By FRED BARNES
August 30, 2008

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, John McCain’s pick as his running mate, is the boldest selection of a vice presidential candidate since Walter Mondale chose Geraldine Ferraro in 1984. Actually, it’s even bolder, and thus riskier. Mrs. Ferraro was a member of Congress and reasonably well-known in the national political community. Mrs. Palin is known only by faint reputation outside her home state, where she is enormously popular.

As a 44-year-old woman, Mrs. Palin adds desperately needed diversity to the Republican ticket. But that’s not her main strength. It’s her conservatism that matters more. Like Mr. McCain, she’s an anti-establishment reformer who’s taken on the corrupt Republican hierarchy in Alaska. She’s more conservative than Mr. McCain, balancing his maverick tendencies.

If Mrs. Palin (pronounced pale-in) emerges as a strong running mate, she’ll add what has been the chief missing ingredient of the McCain campaign. Conservatives — the base of the Republican Party — have grudgingly accepted Mr. McCain. But to win, he must mobilize the base as President Bush did in 2004. With Mrs. Palin, he now has a better chance of doing that.

One can imagine how different next week’s Republican convention in St. Paul will be. If Mr. McCain had gone with a more conventional running mate like Mitt Romney or Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty or a nonconservative such as Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman, a dreary or disgruntled convention seemed inevitable. Now the convention is likely to be a lovefest and a great story for television.

The selection of Mrs. Palin is bound to improve the Republican Party’s pockmarked image. And should the McCain-Palin ticket win the election, it will produce a huge change in the party itself. Mrs. Palin would become first in the line of succession to become the next Republican presidential nominee and would usher in a new generation of leaders.

Republicans have a ways to go. Mrs. Palin now must clear a daunting hurdle — first the media, then public opinion. Since the press is unfamiliar with her, she will be treated as a target for aggressive scrutiny. In the past, surprise picks like Mrs. Palin have faltered in the face of a media onslaught and never recovered. Mrs. Ferraro, though more familiar, became an albatross for Mr. Mondale. In 1988, Dan Quayle was quickly turned into a joke for late-night comics.

Mrs. Palin’s task is to show she’s presidential material, or close to it. Since she’s not someone who will instantly strike voters as a plausible president — as Mr. Romney or Mr. Lieberman might have — she will have to demonstrate her judgment, temperament, knowledge and seriousness of purpose through her behavior and remarks over the next few days. The media will deconstruct her every word and reach a verdict, which will then affect how the public regards her. It’s a fast, brutal and often unfair process.

I met Mrs. Palin in Juneau a year ago and suspected that, except for coming from faraway Alaska, she’d be a governor of national stature. Now she is.

A mother of five, she has an enormously appealing life story. She was a high-school basketball star and beauty queen. She’s been mayor of Wasilla (her hometown near Anchorage), Alaska’s top regulator of the oil industry, and governor for less than two years. She has no experience in foreign or national-security policy — unlike Joe Biden, the veteran Democrat she’ll face in the nationally televised vice presidential debate in October. But she’s an expert on one of this year’s biggest issues — energy.

Because Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama has relatively little experience in national affairs, the bar has been lowered this year for national candidates. This helps Mrs. Palin. As a governor, she has more executive experience than Mr. Obama.

And she has a record of integrity matched by few elected officials. Mrs. Palin resigned in protest in 2004 as head of the Alaska Oil and Gas Commission over alleged ethical violations by the state Republican chairman, a commission member. Two years later, she upset Republican Gov. Frank Murkowski in the primary and defeated a Democrat in the general election.

For Mr. McCain, choosing Mrs. Palin was a distinct gamble. But she does bring potential assets to the ticket. After Mr. McCain introduced her yesterday in Dayton, Ohio, she said voters still have a chance to break “the glass ceiling” that Hillary Clinton insists kept her from the presidency. How many unhappy female Clinton supporters Mrs. Palin will attract is unknowable at this point.

Mrs. Palin is no feminist. Instead, she appeals to almost every conceivable grouping of conservatives. She’s pro-life on abortion, pro-gun (she hunts), pro-drilling for oil (including in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge), and is as hawkish about cutting government spending as Mr. McCain himself. She’s also an evangelical Christian.

A rule of thumb in politics is that you win more votes by energizing your base than by persuading undecided voters. Mr. McCain’s strength is wooing undecided independents, moderates and soft Democrats. He’s weaker with conservatives. He often seems inclined to ignore them. Now he has a running mate who can take up the slack.

Mr. Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard and a Fox News Channel commentator.

John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate will either turn out to be a brilliant way for the Republican to scramble the race in his favor — or a disastrous pick that is cast as a desperate act.

On the face of it, McCain has failed the ultimate test that any presidential candidate must face in picking a running mate: selecting someone who is unambiguously qualified to be president.

Palin is a talented politician who has both support among conservatives and a compelling personal story. But her short resume in Alaska politics and her nonexistent national track record will make it impossible for McCain to argue with a straight face that she was the most qualified person he could have selected.

In the short term, the pick will create excitement among the kind of grass-roots conservatives who have never been enthusiastic about McCain, and in the media, which will be fascinated by Palin’s good looks (matched by those of her dishy husband), intelligence and charm.

But Palin is now going to have to perform at a very high level to persuade the media and the public that she is truly ready to be a heartbeat away — and a 72-year-old’s heart at that — from the presidency. How she handles questions about federal issues, national security and foreign affairs will be closely scrutinized, and her margin of error is next to zero.

Early mistakes, like the ones made by Dan Quayle in 1988, could be devastating — not just to her, but also to McCain’s chances. Those who point out that George H.W. Bush was able to win despite Dan Quayle’s presence on the ticket forget that the country was much more solidly Republican at the presidential level back then than in today’s 50-50 America.

In addition, Palin has already had at least one ethical flap as governor, and her personal, political and financial background will be intensely picked over by the Democrats and the national media.

Barack Obama’s pick for his running mate, Joe Biden of Delaware, has already seen the kind of scrutiny a running mate gets, with stories about the financial dealings of his son and brother. The difference is that Biden has had decades in the national spotlight, which means that voters have more context in which to evaluate these stories and that Biden has much more experience in dealing with this kind of controversy. Palin will not only have to get up to speed on a range of issues, but handle the inevitable flaps that will come her way.

Perhaps all of these potential problems will be avoided because Palin, like Barack Obama, will turn out to be a young, once-in-a-generation political figure who can handle American politics at the highest level without the usual experience. That’s what John McCain is counting on. He has always been something of a political gambler. Some of his closest advisers have looked at polling data for many months and reached the conclusion that the national environment is so grim for the Republican Party that McCain can only win the election with a series of bold moves. Palin is clearly intended to help with voters who want change, voters who think America is on the wrong track, and voters who have soured on President Bush.

But if McCain is wrong about how big a plus Palin will be, he might have just undone the gains of the last last month, in which his campaign succeeded somewhat in defining Obama on Republican terms and closed the gap with the Democratic nominee in key state polls. He has taken a chance on Sarah Palin to shake up the race — but at a time when many Republicans do not see why the race needs to be shaken up.

August 28, 2008

By George Will

DENVER — When Barack Obama feeds rhetorical fishes and loaves to the multitudes in the football stadium Thursday night, he should deliver a message of sufficient particularity that it seems particularly suited to Americans. One more inspirational oration, one general enough to please Berliners or even his fellow “citizens of the world,” will confirm Pascal’s point that “continuous eloquence wearies.” That is so because it is not really eloquent. If it is continuous, it is necessarily formulaic and abstract, vague enough for any time and place, hence truly apposite for none.

If Socrates had engaged in an interminable presidential campaign in a media-drenched age, perhaps he, too, would have come to seem banal. But the fact that Obama lost nine of the final 14 primaries might have something to do with the fact that when he descends from the ether to practicalities, he reprises liberalism’s most shopworn nostrums.

Russia, a third-world nation with first-world missiles, is rampant; Iran is developing a missile inventory capable of delivering nuclear weapons the development of which will not be halted by Obama’s promised “aggressive personal diplomacy.” Yet Obama has vowed to “cut investments in unproven missile defense systems.” Steamboats, railroads, airplanes and vaccines were “unproven” until farsighted people made investments. Furthermore, as Reuel Marc Gerecht of the American Enterprise Institute notes, Democrats will eventually embrace missile defense in Europe because they “will have nowhere else to go short of pre-emptive strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities.”

Obama, who might be the last person to learn that schools’ cognitive outputs are not simply functions of financial inputs, promises more money for teachers, who, as usual, are about 10 percent of the Democrats’ convention delegates and alternates. He waxes indignant about approximately 150,000 jobs sent overseas each year — less than 1 percent of the number of jobs normally lost and gained in the creative destruction of America’s dynamic economy. U.S. exports are fending off a recession while he complains about free trade. He deplores NAFTA, although since it was implemented in 1994 the U.S., Mexican and Canadian economies have grown 50 percent, 46 percent and 54 percent, respectively.

Recycling George McGovern’s 1972 “Demogrant” notion, Obama promises a $1,000 check for every family, financed by a “windfall profits” tax on oil companies. Obama is unintimidated by the rule against legislating about subjects one cannot define.

Obama thinks government is not getting a “reasonable share” of oil companies’ profits, which in 2007 were, as a percentage of revenues (8.3 percent), below those of U.S. manufacturing generally (8.9 percent). Exxon Mobil pays almost as much in corporate taxes to various governments as the bottom 50 percent of American earners pay in income taxes. Exxon Mobil does make $1,400 a second in profits — hear the sharp intakes of breath from liberals with pursed lips — but pays $4,000 a second in taxes and $15,000 a second in operating costs.

Obama’s rhetorical extravagances are inversely proportional to his details, as when he promises “nothing less than a complete transformation of our economy” in order to “end the age of oil.” The diminished enthusiasm of some voters hitherto receptive to his appeals might have something to do with the seepage of reality from his rhetoric. Voters understand that neither the “transformation” nor the “end” will or should occur. His dreamy certitude that “alternative” fuels will quickly become real alternatives is an energy policy akin to an old vaudeville joke: “If we had some eggs, we could have ham and eggs, if we had some ham.”

When he speaks Thursday night in a venue consecrated to the faux combat of football, the NATO alliance, which was 12 years old when he was born, may be collapsing because of its unwillingness to help enough in Afghanistan and its inability to respond seriously to Russia’s combat in Georgia. It is unfair to neither NATO nor Obama to note that the alliance is practicing what he preaches: It is preaching to Vladimir Putin, who is unimpressed. NATO, said Lord Ismay, speaking of Europe in 1949, was created to “keep the Americans in, the Germans down and the Russians out.” That Germany’s appeasement reflex is part of NATO’s weakness is perhaps progress, of sorts.

Journalism often must be preoccupied with matters barely remembered a week later. But decades hence, historians will write about today’s response to Russia by the West, perhaps in obituaries for the idea of “the West.” If Obama does not speak to this crisis Thursday night, that will speak volumes.

DENVER — With her husband looking on tenderly and her supporters watching with tears in their eyes, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton deferred her own dreams on Tuesday night and delivered an emphatic plea at the Democratic National Convention to unite behind her rival, Senator Barack Obama, no matter what ill will lingered.

Mrs. Clinton, who was once certain that she would win the Democratic nomination this year, also took steps on Tuesday — deliberate steps, aides said — to keep the door open to a future bid for the presidency. She rallied supporters in her speech, and, at an earlier event with 3,000 women, described her passion about her own campaign. And her aides limited input on the speech from Obama advisers, while seeking advice from her former strategist, Mark Penn, a loathed figure in the Obama camp.

But the main task for Mrs. Clinton at the convention — reaffirming her support for Mr. Obama in soaring and unconditional language — dominated her 23-minute speech, and she betrayed none of the anger and disappointment that she still feels, friends say, and that has especially haunted her husband.

Declaring herself to be “a proud supporter of Barack Obama,” Mrs. Clinton urged Democrats to put aside their loyalty to her and unite behind Mr. Obama — or risk continuing Bush administration policies under the presumptive Republican nominee, Senator John McCain.

“Whether you voted for me, or voted for Barack, the time is now to unite as a single party with a single purpose,” Mrs. Clinton said, beaming as the convention hall burst into applause. “And you haven’t worked so hard over the last 18 months, or endured the last eight years, to suffer through more failed leadership.”

She added, “No way, no how, no McCain.”

Mr. Obama praised Mrs. Clinton’s speech as he watched Tuesday night from Montana.

“That was excellent, that was a strong speech,” Mr. Obama said from Billings. “She made the case for why we’re going to be unified in November and why we’re going to win this election. I thought she was outstanding.”

With the television cameras trained tightly on Mrs. Clinton on stage and former President Bill Clinton in a V.I.P. box, Mrs. Clinton smiled broadly at times and punched the air with ferocity during the tough talk against Republicans, while Mr. Clinton lovingly looked on tight-lipped. And yet, reality intrudes: many of her top fund-raisers said this week that they were still refusing to work for Mr. Obama and were angered by their treatment at the convention.

For their part, Obama advisers were full of expectations. Several of them repeated how “gracious” Mrs. Clinton had been this week. Privately, though, aides say they and Mr. Obama have been eager to move on from Mrs. Clinton’s star turn at the convention, which has been a source of melodrama for Democrats who have not entirely healed from the duo’s bruising primary.

Among them are the Clintons themselves: While Mrs. Clinton is in the midst of a “catharsis,” friends say, Mr. Clinton remains angrier than people realize about the Obama campaign’s portrayal of his wife as deceitful and of his administration as middling and his political tactics as, at times, racially charged. Friends have been urging Mr. Clinton — who speaks on Wednesday night — to move on, and counseling the couple to focus their energy and emotions on Mr. McCain.

At one point in her speech, though, Mrs. Clinton herself paid homage to her husband’s successes — in one sense, making up for the absence of praise from Mr. Obama.

Mrs. Clinton also provided some of the night’s sharpest lines of attack on Mr. McCain in her convention speech. “It makes sense that George Bush and John McCain will be together next week in the Twin Cities, because these days they’re awfully hard to tell apart,” she said, referring to the site of the Republican National Convention.

Introduced by her daughter, Chelsea, who called her “my hero,” Mrs. Clinton was met with a lengthy, loud standing ovation. She sprinkled her opening remarks with personal touches, delighting the crowd by thanking “my supporters, my champions — my sisterhood of the traveling pantsuits,” a reference to her signature sartorial style.

“You never gave in, you never gave up, and together we made history,” Mrs. Clinton said.

With delegates waving banners that read “Hillary” or “Obama” on one side and “Unity” on the other, Mrs. Clinton encouraged supporters to rally behind Mr. Obama for the sake of struggling Americans she met during the campaign.

“I want you to ask yourselves: Were you in this campaign just for me?” Mrs. Clinton said. “Or were you in it for that young marine and others like him? Were you in it for that mom struggling with cancer while raising her kids? Were you in it for that boy and his mom surviving on the minimum wage?”

Mr. Clinton became teary at several points during his wife’s speech, and even Mrs. Clinton, who has been so steady this week, seemed to grow misty a couple of times as she thanked her supporters profusely and recalled some of the Americans she met along the trail. Some parts of the speech devoted to Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain, in turn, had a bit of a workmanlike quality, but on the whole her speech echoed with the emotional lyricism that she showed in June when she dropped out of the race and told supporters, “It would break my heart if, in falling short of my goal, I in any way discouraged any of you from pursuing yours.”

Far from giving a valedictory at the Democratic convention, Mrs. Clinton’s advisers said she wanted the speech to reflect the leverage that she retains in the Democratic Party — that she, far more than Mr. Obama, has the influence to move her supporters to his side. (The Clinton camp did not even provide a final draft to the Obama campaign well in advance of delivery, working on it until the last minute.)

At the same time, advisers said, Mrs. Clinton wanted to ensure that her star turn at the convention could never be portrayed as insufficiently enthusiastic, should Mr. Obama lose the election in part because swaths of her supporters ultimately did not vote for him. Mrs. Clinton is almost certain to run for president in 2012 if Mr. Obama fails this time, several Clinton advisers said Tuesday, and any such plan could possibly founder if the Clintons’ negative feelings show through this year.

The reports of friction between the Clinton and Obama camps were officially dismissed by both sides, and there were signs some Clinton supporters were giving up the fight, with a pro-Clinton demonstration Tuesday petering out.

Mrs. Clinton also had a brief, backstage chat with Michelle Obama at an Emily’s List event earlier; aides to both described the conversation as friendly. During her remarks, meanwhile, Mrs. Clinton made a warm gesture to encourage women in the room to embrace Mrs. Obama.

“Wasn’t Michelle Obama terrific last night?” Mrs. Clinton said to applause. “I know a little bit about how the White House works, and if the president is not exactly on our side, call the first lady — and Michelle Obama will answer that phone.”

“It’s not just about politics,” she said, referring to the distinctive struggles women face as candidates. Her tone broke from its determined cadence and became, for a second, slower and almost hushed. “It’s really personal,” she said.

Still, there were displays of support for Mrs. Clinton that had nothing to do with unity. In her speech on Tuesday at the Emily’s List event, one woman shouted from the audience, “Hillary in 2012!” Mrs. Clinton did not appear to hear the remark; the woman, Karin Schumacher of Denver, had volunteered for Mrs. Clinton, and said she planned to support Mr. Obama.

In the convention hall, several women said they were bracing for a difficult 24 hours as Mrs. Clinton fills a supporting role rather than the lead part.

When Kelly Friendly, a Clinton supporter from Wellesley, Mass., was asked if she would vote for Mr. Obama, she said, referring to Mrs. Clinton: “Absolutely. She just told us to, didn’t she?”

Robyn Blumner
The St. Petersburg Times
August 26, 2008

I had a conversation with a seemingly smart woman recently who thought that Roe v. Wade would never be overturned regardless of who wins the presidency. Though deeply pro-choice, she said she has voted for a Republican as president in the past because she likes the concept of local control and thinks Republicans represent that ideal better.

Now had she said that she’s willing to forgo abortion rights for other Republican political values, that would be one thing. (Although President Bush’s imperial presidency stands starkly inapposite to her stated interest in decentralized power.) But she couldn’t even contemplate a world without Roe’s protections. She was horrified by the prospect and yet, through determined denial, she was willing to be an instrument of the ruling’s demise.

We are almost certainly one U.S. Supreme Court justice away from Roe’s being consigned to the dustbin of history. With two of the court’s liberals being the two oldest members on the court – Justice John Paul Stevens is 88 years old and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 75 – the next president is going to be the decider.

And if he wins, Sen. John McCain promises to be the one to overturn Roe by picking justices who will do the deed. On this, McCain couldn’t be clearer.

In case you missed his recent appearance before the evangelical audience of pastor Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, McCain was asked: When is a baby entitled to human rights? His emphatic response: “At the moment of conception.” (Add wild applause here.)

Think about this.

Were this view to come to pass and a single-cell zygote were imbued with 14th Amendment rights to life, liberty and property, not only would abortion rights go away, but infertile couples would lose the option of in vitro fertilization. It would also mean the end of all embryonic stem cell research.

