The VP Debate, After Effects

I'm not entirely convinced that last night's VP debate did anything to shift the scales on this general election. I say that, even though I continue with my previous assessment: if Sarah Palin didn't have some gaffe or obvious blunder during the debate, then she won it.

During the debate, Sarah demonstrated her folksiness ("You betcha!"), her ability and willingness to take Biden and Obama head-on, and a fair amount of Refreshing Reaganism, as the PBS commentators called it last night. I have to admit that I was unable to actually watch the debate, since I was driving back from a business meeting in Indianapolis during the majority of the debate. But hearing Palin speak (thank you, NPR, for airing the debate!) made it sound like she was not intimidated by a veteran Washington Insider like Biden. She didn't come right out and attack him for being an insider until about an hour into the debate, and that could be a missed opportunity for her. But I don't think her candidacy will any longer be thought of as "Gidget Goes to Washington," another PBS reference at the end of the debate.

Palin obviously crammed very well in the foothills of Sedona, AZ, at the McCain ranch during this past week. She knew her facts and figures, even if she didn't hit the numbers as hard as Biden did. She knew her foreign policy stance much better than she has shown in previous interviews, and she came across much more credibly than she had during those interviews. All in all, she showed that she should be taken seriously as a candidate for VP.

However, whether or not that actually changed anything with voters is a completely different story. As I said before, I have a hunch the die is already cast for an Obama presidency thanks to the economic meltdown and banking crisis of the past two weeks. The news this morning that the McCain/Palin campaign is suspending operations in the battleground state of Michigan doesn't look good. What's next, Ohio? Florida? I understand the need to shepherd resources and apply them to the best chances of victory, but what that really signals is either a lack of funding or a lack of momentum, both of which are critical to maintain in an election.

What I'm looking forward to at this point is the PBS Frontline review on both McCain and Obama, currently scheduled for 14 October in our local market. I trust this Frontline episode, entitled "The Choice: 2008" (more info is available here) will be as influential in making my election decision as the Frontline career retrospective on Bush and Kerry was in 2004.

Get the Popcorn Ready!

I mentioned this before: the one debate I'm eagerly anticipating is this Thursday's Vice Presidential candidate debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden. If I can figure out how to include a countdown clock widget in this post, I'll put it here:



If you saw the first Presidential debate aired last Friday, 26 Sept, you'll know that neither candidate seemed to move the needle much. After the debate was over, Obama apparently picked up some additional support among independents, but by and large (a term I think most people forgot about before this summer's Pixar movie, Wall-E), the people who already support McCain still support McCain, and the people supporting Obama still support Obama. The debate itself was curious on several levels, though.

I thought it interesting that Obama and McCain actually mimicked each other's policy stances on a wide variety of questions, from the inclusion of Ukraine and Georgia in NATO to failing to clearly state where they would cut back on future spending. Neither candidate wanted to play with the hot potato of the $700B bailout package, and yesterday's NO vote showed why. Both candidates want to shake up the cozy Washington Insider environment between lobbyists and lawmakers. Both candidates even tried sliming the other with comparisons to W, at which point Obama laughed out loud when McCain tried to make the case.

It could be that the crowd control rules in place there in Oxford, MS (the audience did a very good job of not rooting for their man, not clapping, applauding, or even laughing at the jokes) prevented the sound bites from delivering a bigger impact on the stage. Both candidates certainly tried hitting their notes, but without a laugh track to confirm a witty rejoinder, it must have seemed like a stand-up comedian in a morgue. Can you imagine Ronny Reagan delivering his "Well, there you go again..." line to Mondale in 1984 to complete silence? I didn't think so.

One of the biggest problems with that debate (and with any future debate between Obama and McCain, for that matter) is that each man can be tarred and feathered with his past votes in the Senate. This is the problem of having all your government service experience in a legislative body instead of in the executive branch. The way legislation is crafted these days, there are typically so many riders and amendments attached to any given bill, there are very strong reasons why a Congressperson would vote against it. In order to vote for any bill, I'm sure they have to hold their noses and accept the bad with the good. So, McCain can claim Obama voted down financial support for the troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Obama can claim McCain supported the Bush tax cuts. The bigger picture, that there are many good reasons why each man voted the way he did at the time, gets lost in the debate.

The reverse case in point: Ron Paul always used this quirk of the legislative process to his own advantage. He faithfully received earmark requests from his home district, made sure those earmarks were included in whatever omnibus spending bill was going to be voted on, and then always voted against the bill to keep from sullying his anti-earmark message. He literally had his cake and ate it, too. He could rightfully claim he always voted against wasteful government spending, knowing full well that enough other votes would still pass the bill, directly benefiting his own district.

