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A new audio commentary for this evening, Sunday, is now up:  "The first time I ever saw a presidential candidate."

SUNDAY,  OCTOBER 12,  2008

SARAH, SARAH

Posted at 8:36 p.m. ET

This is a wonderful piece from the Anchorage Daily News and confirms what many of us have thought - that Sarah Palin is actually a smart lady who's done some very good things, but is being savaged by the liberal press and restricted by the McCain campaign.

Vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin has let her energy platform be dumbed down to "drill, baby, drill," but her actual record on energy is much more responsible, balanced and substantial.

• She worked with lawmakers and used her popularity to vastly increase Alaska's take-home share of its oil wealth, providing the state with billions of dollars in budget surplus with an oil tax that increased both the base rate and captured progressively more at higher oil prices.

• She encouraged new investment and exploration with generous, intelligent tax credits.

• She kick-started investment in a natural gas pipeline -- both through her own Alaska Gasline Inducement Act and the response by North Slope producers BP Alaska and Conoco Phillips, who pledge to spend up to $600 million on their own project.

• She maintained her predecessor's hard- line stance with Exxon/Mobil over development of the Point Thomson gas reserves, ultimately deciding to take the leases back rather the trust Exxon to make good on its umpteenth promise to produce. That prompted Exxon to go to court. That also prompted Exxon to promise $1.3 billion of work on Point Thomson.

• She proposed a Renewable Energy Fund that lawmakers last session approved for $250 million over five years. This is money to bankroll wind, geothermal, tidal and other forms of renewable energy.

• She supported lawmakers' work on home energy conservation, including $200 million for the Weatherization Program that increased the qualifying income limits for individuals and families and $100 million for the Home Energy Rebate Program, which provides up to $10,000 per household for energy efficiency improvements.

Whether you agree or disagree with these steps, the woman is an intelligent, engaged executive.  And note this:

Gov. Palin can't claim sole credit for any of this...

...But Gov. Palin did parlay her unprecedented popularity and those favorable circumstances to give Alaska something closer to a state energy policy than anything the United States has by way of a national policy.

Glad someone said it.  But you won't read it in the mainstream media.  Try to go through the rest of the piece, which provides the details, and concludes:

Sarah Palin's got a solid energy record in Alaska. National voters need to hear more than "drill, baby, drill."

Agreed.

October 12, 2008.      Permalink          

TRACKERS

Posted at 4:32 p.m. ET

The only particularly interesting thing about today's trackers is this statement from Gallup, which reports Obama up seven, down three from eleven four days ago:

These results, based on Oct. 9-11 polling, represent a narrowing of Obama's lead over McCain. Obama led by double-digits for three consecutive days last week, but now his advantage is down to seven percentage points. Obama has led in each of the last three individual days' polling, but by less than double-digits each day, suggesting that the race is, in fact, tightening.

Well, that's one poll, and we'll have to watch the trend.  Rasmussen also shows an Obama loss, but by only one point from yesterday.  Hotline as well shows Obama down, from ten yesterday to eight today.  Battleground doesn't publish on weekends.  Zogby has Obama up six, contrasted with four yesterday.

I'd also point out that the Gallup tracker tends to swing more wildly than the others, and was the outlier earlier in the week, when it reported Obama up by eleven. 

I wouldn't attach much meaning to today's Gallup statement.  Coming this week is the final debate, and McCain has lost the first two.  Also, we don't know what the financial markets will do.  If they improve, that conceivably can help McCain.  But if they plunge further, that fact will suck the air out of the news, making it hard or impossible for McCain to make progress.

The election is three weeks from Tuesday. 

October 12, 2008.      Permalink          

UPDATE AT 9:37 AM. ET:  Two trackers are out for today.  Zogby/Reuters/CSPAN has Obama up six, 49-43, a gain of two from yesterday.  Rasmussen also has Obama up six, 51-45, a loss of one from yesterday. 

COMMENT:  Please note that, even in the midst of economic crisis, Obama barely breaks 50 percent.  There are opportunities for McCain, but he doesn't know how to exploit them. 
 

McCAIN MESS

Posted at 8:43 a.m. ET

I must tell you how little good journalism is available today.  It's as if journalists themselves are holding their breath, waiting for this week's economic news.  The presidential candidates aren't saying anything they haven't said before, and don't seem to have any great ideas to deal with the crisis before us.  There is a sense of emptiness and drift, rather than resolution.  I'm reminded of William Goldman's comment about Hollywood:  "Nobody knows anything."  If someone knew, maybe this economic trauma could have been averted.