This last bit is at odds with McCain’s expressed stance. He has said he would allow federal funds for embryonic cell research in narrow circumstances, on embryos slated for destruction in fertility clinics.

But to state the obvious, embryos with rights equivalent to a bar mitzvah boy may not be destroyed for scientific experimentation, even if that science holds immense medical promise for, you know, the born.

And those fertility clinics McCain speaks of would have to close because it would not be OK – not in the least – to freeze all those petri-dish-souls who are not lucky enough to be implanted in a womb.

A 5-day-old embryo of about 150 cells used in stem cell research is smaller than a grain of sand. (Note that the brain of a fruit fly has 250,000 cells.) The idea of human rights flowing to such an entity is just plain silliness. But the consequences of this view are not silly at all.

Right now a controversy is swirling around Mike Leavitt, secretary of Health and Human Services, who proposed new regulations on Thursday that potentially embrace the human-rights-at-conception paradigm.

The regulations would deny federal funds to hospitals, clinics, pharmacies and health plans that don’t allow their employees to opt out of providing care that offends their personal convictions.

In other words, if a doctor holds the belief that human rights attach at conception, he must be allowed to refuse to provide emergency contraception to patients who need it – even a rape victim.

Catholic hospitals and pharmacies too would be able to deny women access to so-called morning-after pills.

Extremists claim it’s a chemical abortion by occasionally preventing the implantation of a fertilized egg.

Pro-choice Republican voters are deluding themselves if they think Roe is eternal no matter who wins the White House. If McCain is president he promises to grant human rights to microscopic cells, and he very well may succeed.

David Broder

The Washington Post
August 26, 2008

DENVER – I cannot believe that it has been more than 20 years since I interviewed Sen. Joe Biden about his reflections on his first presidential race, but the date on the column is irrefutable: Jan. 6, 1988.

The man chosen Saturday by Barack Obama as his running mate was as self-critical as any politician can be – as tough on himself as John McCain was about his involvement with a savings-and-loan operator in the 1980s that made him one of the “Keating Five.”

Biden’s campaign was cut short in 1987 when an operative for the eventual nominee, Michael Dukakis, leaked word to Maureen Dowd of the New York Times that a seemingly autobiographical passage in Biden’s campaign speech had been cribbed word-for-word from British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock. A C-SPAN video of the speech was played endlessly, and while Biden explained that he had usually been careful to attribute the language to Kinnock, the embarrassment was so great that he was forced out of the race.

Four months later, when I sat down with him, Biden was making no excuses. As I reported, he “acknowledges responsibility for most of the mistakes and misjudgments that led to his early departure from the race, saying he was ‘cocky,’ ‘immature’ and ‘naive’ about the demands of a presidential campaign.”

Already the chairman of the Judiciary Committee and a senior member of Foreign Relations, Biden said he was coming back to the Senate determined “to demonstrate the staying power and the seriousness a lot of you (reporters) doubted that I have.”

Twenty years later, few of his colleagues in either party would dispute that he has done that. With his Republican partner, Richard Lugar, of Indiana, he has rehabilitated the reputation of the Foreign Relations Committee and made it a vehicle for exceptionally thoughtful examinations of U.S. foreign policy.

A consistent critic of Bush administration policy in Iraq and Pakistan, Biden has had more impact on the thinking of other decision-makers than he ever did on voters when he returned to the campaign trail as a presidential candidate last winter. He did well in the Democratic debates, but with Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards soaking up all the media attention and the votes, there was simply no running room left for Biden.

A month ago, I sat down with him again, mainly to hear how he and Lugar hoped to revive bipartisan support for the foreign policy of the next president – whether McCain or Obama. Inevitably, the conversation turned to politics, and while Biden insisted that his sometimes critical comments on the course of Obama’s campaign be placed off the record, I think I can say this without violating our agreement:

If Obama is honest in saying he wants a vice president who will be direct in stating his views and not worry about offending the president, he has found the right man.

Biden brings a blue-collar sensibility that has been lacking in Obama’s campaign, reflecting his own background in Scranton, Pa., and Wilmington, Del. I know of Democratic governors who fear that Biden’s prolix rhetoric will go right over the heads of their constituents. But he has worked hard at shortening his answers to TV questions, and – as David Brooks noted in his New York Times column urging Biden’s selection – this is a guy whose authenticity and heart-on-the-sleeve passions are real.

The message he has brought to Obama is: Your background looks elitist to many of the people I represent. The way to overcome that impression is to be in their neighborhoods, talk directly to them in small groups, and show them you really understand the struggles in their lives.

Biden surely does that.

For a foreign policy maven who has mingled for years with the leaders of allied nations, Biden has an unpublicized side as an urban politician.

His imprint has been heavy on all the anti-crime legislation passed in the past two decades, and his civil rights credentials are impeccable.

His personal relationship with McCain is close enough that even in recent months they have been able to talk politics and policy with each other on a basis of mutual trust. But as Biden demonstrated in his first appearance with Obama on Saturday, he will not be inhibited about taking the Democratic case straight at the Republican ticket.

In picking Biden, Obama has raised the bar for the choice McCain will soon make.

April 29, 2008

By Thomas Sowell

Many years ago, a great hitter named Paul Waner was nearing the end of his long career. He entered a ballgame with 2,999 hits — one hit away from the landmark total of 3,000, which so many hitters want to reach, but which relatively few actually do reach.

Waner hit a ball that the fielder did not handle cleanly but the official scorer called it a hit, making it Waner’s 3,000th. Paul Waner then sent word to the official scorer that he did not want that questionable hit to be the one that put him over the top.

The official scorer reversed himself and called it an error. Later Paul Waner got a clean hit for number 3,000.

What reminded me of this is the great fervor that many seem to feel over the prospect of the first black President of the United States.

No doubt it is only a matter of time before there is a black president, just as it was only a matter of time before Paul Waner got his 3,000th hit. The issue is whether we want to reach that landmark so badly that we are willing to overlook how questionably that landmark is reached.

Paul Waner had too much pride to accept a scratch hit. Choosing a President of the United States is a lot more momentous than a baseball record. We the voters need to have far more concern about who we put in that office that holds the destiny of a nation and of generations yet unborn.

There is no reason why someone as arrogant, foolishly clever and ultimately dangerous as Barack Obama should become president — especially not at a time when the threat of international terrorists with nuclear weapons looms over 300 million Americans.

Many people seem to regard elections as occasions for venting emotions, like cheering for your favorite team or choosing a Homecoming Queen.

The three leading candidates for their party’s nomination are being discussed in terms of their demographics — race, sex and age — as if that is what the job is about.

One of the painful aspects of studying great catastrophes of the past is discovering how many times people were preoccupied with trivialities when they were teetering on the edge of doom. The demographics of the presidency are far less important than the momentous weight of responsibility that office carries.

Just the power to nominate federal judges to trial courts and appellate courts across the country, including the Supreme Court, can have an enormous impact for decades to come. There is no point feeling outraged by things done by federal judges, if you vote on the basis of emotion for those who appoint them.

Barack Obama has already indicated that he wants judges who make social policy instead of just applying the law. He has already tried to stop young violent criminals from being tried as adults.

Although Senator Obama has presented himself as the candidate of new things — using the mantra of “change” endlessly — the cold fact is that virtually everything he says about domestic policy is straight out of the 1960s and virtually everything he says about foreign policy is straight out of the 1930s.

Protecting criminals, attacking business, increasing government spending, promoting a sense of envy and grievance, raising taxes on people who are productive and subsidizing those who are not — all this is a re-run of the 1960s.

We paid a terrible price for such 1960s notions in the years that followed, in the form of soaring crime rates, double-digit inflation and double-digit unemployment. During the 1960s, ghettoes across the countries were ravaged by riots from which many have not fully recovered to this day.

The violence and destruction were concentrated not where there was the greatest poverty or injustice but where there were the most liberal politicians, promoting grievances and hamstringing the police.

Internationally, the approach that Senator Obama proposes — including the media magic of meetings between heads of state — was tried during the 1930s. That approach, in the name of peace, is what led to the most catastrophic war in human history.

Everything seems new to those too young to remember the old and too ignorant of history to have heard about it.

Michael Barone
U.S. News & World Report
August 25, 2008

Once upon a time, the two parties’ national conventions chose presidential nominees. Now they are television shows that try to establish a narrative – one that links the long-since-determined nominee’s life story with the ongoing history of the nation, one that shows how one man is perfectly positioned to lead America to a better future. The hope is that the nominee will get a bounce in the polls.

And they usually do. Gallup poll data shows that nominees got a 5 percent or better bounce from 14 of the 16 national conventions between 1976 and 2004. And that’s even for nominees that in retrospect seem less than inspiring.

In 1988 Democrats presented Michael Dukakis as the son of immigrants who produced the Massachusetts miracle; Republicans presented George H.W. Bush as the pioneer who went to Texas and was ready to take on another mission. Both got 11 percent bounces.

The biggest of all – 30 percent – went to Bill Clinton, “the man from Hope,” in 1992, helped by Ross Perot’s withdrawal on the day of his acceptance speech. The notable exceptions came in 2004, when a polarized electorate gave George W. Bush only a 4 percent bounce and John Kerry – “reporting for duty” – actually lost ground.

There is a difference between the two parties, however. Democrats can usually depend on the mainstream media accepting their narratives uncritically, while Republicans can expect them to punch holes in their storylines. In 1988, the media didn’t note that Dukakis was less an earthy ethnic than a reformer in the Massachusetts Puritan tradition, but it was eager to point to the senior Bush’s aristocratic Eastern background.

The narrative of this year’s Democratic National Convention can be forecast with some assurance. It will emphasize Barack Obama’s roots in Kansas more than Kenya or even Hawaii; it will portray him as a leader from a new generation eager to cast off the partisanship of the last decade; it will hail him as a symbol that America has risen above past prejudices and can once again stand proud in the world. His acceptance speech at Invesco Field will invite comparison with the other two Democratic nominees who spoke in stadiums, Franklin Roosevelt at Philadelphia’s Franklin Field in 1936 and John Kennedy at the Los Angeles Coliseum in 1960.

An interesting question is whether mainstream media have any appetite for undermining this undeniably attractive narrative. Of “the whole Obama narrative,” one reporter told the New Republic’s Gabriel Sherman, “like all stories, it’s not entirely true.”

Obama’s record of reaching across party lines is, as his own answer to Rick Warren’s recent Saddleback Civil Forum showed, pretty thin. His paper trail is surprisingly thin, too. He has left no papers from his Illinois Senate days; he hasn’t listed his law firm clients or provided more than one page of medical records; the papers of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, of which he was chairman and in which the unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers was heavily involved, were suddenly closed to National Review’s Stanley Kurtz by the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois.

Mainstream media, with the conspicuous exception of ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, have shown little curiosity about Obama’s connection with Ayers. It will also be interesting to see if there is much coverage of Obama’s 2003 vote in Illinois against protecting infants born alive in attempted abortions, now that his campaign has conceded the bill was virtually identical to one that passed the U.S. Senate 98-0 in 2001.

Obama backers dismiss attempts to undermine his narrative as distractions or racism, beyond the bounds of reasonable discourse. Most mainstream media tend to agree. Ayers is no more likely to appear at the convention than the disgraced John Edwards. But other media have a voice. Obama will probably get a nice bounce out of his convention. But it’s not clear whether his narrative can be sustained in the weeks and months ahead.

Watch the Democratic Convention Monday 8/25 through Thursday 8/28.

Post your observations, reflections, opinions, and/or questions here.

August 24, 2008

By Dick Morris

It doesn’t take a political genius to realize that Barack Obama needed to nominate a woman for vice president. Obama’s key problem is that there is no gender gap. In the most recent Zogby poll, he runs only 2 points better among women than among men. A Democrat should be running 10 to 15 points better among women.

If Obama is to have a hope of winning, he needs to improve his performance among female voters. The Fox News poll indicates that only about half of those who backed Hillary Clinton in the primaries are voting for Obama and that fully one in five is now planning to back McCain. Attractive to women voters because of his maverick positions on issues and his willingness to defy the Republican orthodoxy, McCain is garnering votes from women who should be part of Obama’s core constituency.

So why didn’t Obama name a woman? He couldn’t nominate Hillary because she came with such baggage that he’d be spending his entire campaign swatting away charges directed at the Clintons. It would be priceless to see Obama trying to justify Bill’s refusal to publish the names of the donors to his library or to explain what Bill is doing in Dubai and Kazakhstan.

But what about Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius? While not a national figure, she is attractive and articulate, and would have made a fine candidate. But Obama was terrified that the Clintons would wreck vengeance if he named a woman other than Hillary. But it was all a bluff.

Hillary’s delegates would have celebrated the selection of a woman and would not have held it against Obama that it was someone other than Hillary. Hillary, for her part, would have had to grit her teeth and support Sebelius or risk alienating her core constituency. But Obama didn’t dare do what he needed to do. He wimped out.

The fact that Barack Obama named Joe Biden as his vice presidential candidate will have relatively little impact on the strategic framework of the race. Biden was the best of the names on Obama’s short list. His experience in foreign affairs, his tough advocacy of the Democratic agenda and his skill at handling himself will all help Obama’s campaign, but not decisively. The other options were worse. Tim Kaine, governor of Virginia, had as little experience as Obama. Evan Bayh, senator from Indiana, is way too soft spoken and mild for a rough and tumble campaign.

But the most important thing is that Obama did not choose a woman. He needed one. With Hillary’s evident availability for the nomination, his failure to name her or some other woman stands out starkly to women voters. It doesn’t matter to them that he chose Biden over Bayh or Kaine. What matters is that he did not choose Hillary or another woman.

Now, John McCain can take advantage of Obama’s blunder by coming back with a woman nominee for president. Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison would be an excellent choice. She’s been around for decades and is not going to start making mistakes now. Her nomination would be a signal to American women that McCain takes their aspirations seriously, even if Obama does not. Hutchison is not charismatic. But her circumstances would be if she were nominated. The prospect of a woman vice president would electrify women throughout the nation.

I have previously written about the advantages of Joe Lieberman for vice president. His nomination would send a signal of bipartisanship that would be notable and would hasten Democratic defections. But conservatives would be horrified by the choice of Lieberman. And Obama’s failure to nominate a woman is such a glaring misstep that McCain should pounce and take advantage of it.

The ticket will nominally be Obama-Biden. But, to millions of American women it will be Obama and not Hillary.

Prompt:  Watch one or both of the interview videos below.  What are your thoughts on the responses and performance of each candidate?  What questions, if any would you have for the candidates on this topic?

Saddleback Debate – McCain

Saddleback Debate – Obama

August 24, 2008

By George Will

WASHINGTON — Barack Obama has made his economic thinking excruciatingly clear, so it also is clear that his running mate should be Rumpelstiltskin. He spun straw into gold, a skill an Obama administration will need in order to fulfill its fairy-tale promises.

Obama recently said he would “require that 10 percent of our energy comes from renewable sources by the end of my first term — more than double what we have now.” Note the verb “require” and the adjective “renewable.”

By 2012 he would “require” the economy’s huge energy sector to — here things become comic — supply half as much energy from renewable sources as already is being supplied by just one potentially renewable source. About 20 percent of America’s energy comes from nuclear energy produced using fuel rods, which, when spent, can be reprocessed into fresh fuel.

Obama is (this is part of liberalism’s catechism) leery of nuclear power. He also says — and might say so even if Nevada were not a swing state — he distrusts the safety of Nevada’s Yucca Mountain for storage of radioactive waste. Evidently he prefers today’s situation — nuclear waste stored at 126 inherently insecure above-ground sites in 39 states, within 75 miles of where more than 161 million Americans live.

But back to requiring this or that quota of energy from renewable sources. What will that involve? For conservatives, seeing is believing; for liberals, believing is seeing. Obama seems to believe that if a particular outcome is desirable, one can see how to require it. But how does that work? Details to follow, sometime after noon, Jan. 20, 2009.

Obama has also promised that “we will get 1 million 150-mile-per-gallon plug-in hybrids on our roads within six years.” What a tranquilizing verb “get” is. This senator, whose has never run so much as a Dairy Queen, is going to get a huge, complex industry to produce, and is going to get a million consumers to buy, these cars. How? Almost certainly by federal financial incentives for both — billions of dollars of tax subsidies for automakers, and billions more to bribe customers to buy these cars they otherwise would spurn.

Conservatives are sometimes justly accused of ascribing magic powers to money and markets: Increase the monetary demand for anything and the supply of it will expand. But it is liberals like Obama who think that any new technological marvel or other social delight can be summoned into existence by a sufficient appropriation. Once they thought “model cities” could be, too.

Where will the electricity for these million cars come from? Not nuclear power (see above). And not anywhere else, if Obama means this: “I will set a hard cap on all carbon emissions at a level that scientists say is necessary to curb global warming — an 80 percent reduction by 2050.”

No he won’t. Steven Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute notes that in 2050 there will be 420 million Americans — 40 million more households. So Obama’s cap would require reducing per capita carbon emissions to levels probably below even those “in colonial days when the only fuel we burned was wood.”

Regarding taxes, Obama says “we don’t want to return to marginal rates of 60 or 70 percent.” The top federal rate was 70 percent until the Reagan cuts of 1981. It has since ranged between 50 in 1982 and today’s 35. Obama promises that expiration of the Bush tax cuts will restore the 39.6 rate. He also favors a payroll tax of up to 4 percent on earnings above $250,000 (today, only the first $102,000 is taxed), most of which also are subject to the highest state income tax rates. When the top federal rate was set at 28 under Reagan, payroll taxes were not levied on income over $42,000, so the top effective rate of combined taxes was under 35. Obama’s policies would bring it to the mid-50s for many Americans, close to the 60 percent Obama considers excessive.

There never is a shortage of nonsensical political rhetoric, but really: Has there ever been solemn silliness comparable to today’s politicians tarting up their agendas as things designed for, and necessary to, “saving the planet,” and promising edicts to “require” entire industries to reorder themselves?

In 1996, Bob Dole, citing the Clinton campaign’s scabrous fundraising, exclaimed: “Where’s the outrage?” This year’s campaign, soggy with environmental messianism, deranged self-importance and delusional economics, the question is: Where is the derisive laughter?

Ben Lieberman

August 23, 2008

I f only drivers could avoid high gasoline prices as easily as Congress has avoided doing anything about them.

Gas has dipped below $4 a gallon for the first time in months, but prices are still uncomfortably high and likely will stay that way through November. Thus, the pain at the pump will remain a big election issue.

But now that members of Congress are home for the August recess and are asking voters to re-elect them, they’ll have to explain why the single best energy idea – expanding domestic oil production – isn’t even on the agenda.

Other measures – crackdowns on speculators, subsidies for alternative energy sources, tax hikes on oil companies, prohibitions on price gouging – have been subject to endless debate, leading to legislative proposals voted on by Congress. These ideas range from mildly useful at best to downright counterproductive at worst. Some, like the tax increases and price-gouging measures, are retreads of blunders that prompted shortages and gas lines in the 1970s. Thus far, none have passed.

