LATER AFTERNOON POST:  APRIL 19, 2008

Posted at 5:40 p.m.  ET

NOONAN

One of President Reagan's key speech writers, Peggy Noonan has for years been a perceptive columnist for The Wall Street Journal.  Here she analyzes Clinton, Obama and McCain in one shot, and does it well.  Her prediction?  Well, read on:

Mrs. Clinton is transmitting, but people aren't receiving. She has been branded, tagged. She's been absorbed, understood and categorized. People have decided what they think, and it's not good.

It took George W. Bush five years to get to that point. It took her five intense months. Political historians will say her campaign sank with the mad Bosnia lie, but Bosnia broke through only because it expressed, crystallized, what people had already begun to think: too much mendacity there, too much manipulation.

And...

This is what I think will happen. At some future point Mrs. Clinton will leave, and at a more distant one she will try to come back. But more than one cycle will have to pass before she does. She'll need more than four years to shake off the impression she made in 2008.

As for Obama...

Barack Obama's supporters will not be denied. He broke through, gained purchase, held his ground, the one thing Mrs. Clinton could not afford. When I speak to superdelegates, the vibration is there: It is the moment of Obama.

And now his problem emerges. It is two-headed. It is not that he is African-American, or half so, and it is not that he is liberal. Liberalism too, one senses, is having a moment.

It is his youth, his relative untriedness, the fact that he has not suffered, been seasoned, been beat about the head by life and left struggling back, as happens to most adults by a certain time. This is what I hear from older people, who vote in great numbers. They are not hostile to his race, they are skeptical of his inexperience.

The other is elitism, a charge that clearly grates on him and unnerves his wife, who has a great deal that would be attractive in a first lady (intelligence, accomplishment, beauty) but lacks placidity, which is, actually, necessary. All first ladies, first spouses, should be like Denis Thatcher, slightly dazed, mildly inscrutable, utterly supportive. It is the only job in the world where "seems slightly drugged" is a positive job qualification.

McCain...

Meanwhile, John McCain makes daily, small, incremental gains. He happily watches the Democrats fight and happily advances his cause. Did you see him on "Hardball" the other night with the college students of Villanova? They were beside themselves at the sight of him. It seems to me it would be a brilliant thing for him to announce he means to be a one-term president, that he means to have a clean, serious, one-term presidency in which he will do things those under pressure of re-election do not and cannot do. This would be received as a refreshment, a way out for the voters in a year they seem to want a way out. For many in the middle it would be a twofer. You get a good man, for only four years, and Mr. Obama gets to grow and deepen. He'll be better older.

The downside? Americans like knowing they can fire a president. It's how they keep them in line. And lame-duckness from day one would not be empowering.

If Mr. McCain went this route, how and when he said it would be everything. As with Mrs. Clinton, timing will be everything.

A lot to think about, as there always is with Peggy Noonan.

April 19, 2008.      Permalink          

AFTERNOON POST: APRIL 19,  2008

Posted at 4:41 p.m. ET

THE POLLS

Three days to the Pennsylvania primaries. The only late poll out today is Zogby, of dubious reliability, showing Clinton up five over Obama.  Rasmussen has not published a new Pennsylvania tracker today.

National polls:  Rasmussen has McCain up seven over Obama, but Gallup has Obama up one over McCain.

Rasmussen has McCain up seven over Clinton, but Gallup has Clinton up two over McCain.

If there is something significant here to watch, it's the national polls for the Democratic nomination.  Rasmussen has Obama up two over Clinton, but Gallup has Clinton up one.  Does this mean anything?  Only as part of a trend, but the trend itself is unclear.  Polls have been notoriously inaccurate this year.  We'll get an idea Tuesday night if any of the polling in Pennsylvania has been correct.

April 19, 2008.      Permalink          

SATURDAY:  APRIL 19,  2008

Posted at 7:48 a.m. ET

THE CHANGING RULES

"Barack Obama seemed puzzled.  Angrily puzzled.  The apostle of hope seemed flummoxed by the audacity of the question."

If we had a quote-of-the-week prize here, that line from Michael Barone would get it.  He was referring to a question asked of Obama in Wednesday's debate, about Obama's association with Weather Underground bomber William Ayers.  Barone asserts that the rules for Barack Obama are changing:

Obamaites live-blogging the debate were outraged. The press is not supposed to ask such questions. They are supposed to invite the candidates to expatiate on how generous their health care plans are. Or to allow them to proclaim that "we are the change that we are seeking." Or to once again bash George W. Bush.

But Barone says...

Debates are held not just to learn the details of the candidates' health care plans — which given the complexity of the issue will probably be considerably altered if they are ever actually put on the table — but also to learn who the candidates are.  And that includes learning about which guys who live in their neighborhood they chose to befriend.

Finally...

Obama fans are upset that ABC News' Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson broke the unwritten rule that you are not supposed to ask Democratic candidates about these things. Associations with unrepentant radicals and comments made to contributors at a San Francisco fund-raiser in a billionaire's mansion are supposed to be kept indoors. Only the face that the candidate wants to place before the public should be seen.

Beliefs that most activist liberals share should be kept under wraps if they are unpopular with most of the voting public. That is how mainstream media have operated for the last generation or more. But not at Philadelphia's Constitution Center on April 16. The rules had changed. And Barack Obama was not well prepared.

Superbly said by one of our foremost political analysts.  Many of us have seen "how mainstream media have operated for the last generation or more."  We saw it during Vietnam, when openly pro-Communist rallies on behalf of the North Vietnamese, held in New York's Central Park, were reported as "anti-war demonstrations."  We have seen it, over the years, in the refusal to provide the public with details on the political backgrounds of leftist, even Marxist operatives.  We've seen it in whitewashed descriptions of publications, as when Chris Matthews describes The Nation as a "liberal" magazine, when it's actually a far-left magazine.  We've seen it when anyone dares to question these practices, and is declared a "McCarthyite." 

