state will vote that way for President.
• Who knows how Obama's candidacy will affect the South, but there are already rumblings that the Dems could take over seats in places like Alabama (2nd)and North Carolina (8th).
  
• Ohio is likely to be a mess again, but the 1st (Cincinnati) and 16th (South of Cleveland) will remain tough holds for the GOP. Both incumbents are leading slightly in polls that they commission; that's not a fantastic sign. The 15th (Columbus), which was Deborah Pryce's seat, is going to be a costly battle for Mary Jo Kilroy (D) and State Sen. Steve Stivers (D), who has the alliteration vote locked down.

Whew. Okay, some quick Veep stuff.
Chris Cillizza's list for Obama now includes Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), who I mentioned was getting lots of shout-outs on his blog last week. He's up to #3, with Evan Bayh and Tim Kaine switching places at the top. McCain's list stays the same at the top (Romney and Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty), and adds Rob Portman, but the bottom now includes... wait for it... SARAH PALIN at #5. Cillizza calls her a game-changing option if McCain's in need of something not at all safe a month from now. I'm skeptical of the "narrative Americans can fall in love with" idea; someone will vote for McCain (who calls his wife the c-word and thinks Viagra but not birth control should be covered under health insurance) because he has a female running mate they've never heard of with a great personal story? I don't see it. And there's still the ANWR problem. But there is clear enthusiasm for her, and he may need that. One recent poll had about 40% of Obama's supporters saying they were excited by the election, compared with 9% of McCain's.

So Long, Anheuser-Busch, and Thanks For All the Crappy Beer!

We have a good string of comments in response to yesteraday's Barry Blick New Yorker cover. Some thought it was good satire, some thought it was just not particularly well-done. Mostly, the readers seem to agree with Nick Anderson, president of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists, who said:

“I think, as a piece of satire, it utterly fails,” Anderson told Politico. “The artist and the New Yorker editor [David Remnick] have claimed that it is so over the top that it is clearly absurd. But it’s not sufficiently over the top. It is merely depicting what the whisper campaigns have been suggesting."

In the Politico piece in question, other cartoonists suggest that the controversy proves the piece did its job. I still find it interesting that the New Yorker ran with it, given that it's certainly a bad story for Obama, and is unlikely to be remembered by history for the satire as much as the brouhaha.

But happy news, as I sit at home sick on this lovely Tuesday. The news came yesterday that, when Anheuser-Busch said it would never, under any circumstances, let go of the AMERICAN control of the AMERICAN original that is their AMERICAN beer, they meant to add "unless InBev kicks in a few extra billion. Then, we're cool." The Belgian beer-maker InBev (owner of Stella Artois, Beck's, and many other brews) reached an agreement Monday to purchase A-B for about $52 billion. They have promised to make Budweiser a flagship brand, and to cut no American jobs. Indeed, their business model suggests that they will put more resources into the brand than A-B did, since A-B was a typical underperforming, overextended, cut-jobs-to-make-shareholders-happy, US corporation. There are no words to describe how happy this news makes me. My several-year-boycott of all products by the St. Louis-based corporation is now over, and as soon as I feel well enough to leave the house, I may just buy some Rolling Rock or Michelob to celebrate. It's a good day for beer, and a good day for American business. It is also, incidentally, a very good day for Cindy McCain, the beer distributor heiress who is going to get even richer on the buyout.

In keeping with our earlier discussion of the New Yorker, the Politico has done some work on media in the past couple days, most notably Michael Calderone's profile of the Associated Press under Washington Bureau chief Ron Fournier. Let me say that anyone who can breathe life into the domestic AP is okay by me; I tend to favor lively, reader-centric writing. Of course, I'm not totally wild about the idea of Fournier telling Karl Rove to "keep up the fight." Appearance of impropriety, much?

Veep news:

• Here's what the UK paper The Sky thinks about veep selection (it's not funny, just interesting as a first-timer's guide to the process).
• The word from some Clinton supporters is that Obama is saying that Hillary is on the short list, but that Bill is a complication. Sounds like an excuse to me, but it's a good one that even Hillary's most die-hard backers can appreciate and respect. Face it, I can't name any of the other potential VPs spouses, except Elizabeth Edwards, and she's a huge help, not a liability.
• On the McCain side, it's looking clearer and clearer that Mitt Romney is the one to beat. Every news agency has a story about how the two are good friends now, or how Mitt would be good as the attack dog. He's got money, conservative cred, economic chops, he's young and an executive, and he makes Michigan a potential GOP state. Plus, say what you will about him or the VP job, Romney has worked his Mormon tail off for McCain so far. He's been all over the country stumping. Maybe that's campaigning for a job, but even so it's impressive dedication to a guy who beat you and didn't (maybe still doesn't) like you at all.
  