At any rate, even those filling executive level positions have their own limitations. Ask W about that this week! Our system of checks and balances makes it impossible to pass legislation or to govern independently, which is as it should be. If Congress wants to play political football with the entire country's financial system, so be it. When Warren Buffett says he's worried about the future of our economy without some form of bank bailout package being passed, I think it's time we all sit up and take notice.

And it could be that no past or future debate affects how people plan to vote in November quite as much as the bank crisis last week and this week's failed bank bailout package. The NewsHour on PBS last night interviewed some swing voters in one key battleground state, Florida. Those voters expressed dismay over the economy (an Obama strength, for some reason) and flat-out said they didn't want four more years of the same failed policies (an indictment of W, to be sure, but which also includes McCain). So at this point, the die may be cast in favor of Obama to reach the White House, even if national polls don't confirm that yet.

I always thought that McCain's pick of Palin was the equivalent of a Republican Hail Mary play, on par with Doug Flutie's Boston College upset of Miami in 1984. (Wow, two references to 1984 in the same post! Who would have figured that?!) McCain needed something big, some huge WOW! factor to jazz up the right-wing base of the party, and Palin certainly did that. She grabbed the headlines, made everyone talk about McCain's campaign for weeks on end, and diverted the media attention (for good or bad) from Obama at a critical stage of the race.

However, she still needs to show she can hold her own against a Washington Insider like Biden. Some conservative pundits within the past week apparently are saying she should step down from the ticket and let McCain pick someone better. Obviously, they aren't going to do that. That would clearly be political suicide at this point, with about five weeks to go until the polls open. I partly wonder if, maybe, just maybe, the Republican political machinery isn't working to lower peoples' expectations for Palin in advance of this, her most important event of the campaign.

In politics as in sports, it's always easier to play to win when all the pressure is on the other guy, the front-runner. If Biden does well and "wins" the debate, he can't really win because he was supposed to do well. As the favorite, there's very little upside and a whole lot of downside. If he cracks or lets the pressure of the situation get to him even the tiniest little bit, it could be momentous. The underdog, on the other hand, can go in loose and without fear, since there's really nothing to lose. If Palin can merely come out even in the debate, she wins. No one expects her to out point Biden or show where he's weak on foreign policy. She has a lot more personality, though. If the crowd is not muted this time, watch out for fireworks!

I'm getting my popcorn ready, that's for sure!

Sarah Palin Speaks

Hmmmm...

That's my official reaction to hearing and reading what Sarah Palin said on ABC News this week, during her first unscripted appearance and interview on a major news network. As I said before, I believe that she deserves the opportunity to speak for herself and to prove to the country that she deserves to be John McCain's VP candidate. Now that she's had that opportunity to defend her own record in an interview with Charlie Gibson, I'm now scratching my head a little.

Let's start with Charlie's questioning about whether or not she's ever met a foreign head of state. She admitted she has not. Ever. She rightly pointed out that she is not the first VP candidate to be in that position, but she clearly does not have any experience negotiating tough deals with foreign heads of state. Since the VP position tends to be more ceremonial than functional (well, it did before Dick Cheney), that inexperience might not be a drawback for Palin.

Charlie moved on to discuss Sarah's perspective on specific national security situations, the first of which was dealing with a resurgent Russia and the recent events in Georgia, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia. Here are the direct quotes, straight from the ABC News website:

Sarah Palin on Russia:

We cannot repeat the Cold War. We are thankful that, under Reagan, we won the Cold War, without a shot fired, also. We've learned lessons from that in our relationship with Russia, previously the Soviet Union.

We will not repeat a Cold War. We must have good relationship with our allies, pressuring, also, helping us to remind Russia that it's in their benefit, also, a mutually beneficial relationship for us all to be getting along.

GIBSON: Would you favor putting Georgia and Ukraine in NATO?

PALIN: Ukraine, definitely, yes. Yes, and Georgia.

GIBSON: Because Putin has said he would not tolerate NATO incursion into the Caucasus.

PALIN: Well, you know, the Rose Revolution, the Orange Revolution, those actions have showed us that those democratic nations, I believe, deserve to be in NATO.

Putin thinks otherwise. Obviously, he thinks otherwise, but...

GIBSON: And under the NATO treaty, wouldn't we then have to go to war if Russia went into Georgia?

PALIN: Perhaps so. I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you're going to be expected to be called upon and help.