A far better option is to open the vast oil-rich areas in the United States – both onshore and in our territorial waters – that inexplicably remain restricted despite skyrocketing prices. Polling shows that the public strongly supports opening the 85 percent of America’s offshore areas currently off-limits – areas believed to contain 19 billion barrels. The same is true for promising onshore regions such as Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a tiny portion of which is estimated to contain 10 billion more.

Those 29 billion barrels – and past experience suggests we’ll find far more – represents 48 years’ worth of current imports from Saudi Arabia.

Increasing domestic oil supplies is an indispensable part of a sound energy policy. Americans get this, even if some in Washington don’t.

Several bills, sponsored mostly by Republicans, seek to open these areas. Republicans also have sought to add these measures as amendments to other energy and non-energy legislation.

Not only has the House and Senate Democratic leadership opposed these efforts, but they have used every tactic in the book to keep them from coming to a vote.

Amazingly, they have even shelved appropriations bills – the ones politicians love to fill with pork-barrel spending in an election year – rather than see pro-energy amendments tacked onto them. Some say a government shutdown is possible, if Republicans insist that the bills needed to keep federal activities going also allow new drilling and if the Democratic leadership refuses to go along.

Many Republicans even tried to block the August recess and keep Congress in Washington until an agreement was reached on increasing domestic oil supplies. They failed, but some refused to go home anyway and continued making their case.

It should be emphasized that, although Republicans are leading this charge, it isn’t entirely a partisan issue. The strongly liberal Democratic leadership – Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and their like-minded colleagues – is at odds with a number of pro-energy Democrats who would join Republicans and put a domestic energy bill over the top.

This is why the leadership is stonewalling: They’re desperate to avoid a vote they know they would lose.

Pelosi, Reid and other critics of expanded drilling are not without their excuses: There isn’t enough new oil out there to make any difference, it will take too long to bring it to market, oil companies don’t need new places to drill because they’re deliberately under-producing in existing areas, and so on.

None of these claims have merit, but those who do believe them should be willing to say so in an open debate over a drilling bill, and then proudly vote no on that bill. Instead, they have gone miles out of their way to avoid that debate and vote.

The reality is that the liberal Democratic leadership is too beholden to environmental extremists whose “drill nowhere” absolutism takes precedence over pump prices, no matter how high they may go. And this position has never been more out of touch than it is now.

So Congress adjourned without adding a drop of new oil, and members are back in their states and districts where high pump prices remain a top concern. Don’t be surprised if constituents angry over paying $70 per tankful give their representatives an earful.

David Sarasohn
August 23, 2008

Before we leave these Olympics, it’s worth noting that they’ve produced one record that shoots way past Michael Phelps’ eight gold medals.

According to the New York Times, this year the Chinese have compiled a previously unimaginable statistic: 77 protest permits applied for, 0 protests actually happening.

No doubt somewhere there’s a Beijing bureaucrat telling a TV reporter that nobody gave him a chance to pull it off, but he knew that if he just played his game, he could do it.

Not only have no permits been given, but the Times reported that two Chinese ladies in their 70s, applying for a permit to protest because they felt inadequately compensated when their land was taken for development, were sentenced to a year in re-education camp for “disturbing public order.”

It’s a reminder that as we approach the next two weeks and our national party conventions, which these days require massive security arrangements, demonstration areas, parade routes and detention facilities, there are worse things than a little public disorder.

Especially for the Democrats’ gathering in Denver, the conventions are likely to feature considerable upheaval. (New York, site of the 2004 GOP convention, is still plowing through the lawsuits and investigations of security preparations and police behavior, long after the convention’s economic benefits have been tallied and spent.) This year’s Democratic convention features a protest group called “Recreate ‘68,” which as an agenda ranks with “Hurricane Katrina, One More Time.”

Not to mention the demonstrations threatened by Hillary Clinton supporters.

Still, even if you end up peeling the occasional demonstrator away from the police horse, and the whole occasion considerably distorts both the municipal budget and commuting schedules, the disorderly approach beats a system where people come to the police station to apply for protest permits and don’t actually come out.

Although theirs saves on the cost of signs.

To get this year’s games, China made a wide range of promises to the International Olympic Committee about opening up its society and access, promises the IOC believed because it was convenient to believe them. Nobody actually believed Beijing was going to open up – except maybe the 77 Chinese who showed up to apply for permits.

“In order to ensure smooth traffic flow, a nice environment and good social order, we will invite these participants to hold their demonstrations in designated places,” explained Liu Shaowu, the Olympics’ security director.

Can’t beat that good social order.

This week, Chinese officials told the Times that the reason none of the requests produced an actual demonstration in the designated places was that complaints were “properly addressed by relevant authorities or departments through consultations.”

Or labor camp sentences.

You’ve got to hope that word of this approach doesn’t get to the Bush administration.

These Olympics have, of course, produced other illustrations of how the Chinese government sees its society working.

The world was hugely impressed by the dazzling display of the opening ceremonies, with 15,000 performers functioning in concert. Afterward, the ceremony’s director, Zhang Yimou, proudly told a Chinese newspaper that only North Korea could have coordinated things better.

When your ideal for how things ought to work is North Korea, you’ve got a pretty demanding vision of social order.

This kind of outlook can give you a much friendlier attitude toward American demonstrators lying down in the middle of the street.

Leonard Pitts Jr.
The Miami Herald
August 22, 2008

First I spent long moments trying to decide upon my greatest moral failing. Then I spent longer moments asking myself whether I’d really want to share that failing with an audience of millions.

So much for playing along at home.

By the time I was done agonizing, Hamlet-like, over that question, posed by Pastor Rick Warren during his televised presidential forum at Saddleback Church in Orange County, Calif., he had gone to a commercial.

Color me impressed, then, with both Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain for not stammering homina homina homina – as I would have – and promptly answering that and other toughies during last week’s forum. And color me impressed with the program itself; it was that rare campaign appearance that imparted something of value.

Credit the decision to ask both men identical questions; it allowed voters to draw sharp comparisons and contrasts. Credit also the questions themselves, which were designed to elicit not 10-point plans and strategic visions but, rather, some sense of how a man’s mind works, some inventory of his soul.

John McCain gave the more impressive performance. His answers were crisp and concise where Obama’s were long and thoughtful. Where Obama navigated shifting shades of gray in answering questions about faith, gay marriage and the existence of evil, McCain’s answers were as direct as an arrow in flight.

Take, for example, a question about when a fetus gets human rights. Obama responded that, whether one is speaking theologically or scientifically, the answer is “above my pay grade.” He went on to say he supports Roe v. Wade “not because I’m pro-abortion but because, ultimately, I don’t think women make these decisions casually. I think they wrestle with these things in profound ways.” Finally, he expressed his wish to reduce the number of abortions, while not restricting access to them.

McCain said, “At the moment of conception.”

I found myself wishing Dr. Frankenstein was around to combine each candidate’s best qualities into one. That expedient being unavailable, we are left to parse the ways last week’s forum illuminates the strengths and weaknesses of the candidates and the parties they represent.

Obama, for all his vaunted rhetorical agility and eloquence, seemed curiously leaden. Like legions of Democrats before him, he was unable to find a way of explaining nuanced positions in concise and compelling ways.

In answering the abortion question, for instance, one could argue that he – to use a journalism term – buried the lede.

Might he not have been more effective had he said from the beginning that his goal is to keep abortions legal but make them rare?

Republicans, of course, don’t have the burden Democrats do; by and large, they don’t do nuance. On abortion (outlaw it), immigration (build a fence) and just about every other issue you can name, they are as clear and blunt as a punch in the nose. There is a stark simplicity to their positions that is undeniably appealing.

But if these last years have taught us nothing else, they’ve taught us not to mistake stark simplicity for wisdom. That, after all, was supposed to have been the key to George W. Bush’s appeal: He was a plain-spoken guy of plain-spoken values, not some egghead intellectual elitist noodling around in shades of gray.

Seven years later, we see where that’s gotten us. The one thing most of us agree on is that the country is a mess.

It’s something to remember as candidates struggle to explain who they are and what they believe, something these last years should have made abundantly clear.

The simplest answer is not always the best.

“Don’t ask a pollster about reality, we deal in perception,” joked Democratic survey expert Celinda Lake, when asked about the “reality” of Barack Obama’s tax plan versus John McCain’s. And the perception seems clear: voters think Obama would be better at handling the economy, and his relentless focus on middle-class tax cuts has insulated him from traditional Republican attacks on Democrats as tax-raisers.

Otherwise, it hasn’t been a great summer for the candidate who many in his party hoped would break out of what seems a static race. Back-to-back conventions offer an opportunity to reframe the race. Obama needs a healthy bounce coming out of Denver to withstand the headwinds that he’ll face as McCain announces his running mate and the Republicans rev up their attacks at their St. Paul confab.

The startling news in the bipartisan Battleground poll unveiled midweek by Lake and her Republican counterpart, Brian Nienaber, is McCain’s 10 point lead among independents. The election outcome in November will likely hinge on that group, and they were supposed to be Obama’s strong suit. “McCain is a known quantity; Obama is a new quantity,” Lake explained, adding that independents right now are deciding on the basis of strength of leadership, rather than change. Obama has 70 days to fill in the gaps in his leadership profile, beginning this weekend with his choice of a vice president. He needs to use the convention to highlight the programmatic and generational contrasts with McCain, and hammer those contrasts home during the three debates scheduled for late September and early October.

It’s an article of faith in the Obama campaign that standing side-by-side with McCain for 90 minutes will be the great leveler, the image that could seal the deal for Obama just as it did for Ronald Reagan in 1980. Reagan had been trailing President Carter up until the October debate. Voters were nervous about a former screen actor as president, but Reagan came across calming and reassuring, swatting aside Carter’s attacks with a jocular, “There you go again.” He won in a landslide.

McCain is a far more plausible candidate at summer’s end in part because he has sanctioned a sharply negative campaign against Obama. Pollster Lake said McCain projected a toughness of mind and an energy level that the voters weren’t sure he had at age 72. He also won the issue skirmish over energy independence, conveying a sense of urgency that has been missing in Obama’s emphasis on finding alternative fuels. Just as Democrats were wringing their hands about an August curse, the Obama team got off the mat, jumping on McCain’s definition of rich as $5 million or more, and his admission that he doesn’t know how many homes he and his wife own–at least four, a campaign aide said, though others have estimated seven. (The RNC countered with a blast at Obama, noting his Hyde Park, Chicago, home has four fireplaces and a wine cellar and was purchased with help from convicted felon Tony Rezko.)

Despite the tight poll numbers, the Obama camp remains confident they have the candidate and the resources to change the face of the electorate. Call it Iowa Redux–a replay of what happened in the Iowa caucuses when a hundred thousand more people showed up than anticipated, most of them young, and most of them voting for Obama. Mark Siegel, a former executive director of the Democratic National Committee, predicts Obama will win the election by 8 points with 350 electoral votes. “Write it down,” he commanded as I gasped in disbelief.

He bases his forecast first on who the undecideds are. A large number are Clinton voters, “behavioral Democrats” who will come home after the convention. (In Lake’s polling, 16 to 18 percent of Hillary voters say they’ll vote for McCain; once the Clintons give their speeches in Denver, Lake believes these voters will be solidly behind Obama.)  Second, Obama enjoys an edge over McCain in the intensity of his support, which affects money and turnout. Siegel also believes that there may be another scenario like the one that unfolded in Iowa during the primaries. If voters under age 30 turn out at 50 percent (they normally vote in the 30 percent range), and African-Americans turn out in the low 70s instead of low 50s, that would increase the popular vote by 4 million to 5 million people.

Obama’s ground game is key. The campaign has 150 paid people in North Carolina, a state normally out of reach for Democrats, and five offices in the Republican stronghold of Alaska, where McCain currently has none. Obama is leading by 5 points in North Dakota, a state he probably won’t win, “but if they [the McCain campaign] have to spend a half million there, [that's money] they won’t have for Ohio,” says Siegel. “There are some places in Ohio, African-American neighborhoods, where you can’t go one street corner without being pulled over and given a voter-registration card.” Those factors will help determine whether Campaign 2008 ends in a squeaker or a landslide.

Correction (published Aug. 22, 2008): The Obama campaign has only five offices in Alaska, not 14 as previously reported.

WASHINGTON — Senator Barack Obama has chosen Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware to be his running mate, turning to a leading authority on foreign policy and a longtime Washington hand to fill out the Democratic ticket, Mr. Obama announced in text and e-mail messages early Saturday.

Mr. Obama’s selection ended a two-month search that was conducted almost entirely in secret. It reflected a critical strategic choice by Mr. Obama: To go with a running mate who could reassure voters about gaps in his résumé, rather than to pick someone who could deliver a state or reinforce Mr. Obama’s message of change.

Mr. Biden is the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and is familiar with foreign leaders and diplomats around the world. Although he initially voted to authorize the war in Iraq — Mr. Obama opposed it from the start — Mr. Biden became a persistent critic of President George W. Bush’s policies in Iraq.

The brief text message from the Obama campaign came about 3 a.m., less than three hours after word of the decision had begun leaking out. “Barack has chosen Senator Joe Biden to be our VP nominee. Watch the first Obama-Biden rally live at 3pm ET on www.BarackObama.com. Spread the word!”

His e-mail announcement began: “Friend — I have some important news that I want to make official. I’ve chosen Joe Biden to be my running mate.”

The selection was disclosed as Mr. Obama moves into a critical part of his campaign, preparing for the party’s four-day convention in Denver starting on Monday. Mr. Obama’s aides viewed the introduction of his vice presidential choice — including an afternoon rally Saturday at the old State Capitol in Springfield, Ill., the same place where Mr. Obama announced his candidacy on a freezing winter morning almost two years ago — and a tour of swing states as the beginning of a week-long stretch in which Mr. Obama hopes to dominate the stage and position himself for the fall campaign.

Word of Mr. Obama’s decision leaked out hours before his campaign had been scheduled to inform supporters via text and e-mail message, and hours after informing two other top contenders for the vice presidential nomination — Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana and Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia — that they had not been chosen.

As the selection process moved to an end, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, whom Mr. Obama had defeated in his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, had slipped out of contention — to the degree that Mr. Obama had never seriously considered her.

Mr. Biden is Roman Catholic, giving him appeal to that important voting bloc, though he favors abortion rights. He was born in a working-class family in Scranton, Pa., a swing state where he remains well-known. Mr. Biden is up for re-election to the Senate this year and he would presumably run simultaneously for both seats.

Mr. Biden is known for being both talkative and prone to making the kind of statements that get him in trouble. In 2007, when he was competing for Mr. Obama for the presidential nomination, he declared that Mr. Obama was “not yet ready” for the presidency.

The McCain campaign jumped on that early Saturday, as it responded to the selection, offering a glimpse into the line of criticism that awaits the Democratic ticket.

“There has been no harsher critic of Barack Obama’s lack of experience than Joe Biden. Biden has denounced Barack Obama’s poor foreign policy judgment and has strongly argued in his own words what Americans are quickly realizing — that Barack Obama is not ready to be President,” said Ben Porritt, a spokesman for Mr. McCain.

Although Mr. Biden is not exactly a household name, he is probably the best known of all the Democrats who were in contention for the spot, given his political and personal history (not to mention his regular appearances on the Sunday morning television news shows). He first ran for the Senate from Delaware when he was just 29.

Mr. Biden has run twice for the presidency himself, in 1988 and again in 2008, dropping out early in both cases. He was also the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee during two of the most contentious Supreme Court nomination battles of the past 50 years: the confirmation proceedings for Robert H. Bork, who was defeated, and Clarence Thomas, who was confirmed after an explosive hearing in which Anita Hill had accused Mr. Thomas of sexual harassment. Mr. Biden led the opposition to both nominations, although he came under criticism from some feminists for not immediately disclosing what were at first Ms. Hill’s closed-door accusations against Mr. Thomas.

Mr. Obama’s choice of Mr. Biden suggested some of the weaknesses the Obama campaign is trying to address at a time when national polls suggest that his race with Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, is tightening.

Chief among Mr. Biden’s strengths is his familiarity with foreign policy and national security issues, highlighted just this past weekend with the invitation he received from the embattled president of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili, to visit Georgia in the midst of its tense faceoff with Russia. From the moment he dropped out of the presidential race, he had been mentioned as a potential Secretary of State should either Mr. Obama or Mrs. Clinton win the election.

He is also something of a fixture in Washington, and would bring to the campaign — and the White House — a familiarity with the way the city and Congress works that Mr. Obama cannot match after his relatively short stint in Washington.

At 65, Mr. Biden adds a few years and gray hair to a ticket that otherwise might seem a bit young (Mr. Obama is 47). [Sidenote FYI:  Should something happen to President Obama once he takes office, Senator Biden will be at least 66 years old and the third oldest president in history, behind W.H. Harrison - 68 (I think we all know how that one turned out), and Ronald Reagan - 69.  Also, he would only be a year or so behind McCain's present age at the start of the second term.] He is, as Mr. Obama’s advisers were quick to argue, someone who appears by every measure prepared to take over as president, setting a standard that appears intended to at least somewhat hamstring Mr. McCain should he be tempted to go for a more adventurous choice for No. 2.

He has a long history of making statements that get him in trouble. He was forced to apologize to Mr. Obama almost the moment he entered the race for president after he was quoted as describing Mr. Obama as “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” a remark that drew criticism for being racially insensitive. While campaigning in New Hampshire, Mr. Biden said that “you cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent.”

Mr. Biden quit the presidential race this year after barely making a mark; he came in fifth in Iowa. He was forced to quit the 1988 presidential race in the face of accusations that he had plagiarized part of a speech from Neil Kinnock, the British Labor Party leader. Shortly afterward, he was found to have suffered two aneurysms.

He is also, at least arguably, a Washington insider, having worked there for so long, though he still commutes home to Wilmington every night by train.

The choice by Mr. Obama in some ways mirrors the choice by Mr. Bush of Dick Cheney as his running mate in 2000; at his age, it appears unlikely that Mr. Biden would be in a position to run for president should Mr. Obama win and serve two terms. Shorn of any remaining ambition to run for president on his own, he could find himself in a less complex political relationship with Mr. Obama than most vice presidents have with their presidents.

Mr. Biden was born in Scranton, grew up in the suburbs of Wilmington, Del., and went to Syracuse Law School. As a young man, he was in the center of a gripping family drama: barely a month after he was elected to the Senate, his wife and their three children were in a car accident with a drunken driver resulted in the death of his wife and daughter. His two sons survived, and Mr. Biden remarried five years later.

Barack Obama has decided upon a vice-presidential running mate. And while I don’t know who it is as I write, for the good of the country, I hope he picked Joe Biden.

Biden’s weaknesses are on the surface. He has said a number of idiotic things over the years and, in the days following his selection, those snippets would be aired again and again.

