O'Reilly's Criticism of McCain: Post-Election Palin Defense
To the reader of my posts, my position on Sarah Palin is clear: she is not qualified to be President of the United States. After the election, there were allegations leaked by unnamed sources in the McCain campaign, suggesting she did not know some basic facts in geography, membership of NAFTA, etc., as well as diva behavior and some clothing purchase binges. These have been widely criticized as "smears" and "sexist", and others have impugned the integrity of the leaks, noting their anonymous nature. In particular, Bill O'Reilly had the audacity for attacking McCain for not coming publicly out to support Palin until a week after the election.
It never ceases to amaze me how O'Reilly makes much ado about nothing. Typically losing Presidential candidates take a low profile after conceding an election. McCain had had an unreal travel schedule over the last several days of the campaign, including the unusual step of campaigning on election day itself. After his gracious election concession speech, he probably took a few days off to rest, not wanting to distract attention from the new President-elect. I think the Tonight Show a week later was his first public appearance. McCain was gracious to Sarah Palin in his concession speech, noting she was part of the future of the Republican Party, and took full responsibility for the loss. He said more or less the same thing at the Tonight Show. He basically dismissed the post-election kerfuffle as the sort of thing that happens in a losing campaign. I seriously doubt he could address the specific allegations, because he himself was probably not present at the events in question.
I don't know why O'Reilly thought McCain should have made an earlier public statement. It's reasonable that the allegations were true. The diva characterization was ironically confirmed by Sarah Palin's own response, which was to personally attack the unnamed sources. [A more typical political response would have been "You know, I'm not going to dignity that with a response." ] She had also told Carl Cameron that the reason she didn't answer Katie Couric's question more directly about the newspapers and magazines she read was because she saw the question as an implicit anti-Alaskan putdown. I don't know what's worse--filibustering a question on newspapers and magazines or getting paranoid over the motives behind an innocent question designed to get at what the governor does to keep up with current events. And then, of course, during the VP debate, she openly acknowledged she was going to address the point she wanted to talk about, not necessarily the moderator's question. It's difficult not to read a certain arrogance into that observation (without precedence in my memory).
We know that the McCain campaign postponed access of Palin to the press for some time after the GOP convention. There's only one rationale for that: Palin was not ready. That's not an unfair assessment; she had just given birth and had 4 kids already in school; she was a busy governor. She seemed to be a long shot, particularly after Troopergate surfaced. Of course, she had to learn John McCain's positions on the issues. But all VP candidates go through the same, and even given the fact that the choice and convention were unusually late, it was clear that there were more serious preparation issues. We didn't know what the nature and extent of those issues were. What we know is that the McCain campaign was in a catch-22: an unprepared Palin would devastate the campaign and McCain's judgment in selecting her; the longer the gap in a conventional news interview, the bigger the red flag and the effort by the national media to probe the largely unknown governor in their zeal for an exclusive.
I don't think the press was being unfair, in the sense Obama had largely bypassed the same type of probing by choosing an ultimate insider, a 36-year senator and twice national candidate. I do consider it odd in the sense the press treated her like a right-wing nutjob, with a lot of questions related to God, abortion, and guns; this is a woman with then an 80% approval rating, liberal positions on make-work public infrastructure projects, windfall profits taxes and alternative fuels, and a bipartisan record with the Alaskan legislature. That's why I find it ironic that Governor Sarah Palin became the poster girl for the media conservatives like Limbaugh, Hannity, Ingraham and Malkin. You have to wonder if they themselves really understand the person they're defending, if they've done due diligence. I think that the facts that the liberals' initial response to the surprise selection of Palin was so over the top, Palin's decision to forego eugenic abortion in carrying a Down syndrome child to birth, and Palin's role in delivering red-meat rhetoric, e.g., Obama's "palling around with terrorists" (i.e., Ayers) have led them to close ranks around Palin.