• Mackenzie Carpenter of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette runs down some of the female VP considerations, focusing on Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman. I saw Fiorina on MTP Sunday, and she was, as usual, pretty bad. I don't get what the right wing loves about her, but she keeps popping up. In this story, as in most others, Sarah Palin gets a passing mention but no real discussion. I feel confident in saying that, with the exception of the site dedicated to getting her picked as VP, Stop. Just Stop. has discussed Palin more heavily than any other "news" source, Internet or otherwise. This is partially because we have some vocal commenters, and partially because, I admit, I'm intrigued. I've never seen anyone as passionate about any potential VP as "Ted" and "Dave from Illinois" are about Palin, and yet I don't see it. And no, fellas, it's not a clever ruse to use my phenomenal cosmic influence to push Romney because I'm secretly terrified of a McCain/Palin ticket. As someone who, barring major changes, will hope for Obama to win, I'm a lot more scared of Romney than I am of a never-heard-of governor from a state Mac will win anyway. But there must be SOMETHING there, because there are real Palin zealots out there (not just on this blog). Still, McCain has shown us this campaign that he is not the maverick of years past. He will do, I expect, whatever the establishment wants him to do. The GOP insiders like Palin, but Romney has resources, name recognition, and right wing cred. Not to mention both parties have plenty of sexists in the upper tiers. I just Romney as the safer choice, and I don't see McCain as likely to take a big risk on an unknown.
  

Congress news:

• As Reid Wilson says, this year, even a push poll showing a Republican ahead counts as good news for the GOP. The Ohio 16th, which has been Rep. Ralph Regula's (R) for the past 36 years, is now a race between two state senators, Republican Kent Schuring and Democrat John Boccieri. Most think it's Boccieri's to win, but a Schuring camp poll has it close. Still, this says more about how bad things are for the GOP House prospects than how good a candidate Schuring is.
• Along those lines, Wilson celebrates that Rep. Marsha Blackburn (D-TN) is only up by 11 points in one really small poll in July! Again, this counts as good news?
• Jesse Ventura is not running for Senate.
  
• We had our first Senatorial debate last night, in Colorado, between Mark Udall (D) and Bob Schaffer (R). I will be stunned if Udall doesn't win.
• House Democrats are annoyed that Barack Obama's campaign isn't about helping them win their districts. SJS advice to them: Shut up and be patient. If Barack wins (and he has a 10-point lead in the latest Q poll), there will be plenty of coattails for you all. If he spends all his time on you, then you may just all lose together. And the man raises money like a fiend, so just chill. It's July. You'll be fine.
• The Post takes a look at several young, energetic "Obama generation" primary challengers in heavily black Georgia districts.
  
• And there is a primary today in the Georgia 10th. Since it's a heavily GOP district, this is the real election, and it's especially interesting to people like me. On on hand, you have State Rep. Barry Fleming (R-Augusta), who's your standard brand of GA right wing conservative. Then you've got the semi-incumbent, Paul Broun, who last year won a special election upset to fill out the rest of Charlie Norwood's term. Broun beat State Rep. Jim Whitehead because Whitehead, despite being a bigger name and better funded, was an idiot who said Athens, GA, where the "liberal" U. of Georgia campus is, should be bombed (except for the football team). Thanks to a runoff victory of 394 votes and 89% of the voters in Athens, Broun won. Yes, yes, very nice, but why do we care? We care because Broun is a Constitutionalist, a la his good friend Ron Paul. So he's a real conservative, meaning he thinks it's not the government's job to care about who sleeps with who or to spy on your phone calls. In the Georgia 10th, that means Fleming has been beating him up with "gay-friendly" labels, etc. I may not agree with Broun on everything. But I respect his brand of conservative a lot, and I appreciate anyone that's willing to work on actual government instead of fighting over stupid issues that don't affect me. We need more men like Broun in Washington, and we need many fewer men like Fleming there. Here's hoping.

And I will do my best, in the coming months, to interview Paul Tishen, independent Pittsburgher for president, a Guy You Can Believe in 2008. Seriously. Go to his site.