But that won’t hurt all that much because voters are smart enough to forgive the genuine flaws of genuine people. And over the long haul, Biden provides what Obama needs:

Working-Class Roots. Biden is a lunch-bucket Democrat. His father was rich when he was young — played polo, cavorted on yachts, drove luxury cars. But through a series of bad personal and business decisions, he was broke by the time Joe Jr. came along. They lived with their in-laws in Scranton, Pa., then moved to a dingy working-class area in Wilmington, Del. At one point, the elder Biden cleaned boilers during the week and sold pennants and knickknacks at a farmer’s market on the weekends.

His son was raised with a fierce working-class pride — no one is better than anyone else. Once, when Joe Sr. was working for a car dealership, the owner threw a Christmas party for the staff. Just as the dancing was to begin, the owner scattered silver dollars on the floor and watched from above as the mechanics and salesmen scrambled about for them. Joe Sr. quit that job on the spot.

Even today, after serving for decades in the world’s most pompous workplace, Senator Biden retains an ostentatiously unpretentious manner. He campaigns with an army of Bidens who seem to emerge by the dozens from the old neighborhood in Scranton. He has disdain for privilege and for limousine liberals — the mark of an honest, working-class Democrat.

Democrats in general, and Obama in particular, have trouble connecting with working-class voters, especially Catholic ones. Biden would be the bridge.

Honesty. Biden’s most notorious feature is his mouth. But in his youth, he had a stutter. As a freshman in high school he was exempted from public speaking because of his disability, and was ridiculed by teachers and peers. His nickname was Dash, because of his inability to finish a sentence.

He developed an odd smile as a way to relax his facial muscles (it still shows up while he’s speaking today) and he’s spent his adulthood making up for any comments that may have gone unmade during his youth.

Today, Biden’s conversational style is tiresome to some, but it has one outstanding feature. He is direct. No matter who you are, he tells you exactly what he thinks, before he tells it to you a second, third and fourth time.

Presidents need someone who will be relentlessly direct. Obama, who attracts worshippers, not just staff members, needs that more than most.

Loyalty. Just after Biden was elected to the senate in 1972, his wife, Neilia, and daughter Naomi were killed in a car crash. His career has also been marked by lesser crises. His first presidential run ended in a plagiarism scandal. He nearly died of a brain aneurism.

New administrations are dominated by the young and the arrogant, and benefit from the presence of those who have been through the worst and who have a tinge of perspective. Moreover, there are moments when a president has to go into the cabinet room and announce a decision that nearly everyone else on his team disagrees with. In those moments, he needs a vice president who will provide absolute support. That sort of loyalty comes easiest to people who have been down themselves, and who had to rely on others in their own moments of need.

Experience. When Obama talks about postpartisanship, he talks about a grass-roots movement that will arise and sweep away the old ways of Washington. When John McCain talks about it, he describes a meeting of wise old heads who get together to craft compromises. Obama’s vision is more romantic, but McCain’s is more realistic.

When Biden was a young senator, he was mentored by Hubert Humphrey, Mike Mansfield and the like. He was schooled in senatorial procedure in the days when the Senate was less gridlocked. If Obama hopes to pass energy and health care legislation, he’s going to need someone with that kind of legislative knowledge who can bring the battered old senators together, as in days of yore.

There are other veep choices. Tim Kaine seems like a solid man, but selecting him would be disastrous. It would underline all the anxieties voters have about youth and inexperience. Evan Bayh has impeccably centrist credentials, but the country is not in the mood for dispassionate caution.

Biden’s the one. The only question is whether Obama was wise and self-aware enough to know that.

by Mara Liasson

Morning Edition, August 21, 2008 · An NPR poll of likely voters in 19 battleground states finds about half consider Illinois Sen. Barack Obama too risky. Those polled rank Arizona Sen. John McCain slightly behind Obama in terms of independence.

The poll results reveal voter doubts about both candidates’ presidential qualities that may explain why neither seems to be able to break through a kind of ceiling this summer. In the national head-to-head matchups, Obama can’t seem to break 50 percent, and McCain is stuck somewhere in the low to mid-40s.

The poll, conducted Aug. 12-14 by a bipartisan team of pollsters, surveyed voters in 19 states where the polling shows the race is very close or where the candidates have decided to make major investments of time and money, says Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg.

“It’s a very different map than what we’ve looked at in the past. We’re looking at states like Alaska and Georgia that are odd places for those of us who have been stuck in the Electoral College map of the polarized American politics,” Greenberg says.

It’s hard to imagine that some of these historically red states, such as Alaska, Georgia or North Dakota, will still be in play in November. But for now, Obama has managed to make them competitive, says Republican pollster Glen Bolger.

“I think it’s pretty clear that Obama has his own set of strengths and his own set of weaknesses that make his candidacy not just historical but also fairly unique,” Bolger says.

President Bush won 14 of these 19 states in 2004. The fact that four years later Obama is tied in this select landscape with Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona is remarkable for Democrats. But Bolger points out that Obama compared poorly with McCain on a number of presidential attributes in the poll.

Fifty-one percent of the likely voters surveyed thought Obama was too risky, compared with 38 percent for McCain. The Arizona senator had an advantage of 10 percentage points when it came to being seen as a strong leader and having what it takes to be president. When asked which candidate says what people want to hear, rather than what he believes in, 50 percent said Obama; 34 percent said McCain.

“That’s why this race is so close nationally, despite the political environment totally going [Obama's] way,” Bolger says. “The fact that this is a very close race nationally underscores the perceptual challenges that Obama faces in terms of not being seen as a leader.”

But the poll also exposed weaknesses for McCain. Asked which candidate is independent, more voters — 46 percent — said Obama; 42 percent said McCain. That’s a blow to what Greenberg says was once McCain’s stock in trade.

“His brand was also rooted in being independent,” Greenberg says of McCain, adding, “What he had to do to win the nomination has lost him a great deal. On the other hand, Obama does have important advantages: on bringing the right kind of change, restoring our respect in the world. Those are also important presidential attributes.”

Walter Eiss, a registered independent from Minnesota, says he originally was leaning toward McCain, but not anymore.

“Toward the beginning of this thing, I was thinking if a Republican was going to win, I wish it was him,” Eiss says. “He was probably the best candidate of all the choices that I had. But after I’ve seen all this other stuff — and his campaigning right now is bothersome, too — I’ve lost almost all my respect for him.”

The ad wars are clearly taking a toll on both Obama and McCain. When asked which candidate has been too negative in his campaign, 51 percent of voters said McCain; 27 percent said Obama. But when asked about flip-flopping, the numbers are virtually reversed: Forty-nine percent said Obama flip-flopped, compared with 27 percent who said McCain.

Mike Lookliss from Algonac, Mich., is a registered Democrat but says he’s thinking about voting for McCain.

“When Obama talks, he doesn’t really say what he stands for,” Lookliss says. When asked whether McCain says what he really thinks, Lookliss replies, “Yes.”

Lookliss, who works at a rubber factory, thinks Bush has done a bad job, and he wants to end the war in Iraq. But when it comes to war policy, he says McCain has a better approach than Obama — a sentiment also reflected in the poll, where voters gave McCain the edge by 10 percentage points.

Veep Challenge:  Let’s make this interesting.  Find a fellow classmate and challenge them to a pick the Veep contest.  Each person agrees to wager 20pts of their summer Blog assignment on their pick and the winner will get them as Extra Credit pts.  Anyone willing to take the challenge?  All picks and wagers must be in before the pick is actually made.  Kautzman

Late this week the best bet for revealing running mate

Associated Press Barack Obama speaks at a town hall meeting in Albuquerque, N.M., on Monday. (Associated Press) Related stories Barack Obama

Dan Balz
Washington Post
August 19, 2008

WASHINGTON – This is Veep Week. That is about all anyone outside Sen. Barack Obama’s inner, inner circle knows – that sometime before next week the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee will announce his running mate. Beyond that, the political world is in a zone of fevered speculation.

Nothing is certain, and one sign of how jittery everyone is about the timing and the choice came Monday afternoon, when the gossipy Drudge Report posted an item that said, “Paper: Obama may announce VP in AM.” That set off alarms in newsrooms across the country until Obama advisers shot it down.

As Obama completed his Hawaiian vacation, there was a widespread assumption, based on nothing solid from the campaign, that he could make his announcement early this week and stage a multi-day rollout. Now, in a twist that goes against recent history, there are signs that Obama may wait to announce his choice until this weekend or just before in hopes of providing a big boost before the convention opens Monday in Denver.

In addition to giving some convention-eve energy to Obama’s campaign, a late-in-the-week rollout would have another benefit in the eyes of Obama loyalists. It could help overshadow the other dominant story heading into Denver, which is the long-running drama over how Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, and Clinton’s supporters, will handle themselves during the week.

Obama is said to be operating with a list of five finalists, though there is no solid confirmation from his inner circle of who and how many are serious contenders.

One is believed to be Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., of Delaware, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who was prepping for the job with a weekend trip overseas to Georgia, at the invitation of President Mikheil Saakashvili, to assess the situation there.

Another presumed finalist is Evan Bayh, a current senator and the former governor of Indiana, one of the red states on Obama’s expand-the-map target list. Bayh is considered a default safe choice and a candidate who, in contrast to Biden, is closer generationally to a candidate who has called for turning the page on the politics of the past. But he generates some hostility among progressives and antiwar Democrats because of his centrist positions on domestic policy and his original support for the Iraq war.

The others? Timothy M. Kaine, the governor of Virginia and the first governor to endorse Obama, appears to be a finalist. It has already been reported that the Obama campaign will be holding a big event in Richmond this week, fueling speculation that Kaine is very, very high on the list.

If anything has hurt Kaine, it may be that the Russian war against Georgia and the resignation of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf have highlighted the importance of a running mate with national experience and foreign policy credentials.

In his speech to the VFW Monday morning, the presumptive Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain, gave a blistering critique of Obama for opposing the “surge” of troops in Iraq. Obama may conclude he needs an experienced hand and vigorous campaigner to help lead the counterattack on foreign policy between now and November.

The lone woman under consideration may be Kathleen Sebelius, the governor of Kansas. Obama is in a difficult position. He dares not have a final list of candidates that does not include a woman, given Hillary Clinton’s historic campaign and the importance of the women’s vote to his hopes of winning in November. Yet he risks a major backlash among Clinton supporters should he pick a woman other than Clinton.

Clinton, of course, would be the ultimate surprise. Her selection would be a gesture designed to unify and energize the Democratic Party. But given all the questions and concerns about the role Bill Clinton would play during the campaign and particularly in an Obama administration, her selection still appears highly unlikely.

Justin Pope
Associated Press
August 19, 2008

College presidents from about 100 of the nation’s best-known universities, including Duke, Dartmouth and Ohio State, are calling on lawmakers to consider lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18, saying current laws actually encourage dangerous binge drinking on campus.

The movement called the Amethyst Initiative began quietly recruiting presidents more than a year ago to provoke national debate about the drinking age.

“This is a law that is routinely evaded,” said John McCardell, former president of Middlebury College in Vermont who started the organization. “It is a law that the people at whom it is directed believe is unjust and unfair and discriminatory.”

Other prominent schools in the group include Syracuse, Tufts, Colgate, Kenyon and Morehouse.

But even before the presidents begin the public phase of their efforts, which may include publishing newspaper ads in the coming weeks, they are already facing sharp criticism.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving says lowering the drinking age would lead to more fatal car crashes. It accuses the presidents of misrepresenting science and looking for an easy way out of an inconvenient problem. MADD officials are even urging parents to think carefully about the safety of colleges whose presidents have signed on.

“It’s very clear the 21-year-old drinking age will not be enforced at those campuses,” said Laura Dean-Mooney, national president of MADD.

Both sides agree alcohol abuse by college students is a huge problem.

Research has found more than 40 percent of college students reported at least one symptom of alcohol abuse or dependence. One study has estimated more than 500,000 full-time students at four-year colleges suffer injuries each year related in some way to drinking, and about 1,700 die in such accidents.

A recent Associated Press analysis of federal records found that 157 college-age people, 18 to 23, drank themselves to death from 1999 through 2005.

McCardell’s group takes its name from ancient Greece, where the purple gemstone amethyst was widely believed to ward off drunkenness if used in drinking vessels and jewelry. He said college students will drink no matter what, but do so more dangerously when it’s illegal.

The statement the presidents have signed avoids calling explicitly for a younger drinking age. Rather, it seeks “an informed and dispassionate debate” over the issue and the federal highway law that made 21 the de facto national drinking age by denying money to any state that bucks the trend.

But the statement makes clear the signers think the current law isn’t working, citing a “culture of dangerous, clandestine binge-drinking,” and noting that while adults under 21 can vote and enlist in the military, they “are told they are not mature enough to have a beer.” Furthermore, “by choosing to use fake IDs, students make ethical compromises that erode respect for the law.”

“I’m not sure where the dialogue will lead, but it’s an important topic to American families, and it deserves a straightforward dialogue,” said William Troutt, president of Rhodes College in Memphis, Tenn., who has signed the statement.

But some other college administrators sharply disagree that lowering the drinking age would help. University of Miami President Donna Shalala, who served as secretary of health and human services under President Clinton, declined to sign.

“I remember college campuses when we had 18-year-old drinking ages, and I honestly believe we’ve made some progress,” Shalala said in a telephone interview. “To just shift it back down to the high schools makes no sense at all.”

Speed of heart extractions raises ethical questions

Rob Stein
Washington Post
August 14, 2008

WASHINGTON – Surgeons in Denver are publishing their first account of a controversial procedure in which they remove the hearts of severely brain-damaged newborns less than two minutes after the babies are disconnected from life support, and their hearts stop beating, so the organs can be transplanted into infants who would otherwise die.

A detailed description of the transplants in today’s issue of the New England Journal of Medicine immediately ignited an intense debate about whether the first-of-their-kind procedures are pushing an already controversial organ-retrieval strategy beyond acceptable legal, moral and ethical bounds.

The doctors who performed the operations as part of a federally funded research project defended the practice, and some advocates for organ donation praised the operations as offering the first clear evidence that the procedures could provide desperately needed hearts for terminally ill babies.

Critics, however, are questioning the propriety of removing hearts from patients, especially babies, who are not brain dead and are asking whether the Denver doctors wait long enough to make sure the infants met either of the long-accepted definitions of death – complete, irreversible cessation of brain function or of heart and lung function. Some even said the operations are tantamount to murder.

“This bold experiment is pushing the boundaries and raising many questions,” said James Bernat, a Dartmouth medical professor who wrote one of four commentaries that the journal published with the report – an unusual step that anticipated the firestorm of reaction the procedures would cause. The journal posted them on its Web site with a videotaped debate among three prominent bioethicists.

“This clearly shows the feasibility of doing this,” Bernat said. “The question is: Should this be done?”  This is the issue I would like you to focus on for this post – Kautzman

The operations are occurring as transplant advocates have become increasingly aggressive in trying to bridge the gap between the number of available livers, kidneys, hearts and other organs and the number of Americans on the waiting list for transplants.

Since the 1970s, most organs have been removed only after doctors declared a patient brain dead. But in the hopes of obtaining more organs, federal health officials, transplant surgeons and organ banks have been intensely promoting “donation after cardiac death,” or DCD. DCD usually involves patients who have devastating and irreversible brain damage but are not actually brain dead. Their families consent to removing life support, and their organs are removed minutes after the patients’ hearts stop beating.

While the procedure has become increasingly common in adults, it remains highly controversial. Critics say it endangers the care of dying patients – a California surgeon is facing criminal charges that he tried to hasten the death of a potential DCD donor in 2006 – and has raised questions about whether the donors are truly dead.

To address such concerns, hospitals follow strict guidelines, including requiring a clear division between doctors caring for the patients and those removing and transplanting the organs. Most also require surgeons to wait at least two minutes – and usually five – after a heart stops to make sure it does not spontaneously start beating again on its own, which has occurred in rare cases.

The Washington Post reported last year that doctors at the Denver Children’s Hospital had started removing hearts from babies, sometimes waiting only 75 seconds to increase the chances that the organs would be viable. The new report marks the first time the doctors have described their efforts in a medical journal.

The report details three cases between 2004 and 2007 involving babies who experienced severe brain damage from oxygen deprivation during birth. Their parents decided to discontinue life support several days following their birth after doctors told them there was no hope. The surgeons waited three minutes before removing the first baby’s heart, but just 75 seconds for the second and third after an ethics panel monitoring the research decided that would be sufficient.

Surgeons transplanted the hearts into three babies 1 to 4 months old who were dying of heart problems. Six months later, all three recipients were alive.

“We’re very pleased with the lives we saved,” said Mark Boucek, who led the team before moving to the Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital in Hollywood, Fla. “We’re trying to deal with a very difficult situation where children die waiting for transplant and parents of other children want to donate.”

James Burdick of the Health and Human Services Department, which funded the study, agreed.

“In a very important way, it’s a wonderful story. You had three situations with hopeless medical problems who would have otherwise died but got this gift of life,” he said. “It’s an important demonstration of what is possible.”

But critics questioned whether the donor babies were truly dead when their hearts were removed. In those cases, the hearts were restarted in another child’s body, meaning cessation was not irreversible, they argued.

“This practice cannot be ethically justified,” said George Annas, a Boston University bioethicist. “The donors are not dead. I understand that they would like us to change the definition of death, but they can’t do that by themselves. It’s very problematic to start treating a baby as an organ donor before it’s dead.”

Robert Veatch, a Georgetown University bioethicist, went further, saying the deaths were equivalent to murder.

“The whole issue is whether the infants from whom the hearts were taken were dead. It seems very clear to me that they were not,” he said. “I think it’s illegal, and if it’s illegal, what we’re talking about is the physicians causing the death of the three patients, and that would be homicide. It’s immoral. I think it should be stopped.”

Boucek, the cardiologist, argued that the hearts were incapable of functioning in the newborns from whom they were removed, satisfying the criteria for pronouncing the babies dead.

“At the end of the day, we feel we are on very firm ground,” he said. “There is no question these all met the criteria that one would establish for death.”

Democrats feeling pressure to lift ban

Richard Simon
Los Angeles Times
August 14, 2008

WASHINGTON – Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is considering legislation that would permit new offshore drilling as part of a broad energy bill, a response to growing anxiety within her party that Republicans are gaining traction with election-year attacks that Democrats aren’t doing enough to address high gasoline prices.

One proposal under consideration would let states decide whether to permit new energy exploration off their coasts while possibly maintaining the drilling ban off the Pacific coast, according to a House leadership aide who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of ongoing negotiations

Pelosi has long opposed lifting the drilling ban but has come under pressure from members of her own party – including freshmen in tough re-election campaigns – to allow a vote on offshore drilling. Adding to that, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama recently said that he would be open to limited offshore drilling if it was part of a broader energy compromise.

A vote is now likely to be held next month, after the House returns from its summer recess.

What exactly would be voted on was still being discussed Wednesday. Democrats are expected to insist that any bill include some of their priorities, such as the repeal of oil industry tax breaks and a requirement that utilities generate more electricity from cleaner energy sources. Those measures, which have drawn Republican opposition, could complicate passage of any measure.

