Outflanking McCain on "Reform"

While it no longer seems as if John McCain's media-sensation VP pick Sarah Palin can pull enough white women voters to the Republican ticket to prevent Barack Obama from being elected, there is one more gambit that he could attempt, to lend superficial credence to his claim of being a "reformer" -- in his apparent strategy to out-change Obama, the inventor of the "change" brand in this cycle. He could give a speech at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia and propose significant structural reforms in the federal government itself, in order to bring "real change" to Washington. I predict that unless Barack Obama outflanks McCain in proposing a major package of changes in the way that our government represents the people, McCain just might try something like this. While it would be recognized by the political class as a campaign gambit rather than a sincere initiative, it could work with independent voters who dislike both parties and want a real shake-up in Washington.

From Obama, a serious proposal for significant changes in the way government functions would put beef on the plate of his claim to represent real change, and he'd be offering a solution that's proportionate to the indictment he's made about government today. A majority of Americans believe that an increasingly corrupt and ineffective Congress and executive branch – which mainly serve the interests of those who can buy access to policymakers – should be returned to the control of the people. That requires changes not only of personnel in Washington, but of how and when voters pass judgment on candidates for federal office.

Here's my proposed package, of statutory and constitutional changes: (1) Each citizen must be given the right to vote for president (a right they do not now possess, according to the Supreme Court's 2000 decision in Bush v. Gore, which said that state legislatures make the rules for presidential elections), to have each person's vote counted, and to have that vote counted equally (requiring direct election of the president by national popular vote and abolition of the Electoral College); (2) All contributions for campaigns for national office (president and congress) must be limited to citizens – no organizations of any kind should be permitted to contribute money -- so that people, not interests, control Washington; (3) A recountable paper trail must be established nationally for all electronic voting systems, and such systems should be standardized nationally for federal elections; and (4) Concurrent presidential and House terms of four years should be created, with a four-term limit on House members and a three-term limit on members of the Senate, with a procedure for mid-term special-recall elections for the House and the President. The people themselves must be given the means of breaking the influence of special interests. The breakdown of democracy can only be fixed by strengthening the central position of the people in how our system works.

The announcement of such proposals by either candidate would surprise the media, galvanize the support of undecided independent voters, and dramatically establish that candidate as the unquestionable leader in bringing more change to American elections and American government since at least the time when women were given the right to vote.

The urgency of defusing Sarah Palin

The Obama campaign wizards are whistling past the graveyard if they think they can ignore Sarah Palin, because her telegenic impact will help sell her fallacy-filled attacks on Obama to a wide swath of independent, working-class white voters in swing states, and that could be the difference in this election. Right now she is back in Alaska to undergo briefings on foreign policy and a vast range of issues about which she knows nothing, since she is the least well-educated and least politically experienced nominee for the vice presidency since the erstwhile poet William Orlando Butler in 1848 (he had served only 4 years in Congress, before winning notoriety in the war against Mexico). The Obama campaign should take advantage of the hiatus in Palin mediamania afforded by her cramming sessions at home, by running very hard but entirely factual ads debunking her supposed reformist record in Alaska and insuring that voters in swing states know that as a mayor she tried to fire the city librarian for refusing to censor books, has said that she believes the war in Iraq is part of God's plan, and has repeatedly misrepresented her own record and that of Barack Obama in the past few days. If the tone of these ads is "more in sadness than in anger," and they build an accurate picture of this person's unfitness for national office -- based on her alarming views on energy, climate change, and civil liberties, as well as her penchant for trashing her opponents -- the skepticism of a majority of the electorate about her readiness for the vice presidency will harden into rejection, and John McCain's media-mesmerizing attack 'babe' (the word that right-wing talk radio hosts are using for her) can be disarmed.

Vainglory and venom...

Comment on "The Field", http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/shockingly-bad#comments

John McCain's speech last night was about two things: fighting against enemies, and his own past. It was as if he believed his personal history should be sufficient reason to drape the presidency on his shoulders, as if it were an honorary degree -- as if he felt he deserved to be president for what he'd already done, rather than for his spirit and proposals for the future. But there was also a logical fallacy at the heart of this speech: He insisted that he was serving a cause greater than himself, even as he talked primarily about himself -- as if he saw himself as a kind of Mother Teresa of martial selflessness. In a word, he was vainglorious. And the night before, Sarah Palin delivered a speech that one pundit called "venom-filled". In light of the Republicans' constant invoking of the Christian faith, perhaps they and their nominees should remember the gently sarcastic rebuke that St. Paul gave to himself and some of his followers: "Do we begin again to commend ourselves?" The great apostle knew that overweening pride -- much less ridicule of those who disagree with you -- is not the way to persuade others to join a cause beyond themselves. This week neither McCain nor Palin practiced the values they preached.

Reality-free Palin...

The chief problem with Sarah Palin's speech at the Republican convention tonight is that it gave absolutely no indication that she was aware that the nation's economy and standing in the world are in tatters, and that a large majority of the electorate is vividly aware of those realities. The America of snowmobiling Dads and families that love babies with special needs, which she says she represents, is also an America that has spent -- under her party's leadership -- close to $1 trillion on wars that haven't improved our security, and that has a currency in international free fall as well as a housing market which has cratered. Those problems are what the next president will face, though she showed no awareness of them. And let's not forget that the president whose ex-speechwriter wrote the words she spoke is issuing executive order after executive order expanding domestic spying, legalizing the invasion of data privacy by customs officials, and otherwise constricting Americans' civil liberties. That happens to be the America we live in, not the air-brushed postcard we got from Sarah Palin tonight. The Republicans can show a photo of Mount Rushmore above her head to try preposterously to lend an historical reference to a vice presidential candidate who is egregiously unqualified for national office, but this entire act tonight falls flat. We will not be fooled -- or insulted, as Governor Palin did repeatedly to Senator Obama. Her condescension was appropriate only in the context of a convention where personal invective was hurled at opponents by politicians who routinely claim to have some higher brand of morality than the other party. Tonight Ms. Palin, Mr Guiliani and other speakers spent more time reinforcing their party's richly deserved reputation for hypocrisy than they did actually finding substantive reasons to object to the election of Barack Obama.