But NATO, I think, should include Ukraine, definitely, at this point and I think that we need to -- especially with new leadership coming in on January 20, being sworn on, on either ticket, we have got to make sure that we strengthen our allies, our ties with each one of those NATO members.

We have got to make sure that that is the group that can be counted upon to defend one another in a very dangerous world today.

GIBSON: And you think it would be worth it to the United States, Georgia is worth it to the United States to go to war if Russia were to invade.

PALIN: What I think is that smaller democratic countries that are invaded by a larger power is something for us to be vigilant against. We have got to be cognizant of what the consequences are if a larger power is able to take over smaller democratic countries.

And we have got to be vigilant. We have got to show the support, in this case, for Georgia. The support that we can show is economic sanctions perhaps against Russia, if this is what it leads to.

It doesn't have to lead to war and it doesn't have to lead, as I said, to a Cold War, but economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure, again, counting on our allies to help us do that in this mission of keeping our eye on Russia and Putin and some of his desire to control and to control much more than smaller democratic countries.

His mission, if it is to control energy supplies, also, coming from and through Russia, that's a dangerous position for our world to be in, if we were to allow that to happen.

Now, of course, I'm very happy to hear that Palin does not advocate a return to the Cold War. She's flat-out wrong about no shots fired during the Cold War, naturally. Francis Gary Powers springs to mind. The US also might not have much of a choice about a renewed Cold War with Russia. I'm not saying that Big Bad Vlad (Putin) wants to reinstate the Iron Curtain and rebuild the buffer zone of Eastern European countries in another USSR. However, he does seem to want to reassert Russia's zones of influence and return Russia to a resurgent role as superpower on the world stage.

This about this from Putin's perspective. Russia was bankrupt towards the end of the Cold War and simply couldn't keep up with Reagan's military buildup in the 1980s. (Then again, how well did the US afford that buildup?) First Gorby and then Yeltsin promoted the idea of Glasnost and Perestroika, encouraging more transparency within the government and warmer ties with the West. In exchange, Russia was shown to have significant issues within its military, and while they always maintained their importance in the UN Security Council, The West learned we didn't have quite as much to fear from Russia as we thought during the Cold War.

Which meant the US was then free to act much more unilaterally and with some impunity when it came to matters of national security. What did Russia get in return? Some free market reforms that made the oligarchs and Russian mafia rich, but certainly a diminished role and very little opposition to US objectives. War in the Balkans? The US stepped in during the Dayton Peace Accords and still maintains boots on the ground there. War in the Middle East? The US has conducted not one, but three different wars since the early '90s with very little to no consideration for Russian goals or objectives in the region. Of course, the Russians might have the last laugh if the US also has to leave the mountains of Afghanistan without a long-lasting solution against the Islamic fundamentalists there. But the Russians aren't providing the remnants of the Taliban with guns and Stingers the way we did during their occupation of the country in the '80s.

So, for Palin and, I assume McCain also, to suggest that we need to include Georgia and Ukraine in NATO against Russian opposition to such a move is dangerous and reckless at the very least. I understand that leaders in Ukraine and Georgia are asking for membership in NATO and the European Union. They have much more to gain by aligning themselves with Western Europe than with Russia. However, I would not be surprised in the least for Russia to invent another provocation against ethnic Russians living in Sevastopol, their long-time warm weather port and home to the Russian Black Sea fleet. Any excuse they can use to send in troops and control the necessary land of Ukraine, I believe they will do. Putin has shown he is willing to commit troops on such a cause, and they are looking for ways of provoking a fight with the US as this WSJ article shows (subscription req'd). Why else would Russia claim a stolen US passport was evidence of US meddling or mercenaries in Georgia? Russia is itching for a fight, and we don't need to provoke them by trying to include Georgia and Ukraine in NATO.

Let's get back to Palin. She also discussed the Bush Doctrine* with Gibson. (Watch the video on ABC News/Yahoo here.) More appropriately, it seemed as though Gibson had to tell Palin what the Bush Doctrine was, and then she had to react to being caught off-guard. She certainly supports Bush's ability to strike at Islamic extremists at will, pre-emptively if needed, but then she wanted to resume the McCain-Palin ticket's claim to being agents of change.

*As perhaps one of the most significant foreign policy shifts since the Truman Doctrine stated the U.S. would do everything in its power to prevent Greece and Turkey from falling under Soviet influence after WWII, the Bush Doctrine is certainly worth knowing cold for any future Presidential candidate. It's also certainly worth contrasting with the Powell Doctrine, used so effectively by Bush 41 in the First Persian Gulf War in 1991.