I hope the rules are changing, for they need to be changed.  My great fear, though, is that the intimidation tactics now practiced by the Obama troops will work, that they will go after individual reporters and news outlets, suggesting that anyone who doesn't cooperate is vaguely "racist" or "right wing."  Reputations are important.  A reporter with kids in school might think twice before asking the tough question that needs to be asked.  It's safer, and more popular, to be part of the new politics of "unity."

But when Obama and his supporters speak of achieving unity, I worry that what they really mean is achieving it the old-fashioned way - by eliminating the other side, or any tough questions from that side.  They're on their way to doing that.  Yes they can.

April 19, 2008.      Permalink          

IN THE TANK FOR OBAMA

How bad is the problem of reporters in the tank for Obama?

The Politico has the single most important piece on this that I've read in a long time.  Bottom line, the writers concede that the press is pro-Obama, period.  My, what a shock.  Who could have suspected such a sin?  The report:

My, oh my, but weren’t those fellows from ABC News rude to Barack Obama at this week’s presidential debate.

Nothing but petty, process-oriented questions, asked in a prosecutorial tone, about the Democratic front-runner’s personal associations and his electablity. Where was the substance? Where was the balance?

Where indeed. Hillary Clinton and her aides have been complaining for months about imbalance in news coverage. For the most part, the reaction to her from the political-media commentariat has been: Stop whining.

That’s still a good response now that it is Obama partisans—some of whom are showing up in distressingly inappropriate places—who are doing the whining.

And...

Moreover, those questions about Jeremiah Wright, about Obama’s association with 1960s radical William Ayers, about apparent contradictions between his past and present views on proven wedge issues like gun control, were entirely in-bounds. If anything they were overdue for a front-runner and likely nominee.

If Obama was covered like Clinton is, one feels certain the media focus would not have been on the questions, but on a candidate performance that at times seemed tinny, impatient, and uncertain.

The difference seems clear: Many journalists are not merely observers but participants in the Obama phenomenon.

Oh dear, oh dear.  Mustn't say it.  Mustn't think it.  Was this actually written?  Aren't there laws in the new united America against such thoughts?

Read the whole piece.  Read it privately.  You never know who's watching.  Pass it around secretly to friends.

April 19, 2008.      Permalink          

INTO THE STREETS

Oh, it's just like old times.  Just like the sixties.

Bring the war home!

They were out in the streets. Okay, there weren't many of them, but it's a start.  The movement gains strength!

Democratic protesters confronted the might of ABC News by picketing its parent, Disney Studios, in Burbank, California:

BURBANK, Calif.—About 50 people rallied at Disney Studios Friday to protest the questions that ABC News journalists asked the Democratic presidential candidates during a debate earlier this week.

Protestors waved signs that read "Restore the Fourth Estate" and "ABC is TMZ," referring to the online celebrity site.

Organizer Rick Jacobs criticized ABC for focusing on the past gaffes of Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, instead of issues like the war in Iraq and the American economy.

Jacobs said he was offended that Obama was asked why he hasn't worn an American flag pin on his lapel.

"Patriotism isn't defined by a flag pin made in China," he said.

ABC did not immediately return messages seeking comment.

"I'm protesting the dumbing down of America ... of what should be news," said Albert Johnson, Jr., an insurance agent from Altadena. "I could ask any Hooters waitress and they'd have better questions. All that bing-pow graphics? What is this—a baseball game?"

ABC News is owned by The Walt Disney Co.

I spent many miserable hours in that studio, pitching movie projects.  The building is decorated by sculptured depictions of the Seven Dwarfs.  Somehow, the symbolism is perfect for the occasion.

But is Dopey the ABC executive, or the picketer outside?

Don't worry.  Say it loud, with your strong little band:  "Today Disney, tomorrow Disneyland!"

Hey, I like that.

April 19, 2008.      Permalink          

DIRECT FROM THE CREATIVE CAPITAL

Since we're in Hollywood, let's stay awhile.  There's excitement in the air.  Why?  Well, don't you know?  Where have you been?  Haven't you read the papers?

Let me clue you in.  Hollywood is about to release a set of "post 9-11 comedies."  Isn't that exciting?  Hilarious laugh riots that finally get us past the murder of 3,000 people.  Are we a creative nation, or what?  The honor roll:

Over the next few weeks, theaters will be screening far-out fare such as an Osama bin Laden documentary by the maker of “Super Size Me”; an absurdist slam against merchants of war featuring John Cusack; a zombie soldier flick with XXX star Jenna Jameson; a stoner movie about Guantanamo Bay; and a Sept. 11 parody — yes, parody — made by Uwe Boll, a little-known filmmaker often ridiculed as the worst director in Hollywood since Ed Wood.

Just how off-the-wall is the genre getting? Over the past six months, filmgoers have been turned off by overearnest snoozers (“Lions for Lambs,” “A Mighty Heart”), low-budget losers (“Redacted”) and far worse.

With the arrival of a half-dozen comedies, however, the post-Sept. 11 movie has quite possibly reached a new low.

Hey, what do you mean, "a new low"?  You tryin' to destroy the hopes and dreams of the new film generation? 

I know all of you will be excited by the descriptions of the films in this story.  Who needs "Casablanca," "Gone With the Wind," or "Sergeant York," when we've got the genius of Hollywood today?

Yuch.

Be back later with the newest polls.

April 19, 2008.      Permalink