SECOND EVENING UPDATE:  JUNE 18,  2008

Posted at 8:09 p.m. ET

GOOD FOR WaPo

Since we're on the subject of journalists who do good work, I must once again praise the editorial page of The Washington Post.  It's a liberal page, and I often disagree, but it is thoughtful and fair, and has been superb on Iraq, always willing to consider the changing facts on the ground.  Today, the page argues that Barack Obama needs a new Iraq policy.  Despite vast progress...

He still proposes withdrawing most U.S. troops according to a fixed timetable, set to the most rapid pace at which commanders have said American forces could be pulled out.

Mr. (Hoshyar) Zebari, who has served as foreign minister in every Iraqi government since 2003, finds Mr. Obama's proposal worrying. In a meeting with Post editors and reporters Tuesday, he said that after all the pain and sacrifices of the past five years, "we are just turning the corner in Iraq." A precipitous withdrawal, he said, "would create a huge vacuum and undo all the gains and achievements. And the others" -- enemies of the United States -- "would celebrate."

Mr. Zebari said he told Mr. Obama that "Iraq is not an island." In other words, an American withdrawal that destabilized the country would also roil the region around it and embolden U.S. adversaries such as al-Qaeda and Iran.

And...

The foreign minister said "my message" to Mr. Obama "was very clear. . . . Really, we are making progress. I hope any actions you will take will not endanger this progress." He said he was reassured by the candidate's response, which caused him to think that Mr. Obama might not differ all that much from Mr. McCain.

Really?  I'd like to believe it, but I have to hear it directly from Mr. Obama, in a public statement.  Then watch his base go berserk .  Let's see if Obama has the guts.

June 18, 2008.       Permalink          

FIRST EVENING UPDATE:  JUNE 18,  2008

Posted at 6:33 p.m. ET

A WORTHY TRIBUTE

I've written here, as have others, about the vulgar, over-the-top tributes to Tim Russert, and how outlandish and self-serving some of them have been.  But there's one, published today, that's outstanding. Bernard Goldberg, the former CBS correspondent who's spoken out bluntly about media bias, recalls Russert as a man who worried about the same thing:

No, what made Tim Russert different, and better, I think was his willingness to listen to -- and take seriously -- criticism about his own profession. He was willing, for example, to keep an open mind about a hot-button issue like media bias -- an issue that so many of his colleagues dismiss as the delusions of right-wing media haters. (Trust me on this one, I worked at CBS News for 28 years and know Dan Rather personally.)

And...

Tim was a big proponent of diversity, but he wanted to go further than the usual stuff. "I am for having women in the newsroom and minorities in the newsroom -- I'm all for it. It opens up our eyes and gives us different perspectives. But just as well, let's have people with military experience; let's have people from all walks of life, people from the top-echelon schools but also people from junior colleges and the so-called middling schools -- that's the pageantry of America . . . You need cultural diversity, you need ideological diversity. You need it."

And...

"There's a potential cultural bias. And I think it's very real and very important to recognize and to deal with," he told me. "Because of backgrounds and training you come to issues with a preconceived notion or a preordained view on subjects like abortion, gun control, campaign finance. I think many journalists growing up in the '60s and the '70s have to be very careful about attitudes toward government, attitudes toward the military, attitudes toward authority. It doesn't mean there's a rightness or a wrongness. It means you have to constantly check yourself."

And finally...

"It is imperative," he told me, "that we never suggest that there's a moral equivalency between the United States of America and the terrorists. Period. I'll believe that until the day I die."

And he did.  And that's a fine, worthy tribute that really tells us something important about the man.

Posted on June 18, 2008.      Permalink          

SECOND AFTERNOON POST:  JUNE 18,  2008

Posted at 4:57 p.m. ET

McCAIN GOES NUCLEAR

Senator McCain has made a bold proposal to build 45 new nuclear power plants in the United States.  Good on him.  Energy is an area where the Republicans have a great advantage over the Democrats, who are beholden to the white-wine environmentalists on the slopes of Aspen.  McCain should hammer home his energy proposals, make the Dems look like what they are - a bunch of sixties reactionaries out of step with modern science.  Energy is a winning issue, especially with the price of gasoline.  Here's the story:

SPRINGFIELD, Missouri (Reuters) - Republican John McCain would put the United States on course to build 45 new nuclear reactors by 2030 if elected president, the Arizona senator said on Wednesday.