It was Sarah Palin whom created the so-called "female Dan Quayle" image for herself, not even able to handle the simplest questions, inspiring Tina Fey on her devastating Palin mimicry on SNL. In fact, Jack Colwell bristles at the "pretty-boy, can't-spell-potato" Dan Quayle comparison: "I know Dan Quayle. Dan Quayle is a friend of mine. And Sarah Palin is no Dan Quayle." Colwell points out that Quayle beat two well-established Democratic incumbents, Rep. Ed Roush and Sen. Birch Bayh, in a 12-year federal legislative career prior to his VP selection. Sarah Palin made much of her administrative experience advantage over Obama and Biden; it's a lot easier being a governor with state coffers brimming with $140/barrel oil-based revenues. It's about to become a lot tougher with global recessionary drops in oil prices and Alaskan Democrats bitter over the governor's partisan role in the national campaign. And let's not forget after Dan Quayle announced for the 2000 Presidential race, despite his appeal to the media conservatives, he finished only eighth in the 1999 Ames straw poll and withdrew.
Were the allegations of whether Palin knew the countries in NAFTA, whether Africa was a continent, etc. "smears" or "sexist"? I don't think so (the very allegation of a "female Dan Quayle" seems to disprove "sexist" allegations). First of all, you have to deal with the fact that Palin's performances during the Gibson and Couric interviews were abysmal: not the result of unfair questions or poor preparation by the McCain campaign staff. And I'm not even talking about her gulliblity in the phony Sarkozy interview. It's difficult to know (unless the leaks recorded events) what questions and answers were given during preparation and impossible to prove a negative. But given Palin's public unforced errors, including her invalid job description of the VP position to a third-grade class recorded in late October, it's hard to argue that the alleged leaked items are inconceivable given her other performances.
Second, O'Reilly failed to do due diligence on the story. There were rumors reported in the press at least 10 days before the election of in-fighting and leaks between the candidates' staffs, including the termination and subsequent reinstatement (by McCain) of a Palin staff operative. There had been issues of Palin going rogue, e.g., her criticism of the McCain campaign withdrawing from Michigan and her preemptive attack on the Obama-Ayers connection before campaign signoff. And there's absolutely no doubt that the choice of Palin became a problem with moderates and independents (specifically Colin Powell) after initial favorability based on her performance with prepared speeches. McCain's drop in the polls seemed to correspond to Palin's dropping favorability ratings. Sarah Palin became John McCain's Harriet Miers. Initially, though, McCain's selection completely swerved the Obama campaign, and they overreacted, to the benefit of the McCain campaign.
What it all boiled down to was Sarah Palin's selfishness. Her credibility was done after the Couric interview. There was no going back. Some conservatives argue she "won" the VP debate and pointed out Biden had made about a dozen factual errors during the debate. Perhaps, but John McCain's running mate misidentified the commander in Afghanistan, calling McKiernan McClelland, Biden constantly had Palin on the defensive, unable or unwilling to return serve, and Palin openly disregarded the moderator's questions at times and used her debate time to use as a soapbox. The only good thing about her performance is that I was fearing a reprise of the Couric interview performance in front of a nationwide audience (I suspect a large number of the TV audience was tuning in to see whether Palin would crash-and-burn). But McCain was in a tough spot: If he took Palin off the ticket, he risked outrage from the media conservative base and criticism of his own decisionmaking process. If he didn't take her off, it would hurt him in the battleground states. It was up to Palin to let him off the hook; she could have resigned, rationalizing the demands of her family life, Troopergate, some Alaska state business, etc. But clearly she has national ambitions, and she noticed the large crowds and large television audiences.
But for O'Reilly to take a cheap shot at McCain because some campaign squabbling went into overtime? McCain is no idiot; he knows that Palin caused the campaign irreparable damage with her unscripted performances. He knows that his own age was an issue with a significant percentage of voters, which amplified the Palin problem. But he has never, to the best of my knowledge, said a negative or critical thing about Sarah Palin. What is he going to do: say that the specific events never happened? Did he attend Palin's briefing and practice sessions? What we know--from O'Reilly himself--is the campaign insisted on McCain making a joint appearance with Palin if she was going to be interviewed on the O'Reilly Factor; O'Reilly himself said he wouldn't accommodate that condition. We know that interview with Brian Williams was a joint one. We know she didn't appear on the Sunday morning national talk shows. There's a reason the campaign turned down all those appearances, which would reach a good number of voters: the McCain campaign assessed there was an unacceptable downside risk. She was good at scripted performances like campaign rallies.
