EVENING UPDATE,  FEBRUARY 20,  2008

Why?

The single most fascinating question of this campaign is expressed in one word:  Why?

Why have we come to the point where a major party is about to hand its nomination for president to a blank slate?  Why are Democratic voters so gullible?  Why has the press asked so few serious questions of the blank?  Why do we depend on Power Line to examine the sometimes weird nature of the blank's advisers, like Zbig Brzezinski or Samantha Power?  Why have we permitted the greatest threat we face, the Iranian nuclear program, to slip from the front page while the blank essentially ignores it?

There is no one answer.  Certainly the pathetic campaign waged by Hillary Clinton, and her own unpopularity, explain part of the mystery.  At the start of this campaign season few expected Barack Obama to succeed, and to succeed as dramatically as he has.  I watched Clinton again on TV today and I did not see a candidate poised to make a comeback.  I saw an exhausted, bewildered senator, ill-served by a smug staff, and unprepared to fight back.  That could change, but that's what I saw.

There are other reasons:  A kid graduating from college today was born in the middle of Ronald Reagan's second term.  He or she was about 15 when the current president was inaugurated.  He or she never lived through the Cold War.  Vietnam is ancient history.  The Reagan revolution was probably taught contemptuously by professors who are leftovers from the sixties generation.  While young people responded well, and patriotically, to 9/11, the educational establishment has had seven years to undo the patriotism.  The reporting of the Iraq war has soured many of the young on President Bush.  They live in an age of American Idol.  They are ripe for an Obama, and they are fueling much of his campaign.  They are the foot soldiers, the volunteers in the precincts.   

Race is another answer.  Admirably, Americans seem ready to get beyond past prejudices.  They're prepared to make the deal.  But they may not be aware of the fine print - that many in the media, especially the broadcast media, will not do their jobs, will not ask "the first" the kind of tough questions they should be asking.  That is changing, but mostly in the print media.  The broadcasters are still soft.  They have a TV star.  They also travel in circles that love Obama, see him as a means toward their own personal redemption.

We have seen phenomena like this in other countries.  We've had shooting stars in this country, but not at the presidential level.  John F. Kennedy was a far more serious man than is Barack Obama, despite what some in his family might say. 

I find the whole thing frightening.  It is not frightening if things go well for a President Obama.  It is frightening if things go badly.  The brilliant, appealing rhetoric that today speaks of hope can just as easily be turned on critics, on ethnic groups, on anyone who dissents.  And Obama would have plenty of support, no matter how vicious things became. 

And it is frightening because a President Obama, ratified by an election, can suddenly turn sharply to the left and deliver a presidency that few voted for, but which an intimidated Democratic Congress would be forced to support. 

This is not good.

Victor Davis Hanson on the Obama thing

Leave it to Victor Davis Hanson to come up with a sharp analysis of what he calls Harvard's power couple.  Example:

Re: Michelle Obama's astounding admission that she hitherto had no reason to feel pride in the U.S., and Obama's supposed Biden-like lifting of a campaign refrain from someone else.

The problem is deeper than occasional slips. For most of the last 25 years the Obamas' contacts have been largely confined to universities (Occidental, Columbia, Princeton, Harvard, Chicago) as both students and employees, or to government-sponsored social agencies, or to the incestuous world of Chicago minority politics. These landscapes have proven liberal, sympathetic, and non-confrontational. I doubt very seriously in those environments that the Obamas have had any of their sometimes bewildering statements seriously cross-examined or questioned.

And that is precisely the point.  Untested.  Unquestioned.  Darlings of a small, unrepresentative, elite establishment.  The result:

The result is that finally out on the campaign trail both are beginning to enter an arena where most of America does not faint at an Obama rally, but resents deeply a candidate's spouse suggesting that she previously had no pride in her own country, and would think that generous college admission practices, scholarships, and loans were cause more for gratitude rather than resentment. 

Train wreck coming.

Some dare to ask

As an example of the kind of journalism we need right now, The Washington Post's Fact Checker, by Michael Dobbs, asks some tough questions about Obama's contradictory stands on public financing of election campaigns - particularly his.  Now that he's raising bundles, Obama seems to be backing away from a firm pledge to participate in public financing, which carries with it restrictions:

The Obama campaign has said different things at different times on the issue of public financing. While there may have been a little wriggle room in some campaign statements, Obama's affirmative answer to the Midwest Democracy Network seems unequivocal. Now that Obama is raising $1 million a day, his enthusiasm for public financing appears to have waned.