On the political front, the main story seems to be frustration with Senator McCain's campaign.  He is getting advice from all quarters, much of it conflicting.   There is no unifying theme.  Some say attack.  Others say don't attack.  Some say question Obama's character.  Others say come up with a coherent economic plan.  Three weeks from Tuesday, America will elect a new president.  I suspect many Americans are waking up to the reality that this new president will probably be Barack Obama.  Will this recognition ignite a backlash, a realization that we are heading down an unknown path with an unknown candidate toward an unknown destination?  I don't know.  But some one had better articulate the danger. 

Frank Miele, a highly intelligent Western editor whose work is often quoted here, has one of the best appraisals of the McCain campaign: 

No, I don’t mean his physical ailments, partly brought on by age and partly by the vicissitudes of torture at the hands of his captors in Hanoi 40 years ago. And I don’t mean his policies, although God knows he has some explaining to do there as well.

I am talking about his inability to carry the battle to his enemies — to look a man square in the eye and tell him, “You are wrong.” He hasn’t yet determined how to run a campaign aimed against Barack Obama’s many flaws, and time is running out.

McCain must fight:

But most pointedly of all, a McCain supporter at a rally in Waukesha, Wisconsin, on Thursday stood up and told McCain to his face what almost all of his supporters are feeling — take off your gloves and fight!

“I’m mad! I’m really mad!” said the unidentified man. “When you have Obama, [House speaker Nancy] Pelosi and the rest of the hooligans up there going to run the country, we have to have our head examined. It’s time that you two represent the rest of us,” he told McCain and his running mate, Sarah Palin, “So go get ’em!”

But the problem is that there's no clear vision for the campaign.  Analyst Dick Morris has said, correctly, that there are tactics, but there's no strategy. 

Barring some unforeseen testosterone transfusion, McCain is destined to keep thinking his enemies are his “friends” and that his self-appointed role as the oxymoronic “maverick moderate” will somehow pay off in votes instead of snickers.

It had looked for a while like Pitbull Palin would pull McCain across the finish line, but now it seems safe to assume that McCain will put a muzzle on her and turn the final three weeks of the campaign into a race for last place.

No matter what McCain does, he seems to get the blame:

McCain has missed opportunity after opportunity to go after Barack Obama’s tax policy, his education policy, his foreign policy and his fiscal policy, let alone his association with ACORN and its fraudulent voter registration campaigns, his 20 years of friendship with the radical Rev. Jeremiah Wright and his ties to the domestic terrorist and lifelong communist William Ayers.

The national media has already painted McCain as a negative campaigner, but the funny thing is, they do it without ever investigating whether the allegations against Obama are true. Doesn’t the truth play some small role in whether a campaign is negative or not? I mean, if someone in Russia had called Josef Stalin a mass murderer, would that be considered negative campaigning? Yes, it’s a negative statement, but in deciding your future, isn’t the truth relevant?

Wonderfully stated.  No, apparently it's not relevant, especially when the mainstream media is shaping what we see and hear.  Obama has two parties behind him - the Democratic Party, and the media party. 

Finally...

Ugh. It’s becoming almost ridiculously silly out there.

This time, I am afraid, America will get the government it deserves, and that — my friends — is a scary thought.

No doubt.  Wait 'til the day after election day.  Even scarier.

October 12, 2008.      Permalink          

SATURDAY,  OCTOBER 11,  2008

THE SILENCE

Posted at 6:20 p.m. ET

John Avlon, at the New York Post, has noticed a remarkable absence from the presidential campaigns.  It says a great deal about our politically correct culture, something likely to get much worse in the time of Obama:

HERE'S a wake-up call for a nation at war: We've had all but one of the presidential debates, plus the veep debate - without once hearing the words "Islamic terrorism."

Seven years after 9/11, we still seem to be debating whether it's polite to name our enemy directly. Worse, the emerging consensus seems to be "no."

That is not a good sign. How is the next leader of the free world going to solve a problem he can't even name?

And...

As dissident and exile Ayaan Hirsi Ali told me, "The presidential candidates are focused on military and intelligence positions, but I patiently wait for them to define the ideology they are going up against - because it's also a war of ideas. . . The collectivist Islamist system is not just wrong, but opposed to the American way of life."

This skittishness about naming our enemy directly is consistent with the 20-plus debates of the Democratic primaries, where discomfort with saying "Islamic terrorism" led to its absence from the dialogue.

Which raises the question: Who are we afraid of offending?

A very good question, and one that goes unanswered in the public debates.

Since the opening hours of this war, US officials have strenuously emphasized that our enemy is not Islam, but Islamist terrorists...

...But the next president has far more work to do before we can begin to declare victory.

It may be years or decades, but Americans aren't being told that by either party.