The one insight O'Reilly was spot on was that a number of Republicans want nothing to do with Palin in a national leadership position because she proved herself not smart enough to deal with the responsibilities of the Presidency. It was embarrassing to hear this woman try to argue foreign policy experience, based on (nonexistent) trade missions with Russia, and defense policy because of military bases in Alaska and her oversight of the Alaska National Guard. (I know how I would have approached those questions which is beyond the scope of this post, but the worst thing you can do in this situation is to unrealistically hype some incidental fact, which Tina Fey famously parodied on SNL: "I can see Russia from my house!") Republicans have often extolled the virtues of competence in the private sector; it has been painful to see the first MBA President of the United States nominate Texas cronies like Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court and Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General, not to mention the absolute incompetence of the early occupation of post-liberation Iraq and the post-Katrina disaster in New Orleans. I know McCain was drawn to Palin primarily because he saw her as a kindred spirit against government corruption and as a bipartisan leader. I do not know what, if anything was done to assess her ability to deal with a crisis on the fly. The reason this is an issue is not so much she would accidentally hit the red button while in the Oval Office but that certain strong personalities not on the ballot would manipulate a weak President.
In terms of the point of handling a crisis, Palin's handling of Troopergate (which she calls "Tasergate", referencing the allegation her former state trooper brother-in-law tasered his 10-year-old stepson) was not promising. She did not seem to understand a potential conflict of interest regarding the fact the Commissioner of Public Safety reports to her. When her spouse Todd Palin obsessively started lobbying, even from state offices as an unelected official, high-level CPS officials trying to get action on Trooper Wooten, he had crossed the line. Sarah Palin simply responded by pointing out he's a citizen of Alaska, allowed to raise issues with CPS. There were non-Troopergate substantive reasons to fire Monegan, whom served at the pleasure of Palin. However, it's ironic that a reformer like Sarah Palin would not have been more sensitive to the impropriety of her husband's actions; it doesn't reflect well on her judgment. The email she sent on to Monegan on a legislator's gun bill was also an ill-advised, thinly-veiled attempt to raise the Wooten issue. These things gave Monegan the opening he needed to attack Palin and deflect attention from his own rogue behavior.
TV Series "Boston Legal" Still McCain-Bashing
The one of the side plots to last Monday's episode had lead protagonist Alan Shore and senior partner Shirley Schmidt, both hardcore liberal Obama voters, defending an unlikely character, a woman whom claims that she was fired for voting for McCain. (I initially thought that the character, with a large bust and a plunging neckline, was going to argue sexual harassment.) The assistant's former boss agrees to see Shore, notes that she was hired "at will" (meaning he doesn't have to give a reason for termination), but dismisses the allegation, noting that he himself voted for McCain for more substantive reasons (his aggressive standpoint on nuclear plant buildout); he claims that he fired the woman for being stupid. It turns out that she was a former Clinton supporter whom voiced to the boss that she wanted to vote for McCain because he chose Palin as a running mate. The boss does not respect her rationale. Denny Crane is out of town, so Shore invites Schmidt up for his usual end-of-day balcony small talk.
The topic of the evening is how in the world was it possible for McCain to have gotten as high as 46% of the national vote. They can't imagine how gullible McCain supporters were and all the alleged irrational reasons voters had for voting for him. Isn't it obvious that the economic and foreign policies over the past 8 have not worked and a vote for McCain was a continuation of the same?