Two Pinocchios for the land-of-Lincolner.

 

What's a mother to do?

Dan Balz, in another example of his excellent reporting, paints the grim picture of the Clinton campaign and asks professional pols to give their candid, anonymous opinion of what she must do to survive.  The quote:

Whatever the Clinton campaign thought would work has not worked. The carefully crafted phrases -- Obama is about promises, Clinton is about solutions -- fell flat in the Badger State. The negative ads about whether Obama was ducking debates did not work either.

Clinton needs something more dramatic in terms of a midcourse correction as the two-week battle for Texas and Ohio begins. What might it be? There appears to be conflict inside the Clinton campaign about the nature of the problem she has. Various theories abound.

And some of the theories:

"She lost the battle of the job description -- she let the Obama campaign define what's needed in a president in terms that totally work for him and totally marginalize her," one strategist wrote. "In fact, this was the major turning point in the campaign. Obama took off when he stopped just talking vaguely about the need for change and started making the case that his unique attributes are exactly what we need in a president today to turn the country around. She never engaged in a thoughtful discussion about the presidency, and why she fits the bill better than Obama."

Another...

A veteran of the Clinton-Gore administration offered these thoughts: "First, for the political community, she needs to open up her campaign. I love Maggie [Williams], Doug [Sosnik] and Steve [Richetti], but all the changes have said, 'We're in trouble and we're drawing the circle TIGHTER.' HRC [Hillary Rodham Clinton] needs someone high and visible who is not on the Clinton Library Steering Committee."

This strategist continued: "Second, in terms of presentation, they should never let her stand behind a podium and give a speech ever again. It's just not her thing, and she's getting KILLED in the comparison to Obama. Put her back around a table, listening and chatting. She's likable, smart, and engaging in a small setting."

Read the whole piece.  Interesting ideas.

Madness speaks again. 

We get so involved in our campaign that we sometimes forget there's an outside world.  The esteemed president of Iran has surfaced again, this time expanding on his vile comments about wiping Israel off the face of the earth.  We now, though, have a UN secretary-general who, unlike the last one, does respond correctly:

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon promised Wednesday to respond "firmly" to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's verbal attacks on Israel, which he called "intolerable."

Ban made the promise in a meeting with Israel's Ambassador to the UN Dan Gillerman, who requested the meeting with the UN chief following the Iranian president's Wednesday attack calling Israel a "filthy germ."

Ahmadinejad's remarks were broadcast on Iranian television on Wednesday, in which he called Israel a "filthy germ" and "savage beast" established by Western states in their bid to dominate Middle East nations.

The comments came just days after a top commander in Iran's Revolutionary Guard called Israel a "cancerous germ" which would be wiped out by Hezbollah, Army Radio reported.

At the same time, an Iranian dissident group is claiming that Iran already has nuclear weapons.   Look, I can't vouch for that.  But anyone who believes that Iran's vast nuclear program is designed just to recharge cell phones should get a job as Michelle Obama's speech writer. 

Finally, real justice.  We can breathe again.

The system works.  We are whole!

We have a conviction in the case of a man who faked his own disappearance to call attention to his congressional campaign:

DOVER, N.H. (AP) -- A businessman was convicted Wednesday of faking his disappearance after a car crash two years ago to draw attention to his long-shot congressional campaign.

A jury convicted Gary Dodds of falsifying evidence, causing a false public alarm and leaving the scene of the April 2006 crash. He showed no emotion as the verdicts were returned on the first day of deliberations after a 15-day trial.

Dodds, 43, claims he injured his head in a crash on the Spaulding Turnpike and nearly drowned in a river before being rescued 27 hours later from the snowy woods. Prosecutors say he spent part of that time soaking his feet in cold water to make it appear he spent the night outdoors, all to boost his faltering campaign.

''He had a story that he was going to stick to,'' County Attorney Thomas Velardi said during closing arguments Friday. ''It would've been a heroic story. It would've been a great story -- all the people who hadn't heard of him before ... really would've known who he was.''

Put him on Oprah. Potential president.

And I'll be back tomorrow, unless I disappear to call attention to my blog.

Posted on February 20, 2008.