Pelosi said on CNN’s “Larry King Live” earlier this week that she would consider a vote on offshore drilling, “but it has to be part of something that says we want to bring immediate relief to the public and not just a hoax” – part of a broader package that would likely include investment in alternative energy sources, releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and targeting speculation in energy markets.

Pro-drilling forces remained suspicious.

“Just because a bill comes to the floor with ‘offshore’ and ‘energy’ in the title doesn’t mean it’s a good offshore drilling bill,” said Brian Kennedy, a former House Republican leadership aide who is now with the Institute for Energy Research, a Washington research group that promotes free-market energy policies. “Speaker Pelosi is only going to schedule a vote on an offshore energy bill if she believes it would be politically perilous not to, and even then, it’s not going to have much energy in it.”

While President Bush and Republican presidential candidate John McCain have called for lifting the long-standing ban on new offshore drilling, Pelosi has called it an election-year “hoax” by oil industry allies. She has said it would provide no immediate relief from high gas prices and, even in the long run, have a negligible effect on energy costs at potential risk to the environment.

At least 31 Democrats have signed on as co-sponsors of legislation to permit new drilling 25 miles off the coast – or, if states object, 50 miles offshore. The number of Democratic supporters is expected to grow once lawmakers get an earful from their constituents about high gasoline prices, said Dave Helfert, a spokesman for Rep. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii, one of the bill’s chief sponsors.

The idea of letting states decide whether to permit drilling has gained support in the Senate, too. A bipartisan group of senators recently announced a compromise that would let Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia decide whether to allow drilling 50 miles off their shorelines.

Leonard Pitts Jr.
The Miami Herald
August 15, 2008

There is obviously no way to quantify this, but I regard Bill Clinton as the most thoroughly humiliated person in all of human history. Who else even comes close?

On Sunday, it will be 10 years since that astonishing day a sitting president gave a nationally televised address in which he admitted that, yes, he’d had a sexual relationship with a young intern, and that all his previous statements to the contrary – to his family, to the media, to the nation – were baldfaced lies. You gazed upon that astonishing spectacle, gazed upon the utter debasement of the highest public official in the land, and you said that here was an object lesson to which other public figures were surely paying close attention and from which they were surely drawing the obvious lessons: Keep it in your pants, boys; in an era where media are 24/7, 365, and that old gentleman’s agreement you once had with them to keep private peccadilloes private has long since vanished, there is no woman fetching enough, no sex amazing enough, to justify such complete and utter humiliation.

This belief was, of course, naive.

We soon learned that Jesse Jackson wasn’t paying attention. Nor was former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer. Or Sen. Larry Craig. Or Motown Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. Last week, another name was added to the ranks of the obviously inattentive: the golden boy himself, former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards.

Edwards admitted in an interview with ABC News to having had an affair with a woman hired to shoot video for his most recent presidential campaign and lying repeatedly about it when asked by reporters. It turns out the guy was stepping out on his wife “while she was battling breast cancer.”

There are those who will say this is much ado about very little. Note that even when President Hefner was going through his tribulations 10 years ago, public support for him remained strong. His partisans are fond of pointing out that when Clinton lied, nobody died, their way of jabbing his successor for multiple mendacities and serial bungling in the War on Terror and reminding us that Clinton’s sins were “only” about sex. Every man strays, they say, and every man lies about it.

Even if you buy that rather demeaning formulation – I don’t – it still doesn’t follow that these are transgressions of minor importance. Because the issue is neither straying, nor sex, nor lying. It is doing all of the above while living a public life. When you are an individual whose face is known, who is followed daily by cameras, whose whereabouts are monitored, how deluded must you be if you think you can keep a secret sweetie secret?

Moreover, what does that delusion say about your judgment? Does it not suggest a recklessness, an arrogance, a staggering self-centeredness appalling in one who purports to be a leader? Does it not suggest that you can project only to the limits of your own immediate gratification and to hell with everyone else?

Bill Clinton was not, after all, alone in his humiliation. No, he dragged his wife and daughter through it with him. At the time, John Edwards told reporters he felt betrayed by Clinton’s behavior. “Any American should be bothered by it,” he said. “What the president did was wrong. It was totally wrong. What he did was take a really bad situation and make it worse by not telling us the truth about it.”

Ten years later, Edwards is Clinton. Not just because he strayed, nor just because he lied, but because he chose to ignore the eminently foreseeable cost of doing so – if not to himself, then to his wife and children, whose only sin was to love him and to believe.

Be thankful this man never became president. If he could not put his family’s interests before himself, where do you think he would have put ours?

Trudy Rubin
The Philadelphia Inquirer
August 15, 2008

The Russian invasion of Georgia last week took place just before the 40th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.

As Russian tanks poured into Southern Ossetia, an ethnic enclave within Georgia, I remembered Aug. 22, 1968, when Soviet tanks rumbled into Prague; I lived there during the 1968 “Prague spring.” The Czech crime, in Soviet eyes, was their efforts to chart a course somewhat independent of Moscow.

Russia’s iron fist makes it look as if it is trying to recreate a previous era. Or to dominate the oil-rich Caspian region and the pipelines that provide Europe with much of its energy. The outcome of the Georgia crisis will show what kind of role Russia wants to play in the world.

Moscow, of course, denies aggressive ambitions. It calls Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili “the aggressor” for sending troops into Southern Ossetia, accusing him of “war crimes.”

A little history is in order.

When the Soviet Union broke up in the early 1990s, its former republics eagerly became independent. I visited the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, in June 1990; Georgians told me they feared that Moscow would stir up unrest among minorities in order to keep Georgia weak and retain Russian military bases.

Soon afterward, unrest exploded in Abkhazia, a large autonomous area along Georgia’s coast where only 20 percent of the people were ethnic Abkhazians. Tens of thousands of Georgians were driven out, shifting the ethnic balance. Russia attacked the remaining Georgians there last week.

In other words, Moscow gives not a hoot about “ethnic cleansing.” And when I hear Russian officials talk of war crimes, I remember standing near a Russian military base above the Chechen capital of Grozny, in 1995. I watched Russian troops fire heavy artillery for hours into civilian areas full of high-rise apartments.

So let’s be clear. What the Kremlin wants is to keep control of its former republics; ethnic manipulation is a useful tool. Ignoring Georgian sovereignty, Moscow issued Russian passports in recent years to South Ossetians and Abkhazians, and now it declares that it has to protect its citizens.

By stirring the ethnic pot, the Kremlin provoked Georgian leader Saakashvili into invading South Ossetia. When he (rashly) took the bait, Moscow pounced.

The Georgian leader may have been misled to expect Western military help by the recent U.S. push to get Georgia into NATO. This was an overreach rightly rejected by European members at the NATO summit last April. The proper response to Russia’s regional aggression cannot be a NATO attack.

But neither can that response be limited to rhetoric. Russia’s actions have implications for Europe and the wider world.

Despite talk of a “conditional” cease-fire, Russia wants to topple Saakashvili and keep its troops in Georgia. That has to give other neighbors of Russia the shivers; it raises questions about Russia’s future dealings with the rest of the world.

As for Europe, Moscow has been eager to control pipelines carrying energy to Europe from Central Asia and Azerbaijan. Western investors built the BTC pipeline from the Caspian through Georgia, avoiding Russia.

Central Asia expert Martha Brill Olcott thinks the Georgia crisis could undercut confidence in the BTC route; it might also dissuade Central Asian nations from considering other pipeline proposals that would circumvent Russia. That would make Europe ever-more energy dependent on Russia.

What to do? Most essential is a unified stance by the United States and the European Union. America cannot act alone.

Europe and America must support, and provide substantial aid to, Saakashvili, and insist on the need for independent peacekeepers in Georgia. European countries must finally fashion a joint energy policy and lessen dependence on Moscow, rather than cutting separate deals with Russia.

And the West must make clear that, if the Russians balk, this will be a “game-changer” for Western-Russian relations. Under present conditions, it’s hard to imagine holding the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, not far from the Georgian war zone.

This is not an effort to humiliate Russia. As Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said: “Russia has legitimate interests in its neighborhood, but the means they are using are no way to pursue them.”

Moscow can’t imitate 1968 in 2008. Otherwise, the Kremlin will face a self-imposed renewal of cold war.

Census projection

USA Today
August 14, 2008

The number of minorities in the United States is growing so briskly that non-Hispanic whites will lose their majority status in 2042, years before demographers had previously projected, according to census data released Wednesday.

The population is surging on almost all fronts, the new figures show. There will be 400 million people in the U.S. in 31 years, up from fewer than 305 million now.

The swelling numbers will transform Americans’ standard of living from the environment to public schools, demographers and public policy experts say.

“It affects quality of life in very important ways,” said Mark Mather, who studies U.S. demographic trends for the Population Reference Bureau, a research group in Washington, D.C. “We’re already experiencing that in traffic congestion, in schools and in our crowded coastal areas.”

Dramatic growth in the numbers of legal and illegal immigrants, especially Hispanics, has propelled the increase. Annual immigration this year is about 1 million and is projected to double by 2050.

Jeffrey Passel, senior demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center, said the earlier projections were low because they underestimated immigration.

“We’ve measured a much higher immigration in the ’90s,” he said. “In this decade, those high levels continued.”

Census projections in 2000 forecast that minorities in the nation would become a majority in 2059, 17 years later than previously forecast. The latest figures show that in 2050, non-Hispanic whites will have fallen to 46 percent of the population.

Since this article is extremely brief, I would like anyone that decides to post/respond to it, to focus on the ramifications of these numbers and the changes likely to ensue as a result of these demographic changes.  Be thorough in your thought-process and feel free to provide additional data and statistics to support your views.  Kautzman

August 15, 2008 By Toby Harnden

Get used to it. They are not going away. Anyone who thought that Barack Obama had sent Hillary Clinton back to the Senate to atone for her campaign’s sins or banished her husband, baying at the moon, into the wilderness was deluded.

Denver shows every sign of being the Clinton show. Hillary has a prime-time convention slot on the Tuesday. Bill speaks on Wednesday, stealing the thunder of Senator Obama’s veep pick. And now that Obama has caved into her demand for a roll call vote, Hillary will be center stage again on Thursday. So much for turning the page.

Fuelled by an unholy brew of victimhood and entitlement, Clinton’s supporters threaten to steal the show at the convention. Don’t be fooled by the sweetness-and-light joint statement released by the two campaigns. According to one member of Clinton’s camp, Obama’s “elbow was twisted”. Any future negotiations with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran will probably seem like a picnic.

Only a political naïf would have agreed to a televised reminder of just how close Senator Clinton came to victory in the primaries. And Obama, schooled in Chicago, is no ingénue. Of course, Clinton – as she is so fond of reminding us – received some 18 million votes this year and came within a whisker of winning. Her husband is the most recent Democratic president. They had to be accommodated.

But the deal Obama struck with Mrs Clinton must have stuck in his craw. The contention, moreover, that it was his idea that her name should be placed into nomination is an insult to our intelligence. By allowing the roll call, Obama has ceded control of what happens on the convention floor.

No doubt Obama decided that a bad agreement was better than none at all but the outcome reeks of appeasement and indicates that, with the polls showing John McCain, improbably, almost level, his bargaining position was weak.

But he was outmaneuvered and the Clinton show in Denver will help lay the foundation for a 2012 presidential bid or, if Obama does emerge victorious, possibly in 2016, when she will still be four years younger than McCain is now.

Even the plan for the former First Lady to cast her own vote for her erstwhile rival and direct her delegates to swing behind the Illinois senator – being spun as a magnanimous gesture of unity – risks undermining Obama. Despite the closeness of the primary battle, he won the nomination; the image of Mrs. Clinton graciously anointing him is exactly what he does not need.

During the primaries, Bill characterized his wife’s campaign as “back to the future” while back in January – in Denver, ironically enough – Obama urged Democrats not to “build a bridge back to the 20th Century”. But the prominence of the Clintons in Denver will blunt any such message. Despite the undoubted political attributes of the couple, for much of Middle America they represent cynicism rather than hope, the status quo rather than change.

In Mrs. Clinton’s non-concession speech, when she first said she was “committed to uniting our party”, she famously asked: “What does Hillary want?” The answer is self-evident. She wants to be president. And what is now her most plausible path to the White House? A McCain victory in 2008.

Naturally, for her openly to oppose Obama would be disastrous. Mrs. Clinton needs to play the good soldier, just as McCain did with George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004. A far more disciplined, though less inspiring and intuitive, campaigner than her husband, she is capable of pulling this off.

Bill Clinton is another matter. If anyone was in any doubt what he hoped would be the outcome in 2008, during his train wreck of an interview with ABC News in Rwanda he declined to say even that Obama was ready to be president, quibbling that no one was really quite ready. This from the man whose wife ran on a slogan of “Ready on Day One”.

Of course, Clinton, with his monumental self-regard, will believe that he should be called upon to “help” Obama campaign in the fall even though at this stage he’s barely endorsed him.

Remember 2000? He upstaged Al Gore at the Los Angeles convention with a triumphant entrance and a speech that barely mentioned his vice-president. Less than two years after being impeached, Clinton and his allies spent much of the subsequent few weeks griping to reporters about how Gore wasn’t using him and was running away from his record.

This time around, Clinton is not so much nursing a grudge as carrying a whole hospital full of them. There’s a Mafioso quality to his world. After Bill Richardson endorsed Obama, despite the gainful employment he’d been given by the former president, Clinton consigliere James Carville branded him a Judas – a political kneecapping.

In the Rwanda interview, House Majority Whip James Clyburn got the same treatment from the Godfather himself. When it was suggested Clyburn was ” a friend”, Clinton shot back: “Used to be.” Doubtless Obama is on his mental hit list. In Pennsylvania, Clinton accused the Illinois senator of playing the race card against him, triggering a towering rage that has clearly not yet subsided.

Does Hillary Clinton really want McCain to win? Well, any presidential candidate worth their salt believes that their election to the White House is the very definition of the common good. And one of her closing arguments during the primaries was that Obama was, as Mark Penn put it, “unelectable except perhaps against Attila the Hun”. Which politician would be unhappy to be proved right?

Even if a McCain victory would damage the Democratic party and the country, if it leads to her winning in 2012, Mrs. Clinton can rationalize, it’s all ultimately for the best. She called her 1996 book “It Takes a Village”. Sometimes, you have to destroy the village to save it.

The Clinton plan for victory, conveniently leaked to Atlantic Monthly, provides McCain with a road map for defeating Obama. Thus far, he seems to be following it fairly closely.

Which leaves the Clintons able to wait patiently for November. Having sown the seeds for a potential Obama defeat, they can sit back and prepare for the possibility that, despite all the Democratic advantages this year, they will be vindicated by a McCain win.

If Obama does prevail, after welcoming the Clintons into the tent in Denver he’ll have to accept that they’ll always be looking over his shoulder. Whichever way you slice it, they’re here to stay.

Toby Harnden is US Editor of The Daily Telegraph of London. His blog is at http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/foreign/tobyharnden

August 12, 2008

By HELENE COOPER

WASHINGTON — Russian troops stepped up their advance into Georgian territory on Monday, attempting to turn back the clock to the days when Moscow held uncontested sway over what it considers its “near abroad,” and arousing increasing alarm among Western leaders.

Even as President Bush denounced the Russian actions in the strongest terms to date, the United States and its European allies faced tough choices over how to push back. They seemed uncertain how to adjust to a new geopolitical game that threatened to undermine two decades of democratic gains in countries that were once part of the Soviet sphere.

Russian troops briefly seized a Georgian military base and took up positions close to the Georgian city of Gori on Monday, raising Georgian fears of a full-scale invasion or an attempt to oust the country’s pro-Western president, Mikheil Saakashvili.

Mr. Bush, little more than an hour after returning to Washington from the Olympic Games in Beijing, bluntly warned Russia that its military operations were damaging its reputation and were “unacceptable in the 21st century.”

“Russia’s actions this week have raised serious questions about its intent in Georgia and the region,” he said. “These actions have substantially damaged Russia’s standing in the world, and these actions jeopardize relations with the United States and Europe.”

Administration officials said military options were almost certainly off the table, but the United States did airlift Georgian troops stationed in Iraq back home, answering a plea from the Georgian government and prompting a sharp response from Russia. Washington could also press to ostracize Moscow on the international stage, perhaps by kicking it out of the Group of 8 industrialized nations.

Yet there was no immediate indication that Western powers could exercise much leverage over Russia if it chose to ignore their warnings.

The country is enjoying windfall profits from oil exports and seems determined to reassert influence over Georgia and Ukraine, while sending a clear signal to other former satellite states that they should be wary of an overly cozy political and military alliance with the United States, analysts say.

“If the United States and Europe don’t stop Russia, I think this is the end of what we thought of as the post-Soviet era,” said Sarah Mendelson, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

George Friedman, chief executive of Stratfor, a geopolitical risk analysis firm, said: “The Russians feel they have been treated like dirt by the world for the last 20 years. Now, they’re back.”

Many experts in foreign policy say that one reason Russia responded so forcefully to Georgia’s attempt to take back South Ossetia is that the United States and Europe had been asserting themselves in Russia’s backyard, alienating Moscow by supporting Kosovo’s bid for independence.

These expert say that the Bush administration’s efforts to promote democracy, including backing Mr. Saakashvili as a beacon of democracy on Russia’s borders, may have emboldened the Georgian president to take provocative actions that brought a fierce Russian response.

Beyond that, Russia has also been angry about American plans to put a missile defense system in Poland, and by American moves to encourage Georgia and Ukraine to join NATO.

“The combination is that the overall means with which we’ve dealt with the Russians over the last two years have painted them into a corner so that it’s difficult for them not to see us as hostile,” said Michael Greig, conflict management specialist at the University of North Texas.

Few foreign-policy experts predict that Russia will ever recapture its days of Communist glory, global intimidation and military might; the world has changed and growing global powers like China and India will make a return to the cold war impossible.

But there is a growing belief in European capitals and in Washington that the return of Russia to a position of great power could mean a redrawing of the Eurasia map, with Europe and the United States giving up on attempts to integrate former Soviet republics in the Caucasus into the Western orbit, while battling with Russia to keep Eastern European countries like Poland and the Baltic states.

And Russia’s resurgence could mean an end to already-dwindling American and European hopes of bringing Russia along eventually as an ally of the West. At best, Russia would never be trusted; at worst, it would be seen as an adversary.

Even for an emboldened Moscow, the Russian foray into Georgia carries substantial risks: not just global isolation from the Western democracies, but also anger from neighboring states of the former Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact, the prospect of perpetual military quagmires around its borders, and nationalist reprisals like those that resulted from its crackdown in Chechnya.

A crowd of more than 1,000 people demonstrated in the Latvian capital, Riga, on Monday, while hundreds gathered in Tallinn, Estonia, and Vilnius, Lithuania, to press the West to adopt a tough stance toward Moscow. Leaders in Poland and the Czech Republic echoed that call.

Even as American and European leaders were demanding, begging and pleading with Russia to halt its advance into Georgia — foreign ministers from the world’s richest countries held an emergency conference call and notably excluded Russia’s foreign minister by limiting the group to the Group of 7, instead of the Group of 8 — diplomats were going through what one Bush administration official described as “not exactly the greatest hand of cards to have to play.”