McCain, his party's presumptive nominee in this fall's presidential election, is laying out his plan to make the country energy independent.

"If I am elected president, I will set this nation on a course to building 45 new reactors by the year 2030, with the ultimate goal of 100 new plants to power the homes and factories and cities of America," he said.

There are 104 operating nuclear reactors nationwide at present, which generate about 20 percent of the nation's power supply.

McCain has argued forcefully for further nuclear plants, seeing them as part of a solution to fighting climate change and establishing U.S. energy independence.

Sen. Barack Obama, McCain's presumptive Democratic opponent, has issued supportive statements about nuclear power but has set no outright goal for building plants.

McCain will get flak from the usual suspects, but he's got to press ahead like a bulldog.  When McCain is McCain, he comes alive.  He should pledge to declare a national energy emergency, and demand that we pursue energy independence and economy the way we pursue a foreign enemy. 

June 18, 2008.      Permalink          

AFTERNOON POST:  JUNE 18,  2008

Posted at 4:18 p.m. ET

POLLS

The polls are consistent, remarkably so.  The Rasmussen tracker has Obama up three over McCain, but Gallup has him up five. 

A new Reuters/Zogby poll also has Obama up five.  An ABC News/Washington Post poll published a day or so ago had him up four.

So the lead is three to five percent.  It's a small lead, and it can be overcome.  But it can also grow.  The mainstream media is so in the tank for Obama that nothing he does, no blunder he commits, seems to mean anything at all.  If McCain has a hair out of place, it's headline news.  If Obama misspeaks on Jerusalem, and has to send out an adviser to issue a correction, it's barely reported.

I've said for some time that the press will elect Obama.  I see nothing to contradict that statement.  McCain has got to work twice as hard, and he needs a dynamic v.p. choice to spruce up the ticket.

June 18, 2008.      Permalink          

WEDNESDAY:  JUNE 18,  2008

Posted at 6:58 a.m. ET

MRS. SAINT

You want to read something weird?  Read today's New York Times piece on the makeover of Michelle Obama.  I mean, really now.  They tell us that she's getting this kind of remodeling after being attacked for some statements.  But then, they kind of say that she's perfect already, as perfect as her saintly husband.  Look, up in the sky, it's a bird, it's a plane, it's...Mrs. Saint.  Observe:

Fox News called her “Obama’s baby mama,” a derogatory term for an unwed mother. Christopher Hitchens, a Slate columnist, claimed — with scant evidence — that her college thesis proved she was once influenced by black separatism. National Review presented her as a scowling “Mrs. Grievance.”

It's the right wing.  That's what it is.  That's the whole problem.  There's nothing wrong with this woman that some good censorship couldn't cure.  After all:

The caricatures of Mrs. Obama as the Angry Black Woman confound her, friends say. Her own family crosses racial boundaries — her mother-in-law and a sister-in-law are white — and she has spent much of her adult life trying to address racial resentment.

Is this playing the white card?  I don't know.  But there is heroism here:

By 2001, Mrs. Obama, married for nine years and the mother of two daughters, had taken a job as vice president of community affairs at the University of Chicago Medical Center. She soon discovered just how acrimonious those affairs were.

Hospital brass had gathered to break ground for a children’s wing when African-American protesters broke in with bullhorns, drowning out the proceedings with demands that the hospital award more contracts to minority firms.

The executives froze. Mrs. Obama strolled over and offered to meet later, if only the protestors would pipe down. She revised the contracting system, sending so much business to firms owned by women and other minorities that the hospital won awards.

Okay, next stop - she goes to Iran.  Why send Barack when you can send a pro?

Finally...

As her plane descends into a northern Montana valley, she sounds like a woman who wishes she could sit voters down for a long talk. “You know, if someone sat in a room with me for five minutes after hearing these rumors, they’d go ‘huh?’ ” she says. “They’d realize it doesn’t make sense.”

She extends her long arms, her voice plaintive. “I will walk anyone through my life,” she says. “Come on, let’s go.”

Yeah, right.  But I still want to know whether this is the first time she's been proud of her country, and whether she still thinks America is a mean place in 2008.  I also would like her to explain this comment:  “Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual — uninvolved, uninformed.”  Never allow us?  Is this a dictatorship?  Uninvolved?  Uninformed?  Does she know all of us?

Apparently, the reporters didn't ask too many embarrassing questions.