Behind the Palin gambit: trying to destroy a rational election

It's now commonly assumed that the principal reasons that John McCain selected one-term Alaska governor Sarah Palin to be his running mate were to excite the religious right and tempt undecided women voters to embrace the Republican ticket, since they now have one of their own to turn out for. But there was more to picking Palin than that.

The predictable volume of the blogosphere storm about Palin shows that McCain is achieving at least one of his objectives in selecting a sure-to-be-controversial nominee: diverting attention away from Obama in the wake of the Democrats' terrific convention and Obama's solid acceptance speech. Morever, the paladins of the mainstream media -- believing that unfavorable information about politicians must first come out of the mouths of their quotable foes -- are bending over backwards to avoid noticing anything questionable about Palin. This will force Democrats to start pointing out the enormous problems with her being one step away from the presidency.

Mark my words, as soon as Democrats turn their fire on her, they'll be accused of being anti-women. Obama himself is right to steer around making remarks about her, but Biden needn't do so. Her various hard-right positions and her admissions of ignorance about government (such as saying last month that she had no idea what a vice president does) should be turned into campaign ads against her immediately, or else the Republicans may succeed in defining her as just a colorful frontier-state straight-talker.

They will be doing that to frame the second wave of attention to Palin, which McCain's people surely realized was inevitable: media investigations into her firing of the head of the Alaskan state police, for resisting her attempts to get him to dismiss her state-trooper ex-brother-in-law. The Alaskan legislature started an investigation of this apparent abuse of power, and the report is due eight days before the November election. The McCain campaign was probably untroubled by this scandal -- because it could be portrayed as partisan (again, "unfairly attacking a woman"), and would deny more media time to Obama.

This hints at significant new negative ads about Obama coming soon from the McCain campaign. Combined with feigned but towering outrage at criticism of Palin's dearth of relevant experience for national office, the McCain campaign will be trying to manipulate and distort the nature of news coverage over the next several weeks -- to embroil the fall election campaign in a storm of negative attacks, counter-attacks and media insanity, to distract voters from anything substantive, since on substance, McCain loses.

Palin in power: the end of rational government

By nominating Sarah Palin for vice president, the Republicans will cease to be a serious political party contending for professional leadership of the most prominent democratic nation on earth. By selecting, as the would-be second-in-command of this nation, a person who believes that religious creationism should be taught in public schools, that all men and women should not use contraception, that human beings have played no role in global warming, and that it's appropriate for elected officials to intimidate police officers, they will have exhibited to everyone watching this election that they have contempt for science, the rule of law, and individual rights. Ms. Palin's access to power would be the symbol of the death of rationality in American public life that would be the logical end of continued Republican rule. The election of Obama has now become an existential necessity for this country, if Americans wish to have any hope not just of continuing to lead the secular democratic West, but of remaining in any position to compete in the open global technological society of the 21st century.

Playing it safe with his VP choice will downsize Obama himself...

"My friends", unless you want to hear that phrase every day after next January 20, please hear this: The credentials of Obama's VP choice will have no effect on the election, because the VP's credentials have not ever been the reason why a presidential nominee won in November. The only two effects are the subjective effect that it has on the nominee's base and the media when it's announced, and what the choice says about the nominee.

Kathleen Sebelius is the only conceivable VP selection at this point who would both excite the Democratic grass roots and electrify the news media. (Selecting a woman VP did not have that effect in 1984, because Mondale had no chance to win, and Ferraro was plucked from obscurity in the House as a Hail Mary pass. But any woman that Obama picked might actually be one step away from the presidency.)

To those who ask if selecting a woman other than Hillary will alienate Hillaryites, I say this: Not if he announces the choice before Saturday of this week, because that will turn the next several days into the Coming of Kathleen. Striding together into Denver, they would be embraced by countless Democratic women politicians eager to be seen with them, praising Sebelius to the rafters. Hillary would have no choice but to join the chorus, because any damning by faint praise would be seen as focus on her own interests rather than the party's.

In contrast to the media frenzy that such a VP choice would create, Bayh, Biden, Kaine or any other traditional white male politician would entail no surprise and deliver no excitement; the sense of deflation would be palpable in less than two days. In what now looks like an unnecessarily close election from Democrats' perspective, and with a qualified progressive woman governor of a Republican state (with great media sparkle) available, any more conventional choice would contribute nothing to Obama's momentum.

He can't win this election by making safe choices and hedging his bets, or else he'll seem more conventional himself. Since returning from Berlin, Obama has frittered away the summer weeks as if he were expecting to saunter to victory in November. But that won't happen. In the first five months of this year, he raised the nation's expectations by unexpectedly capturing this nomination. He has to renew and meet those expectations with a bold VP selection that seems proportionate to the urgency of the stakes in this election. (And he will inoculate himself against an unfavorable comparison if, as seems likely now, John McCain springs his own surprise to great media effect when he announces his VP pick.)

There has not been such interest in the vicissitudes of a presidential campaign in American politics since 1992 or perhaps 1960. Obama needs to increase the tempo and not dampen it, if he's to retain the upper hand in this election.