EVENING UPDATE:  MAY 16, 2008

Posted at 7:39 p.m. ET

THE DUSTUP

Scott Johnson at Power Line has the most comprehensive report on the weird dustup between Barack Obama and President Bush.  Scott gives a full description and analysis of the president's words, then adds:

Barack Obama and his many friends in the mainstream media have projected Obama into Bush's speech, alleging that Bush made a veiled reference to him as a supporter of appeasement. From Hamlet we learn that the play's the thing wherein to catch the conscience of the king. Bush's "play" in Jerusalem was not about Obama. Yet Obama purports to see himself as an object of its critique of appeasement. Bush's speech treats Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran as common enemies with whom negotiation is impossible. Obama purports to distinguish Iran from Hamas and Hezbollah, rejecting unconditional negotiations only with the the terrorist groups.

Obama's protestations against Bush's speech make up his own play-within-the-play. They don't serve to prick a conscience, but rather to obscure the senator's inability to offer a rationale distinguishing between the terrorists and their state patron.

Well said. 

May 16, 2008.      Permalink          

WILL OBAMA GET IT?

We must remember that Obama may well be elected president in November.  The odds are with him.  So, can he learn?  Can he see why so many people have such doubts about him regarding national security?  The New York Sun editorializes:

Painful though it may have been for Mr. Obama to sense himself as the object of Mr. Bush’s remarks, no one need rule out the possibility that, should the Democrat gain the White House, he will also gain an appreciation of what Mr. Bush has comprehended so clearly and of the nature of the covenant of which the president gave such an eloquent expression.

That may be true.  One effect of this latest dustup is, ironically, to move Obama slightly to the right.  By asserting his outrage - put on or not - over the president's "targeting" of him, he commits himself to a certain strength in foreign policy.  Of course, that could change for the worse once he takes the oath.  We hope, though, that it changes for the better, should that moment arrive.

We have a right to demand more commitments from Senator Obama, and it shouldn't take a presidential putdown to prompt them.

May 16, 2008.      Permalink          

MID-AFTERNOON POST:  MAY 16,  2008

Posted at 4:16 p.m. ET

THE POLLS

Well, I'll be.  No matter what the pundits say about her, Senator Clinton maintains her strength in theoretical matchups against Senator McCain.

In today's trackers, Rasmussen has Obama and McCain tied, whereas Gallup has McCain up two points.

Rasmussen has Clinton up one over McCain, and Gallup has her up three. 

I always stress that tracking polls are best at measuring trends, and that it's not useful to isolate one day's sample.  But the trends here are pretty clear:  Obama hasn't made the sale.  There is resistance. 

These polls were taken before the latest Obama-bomb re the president's comments in Israel.  It will be instructive to see how the public reacts to Obama's over-the-top response.  Will he be seen as strong and decisive, or fearful and defensive?  On that may rest his image for some time.

May 16, 2008.      Permalink          

EARLY AFTERNOON POST:  MAY 16,  2008

Posted at 1:40 p.m. ET

THE INVESTIGATOR

Hire a lawyer - quick.  The UN is sending a guy to investigate the US for racism:

GENEVA (Reuters) - A special U.N. human rights investigator will visit the United States this month to probe racism, an issue that has forced its way into the race to secure the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.

The United Nations said Doudou Diene would meet federal and local officials, as well as lawmakers and judicial authorities during the May 19-June 6 visit.

"The special rapporteur will...gather first-hand information on issues related to racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance," a U.N. statement said on Friday.

In a tribute to objective journalism, the Reuters report continues:

Race has become a central issue in the U.S. election cycle because Sen. Barack Obama, the frontrunner in the battle for the Democratic nomination battle, stands to become the country's first African American president.

His campaign has increased turnout among black voters but has also turned off some white voters in a country with a history of slavery and racial segregation.

And also a history of looking at the views and experience of presidential contenders.  Will someone please notify Reuters about that.

I can't wait for the report. 

May 16, 2008.      Permalink          

FRIDAY:  MAY 16,  2008

Posted at 6:10 a.m. ET

THEY'RE STILL AGONIZED

The political world is abuzz over the Democrats' over-the-top reaction to President Bush's remarks before the Israeli parliament.  All the president did was reiterate what he's said many times - that he's opposed to negotiating with terrorists, and that he believes negotiating with them constitutes appeasement.  He recalled the start of World War II to illustrate the dangers of an appeasement policy. 

Well, I must say.  The Dems, thinking he was referring to them, went insane.  And it wasn't just the officeholders or the Barack brigades who shot back.  Consider this, in the Washington Post, from James P. Rubin, State Department spokesman in the Clinton government.  He's now married to Christiane Amanpour of CNN, which may explain his near hysteria:

The Obama campaign was right to criticize the president for his remarks and for engaging in partisan politics while overseas. Many presidents have said things abroad that could be construed as violating this unwritten rule of American politics. But it is hard to remember any president abusing the prestige of his office in as crude a way as Bush did yesterday. Charging your opponents with appeasement and likening them to Neville Chamberlain in the Knesset is a brutal blow. It is bad enough that Republicans use the politics of personal destruction here at home, but to deploy that kind of political weapon at an occasion as solemn as an American president addressing the parliament of a friendly government marks a new low.