June 18, 2008.      Permalink          

ADVICE FOR BARACK

Blake D. Dvorak, one of the editors at Real Clear Politics, has some sound advice for Barack Obama - to slaughter some of the Democratic sacred cows. The ideas are good.  The chances of acceptance, I think, are no better than ten percent:

School choice: Voucher remains unpopular with the general public, but charter schools and education tax credits are gaining in popularity, mostly due to the results. In Washington, D.C., the charter school program enjoys a 90% satisfaction rating, according to the Wall Street Journal. Yet congressional Democrats, urged on by the teachers unions, are trying to destroy the program.

Here's a case where Obama can say that when there's solid evidence of improvement he is willing to change his mind.

But the teachers would kidnap him and take him to their secret detention room in the mountains.

Another idea:

Second Amendment: The Supreme Court is about to decide the case on D.C.'s handgun ban. As a presidential candidate, Obama has had to do what every Democrat running for president has done: Voice support of the Second Amendment but maintain that there is room for restrictions. This weakness of this position has yielded the issue of gun rights to Republicans because it convinces so few voters - the same voters who remember Obama telling them how they "cling" to their guns.

The Court's overturning of D.C.'s handgun ban would give Obama the cover he would need to reverse (slightly) his position on guns. Even if it doesn't, Obama need only say that he recognizes that guns are used for protection, not just hunting, and that his administration will protect that right.

The anti-gun crowd would call him the Second Coming of Joe Lieberman.  That plus school choice?  We're talking toast here.

Finally...

The United Nations: Petty tyrants and anti-Semitic gasbags have long since corrupted Turtle Bay. Even when you take out the riffraff what remains is an ineffective peace-keeping body whose guiding light is reactionary anti-Americanism. While ignoring the former, the internationalist left applauds the latter.

Obama doesn't need to go so far as to propose leaving the U.N., but he should recognize that the "blame Bush" talk won't end with an Obama Administration. Stating this fact and urging some measure of reform wouldn't destroy Obama's internationalist message. In fact, it would make it stronger and more palpable for Americans who might be weary of Bush's unilateralism but resistant to handing over more power to a body that lets Hugo Chavez be a member.

There goes the West Side of Manhattan and all the Hollywood studios.

Look, that's fine, rational stuff.  But the Democratic Party of 2008 isn't a fine, rational party.  It's a party that thinks it's on the cutting edge of paradise.

Oh, by the way, Obama just moved much of the Democratic National Committee's machinery to Chicago, home of the Daley machine.  That's the kind of paradise we can believe in.

June 18, 2008.      Permalink          

IS THIS REAL?

What if someone told you that the Pentagon was depending on advice from our universities to fight the war on terror?  Would you 1) get ready to leave the country; 2) leave without getting ready; 3) dig a bomb shelter; 4) ask for a psychiatric examination of the secretary of defense?

I'd choose at least two of the above.  But, incredibly, our heroic defense bureaucrats are doing exactly what starts the nightmares:

Eager to embrace eggheads and ideas, the Pentagon has started an ambitious and unusual program to recruit social scientists and direct the nation’s brainpower to combating security threats like the Chinese military, Iraq, terrorism and religious fundamentalism.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has compared the initiative — named Minerva, after the Roman goddess of wisdom (and warriors) — to the government’s effort to pump up its intellectual capital during the cold war after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957.

Oh, now wait a minute.  We had real universities then, and they weren't controlled by the far left.  I mean, who do you go to in today's universities to learn about the Middle East?  Many of the departments are funded partly with Saudi money.  Depend on that?  Even the leftists are skeptical:

The American Anthropological Association, an 11,000-member organization, has also told administration officials that while research on these issues is essential, Defense Department money could compromise quality and independence because of the department’s inexperience with social science. “There was pretty general agreement that this was an issue we should weigh in on,” said Setha M. Low, the organization’s president, who contacted dozens of anthropologists about it.

You know those hawkish anthropologists, don't you? 

The story is filled with expressions of reluctance on the part of academics to get involved with the Defense Department.  If they're reluctant, where do you think they'd be on the political spectrum?  What kind of advice do you think they'd give? 

Historically, universities have made their greatest contribution to national defense through science and engineering.  I'm not so sure that the humanities or social sciences, considering today's academic realities, would be quite as helpful.

June 18, 2008.      Permalink