Frankly, it can be quite confusing. Would a McCain Administration continue prosecuting unpopular military actions in Afghanistan and, increasingly, Pakistan, with the prospects of expanding the war on terror? Pakistan poses its own high wire diplomatic drama, with factions taking hard line stances against having US troops conducting offensive actions in western Pakistan. The official government line, for now, is resorting to diplomacy, but how long will that last?

So, all of this once again makes me think, "Hmmmm..." How much could we trust a McCain-Palin administration to keep us safe in the new world order? How much should we trust them with foreign affairs? How well do they understand all the issues? And would an Obama-Biden administration do any better?

Let the Woman Be, eh?

So, people either love her or hate her. The "her" in question is, of course, John McCain's selection for running mate, Sarah Palin. No one has been lukewarm about the announcement, it seems. Democrats have been looking for any reason to discredit the woman, from attacks on her family (I'm glad to see that both Obama and Biden have called for the family attacks to stop), to attacks on her beauty-queen looks, to even digging up ancient footage of when she did the sportscasting for her local news station. You know what? I've seen LOTS of male sportscasters on local TV stations who couldn't hold a candle to her performance captured above.

All I can say is, America is the land of opportunity. She's been handed a tremendous opportunity because John McCain and the Republican Party chose her for some reason in what has to be seen as a make-or-break gamble for the Presidency. So, let's see what she has to say and see how she handles herself during the rest of the campaign.

Personally, I was impressed with her speech yesterday. Perhaps because she has that experience in front of cameras, she showed no hesitation or fear of speaking in front of the raucous crowds at the RNC. She hit her lines, and the only drawback there was that they leaked the best lines during the day yesterday. Punchlines are always heightened when they are unexpected. I was sincerely disappointed that the GOP did not prepare a "Meet Sarah Palin" video the same way the Democrats did for Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton (who needed that intro, by the way?), and Barack Obama. Shoot, even John McCain is getting his own video, and most people are already familiar with his story. So, why no video for a person who is a virtual unknown on the national stage?

Perhaps Sarah wanted to perform her own introductions. She certainly didn't hold back from introducing her loving husband, her five children, and her own back story. Good for her, I say.

A recent photo of the Palin family, pre-Trig

I really have only two negatives that I've seen thus far, one of which is offered up by my wife. After Sarah's speech yesterday, she pointed out how Sarah's piled high hair and outfit, while nicer than Hillary's pantsuits, still seemed very small-townish. I have very little to no idea about women's fashions, so when I suggested that Sarah was perhaps cultivating that small town look to demonstrate again that she's not from Washington or the east coast, my wife told me that women would notice and judge her for the clothes she wears and how she wears her hair. To me, if she goes all "Sex and the City" fashionable now, it would seem terribly phony and, most likely, backfire on her. She might be in an unwinnable position there.

My only other comment, and I really don't mean to attack her family in any way, is this: I, personally, am more of a traditionalist when it comes to naming children. My own children are named after relatives, so I probably shouldn't even make this comment. I just wouldn't name my own children Track*, Bristol, Willow, Piper, and Trig. To me, those are: something you run in middle school, the home of ESPN, a bad '80s movie, an airplane, and high school math. That's all I'll say about that.

*But good for Track to volunteer for the Army and proudly serve his country in our armed forces! 

I did love the commentators on NPR last night, after she delivered her speech. They talked about how she hit a home run with her delivery and her comportment. What I loved the most, however, was how they picked up on Rudy Guiliani's line about how no one -- NO ONE! -- would ever question a male candidate about his choice to run and whether he could still devote enough time and attention to his family. By questioning Palin's choice, the Democrats effectively ceded initiative on the feminism issue to Republicans, and who ever thought that would happen in their lifetime?

What I especially want to see now -- what I'm dying to see as soon as possible -- is the VP debate. Sure, I'll watch the Presidential candidates face off, just to see what they say head-to-head. But I'll be making popcorn and settling in early to see Sarah vs. Joe Biden. If she can hold her own against a long-time Washington insider, someone who has a long legislative track record and excellent foreign policy credentials; if she can hold her own and not freeze on a question against Biden; if she can make people laugh with an off-the-cuff witty rejoinder during the pressure-packed debate when the hot lights are shining and she has no place to hide, then I will be very impressed. I would feel much better about McCain's choice of running mate if she can perform on that stage.

I think she has already done a very good job of handling the pressure and media scrutiny since the announcement. She had to know the media circus would pounce on her background and start flinging mud against her family, and yet she chose to run anyway. That has to say something about her character. Let's give her a chance and see what she does with it. Isn't that what America is all about?