Oh, my Heavens.  Will someone tell the gentleman that the president mentioned no one in particular in his speech, that his comments got a great round of applause, and that only the Democrats thought he was attacking them. 

The best analysts I saw on TV last night all said the same thing - that the Dems should have simply agreed with the president, applauded his opposition to appeasement, and left it at that.  This was amateur night.  The Democratic Party is sensitive about national security, and let that sensitivity get out of hand.  The president came out on top.

May 16, 2008.      Permalink          

OBAMA'S PROBLEM

Michael Goodwin, of The New York Daily News, has proved himself an astute observer of American politics.  He analyzes part of Obama's national-security problem, which may account for the wild reaction to Mr. Bush's Israel speech:

Barack Hussein Obama wants it both ways.

Any American who uses his full name is trying to scare voters, his wife charges. But Obama says he understands why Islamic terror group Hamas looks at his middle name and trusts him.

Ditto for his plan to meet with Iran's madman president and other rogue leaders. Obama sees his open-door policy as evidence he will end President Bush's "cowboy diplomacy." When Bush slammed that plan Thursday as "appeasement," Obama accused him of a "false political attack."

It's a legitimate attack, because Obama's kumbaya foreign policy is dangerous. And his name, including the Hussein part, is fair game because Obama has declared it an international advantage.

He can want it both ways, but he can't have it.

Pretty tough, but pretty much what we'll see in the fall when the GOP takes aim at Obama.  There's more:

The trouble started when Hamas adviser Ahmed Yousef said, "We like Mr. Obama" and added, "we hope he wins the election."

That's an endorsement, plain and simple. When John McCain jumped in, promising to be Hamas' "worst enemy," Obama got huffy and accused McCain of "divisive fear-mongering."

That's par for the Obama course. Michelle Obama once said anyone using her husband's full name is throwing the "ultimate fear bomb. When all else fails, be afraid of his name."

The gloves are coming off.  This will get ugly, and Mr. Obama has to learn to take a punch.  The antidote to the Dems' sensitivity on national security is clear:  Support it, expand it, strengthen it, do a JFK.  I just heard half the party fainting.  The Obama half.

May 16, 2008.      Permalink          

INSECURITY

In the real world of national security we continue to do dumb things, sometimes in the name of noble sensitivity.  Steve Emerson, whom you know as one of the nation's leading experts in terrorism, relates how the behavior of one police officer with a political agenda affected a whole department and put citizens at risk:

A Fairfax County Police sergeant who admits tipping off a terrorism suspect that he was under FBI surveillance also helped kill what had been a successful intelligence and terrorism-related training program within his police department.

Sgt. Weiss Rasool was sentenced to two years probation on April 22 after pleading guilty to illegally accessing a police database to run license tag numbers for a friend who thought he was being followed. Those tags traced back to FBI agents who had Rasool's acquaintance under surveillance as part of a terrorism investigation.

The Washington Post reported that Rasool cried during his sentencing and apologized for what he called "errors of judgment. But I never intended to put anybody's life at risk." The Post further reported:

"The target was arrested in November 2005, then convicted and deported, according to court filings in Rasool's case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeanine Linehan said that the target and his family were already dressed and destroying evidence at 6 a.m. when agents arrived to make the arrest, indicating that they had been tipped off."

Now the president of an Arlington, Va.-based counterterrorism research center is asking Rasool's bosses to reconsider their 2006 decision to cease using training programs offered by the center. Complaints by Rasool and an officer from another local agency that the training was anti-Islam prompted Fairfax County police to break with the Higgins Center for Counter Terrorism Research.

Nice, huh?   It's been seven years since 9-11, and Americans have forgotten.  That may be understandable, but you'd think police forces would have more common sense and savvy.  Here a training program was cut out over "sensitivity," and the sensitive guy turned out to have odd loyalties.  These chickens will eventually come home to roost.

May 16, 2008.      Permalink          

SCHOOL STANDARDS

Finally, just as this country appears poised to go liberal in its politics, inspiration comes from the very places we'd written off as hopelessly socialist not many months ago.  Conservatives in Britain say they'll clean up the schools if they regain power.  The Times of London reports:

Schools will be expected to smarten up their appearance under a Tory government. Out will go jeans and trainers, untucked baggy shirts, crop tops and biker leathers.

Uh, there's an asterisk here.  The new standards will apply to teachers, not students.  It seems many British teachers dress in ways that our grandmothers might find wanting.

Will the program work?  Are you kidding?  The union is already marching:

But Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT teaching union was outraged at the suggestion of a dress code for teachers.

“This is a party that said it wants to allow teachers more independence to use their professional judgement and it is making suggestions on the way they dress,” she said.

She added that schools had run into problems in the past when they attempted to ban women teachers from wearing trousers or insist that men must wear ties. Teaching was an active job and a formal business suit was sometimes too restrictive.

“If this is a sign of things to come, 400,000 teachers will be alienated,” she said.

That's the bottom line:  Thou shalt not alienate.  It's the one Moses would have included had he had more space.

So British kids may still be learning their history from a guy in jeans, cowboy boots and a tank top.  They'll lose more than the empire.

Back later, neatly dressed for blogging.

May 16, 2008.      Permalink