At the United Nations, the Russians were dismissive of a draft resolution to end the fighting, which began to circulate among Security Council members. The Russians, who have veto power on the Council, said they were disappointed that they had not been consulted on the agreement as it was being drawn up and noted that there was no mention of “Georgian aggression.”

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sent a mid-level State Department official, Matt Bryza, to the region to back up mediation efforts by Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner of France. Georgian officials urged their European counterparts to take more punitive steps, like ending plans to pursue a new strategic partnership with Moscow, and questioning the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia.

The Games in Sochi are a personal project for Russia’s prime minister, Vladimir V. Putin, who favors Sochi as a summer and winter retreat, and skis in nearby mountains, close to the border with disputed Abkhazia.

But Democratic critics of the Bush administration criticized the administration’s moves so far as weak. Richard C. Holbrooke, the former ambassador to the United Nations, noted that President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, which holds the presidency of the European Union, was leading the mediation efforts. Ms. Rice, Mr. Holbrooke said, should be on a plane to Moscow, particularly given the administration’s close ties to Georgia, and its encouragement of that country’s efforts to join NATO.

But the problem has become the response: Russia has now pushed back hard, and the United States, bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan and fretting about Iran, is unlikely to take on Russia over the matter of Georgia. Russia has shown that it wants to rule its own backyard, said Mr. Friedman of Stratfor.

“All this basically means that Russia emerges as a great power,” Mr. Friedman said. “Not a global power like it used to be, but a power that has to be taken very seriously.”

Reporting was contributed by Marc Santora from the United Nations, Steven Lee Myers from Washington, and C. J. Chivers.

By Michael Tomasky
Sunday, August 10, 2008; B01

As the Democratic convention approaches, it’s a safe bet that the cable networks will transport us back in time to late July 2004 by showing clips of Barack Obama’s electrifying keynote address to that year’s gathering. That was the speech that made him a star (and unlike John McCain’s ad team, I mean this as a compliment). But I’ve sometimes wondered in recent months: Whatever happened to that Obama, to that enemy of excessive partisanship and evangelist of national unity?

You will recall the money sentences: “Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America; there’s the United States of America. There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America.” These phrases were followed by several deftly chosen images designed to skewer the stereotypes that red and blue Americans entertain about each other. “We worship an awesome God in the blue states,” Obama thundered. “And yes,” he added, “we’ve got some gay friends in the red states.”

These now-famous lines constituted just a small sliver of the speech; the rest was more standard stuff — his biography, his concern for workers at a Maytag plant in Galesburg, Ill., (he was running for Senate, after all) and, of course, all the marvelous things that John F. Kerry would do as president. But those lines stood out for a reason: They articulated a deep yearning, held by many Americans of varying beliefs, for less polarization and division. This theme was precisely what cata pulted Obama to the front rank of Democratic poli ticians.

Now ask yourself: Have you heard Obama talk like that lately?

Chances are you haven’t. The grand 2004 theme of post-partisanship seems to have all but disappeared from the candidate’s rhetoric. In a major foreign policy address he delivered just before his overseas trip last month, he enumerated some of the steps the United States should have taken after Sept. 11, 2001. Getting Osama bin Laden led the list, but when it came to domestic priorities, the man who burst onto the national scene talking about one America conspicuously failed to mention his regret that, instead of being united after the attacks, Americans were divided along partisan lines by an administration that wielded patriotism as an ideological cudgel.

I recently asked David Axelrod, Obama’s chief strategist, what became of post-partisanship. “Oh, I think he still speaks about it, and I’m sure it’ll be a theme at our convention,” Axelrod told me. “It’s still fundamental to who he is.” I’m sure that’s true, but I also think that Obama will miss an important opportunity if he doesn’t use this month’s convention to restate this theme — and remind voters that a purpler America is still a pretty good idea.

Here are four theories about why Obama has moved post-partisanship to the rhetorical back burner.

Theory No. 1: There’s only room in a campaign for one big theme at a time, and the Obama team has settled on “change.” That’s fair enough. Change is undemanding and direct. It requires no presumed level of information, whereas describing a “post-partisan future” counts on voters’ knowing that we’re in a partisan time and being upset by that or, heck, even knowing what partisanship is to begin with. The urge to keep it simple is understandable.

Theory No. 2: Post-partisanship is too abstract. Obama has taken lots of fire from pundits and GOP operatives for supposedly being too highfalutin’, a propensity he now feels he must guard against. (Of course, this is one of the planet’s dumbest arguments: Humble people don’t run for president, and that goes for John McCain, too.) So Obama’s more recent rhetoric has tended to emphasize nuts and bolts — his plans for Iraq, Afghanistan and the world and his prescriptions for the economy. Again, understandable.

Theory No. 3: The Obama team may feel that they’ve already established the purple theme sufficiently. They may be right; I don’t see their internal polling results. But my sense is that if you asked the average voter today to name three or four things about Obama, few would say, “He wants to bring the country together.” Even a year ago, many more would have.

Theory No. 4: It could be that the post-partisanship theme is simply less resonant now than it was in 2004. Back then, in an election that was a referendum on President Bush, the United States really was a 50-50 country. But with Bush weak and Karl Rove gone, Democrats can be forgiven for thinking that polarization is now a less pressing issue and that the equation tilts more in their favor today. Still, the McCain campaign shows every sign of planning to run — quite counter to the candidate’s earlier pronouncements — a Rove-style, divide-and-conquer campaign. (The man who vowed to run a substantive, honorable campaign is bringing us Paris Hilton?) Obama is giving as well as getting on this front, so we’ll certainly see our share of partisan politics between now and Nov. 4.

So perhaps the Obama campaign has good reasons to move away from the theme that made its candidate famous. The Obama people may know exactly what they’re doing. After all, they haven’t done too badly so far.

And in fact, instead of talking about post-partisanship, Obama has in some respects been demonstrating it. His apparently close relationship with retiring Sen. Chuck Hagel, the Nebraska Republican who traveled with him to Iraq and shows many signs of intending to endorse him, is the clearest manifestation of this. The recent ad bragging about Obama’s nuclear nonproliferation work with Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), an ad that Lugar clearly green-lighted, is another.

I suspect that Hagel will speak at the Democratic convention and appear in ads for Obama down the road. And I wonder about former secretary of state Colin L. Powell and Lincoln Chafee (the former Rhode Island GOP senator, now an independent), and Susan Eisenhower (Ike’s granddaughter) and even Douglas W. Kmiec, a conservative legal scholar who is hardly a household name but whose endorsement of Obama was a huge deal in certain circles. If these folks are willing to speak for Obama, offering testimonials to his ability to lead us toward a new kind of politics, that could well do more to advance the national unity theme than any amount of rhetoric from the candidate.

Even so, I would like to see Obama return to the post-partisan, one-America idea himself. It’s an electoral winner and a governing essential, should he be elected.

It’s an electoral winner because Democrats can’t really triumph in divide-and-conquer elections. No, it’s not that they’re too noble for them. It’s just that they’re not as good at it as the Rove Republicans are, and progressive core positions don’t translate as well into fear-mongering rhetoric. The Democrats fear-monger pretty effectively about Social Security — as well they should — but beyond that, it’s hard to scare people into fearing that the other guy is going to cut your taxes too much or be too tough on our enemies.

Of course, Obama must attack McCain and return fire when fired upon, but he needs to do something more. He must get some percentage of people to vote their hopes, not their fears, as Bill Clinton used to put it. As McCain sprints rightward on a range of issues and dedicates himself to a negative campaign designed to scare 51 percent of the voters about Obama’s euphemistic “otherness” and alleged lack of preparedness, a dose of trans-partisan optimism will make a useful contrast.

And the one-America theme will be crucial if he actually wins. As president, Obama will need to unite liberals and moderates of both parties and isolate the conservative blocs in the House and especially the Senate to get anything done. But that’s getting ahead of ourselves.

It’s been a while now since Obama really rocked the house with a great speech. His Berlin effort seemed medium-cool by design, as if he didn’t want to create too much frenzy overseas. But in Denver, he’ll be speaking to Americans, to voters. “People will leave the convention with a strong sense of who he is, what animates him, and how he will govern,” Axelrod told me. “And I think his desire for bipartisanship is a big part of that.”

The television coverage will remind viewers of his 2004 triumph. Obama should remind them of the core idea that made that speech a triumph — and of why they were taken with him in the first place.

mtomasky@gmail.com

Michael Tomasky is the editor of Guardian America, the U.S.-based Web site of the Guardian

Questions for your online discussion and deliberation:

Should the personal side of politicians be fair game for the media and the public’s attention during a political race. Defend your position.

Are politicians, as public figure/icons, held to a higher set of moral standards than us mere mortals? Should they be?

What if the Edward’s scandal had been McCain’s or Obama’s? At this juncture in the political season, what would have been the political ramifications? What should they be?

Did the MSM (Mainstream Media) drop the ball on this story? Explain. What will be the result of future media coverage and the breaking of this story now?

Leonard Pitts Jr.
August 9, 2008

I haven’t read Robert Novak’s (AKA “The Prince of Darkness” by friend and foe alike – Kautzman) column in 10 years.

Back in 1998 he made a comment on CNN – what it was is not material here – that I considered beyond the pale. I decided I could henceforth do without his opinions and insights. He impressed me as a distinctly disagreeable man. And that was well before he outed covert CIA agent Valerie Plame.

When the news broke a few days ago that Novak had a brain tumor and would retire, I was not made prostrate by grief. What I felt was that whisper of common mortality, that sense of there-but-for-the-grace-of-God one usually feels when tragedy strikes someone who is known to you, but not too closely. I felt sorry for the man and for his loved ones. It did not occur to me to celebrate their misfortune.

In this I am evidently different from a number of observers who have infested Internet Web sites with exultation over the columnist’s diagnosis. To be sure, the majority of bloggers and posters – even those put off by Novak’s often brusque conservatism and abrupt personality – have wished him well. But there has been no shortage of those who were unable to attain that level of grace. One calls Novak’s fate evidence of God. Another calls him a scumbag. Still another claims this proves “Republicanism” is a mental illness. LOL, it says.

Then there’s the message board of Novak’s home paper, the Chicago Sun-Times, where whoever is in charge of deleting offensive content is surely working overtime to keep up with the invective. I managed to snag two of the messages before the censor got hold of them. One expressed the hope that Novak “suffers like the victims of his lies.” Another said, “May he rest in pain.”

There is nothing new here. Similar responses attended the late Tony Snow’s battle with the cancer. And Michael Savage, a barely housebroken radio personality, played a song by the Dead Kennedys when news broke that Sen. Edward Kennedy had been diagnosed with brain cancer.

The intention, I imagine, is to debase those with whom one has political disagreements. The authors of this sort of abuse evidently don’t realize that they really debase themselves – and political discourse as a whole.

Yes, it is fair, even now, to offer a harsh critique of Novak’s politics. But there is something fundamentally indecent about celebrating his grave illness. Osama bin Laden, I might understand; he’s a mortal enemy. Robert Novak is just a columnist with whom some of us disagree.

But then the distinction I draw no longer exists in the minds of many, raised as they have been on talk radio diatribes, accustomed as they are to spewing vitriol from the anonymity of the Internet. For them, disagreement is the very mark of a mortal enemy. For them there is no such thing as the sort of easy bonhomie among opponents that allowed, say, Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill to share a drink at the end of a long day spent fighting one another in the political trenches.

It is a sweet picture that might as well be painted in sepia tones, so long ago does it seem. Today there is no bonhomie. Politics is war. In war, one does not drink with enemies. One neither reasons with them nor seeks common ground. One simply hates them. One simply kills them.

That’s the mentality you’re seeing here – politics as war – and it is not pretty. The thing is, there are truths above politics and one of them is that you do not laugh at the other guy’s tragedy. How estranged are you from your own humanity, how deficient was your home training, when you need to be reminded of that?

Friend or foe, there is only one word any of us should feel compelled to offer Robert Novak right now:

Godspeed.

Democrats Tap Conservative Candidates in GOP Bastions
By GREG HITT
August 7, 2008

PRATTVILLE, Ala — This is how shaky Republican fortunes are in 2008: In one of the most conservative corners of the conservative South, Democrats stand a good chance of winning a congressional seat.
[Bobby Bright]

This working-class, mostly rural district has been controlled by Republicans since 1964, when Alabama’s white electorate began its long turn away from the Democratic Party. In 2004, President George W. Bush won 67% of the district’s vote. Today’s leading candidate is Bobby Bright, a self-styled “Southern conservative” and sharecropper’s son from remote Alabama farm country. In another era, he would have run as a Republican. But he’s a Democrat, and early polls strongly suggest he can win.

Spurred by the souring economy and a newfound willingness to embrace conservative candidates, the Democratic Party is running its most competitive campaign across the South in 40 years, fielding potential winners along a rib of states stretching from Louisiana to Virginia, the heart of the Old Confederacy. Sen. Barack Obama’s ability to excite African-American voters in certain Southern races could provide an additional boost, too.

The party’s rising prospects point toward a once unthinkable goal: a reversal of the “Great Reversal,” the switch in political loyalties in the 1960s that made the South a Republican stronghold for a generation. If the current picture holds, Democrats could use the Southern strength to help craft a workable Senate majority and expand their majority in the House of Representatives. At the very least, it widens the field of competitive seats, forcing Republicans to fight fires in once-reliably solid areas.

“This is clearly new territory,” says Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen, the Democratic Party’s chief strategist for House races.

The story of Mr. Bright, the current mayor of Montgomery, could have been sketched by Robert Penn Warren, the novelist who famously captured the essence of Southern populism. Stocky and square-shouldered, Mr. Bright professes a love of chicken livers and is a deacon in Montgomery’s First Baptist Church. Despite nearly a decade in politics, he is still a bit rough around the edges: A poster on the wall of his campaign office, scrawled in black marker, reminds Mr. Bright to say “please” when making fund-raising calls.

Mr. Bright toyed with the idea of running as a Republican. He spoke with party activists “and prayed on it.” But he decided that he felt more at home with the Democrats, whom he describes as the party of working people and the party of diversity.

“The Republican Party has done a wonderful job of making it appear that you don’t have a choice,” said Mr. Bright, standing on a sidewalk in downtown Prattville, dabbing at sweat beading on his forehead. “But that’s changing. That’s changing with me.”

That Democrats are competitive at all in the South is one of the central narratives of this year’s fight for Congress. As recently as July 2006, the year Democrats took control of Congress, a Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll showed Southern voters bucking national sentiment, saying they preferred Republicans over Democrats by 47% to 40%.

But this spring, the party won special elections for House seats in heavily Republican parts of Mississippi and Louisiana. Democrats consistently outnumbered Republicans across the South in this year’s presidential primaries. And in the latest Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll, conducted last month, Southern voters said they prefer a Democratic-controlled Congress over a Republican one by a 44% to 40% margin, a reversal of the long-term historical patterns.

Getting Competitive

In Virginia, Democrat Mark Warner, the former governor, is far ahead in the race to replace retiring Republican Sen. John Warner (no relation). In Mississippi, Democrat Ronnie Musgrove, who fought to post the Ten Commandments in state buildings, is polling even or just ahead of his opponent. In North Carolina, Democrat Kay Hagan is stressing her family’s military roots in a challenge to Republican Sen. Elizabeth Dole.
[south]

In early 2007, both parties expected only 35 to 40 House seats out of 435 to be truly competitive. Now, half a dozen Republican-held House seats across the South, including rural districts in Virginia, North Carolina, Louisiana and South Carolina, are growing more competitive. That makes life tougher for Republicans already facing a 19-seat deficit.

Mr. Bright and his fellow Democrats still have a big task ahead if they have any hope of establishing a Southern beachhead. The Republican Party has had a strong hold on the region for decades, and getting voters to break old habits in voting booths could be difficult. As they have in the past, cultural issues like abortion and gun rights could break to the forefront of the national debate and sow doubts about even moderate Democrats.

A particular danger for Democrats these days is that voters will turn against established politicians of all stripes, in a burst of antiestablishment feelings fueled by the weak economy and fatigue with politics-as-usual. Indeed, Republican strategists say Democrats are misreading what is an anti-incumbent — not anti-Republican — environment, pointing to the primary defeats of incumbents like Maryland Reps. Albert Wynn, a Democrat, and Wayne Gilchrest, a Republican.

But Republican opportunities to erode Democrat’s advantages appear to be few and far between. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, in an essay published in May in Human Events, the conservative online magazine, warned that his party risks reverting to the “permanent minority status it had from 1930 to 1994.”

Why the South Is Shifting

The Republican gains in the South, which started with the Goldwater campaign in 1964, opened the door to the Nixon, Reagan and Bush presidencies by creating an impregnable voting block out of white conservatives. The reasons for the shift are still debated. Some argue Republicans successfully appealed to whites riled over the Civil Rights movement. Others say Republicans successfully appealed to voters in border Southern states who were disenchanted with the nation’s crumbling cities and rising crime rate.

Why the South is moving toward Democrats today is an easier question to answer. One reason: With anxiety high about the economy, more voters are looking to Democrats amid a surge of populist sentiment and an embrace of activist government.

“The pool of votes available to Democrats during tough times gets bigger in the South,” says John Anzalone, a Bright political consultant who advised Democratic winners in Louisiana and Mississippi. In contrast with past downturns, he also suggested voters in the current political climate do appear more concerned about economic than cultural issues. “Those are our wheelhouse [core] issues,” he says.

Democrats have also made efforts to recruit candidates who reflect the values of local districts. Not that long ago, party leaders picked from a list of liberal stalwarts who matched national party sentiments on issues such as gun rights and abortion. Now the focus is finding candidates “who would win,” says one senior strategist.

The 2006 victory of Virginia Democrat Sen. Jim Webb, a moderate who favors gun rights, over Republican Sen. George Allen was an early sign that the strategy might work. Sen. Webb says he sees “real potential” for Democrats to make further inroads in the South, especially with white Southern conservatives. “A lot of people are re-evaluating,” he says.

Mr. Bright, 56 years old, was raised in Alabama’s Wiregrass country southeast of Montgomery. His father sharecropped a small farm before moving the family to his own place. The second youngest of 14 children, Mr. Bright sold vegetables on a truck stand at the side of the road. For many years, the family had no indoor plumbing.

He was one of two siblings to graduate from high school and the only one to go to college. At a local community college, he was elected to the honorary title of “Mr. Boll Weevil.” Mr. Bright later graduated from Auburn University with an undergraduate degree in political science. In search of a job, he worked initially as a prison guard, earned a master’s degree in criminal justice and eventually a law degree.

When Mr. Bright ran for mayor of Montgomery in 1999, he wasn’t given much of a chance against the long-time incumbent, a defender of the city’s political establishment. Yet Mr. Bright knocked him off, arguing the city — the cradle of the Confederacy and a birthplace of the civil-rights movement — needed to move beyond its history of racial discord.

As mayor, he wooed a Hyundai Motor Co. assembly plant to the community. Mr. Bright hired the city’s first black police and fire chiefs and also supported measures that tightened local scrutiny of illegal immigrants.