Reuniting the country to win the wider war against Islamic terrorism is one of the great challenges facing the next president. And it's got to happen - because this challenge won't go away if we ignore it.

The seven years since 9/11 have seen no less than 14 attempted terrorist attacks in America. Our success in stopping them has lulled us into a false comfort, but we can't wait for an attack to succeed to remind us of the threat we face. Our domestic political differences are absurd in our enemies' eyes.

Finally...

If Obama wins, Democrats will be forced to recognize that they have just as much responsibility as Republicans to win this wider war against jihadism. It is inseparable with the larger constitutional responsibility of protecting the American people. And there certainly is no greater threat to liberal values than intolerant Islam.

The bottom line: Our enemy in this era is Islamic terrorism - and the need to confront it must be beyond partisanship. McCain and Obama should affirm that in their final debate.

Don't hold your breath.  The lack of interest, both in public and press, is pathetic, especially on the far left.  I fear that it will take another shock to wake us up, and even that may do it, as the excuse and explanation machine revs up to talk away any attack on this country, and blame it on George Bush.

October 11, 2008.      Permalink          

NOTE AT 6:10 P.M. ET:  Readers of Urgent Agenda know that we're deeply concerned here about press bias, and the effect it's having on this election.  If you want to see a classic example of that bias, go here.  It's a CNN campaign roundup, but note the picture of Sarah Palin on the left.  They will do anything, apparently, to make this woman look bad or dumb.  She is neither.

UPDATE AT 1:34 P.M. ET:  Battleground doesn't publish its poll on Saturday, so there are four trackers to report today:  Rasmussen - Obama up seven; Zogby - Obama up four; Hotline - Obama up ten; and Gallup - Obama up nine.

COMMENT:  Obama's lead solidifies.  The election is three weeks from Tuesday.  There is still time, with the last debate Wednesday, but McCain is making no progress.  Public anger over the economy, and Obama's slick debate performances, have given Obama a powerful lift.

UPDATE AT 1:30 P.M. ET:  From The Washington Post:  PHILADELPHIA -- Democrat Barack Obama said today that he appreciated John McCain's attempts yesterday to soften the harsh and negative tone that has marked the past week of the presidential campaign, but said recent remarks by McCain's campaign manager showed that the Arizona senator "doesn't get it'' when it comes to the economic crisis.

COMMENT:  When will McCain realize that calls to "soften" the tone only apply to his side, not to the other?  We still wait for Obama to ask the media to tone down its incredible attacks on Sarah Palin.  We will continue to wait while McCain plays the gentleman.

UPDATE AT 9:49 A.M. ET:  The Rasmussen tracker, just released, has Obama up seven.  Zogby has him up four.

UPDATE AT 8:41 A.M. ET:  Real Clear Politics, taking into account all the polls, has Obama up an average of 7.1 percent.  Can it be overcome?  Yes, but the hill gets steeper every day.

OPTIMISM

Posted at 7:58 a.m. ET

Victor Davis Hanson admonishes us not to give up on the McCain campaign.  He is taking the optimistic point of view, something hard to find right now, but he argues that events might turn in McCain's favor.  Consider:

For all the gloom, there are several reasons why this race is by no means over.

First, it is not clear that panic, hysteria, and the “Great Depression” will continue to be the headlines and lead-ins each night for the next three weeks. We may be soon reaching a bottom in the stock market.

And...

It is still possible that, by the week before the election, there will be a sense of respite rather than continued anger and panic — and any day in which hysteria is not the topic of the day benefits McCain. In this regard, McCain must keep reminding in simple fashion that Freddie and Fannie were catalysts that drew in the Wall Street sharks: crooked officials cooked the books to get mega-bonuses; they got away with their crimes by lavishing money on mostly Democratic legislators (including Obama).

And...

The more Iraq is out of the news, the more the growing public acceptance that it is becoming a success. McCain should continue to ask: Did Americans want victory in November 2008 or defeat in March 2008?

The connection with Ayers, and other lovelies:

The Ayers controversy is cited by the in-the-tank media as signs of McCain’s desperation. Perhaps. But amid the tsk-tsking, there are also certain deer-in-the-headlights moments among Obama’s handlers.

Why? There are simply too many ACORNs, Ayers, Khalidis, Pflegers, Wrights, et al. not to suggest a pattern unbecoming of a future President of the United States. Obama’s past statements about his relationship with Ayers (and others) simply cannot be reconciled with the factual circumstances of their long association.

Obama is not a great closer:

When Iraq and Wall Street were off the front page, Obama went moribund in the last months of the Democratic primary. Why? Not because of racism, or even public weariness with Obama’s hope and change fluff, or his flip-flops, or occasional striking ignorance about basic history and geography. He finally began to wear on the public — as he continues to when events of the day do not smother the attention of the voter — for two reasons.