I'm not going to endlessly reargue the 2008 election, but that's a rather frivolous characterization. The issue was not a change in leadership, but the type of change. In one case, you have a first-term US Senator with a minimal record of legislative accomplishments, no substantive defense or foreign policy credentials and no business or administrative experience or credentials on economics issues. In the other case, you have a proven reformer and bipartisan leader, someone whom has openly challenges the President of his own party and whose judgment has proven prescient on key military/foreign policy issues like Iraq and the Russian invasion of Georgia.
Obama made a number of position shifts or nuances during the general campaign vs. the Democratic primary season that it's all but impossible to pin him down. Let's take energy. He has given heavily nuanced positions in terms of nuclear power plants, clean coal and oil drilling. He seems to be willing to accept high energy prices to economically compel consumers to conserve more, something that would seriously affect discretionary spending by lower- and middle-income taxpayers. Despite plentiful coal reserves (and giving lip service to clean coal), Obama made the following troubling comment in the campaign in reference to his cap-and-trade initiative: "So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it's just that it will bankrupt them because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted." According to the National Center for Policy Analysis, Europe has had mixed results with its own cap-and-trade proposal, including difficulties in setting baselines and relevant lobbyist influence, domestic customers looking for foreign suppliers unencumbered by expensive emissions control costs to pass along, significantly higher utility costs, and inefficient energy generation. But, more to the point of lowering aggregate contaminants, one could focus on an aggressive expansion of nuclear power plants with zero carbon emissions. The basic problem is when you have to jump through Obama's regulatory hoops (with nuclear power, it's his hesitation on nuclear waste storage); you end up running to problems on meeting capacity like California did, when they suffered from a number of related brownouts a few years back given the dearth of new power plants to accommodate Californian growth during the 1990's.
My concern is that Obama wants to adopt a social welfare net consistent with European-style socialism where employment is sticky high because of high barriers to reducing labor in accommodating market conditions; FDR's New Deal and LBJ's Great Society have had mixed results (in jumpstarting the economy from the Great Depression and in resolving underlying social problems like poor urban neighborhoods), and Obama's "fixes" may introduce moral hazards and trigger the law of unintended consequences. Macroeconomic consequences often take months to surface. So we might find that Obama's decision to do something may actually result in the risk of an even worse problem; I'm particularly concerned with the impact of raising investment and income taxes on the higher income, which may restrict capital needed to fund economic expansion--and meaningful job growth.
I have a liberal accounting professor friend whom said he wasn't adverse to paying a little extra at a fast food place so workers could have a so-called "living wage". The problem is that fast food sales are impacted by price, which is why many fast food places promote bargain-item and combo-deal menus. Wages at the low-skill level naturally rise primarily as a result of greater labor demand, e.g., as a result of business growth.
Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State and other Obama Picks
After Obama made much ado about turning the page on a generation of either (or both) a Bush or a Clinton on a national ticket, Obama is making a number of choices that seem to be a reprise of the Clinton administration and/or its policies: Eric Holder as Attorney General, Bill Richardson as Commerce Secretary, former Clinton era Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle as Health Human Services Secretary, Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff, John Podesta as Transition Chief, Ron Klain as Biden's Chief of Staff--and looming in the wings, the imminent appointment of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, whom undoubtedly will be looking forward to her next visit to Bosnia. With about two-thirds of his new appointments from the Clinton era, one must be wondering how this constitutes "change". In addition, it looks like Obama intends to cherrypick Democratic governors, e.g., in addition to New Mexico's Richardson, he has also picked Arizona's Napolitano.
I tend to read the appointment of Clinton in cynical terms: I believe it is a political attempt to coopt his potential chief rival for reelection. Personally, I don't understand why Hillary Clinton would want to give up a safe Senate seat to report to a person she clearly considered to be an inferior candidate. She could easily oust Harry Reid as Senate Majority Leader and exercise real power in the Senate--and if Barack Obama turned out to be another Jimmy Carter, challenge him in 2012. It's very difficult to see how she could do that working for Obama. It's even more puzzling when you consider he made Hillary Clinton's position on the decision to authorize the liberation of Iraq a major primary campaign issue. Still, it will be amusing to speculate on how she would be received on her next state visit to Bosnia.