When the sitting Republican congressman announced his decision to retire last September, Alabama Rep. Artur Davis called Mr. Bright and asked if he was interested. Mr. Davis is in charge of recruiting for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, or DCCC, the political arm of House Democrats.

“Absolutely,” replied Mr. Bright, who had long harbored hopes of representing southeast Alabama in Congress.

At the time, Mr. Bright, who says he also spoke to Republican leaders, hadn’t committed to either party. He worried he might be seen as a “closet Republican” on Capitol Hill, Mr. Davis says. Democratic leaders assured him he’d be accepted.

“You’re expected to speak for your district,” Mr. Davis said. “We wouldn’t think any other kind of person would win.”

In February, Mr. Bright announced his run for Congress as a Democrat. Standing on the steps of the courthouse in Ozark, a small town not far from his family’s farm, Mr. Bright described himself as “pro-gun” and “pro-life” and vowed to fight illegal immigration. “He sounded like a Republican to me,” says Bob Bunting, Ozark’s mayor, who stood in the crowd.

Mr. Bright likes to say that he represents the values of Alabama’s Second Congressional District, which encompasses 15 mostly rural counties and parts of Montgomery. He moved easily through the primary in early June.

From a metal folding chair at his campaign headquarters, Mr. Bright concentrated on raising money. On the wall is a “pitch chart,” which reminds Mr. Bright to explain to donors why he is running, to say “please,” and then thank them. Mr. Bright hates asking for money, the legacy of a father who taught his children that “you don’t call folks and beg for anything.”

By the end of June, he had $281,000 in the bank, after expenses. Mr. Bright can also expect to benefit from spending by the DCCC, which has a big cash advantage over House Republicans. His Republican opponent, state Rep. Jay Love, who is also a deacon at Montgomery’s First Baptist Church, reported having only $91,000 in available cash, although he is certain to draw support from national party leaders and will likely draw on his personal account for the general election.

African-American Turnout

With Illinois Sen. Barack Obama at the top of the national Democratic ticket, Mr. Bright will likely get a further boost from high turnout among African-Americans, who represent more than a quarter of registered voters in the district.

For decades, winning the Republican primary was tantamount to punching a ticket to Capitol Hill. Retiring Rep. Terry Everett served 16 years. Before him, Rep. Bill Dickinson, heir to the Goldwater legacy, served more than 20.

‘Bobby, Bobby’

In mid-July, the night the Republican primary was settled, Mr. Love attempted to saddle Mr. Bright with the Democratic Party’s liberal national leadership. “If you think Nancy Pelosi and Charlie Rangel know what’s best for our district, then there will be a candidate in this race for you — but he will not be coming out of the Republican Party,” Mr. Love says

That line of attack didn’t work in the earlier special elections and doesn’t seem promising here, either. Early polling by Mr. Bright’s campaign showed him holding up well against a variety of Republican opponents including Mr. Love. On the Fourth of July, Mr. Bright arrived early at the annual barbeque held in Millbrook, where plates of chicken and pork went on sale at 5:30 a.m.

In a parking lot, Judy Lowery, a 54-year-old bank employee who lives in nearby Deatsville, tells the candidate she appreciates his “Christian values” and offers to help in the fall. “I almost always vote Republican and I’m going to vote for Bobby Bright,” Mrs. Lowery said later. “I don’t think he’s doing this for himself,” she added.

At a parade in Prattville later, folks shouted “Bobby, Bobby” as he wheeled by in his black pickup truck. Mr. Bright, dressed in khaki pants and a red, white and blue shirt, tossed candy and whiffle balls at the crowd.

“Party means less today than it has in my lifetime in Alabama,” says state Rep. David Grimes, who lost to Mr. Love in the nomination battle for the congressional seat. Mr. Grimes says the mayor’s ties to southeast Alabama, especially his blue-collar upbringing and conservative values, will serve him well in November.

“I tell you this: Bobby Bright is going to be the man to beat.”

Elections – Presidential

Maria Recio
McClatchy
August 7, 2008

WASHINGTON – Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader is quietly making headway in his third bid for president.

He clinched a major victory last Saturday by getting on the California ballot as the nominee of the Peace and Freedom Party. In 2004, Nader wasn’t on California’s ballot – a state receptive to his anti-war, anti-corporate message – and was on the ballot in only 34 states. He said Wednesday that he’s confident of getting on the ballot in 45 states this year.

With the major-party candidates in a close race, Nader could have an impact, perhaps as dramatic as in 2000, when the then-Green Party nominee received more than 97,000 votes in Florida, which Democratic nominee Al Gore lost by 537 votes to George W. Bush. That gave Bush an Electoral College majority and the White House.

Nader is at 3 percent in one recent poll and 6 percent in another.

True to form, however, he’s complaining about being excluded from the presidential debates, paid for, he noted, by a “corporate duopoly” of the Democratic and Republican parties.

“Why do we ration debates in this country?” he asked. “You can only reach 2 percent of the public without debates.”

The Commission on Presidential Debates stipulates that participants must have 15 percent support in national polls to be eligible.

Nader accuses the news media of being in a “cultural rut” by ignoring him. He said he’d been on national television only 10 seconds this election cycle.

Nader, who’s called Bush a “raging pit bull,” hates the spoiler label that’s been hung on him since that election, saying it’s “a contemptuous word of political bigotry.”

As for Obama, Nader said he “lost all respect for him” when the Illinois senator spoke out against impeaching Bush. Nader supports impeachment because of how Bush handled the lead-up to the war in Iraq.

While Nader doesn’t seem to face a concerted Democratic campaign to block him from state ballots, as he did in 2004, so far he’s on only 12 state ballots, according to the newsletter Ballot Access News. Nader campaign spokesman Chris Driscoll said signatures had been submitted in 26 states and that the campaign was on track to win access in 45 states.

Related Article
from The Swamp
Ralph Nader running again — impact on the race?

by Mark Silva

Ralph Nader, the consumer advocate, said today (Feb 24, 2008) that he will run for president again.

Nader, who played a spoiler’s role in the presidential election of 2000, said today on NBC News’ Meet the Press that he is ready to run again in 2008.

“I have decided to run for president,” said Nader, who, at 73, is a couple of years older than the likely Republican nominee, John McCain.

Nader is voicing a familiar refrain: Maintaining that most Americans are disenchanted with the Democratic and Republican Parties, and that none of the presidential candidates address ways to combat corporate crime and waste within the Pentagon waste and to promote labor rights.

Nader ran as a third-party candidate in 2000 and 2004.

And many Democrats will never forgive him for the role he played in 2000, when his marginal share of the vote in Florida likely cost Democrat Al Gore victory in a razor-thin, disputed vote.

The days of a third-party candidate claiming a large share of the American vote — such as the nearly 20 percent that H. Ross Perot won in 1992, playing a role that many Republicans will never forget — may be gone.

Yet, with elections contested on the margins in many states — from Iowa to Wisconsin, and from New Hampshire to Florida in recent years — any active third-party candidacy could have an impact on the Electoral College balance. (This, ladies and gentlemen, is the key; check out any electoral map with current projections and popular vote polls and notice any state with Obama having a lead of 3-4%, if Nader gets 5%, where does it come from and what is the result? – Kautzman)

And already this year, sizeable numbers of people have voiced discontent with the leading candidates — discontent manifested in the campaign of Republican Ron Paul, for instance. So the question looms this year: Might Nader play the spoiler once more?

For an analysis of Nader’s prospects this year, read on:

Nader, the longtime consumer advocate who played a likely spoiler’s role in the presidential election of 2000 but carried much less weight in 2004, said today that he will wage another campaign for president this year.

Nader, 73, is voicing a familiar refrain of disenchantment with the Democratic and Republican parties, a detachment which he believes is shared by many voters.

A protracted war in Iraq, struggling economy and tax breaks for the rich during the Bush administration have added to a sense of discontent among lower- and middle-class voters, Nader said, in announcing his candidacy during an interview on NBC News’ Meet the Press.

“You take that framework of people feeling locked out, shut out, marginalized and disrespected,” Nader said. “In that context, I have decided to run for president.’’

Yet experts say Nader’s impact this year is likely to be limited.

“The truth is that Nader’s time has passed,’’ John Geer, a political scientist at Vanderbilt University, told the Tribune today.

As the candidate for the Green Party in 2000, Nader attracted just 2.7 percent of the vote nationwide.

Yet, with the 97,488 votes that he collected in Florida – 1.6 percent of the total there – many observers believe that Nader cost Democrat Al Gore victory in a state which George W. Bush carried by a disputed margin of 538 votes that year.

That Supreme Court-settled Florida vote also cost the Democrats the White House in a year when Gore won more than 500,000 more votes than Bush nationally – with Bush claiming a narrow majority of the Electoral College vote.

Yet, in 2004, when Nader ran as an independent, he garnered only 0.3 percent of the vote, appearing on the ballots of 34 states.

This year, Democrats say, the heavy turnout of voters attracted by the party’s early primary elections suggests more enthusiasm for the party’s candidates. Nader’s impact on the 2008 election campaign should be minimal, they say.

“I think it’s a non-event,’’ said Arizona Gov. Jane Napolitano, a Democrat supporting Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign for president, in an appearance today on CBS News’ Face the Nation. “They aren’t looking for a third-party candidate.’’

Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, a Democrat supporting Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president, agreed that Nader’s decision is “a non-event.’’

“There is unhappiness in the electorate, and (Texas Republican Rep.) Ron Paul’s bid captures that anger,’’ Geer said. “But Ralph Nader is not the vehicle for the expression of this discontent. Nader was a spoiler in 2000 and will long be remembered for that. But when he ran in 2004, few cared.

“If Obama is the nominee in 2008, (Nader’s) share may well decline below 0.3 percent,’’ he said. “There is simply no room for Nader to run.’’

Still, Republican candidate Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, noting that Nader’s past campaigns have generally sapped votes from the Democratic nominee, said today on CNN: “Naturally, Republicans would welcome his entry into the race.’’

In his own appearance today, Nader criticized both major parties — Republican candidate Sen. John McCain and Democrats Obama and Clinton alike – for failing to crack down on Pentagon waste and a “bloated military budget. Nader, who made his name in Washington as a consumer activist challenging the products of major corporations, blamed the parties’ inaction on the influence of corporate lobbyists and special interests in the capital.

“The issue is, do they have the moral courage, do they have the fortitude to stand up to corporate powers and get things done for the American people,” Nader said of the leading candidates. “We have to shift the power from the few to the many.”

August 07, 2008

By Victor Davis Hanson

Barack Obama and John McCain are running neck and neck.

Impossible?

It would seem so. Republican President Bush still has less than a 30 percent approval rating. Headlines blare that unemployment and inflation are up — even if we aren’t, technically, in a recession. Gas is around $4 a gallon. Housing prices have nosedived. Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, has been indicted — another in a line of congressional Republicans caught in financial or sexual scandal.

Meanwhile, the GOP’s presumptive candidate, John McCain, is 71 years old. The Republican base thinks he’s lackluster and too liberal.

So, everyone is puzzled why the Democratic candidate isn’t at least 10 points ahead. It seems the more Americans get used to Barack Obama, the less they want him as president — and the more Democrats will soon regret not nominating Hillary Clinton.

First, Obama was billed as a post-racial healer. His half-African ancestry, exotic background and soothing rhetoric were supposed to have been novel and to have reassured the public he was no race-monger like Al Sharpton. On the other hand, his 20-year career in the cauldron of Chicago racial politics also guaranteed to his liberal base that he wasn’t just a moderate Colin Powell, either.

Yet within weeks of the first primary, the outraged Clintons were accusing Obama of playing “the race card” — and vice-versa. Blacks soon were voting heavily against Hillary Clinton. In turn, Hillary, the elite Ivy League progressive, turned into a blue-denim working gal — and won nearly all the final big-state Democratic primaries on the strength of working-class whites.

Americans also learned to their regret how exactly a Hawaiian-born Barack Obama — raised, in part, by his white grandparents and without African-American heritage — had managed to win credibility in what would become his legislative district in Chicago. That discovery of racial chauvinism wasn’t hard once his former associate, his pastor for over 20 years, the racist Rev. Jeremiah Wright, spewed his venom.

Obama himself didn’t help things as he taught the nation that his dutiful grandmother was at times a small-minded bigot — no different from a “typical white person.” And in an impromptu riff, Obama ridiculed small-town working-class Pennsylvanians’ supposed racial insularity.

The primary season ended with a narrow Obama victory — and a wounded, but supposedly wiser, Democratic candidate.

Not quite. Without evidence, he unwisely has claimed his opponents (”they”) will play the race card against poor him. In contrast, on the hot-button issue of racial reparations, he recently played to cheering minority audiences by cryptically suggesting that the government must “not just . . . offer words, but offer deeds.” He later clarified that he didn’t mean cash grants, but his initial words were awfully vague.

Second, many are beginning to notice how a Saint Obama talks down to them. We American yokels can’t speak French or Spanish. We eat too much. Our cars are too big, our houses either overheated or overcooled. And we don’t even put enough air in our car tires. In contrast, a lean, hip Obama promises to still the rising seas and cool down the planet, assuring adoring Germans that he is a citizen of the world.

Third, Obama knows that all doctrinaire liberals must tack rightward in the general election. But due to his inexperience, he’s doing it in far clumsier fashion than any triangulating candidate in memory. Do we know — does Obama even know? — what he really feels about drilling off our coasts, tapping the strategic petroleum reserve, NAFTA, faith-based initiatives, campaign financing, the FISA surveillance laws, town-hall debates with McCain, Iran, the surge, timetables for Iraq pullouts, gun control or capital punishment?

Fourth, Obama is proving as inept an extemporaneous speaker as he is gifted with the Teleprompter. Like most rookie senators, in news conferences and interviews, he stumbles and then makes serial gaffes — from the insignificant, like getting the number of states wrong, to the downright worrisome, such as calling for a shadow civilian aid bureaucracy to be funded like the Pentagon (which would mean $500 billion per annum).

If the polls are right, a public tired of Republicans is beginning to think an increasingly bothersome Obama would be no better — and maybe a lot worse. It is one thing to suggest to voters that they should shed their prejudices, eat less and be more cosmopolitan. But it is quite another when the sermonizer himself too easily evokes race, weekly changes his mind and often sounds like he doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about.

In a tough year like this, Democrats could probably have defeated Republican John McCain with a flawed, but seasoned candidate like Hillary Clinton. But long-suffering liberals convinced their party to go with a messiah rather than a dependable nominee — and thereby they probably will get neither.
Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and author, most recently, of “A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War.” You can reach him by e-mailing author@victorhanson.com.

Voters can check registration, read up on contenders

Elections – Washington state

Jim Camden
Staff writer
August 7, 2008

With ballots for Washington’s top-two primary streaming in to county elections offices, state officials are unveiling a Web site to help voters with their ballots and registration.

The new site, dubbed MyVote, allows voters to check their registered address and correct it if it’s wrong. They can also see which candidates are on their ballots and go to the state’s Voter Guide to see those candidates’ entries. The site lists places where voters can drop off ballots if they don’t want to put them in the mail.

Secretary of State Sam Reed said voters seem to prefer the new voting system, in which they can vote for any candidate in each race, to the “pick a party” primary in 2004 and 2006. In those years, voters could cast a ballot that had only one of the major party’s candidates on it.

Under the previous system, “I was getting an e-mail on the average of every two seconds, and they were not kind e-mails,” Reed said at a press conference Wednesday in Spokane. Voters didn’t like being restricted to a single party, he said.

The top-two primary closely resembles the system called a blanket primary, in place between 1935 and 2003, when it was ruled unconstitutional by federal courts. The two candidates getting the most votes will move to the general election, regardless of their stated party preference. That means it’s possible for the general election race to be between two Democrats or two Republicans, one major party candidate and one minor party candidate, or two minor party candidates.

The biggest change is for minor party candidates, Reed said. But it’s a good-news, bad-news kind of change.

“The good news for them, it’s the easiest and best access to the ballot of any state in America,” Reed said. All they needed to do was file a candidacy petition and state a party preference.

The bad news: It will be difficult for minor party candidates to finish first or second in the primary and advance to the general election in most races, he said.

“There’s always a possibility of a Green Party candidate making it in Seattle, or a Libertarian candidate over here in Eastern Washington,” Reed said.

Under previous systems, minor party candidates bypassed the primary and went directly to the general election if they filed enough signatures. “There are no free passes anymore,” he said.

Reed predicted a statewide turnout of 46 percent, which would be higher than 2004 or 2006. Spokane County Auditor Vicky Dalton said her office has received nearly 19,000 ballots, just under 8 percent of the nearly 244,000 mailed out last week.

They know it’s news. They just wish it would go away.

By Byron York

BBC NEWS

Russian tanks have entered Georgia’s breakaway region of South Ossetia, says Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili.

Georgia has been fighting separatists with ties to Russia in order to regain control of the province, which has had de facto independence since the 1990s.

Russian troops in the South Ossetian capital said their artillery had begun firing at Georgian forces, Russian news agencies reported.

Russia’s president earlier promised to defend his citizens in South Ossetia.

Moscow’s defence ministry said more than 10 of its peacekeeping troops in South Ossetia had been killed and 30 wounded in the Georgian offensive. At least 15 civilians are also reported dead.

‘Clear intrusion’

Amid international calls for restraint, Georgia’s president said 150 Russian tanks and other vehicles had entered South Ossetia.

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Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili says he is willing to agree an immediate ceasefire

He told CNN: “Russia is fighting a war with us in our own territory.”

Mr Saakashvili, who has called on reservists to sign up for duty, said: “This is a clear intrusion on another country’s territory.

“We have Russian tanks on our territory, jets on our territory in broad daylight,” Reuters new agency quoted him as saying.

Later, Moscow’s foreign ministry told media that Russian tanks had reached the northern outskirts of the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali.

The Georgian interior ministry said Russian jets had killed three Georgian soldiers at an airbase outside the capital, Tbilisi, during a bombing raid on Friday, Reuters news agency reported.

I must protect the life and dignity of Russian citizens wherever they are. We will not allow their deaths to go unpunished
Dmitry Medvedev
Russian President

Russia denied any of its fighters had entered its neighbour’s airspace.

Moscow’s defence ministry said reinforcements for Russian peacekeepers had been sent to South Ossetia “to help end bloodshed”.

Amid reports of Russian deaths, President Dmitry Medvedev said: “I must protect the life and dignity of Russian citizens wherever they are,” Interfax news agency reported.

“We will not allow their deaths to go unpunished. Those responsible will receive a deserved punishment.”

‘Ethnic cleansing’

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow was receiving reports that villages in South Ossetia were being ethnically cleansed.

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Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov

Mr Lavrov added in televised remarks: “The number of refugees is growing. A humanitarian crisis is looming.”

Russia said it would cut all air links with Georgia from midnight on Friday.

Meanwhile Interfax quoted South Ossetian rebel leader Eduard Kokoity as saying there were “hundreds of dead civilians” in Tskhinvali.