First, the public tires of all the media slant, the celebrity rants, and the shills in popular culture, that in concert hourly berate, beg, threaten, and ridicule voters on behalf of Obama...

...So there is a quiet unease among the voters, as there always is in America, when someone finger-points and lectures them what they must do — or else!

See Michael Barone, below, on the threatening character of the Obama campaign.

Second, for all the two years of nonstop campaigning, Obama somehow still remains an unknown — and for apparently good reason. He has almost no record in the Senate to speak of — other than one as America’s most predictably partisan and liberal Senator. What is known of his Chicago associates is not reassuring...

Y'mean, Americans don't like guys who throw bombs?

The odds always were against McCain. And the outcome in these last few days may be seem contingent in large part on breaking news beyond the candidates’ control. Yet McCain still has it within his own power to win the election. Obama’s view of America is mostly rosy emulation of the European Union; McCain’s is to restore fiscal sanity, keep our defenses strong, and ensure that American exceptionalism remains a fact, rather than descends into an empty slogan. In that context, it makes no sense to sneer at McCain for being behind, but a great deal to hope that he isn’t.

An uphill battle worth fighting.  At least we can say we never gave up.

October 11, 2008.      Permalink          

BARONE

Posted at 7:34 a.m. ET

If there's one word that can describe Michael Barone perfectly, it's "sober."   Barone is one of our most thoughtful political analysts, and a man not given to exaggeration or lack of discipline.  So this piece is unusual for him.  He tears into Barack Obama and some of the more chilling aspects of Obama's campaign, noting that Obama himself urged his followers to "get in their face": 

Actually, Obama supporters are doing a lot more than getting into people's faces. They seem determined to shut people up.

That's what Obama supporters, alerted by campaign e-mails, did when conservative Stanley Kurtz appeared on Milt Rosenberg's WGN radio program in Chicago. Kurtz had been researching Obama's relationship with unrepentant Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers in Chicago Annenberg Challenge papers in the Richard J. Daley Library in Chicago — papers that were closed off to him for some days, apparently at the behest of Obama supporters.

Obama fans jammed WGN's phone lines and sent in hundreds of protest e-mails. The message was clear to anyone who would follow Rosenberg's example. We will make trouble for you if you let anyone make the case against The One.

This was undoubtedly an attempt to enforce national harmony and togetherness.  More:

In September, St. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch and St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce warned citizens that they would bring criminal libel prosecutions against anyone who made statements against Obama that were "false."

I had been under the impression that the Alien and Sedition Acts had gone out of existence in 1801-02. Not so, apparently, in metropolitan St. Louis. Similarly, the Obama campaign called for a criminal investigation of the American Issues Project when it ran ads highlighting Obama's ties to Ayers.

Maybe Obama just wants to be known as the law-and-order candidate.

Congressional Democrats sought to reimpose the "fairness doctrine" on broadcasters, which until it was repealed in the 1980s required equal time for different points of view.

The motive was plain: to shut down the one conservative-leaning communications medium, talk radio. Liberal talk-show hosts have mostly failed to draw audiences, and many liberals can't abide having citizens hear contrary views.

The problem is, they're not liberals.  It's just the name they give themselves.  Real liberals generally don't behave this way.

Then there's the Democrats' "card check" legislation, which would abolish secret ballot elections in determining whether employees are represented by unions. The unions' strategy is obvious: Send a few thugs over to employees' homes — we know where you live — and get them to sign cards that will trigger a union victory without giving employers a chance to be heard.

There were the good old days:

At one time, liberals prided themselves, with considerable reason, as the staunchest defenders of free speech...

...Today's liberals seem to be taking their marching orders from other quarters. Specifically, from the college and university campuses where administrators, armed with speech codes, have for years been disciplining and subjecting to sensitivity training any students who dare to utter thoughts that liberals find offensive. The campuses that used to pride themselves as zones of free expression are now the least free part of our society.

And that is the key point.  Students today are being taught that it's okay to restrict free speech, all in the name of social goodness and inoffensiveness.  Those students become the government officials of tomorrow, and those notions go with them.

In this campaign, we have seen the coming of the Obama thugocracy, suppressing free speech, and we may see it flourishing in the four or eight years ahead.

That is a serious warning from a man who's spent his lifetime studying the history of American politics.  We normally don't think of presidential campaigns as potential threats to our democracy.  Well, start thinking now.

October 11, 2008.      Permalink          

"What you see is news.  What you know is background.  What you feel is opinion."
    - Lester Markel, late Sunday editor
      of The New York Times.

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