EARLY EVENING POST:  JUNE 22,  2008

Posted at 7:09 p.m. ET

EUROPE FEARS OBAMA

When did you ever think you'd see that headline?  But it appears to be true, at least in one area. My friend Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi alerts me to an article by Glenn Kessler in today's Washington Post, suggesting that Europe is worried that Obama is too soft on Iran.  Yes, you read that right.  Consider:

European officials are increasingly concerned that Sen. Barack Obama's campaign pledge to begin direct talks with Iran on its nuclear program without preconditions could potentially rupture U.S. relations with key European allies early in a potential Obama administration.

The U.N. Security Council has passed four resolutions demanding that Iran stop enriching uranium, each time highlighting the offer of financial and diplomatic incentives from a European-led coalition if Tehran suspends enrichment, a route to producing fuel for nuclear weapons. But Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, has said he would make such suspension a topic for discussion with Iran, rather than a precondition for any negotiations to take place.

This is what happens when an amateur runs for the presidency.  Obama is to the left of Europe.  More:

"Dropping a unanimous Security Council condition would simply be interpreted by Iran and America's allies as unconditional surrender, and America's friends would view this as confirmation of America's basic unreliability," said François Heisbourg, a Paris-based military analyst with the International Institute for Strategic Studies. "A hell of a way to start a presidential term."

What a comment from France!

European officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to be seen as interfering with U.S. politics, said the demand that Iran first suspend its uranium enrichment is a European concept, not something forced on them by the Bush administration. Three European countries -- Britain, France and Germany -- persuaded Tehran to suspend its enrichment activities in 2003 while the two sides negotiated, until Iran declared in 2006 that the talks were fruitless and restarted their nuclear program.

You mean it can't be blamed on BUSH?  No wonder I don't recall reading these details in The New York Times.

President Bush, during his farewell tour of Europe last week, pointed to the coalition as one of his foreign policy legacies. "I leave behind a multilateral framework to work this issue," Bush said. "You know, one country can't solve all problems. I fully agree with that. A group of countries can send a clear message to the Iranians."

But in a recent interview on CNN, Susan Rice, Obama's adviser, was blunt in her criticism of the current approach. "Before we will talk to them about their nuclear problem, they have to suspend their nuclear problem. That [is a] counterproductive precondition," she said.

Why be tough on Iran when you can be tough on Bush?  The McCain camp fires back:

"Obama criticizes a multilateral process and disparages the European contribution. What he is proposing is unilateral cowboy summitry," said Randy Scheunemann, the McCain campaign's national security director. He said McCain "agrees we need to have basic benchmarks, such as suspension, before you go further. And he has called for a significant increase in sanctions, through the U.N. if possible or through like-minded allies if necessary."

The problem, of course, is that once Obama sits down with Iran without preconditions, his worshippers at home will expects results.  And results can only come through American concessions because the Iranians, having gotten us to drop our preconditions, will see us as weak.  They are not going to end their nuclear program for Obama.  And then we're on that familiar slippery slope. 

By the way, this story ran on page 14 of The Post.  It should have been on page one.  The placement shows editorial bias and a desire to bury the story.  Splendid reporting.

June 22, 2008.      Permalink          

AFTERNOON POST:  JUNE 22,  2008

Posted at 2:35 p.m. ET

TRACKERS

Obama has a slight uptick in today's Rasmussen tracking poll, but shows no improvement with Gallup.

Rasmussen, whose poll is taken among likely voters, shows Obama with a seven-point lead, which is troubling.  However, Gallup, whose poll is taken among registered voters, shows Obama up by two. 

I am more confident about polls among likely voters.  However, it is early in the game, and each day's result is only a snapshot.  Both Rasmussen and Gallup claim a margin of error of two percent. 

John Hinderaker at Power Line, my second home, cautions about Republicans becoming too confident when they recall how Michael Dukakis's June, 1988, lead over George H.W. Bush eroded.  John points out that June polling results in years after 1988 have come increasingly closer to the final result each time.   He notes the percentages by which June polling missed the final numbers:

1988--16%
1992--10.5%
1996--8.5%
2000--5%
2004--3.3% 

And he comments:

This may be because improved polling techniques are giving a better read on the electorate, earlier. You could test this theory by checking later poll averages against actual results; I haven't tried to do that. Another possibility is that our politics have become increasingly polarized, so that fewer voters change their minds over the course of a campaign. Either way, recent history suggests that we Republicans shouldn't take too much comfort from the memory of Michael Dukakis. 

I wouldn't take too much comfort in anything political this year.  I continue to believe that the odds heavily favor Obama, and that McCain has a steep hill to climb.  Start now.

June 22, 2008.      Permalink          

SUNDAY:  JUNE 22,  2008

Posted at 7:40 a.m.

THE END IS NEAR!

I must tell you, I haven't read a story like this in a long time.  Catch the lead:

Is everything spinning out of control? Midwestern levees are bursting. Polar bears are adrift. Gas prices are skyrocketing. Home values are abysmal. Air fares, college tuition and health care border on unaffordable. Wars without end rage in Iraq, Afghanistan and against terrorism.

Horatio Alger, twist in your grave.

The can-do, bootstrap approach embedded in the American psyche is under assault. Eroding it is a dour powerlessness that is chipping away at the country's sturdy conviction that destiny can be commanded with sheer courage and perseverance.

Oh, please.  Really now.  We survived the Civil War (600,000 dead), the 1918 flu pandemic, the depression, World War II, a half-century nuclear standoff with the Soviets, and this writer thinks gas prices and college tuition will finish us?  Boy, have we produced a gutsy generation of journalists.

And get this one:

Want to escape on the couch? A writers' strike halted favorite TV shows for half a season. The newspaper on the table may soon be a relic of the Internet age. Just as video stores are falling by the wayside as people get their movies online or in the mail.

Look, I've been a TV writer.  A writers' strike is a national tragedy?  I've walked that picket line.  We didn't think we were dealing a mortal blow to the Old Republic. 

Well, I guess they have to fill the news column with something.  This is your Sunday laugh.

June 22, 2008.      Permalink          

A McCAIN ROAD MAP?

A new Fox poll on our energy problems may well provide a road map for John McCain to make the issue his winning one, if he'll take advantage of the chance.  It does not provide the same shot for Obama because the Democratic Party is so locked into the High Church of Environmentalism, Al Gore, senior pastor:

After taking the body blows of higher energy prices, Americans seem more willing than ever to fight back with bold initiatives. For example, just over three-quarters (76 percent) support immediately increasing oil drilling in the United States — a position recently espoused by presumptive Republican nominee John McCain. More than seven in 10 Democrats (71 percent) also hold this view.

A slim majority (53 percent) supports drilling in a small area of the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge — up 5 percentage points since March 2006. Support also has risen over that same period for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico — 77 percent today, up from 68 percent.

And nuclear power — another McCain energy plank — seems to be enjoying a resurgence of popularity as well. By a 51 percent to 41 percent margin, Americans favor building more nuclear power plants than the 100 or so that already exist — a 4-point increase in support over the last two-plus years.

In April 2002 a majority of Americans (52 percent) opposed building additional nuclear plants. Today a 53 percent majority thinks nuclear power is a safe source of energy — a view that would have seemed far-fetched just a few years ago.

And...

Americans looked negatively on energy policy options that include an increased federal gasoline tax (83 percent opposed) and the rationing of gasoline and oil (63 percent opposed). Americans also are evenly divided on whether environmental standards should be relaxed (46 percent support relaxation; 46 percent oppose it).

What McCain must do is make headlines with this issue, something hard for him to do with his understated style and lack of eloquence.  He should immediately pledge that, in his first hour as president, he will declare a national energy emergency, putting the nation on a war footing in battling our energy crisis.  He might recall FDR's comment about the depression:  "This is an emergency as serious as war itself."  He should then commit to some kind of tax-relief program that will ease the pain for Americans immediately. 

McCain should expect the usual backlash from the liberal press.  He must be ready to ridicule it as the opinion of elites who can easily afford the high gas and heating-oil prices.  He's got to be cutting edge, and turn Obama into a sixties reactionary.  It can be done.

June 22, 2008.      Permalink          

WILL

George Will, who's kind of been in the shadows in recent years, has sparked up a bit recently.  Here he dissects our discussion of crime, with a bit of education thrown in:

Listening to political talk requires a third ear that hears what is not said. Today's near silence about crime probably is evidence of social improvement. For many reasons, including better policing and more incarceration, Americans feel, and are, safer. The New York Times has not recently repeated such amusing headlines as "Crime Keeps on Falling, But Prisons Keep on Filling" (1997), "Prison Population Growing Although Crime Rate Drops" (1998), "Number in Prison Grows Despite Crime Reduction" (2000) and "More Inmates, Despite Slight Drop in Crime" (2003).

If crime revives as an issue, it will be through liberal complaints about something that has reduced the salience of the issue -- the incarceration rate. And any revival will be awkward for Barack Obama. Liberalism likes victimization narratives and the related assumption that individuals are blank slates on which "society" writes. Hence liberals locate the cause of crime in flawed social conditions that liberalism supposedly can fix.

And...

Last July, Obama said "more young black men languish in prison than attend colleges and universities." Actually, more than twice as many black men 18-24 are in college as there are in jail. Last September he said, "We have a system that locks away too many young, first-time, nonviolent offenders for the better part of their lives." But Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute, writing in the institute's City Journal, notes that from 1999 to 2004, violent offenders accounted for all of the increase in the prison population.

Once again Obama gets it wrong.  He makes one factual error after another in his speeches, yet the in-the-tank crowd refuses to call him on it.   What are facts when you've got a messiah running?  More:

James Q. Wilson, America's premier social scientist, notes that "the typical criminal commits from 12 to 16 crimes a year (not counting drug offenses)" and Wilson says that 10 years of scholarly studies "have shown that states that sent a higher fraction of convicts to prison had lower rates of crime, even after controlling for all of the other ways -- poverty, urbanization, and the proportion of young men in the population -- that the states differed.

When I was a student at The University of Chicago, James Q. Wilson, always known as Jim Wilson, was a prized graduate student, a rising star.  The academic world later found out he was a conservative, but even their disapproval couldn't dim the brightness.

Finally...

A recent report by the Pew Center on the States asserts that America incarcerates too many people, and in the process diverts money from higher education. Wilson notes that the report does not examine whether the slower growth of public spending on higher education than on prisons may be explained by the surge in private support for public universities. And, Wilson dryly adds, the report does not explore "whether society gets as much from universities as it does from prisons." A good question, but not one apt to be studied in academia.

No, I don't think so.  Even asking the question would bring the charge of "fascist," issued by the same professors who impose speech codes on their students. 

June 22, 2008.      Permalink