Witnesses said the regional capital was devastated.

Lyudmila Ostayeva, 50, told AP news agency: “I saw bodies lying on the streets, around ruined buildings, in cars. It’s impossible to count them now. There is hardly a single building left undamaged.”

SOUTH OSSETIA MAP & TIMELINE
1991-92 S Ossetia fights war to break away from newly independent Georgia; Russia enforces truce
2004 Mikhail Saakashvili elected Georgian president, promising to recover lost territories
2006 S Ossetians vote for independence in unofficial referendum
April 2008 Russia steps up ties with Abkhazia and South Ossetia
July 2008 Russia admits flying jets over S Ossetia; Russia and Georgia accuse each other of military build-up
7 August 2008 After escalating Georgian-Ossetian clashes, sides agree to ceasefire
8 August 2008 Heavy fighting erupts overnight, Georgian forces close on Tskhinvali

US President George W Bush spoke with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin about the crisis while they attended the Beijing Olympics.

Later, the US voiced support for Georgia’s territorial integrity and its state department said it would send an envoy to the region.

Nato said it was seriously concerned about the situation, while German Chancellor Angela Merkel called on all sides to show restraint.

The European security organisation, the OSCE, warned that the fighting risked escalating into a full-scale war.

Georgian Foreign Minister Ekaterine Tkeshelashvili told the BBC it wanted to ensure that any civilians who wanted to leave the conflict zone could do so safely.

International Red Cross spokeswoman Anna Nelson said it had received reports that hospitals in Tskhinvali were having trouble coping with the influx of casualties and ambulances were having trouble reaching the injured.

Georgian Prime Minister Lado Gurgenidze said Georgia had simply run out of patience with attacks by separatist militias in recent days and had had to move in to restore peace in South Ossetia.

Truce plea

Georgia accuses Russia of arming the separatists. Moscow denies the claim.

Russia earlier called an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to respond to the crisis, but members failed to agree on a Russian statement calling on both sides to renounce the use of force.

The BBC’s James Rodgers in Moscow says Russia has always said it supports the territorial integrity of Georgia but also that it would defend its citizens. Many South Ossetians hold Russian passports.

Hundreds of fighters from Russia and Georgia’s other breakaway region of Abkhazia were reportedly heading to aid the separatist troops.

McCain calls for 45 plants by 2030; Obama more wary

David Jackson
USA Today
August 6, 2008

WASHINGTON – John McCain’s visit to a Michigan nuclear plant Tuesday revives a debate over the promise and safety of nuclear energy.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee emphasized the promise, saying his plan to build 45 0nuclear plants by 2030 would help reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil and cut greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.

“If we want to enable the technologies of tomorrow like plug-in electric cars, we need electricity to plug into,” McCain said after touring a nuclear plant about 30 miles south of Detroit.

Democrat Barack Obama is more cautious. While he says nuclear power should be part of U.S. energy plans, Obama said Tuesday the nation must find “safer ways to use nuclear power and store nuclear waste.” He said the focus should be on finding new energy sources.

A summer of record gas prices and tensions with oil-rich areas such as the Middle East, Venezuela and Russia has combined to make energy a top issue in the White House race.

The Three Mile Island accident in 1979 changed the political dynamics of nuclear power. No new plants have been approved since 1979, but those in development at the time gradually came online, said Steve Kerekes of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry’s trade group.

There were 69 commercial reactors in the U.S. three decades ago, according to the institute, and today there are 104. Nuclear power produces 19 percent of the nation’s electricity – a point McCain frequently makes on the campaign trail. Applications are pending for 18 plants.

John Keeley, a spokesman for the institute, said it is a lengthy process to get plants licensed and built. “We’re looking at an eight-to-nine-year time frame,” Keeley said.

In making the case for nuclear power, McCain often cites France’s reliance on such energy and plans by China, India and Russia to boost their capacity.

The Democratic National Committee and the League of Conservation Voters both noted that the Enrico Fermi nuclear plant that McCain visited had replaced one that had a partial meltdown in 1966. An abnormal level of radiation was not released at the time, and no one was injured, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Obama has criticized McCain for not having a plan to dispose of nuclear waste – other than to deposit it at the proposed Yucca Mountain storage site in Nevada, which the Democrat opposes. McCain, who voted for the site in 2002, has said he supports the facility about 90 miles from Las Vegas as long as it can meet federal environmental standards.

McCain’s plan for nuclear power, including eventual construction of 100 new facilities, is just one idea in a package that also calls for more oil drilling and tax breaks to developers of wind, solar and other alternative energy sources.

Obama’s energy plan includes a tax on companies that make “windfall profits” from soaring oil prices, drilling on stockpiled oil leases and $150 billion to step up research on biofuels and other forms of “clean” energy.

Related Topic/Question: What do the French do with their nuclear waste?

Recycling Nuclear Fuel: The French Do It, Why Can’t Oui?
by Jack Spencer
December 28, 2007

What if the government allowed you to burn only 25 percent of every tank of gas? Or if Washington made you pour half of every gallon of milk down the drain?

What if lawmakers forced us to bury 95 percent of our energy resources?

That is exactly what Washington does when it comes to safe, affordable and CO2-free nuclear energy. Indeed, 95 percent of the used fuel from America’s 104 power reactors, which provide about 20 percent of the nation’s electricity, could be recycled for future use.

To create power, reactor fuel must contain 3-5 percent burnable uranium. Once the burnable uranium falls below that level, the fuel must be replaced. But this “spent” fuel generally retains about 95 percent of the uranium it started with, and that uranium can be recycled.

Over the past four decades, America’s reactors have produced about 56,000 tons of used fuel. That “waste” contains roughly enough energy to power every U.S. household for 12 years. And it’s just sitting there, piling up at power plant storage facilities. Talk about waste!

The sad thing is, the United States developed the technology to recapture that energy decades ago, then barred its commercial use in 1977. We have practiced a virtual moratorium ever since.

Other countries have not taken such a backward approach to nuclear power. France, whose 59 reactors generate 80 percent of its electricity, has safely recycled nuclear fuel for decades. They turned to nuclear power in the 1970s to limit their dependence on foreign energy. And, from the beginning, they made recycling used fuel central to their program.

Upon its removal from French reactors, used fuel is packed in containers and safely shipped via train and road to a facility in La Hague. There, the energy producing uranium and plutonium are removed and separated from the other waste and made into new fuel that can be used again. The entire process adds about 6 percent in costs for the French.

Anti-nuclear fear mongering has proved baseless. The French have recycled fuel like this for 30 years without incident: no terrorist attack, no bad guys stealing uranium, no contribution toward nuclear weapons proliferation, and o accidental explosions.

France meets all of its recycling needs with one facility. Indeed, domestic French reprocessing only takes about half of La Hague’s capacity. The other half is used to recycle other countries’ spent nuclear fuel.

Since beginning operations, France’s La Hague plant has safely processed over 23,000 tones of used fuel–enough to power France for fourteen years.

Their success has sparked plenty of interest abroad. The French company AREVA has already helped Japan with its reprocessing facility and is currently looking at the feasibility of building a similar plant in China.

The British, Japanese, Indians, and Russians all engage in some level of reprocessing.

Of course, there is still waste involved. But recycling produces much lower volumes of highly radioactive waste, and the French deal with it effectively–placing some waste in short-term, interim storage or preparing the rest for long-term storage in their version of Yucca Mountain.

All is not perfect in France. They are still working to open a permanent geologic storage facility. But the critical issue is that they have an organization to handle used nuclear fuel that allows their program to advance without being held hostage to the politics of geologic storage.

If the United States is serious about reducing CO2 and energy dependence, it must get serious about nuclear power and begin recycling used nuclear fuel.

A viable reprocessing capability not only would give the United States a valuable energy resource, it would reduce the amount of material going to Yucca Mountain. The U.S. has already produced enough waste to nearly fill Yucca’s legal limit of 70,000 metric tons–subsequent studies estimate that its actual capacity is about double that amount and some believe that it is even greater.

It would also put the United States back on the map as a leader in commercial nuclear technology, which today it is not.

Nuclear fuel reprocessing is a safe activity that should be part of America’s nuclear energy program. It can be affordable and is technologically feasible. The French are proving that on a daily basis. The question is: Why can’t oui? (This last line was my favorite part of the article – Kautzman)

Jack Spencer is a research fellow in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies.

First appeared in FoxNews.com

Heather Lende
August 6, 2008

HAINES, Alaska – When the senior senator from Alaska visited our small town on the Fourth of July weekend, we knew he was under FBI investigation for renovations done on his house near Anchorage by an oil field services company. We saw pictures of the place on TV. It’s not the Taj Mahal. It’s not even all that nice by Alaska’s challenged architectural standards. It’s a ski camp with a daylight basement.

That’s part of the reason no one mentioned the trouble. Another is that we were hoping he’d help us pay for a new multimillion-dollar harbor. And yet another, more complicated reason is that in a place where so many of us come from somewhere else, and where friends become family, Sen. Stevens is, for richer or poorer, our Uncle Ted. He was voted Alaskan of the Century at the close of 1999. The Anchorage airport is named after him.

But he did not travel to Haines for our Fourth of July celebration in a flag-fluttering motorcade. There were no dark suits or Ray-Bans either. He wore khakis, a flight jacket and walking shoes and was squired around town by a friend in a borrowed minivan.

He arrived early for a veterans appreciation ceremony in a nearby Tlingit Indian village park. He chatted easily with the adult children of old friends, many now gone, with whom he worked to make sure that they and other Alaska Natives got title to their ancestral lands. He patted a stray dog and thanked everyone for inviting him.

That ceremony ended, as many do here, with a prayer. The emcee asked us to raise our hands and bless the citizen-soldiers gathered before us, the fishermen and old loggers, the town guys and Indian village guys, the daughter who is a National Guard medic, and our senator, all the same, as equals.

There, among other old soldiers, mostly Vietnam War vets, he didn’t mention the Distinguished Flying Cross he earned in World War II flying support missions behind enemy lines in Burma. It was a dangerous operation in which hundreds of crewmen and planes were lost. All Ted told the mayor later was that he had hoped to be a fighter pilot but that it hadn’t worked out.

At the reception, rather than quiz him about the politics of money and oil, the war, or climate change, we spoke to one of the most influential men in the country as if he were the groom’s great-uncle at a wedding. We mentioned common acquaintances. We said we hoped he got the chance to go fishing. The only one who brought up his age was a gold miner, who, at 88, is four years older than the senator. He was concerned that Ted seemed to be slowing down.

Well, that old miner was still wearing his Stevens campaign ball cap days after the reports on the senator’s indictment traveled around this town like the news of a friend’s heart attack. “They got Ted,” was all anyone had to say. While some may have cheered inwardly, few did openly. Many of us simply felt sad and embarrassed for our Alaskan family.

In Haines alone, Ted has helped fund our public radio station, new library and Native-run health clinic. He has been the patriarch of the 49th state since it was a twinkle in his eye. The other day he spoke on the radio, reminding Alaskans that he has always been there for us and asking that we help him now. It may be too much to expect, but after all these years, it’s not too much to ask.

Les Payne
August 6, 2008

As a full-blooded descendant of Africans enslaved in Alabama, I admit to a cautious surprise Tuesday upon hearing that the U.S. House of Representatives passed an official apology for slavery, the segregated Jim Crow era and the “vestiges” of racial discrimination that “still linger to this day.”

“Whereas millions of Africans and their descendants were enslaved in the United States and the 13 American colonies from 1619 through 1865,” read the prelude to H. Res. 194 that was generated by Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., and issued by voice vote.

The U.S. Senate will not join the resolution that, while not mentioning reparations, promises to rectify “lingering consequences of the misdeeds committed against African-Americans under slavery and Jim Crow.”

In the interest of public service, I offer the text of the resolution, edited for space:

“Whereas slavery in America resembled no other form of involuntary servitude known in history, as Africans were captured and sold at auction like inanimate objects or animals;

“Whereas Africans forced into slavery were brutalized, humiliated, dehumanized, and subjected to the indignity of being stripped of their names and heritage;

“Whereas enslaved families were torn apart after having been sold separately from one another;

“Whereas the system of slavery and the visceral racism against persons of African descent upon which it depended became entrenched in the Nation’s social fabric;

“Whereas slavery was not officially abolished until the passage of the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865 after the end of the Civil War;

“Whereas after emancipation from 246 years of slavery, African-Americans soon saw the fleeting political, social, and economic gains they made during Reconstruction eviscerated by virulent racism, lynchings, disenfranchisement, Black Codes, and racial segregation laws that imposed a rigid system of officially sanctioned racial segregation in virtually all areas of life;

“Whereas the system of de jure racial segregation known as ‘Jim Crow,’ which arose in certain parts of the Nation following the Civil War to create separate and unequal societies for whites and African-Americans, was a direct result of the racism against persons of African descent engendered by slavery;

“Whereas a century after the official end of slavery in America, Federal action was required during the 1960s to eliminate the de jure and de facto system of Jim Crow throughout parts of the Nation, though its vestiges still linger to this day;

“Whereas African-Americans continue to suffer from the complex interplay between slavery and Jim Crow – long after both systems were formally abolished – through enormous damage and loss, both tangible and intangible, including the loss of human dignity, the frustration of careers and professional lives, and the long-term loss of income and opportunity;

“Whereas the story of the enslavement and de jure segregation of African-Americans and the dehumanizing atrocities committed against them should not be purged from or minimized in the telling of American history; …

“Whereas a genuine apology is an important and necessary first step in the process of racial reconciliation;

“Whereas an apology for centuries of brutal dehumanization and injustices cannot erase the past, but confession of the wrongs committed can speed racial healing and reconciliation and help Americans confront the ghosts of their past; …

“Whereas it is important for this country, which legally recognized slavery through its Constitution and its laws, to make a formal apology for slavery and for its successor, Jim Crow, so that it can move forward and seek reconciliation, justice, and harmony for all of its citizens:

“Now, therefore, be it Resolved, That the House of Representatives –

(1) acknowledges that slavery is incompatible with the basic founding principles recognized in the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal;

(2) acknowledges the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery and Jim Crow;

(3) apologizes to African-Americans on behalf of the people of the United States, for the wrongs committed against them and their ancestors who suffered under slavery and Jim Crow; and

(4) expresses its commitment to rectify the lingering consequences of the misdeeds committed against African-Americans under slavery and Jim Crow and to stop the occurrence of human rights violations in the future.”

Uproar about the apology is likely to flood in from those locked into denial about continuing post-Jim Crow villainies. The resolution, however, seems clear in its delineation, and proper consideration requires a sense of its tone, language, context and a reading of U.S. history.

Insists, ‘I Am Not a Racist,’ Despite Anger Over His S.C. Comments

By KATE SNOW

MONROVIA, Liberia Aug. 4, 2008 —

In his first broadcast interview since his wife dropped out of the Democratic presidential race, former President Bill Clinton said he still has regrets, and insisted he’s “not a racist,” despite controversies surrounding his comments about Sen. Barack Obama’s win in the South Carolina Democratic primary.

Clinton reflected on his wife’s campaign, his future and the work his foundation is doing across Africa in an exclusive wide-ranging interview with ABC News in Monrovia, Liberia. He and daughter Chelsea spent time in four African nations over the past six days. On Monday, the former President will address the World AIDS Conference in Mexico.

At times, he appeared to grow testy as he discussed his wife’s failed bid for the nomination and was asked if he deserves at least some of the blame for his wife’s losses.

Clinton at first said he did not want to rehash events of the past year because it “interferes with the issue which is who should be elected in November.” But then he offered a lengthy defense of his own role and chastized the media for its coverage.

When asked, “Do you personally have any regrets about what you did, campaigning for your wife?” Clinton, at first, answered, “Yes, but not the ones you think. And it would be counterproductive for me to talk about.”

But then he added, “There are things that I wish I’d urged her to do. Things I wish I’d said. Things I wish I hadn’t said.

“But I am not a racist,” he continued. “I’ve never made a racist comment and I never attacked him [Obama] personally.”

Clinton was referring to an uproar surrounding some of his comments in the South Carolina Democratic primary that prompted anger among some in the African-American community. After Obama, D-Ill., defeated his wife there, Clinton seemed to downplay the significance of the victory by noting Jesse Jackson had won South Carolina in 1984 and 1988, which some observers found offensive.

The controversy later brought an apology from Hillary Clinton, who told reporters, “You know, I am sorry if anyone was offended. It was certainly not meant in any way to be offensive.”

Bill Clinton suggested he is still mad at one politician, South Carolina’s Rep. Jim Clyburn, who abandoned his neutrality to back Obama after claiming that the former president had injected race into the campaign.

When Clyburn’s name was brought up as a supporter who criticized the former president, Clinton interrupted to say Clyburn was never a supporter of the Clintons.

When Clyburn’s description was changed to “longtime friend,” Clinton replied, “Used to be.”

Pressed on whether Clinton “severely damaged” his standing with African-Americans as Clyburn has claimed, Clinton snapped, “Yeah, that may be. By the time he got through working on it, that was probably true.”

But Clinton says that he has no hard feelings towards Obama, the man who defeated his wife.

“I’m not and never was mad at Senator Obama,” Clinton said.

“You know he hit her hard a couple of times and they hit us a few times a week before she ever responded in kind. The only thing I ever got mad about was people in your line of work pretending that she somehow started the negative stuff. It’s a contact sport,” Clinton said.

The Obama campaign’s only response to Clinton’s comments was to say, “We had a hard-fought primary. We head to the fall, a united Democratic Party, and look forward to the general election.”

More significant is the likelihood that both Sen. Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton will have prominent speaking roles at the Democratic convention later this month, where Obama will be nominated to be the party’s presidential nominee.

ABC News’ Jake Tapper and Tahman Bradley contributed to this report.

August 04, 2008

By Stuart Rothenberg

Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain hasn’t had a bad couple of weeks. First, the presumptive White House nominee turns the conventional wisdom on its head and outpoints Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) on the Democratic hopeful’s trip to Europe. Instead of Obama using his photo opportunities with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, French President Nicholas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel to convince American voters that he’s ready to run this country, his trip nets him surprisingly little beyond criticism about his self-image.

And then, a McCain TV spot dictates the terms of the political discussion, drawing Obama into a messy confrontation and successfully driving home an important point about Obama’s substance and readiness for the White House. Sure, most Beltway insiders have bashed the ad, but, given the success of the conventional wisdom so far, that’s probably reason enough to figure that McCain has hit the right message.

But the next big decision that each candidate has to make — the veep — is likely to benefit Obama, not McCain, at least if the names most widely circulated as on the “short list” of potential running mates are correct.

Each of the three Democrats mentioned most often — Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, Sen. Joseph Biden (Del.) and Sen. Evan Bayh (Ind.) — has very real assets. Any of them would be a good pick for Obama.

Biden would bring maturity and experience. The Delaware Democrat performed well during the 2008 Democratic presidential primary, and his expertise on foreign policy issues, and particularly his generally thoughtful approach to Iraq, would be an asset.

Does Biden tend to be long-winded? Sure. Would he be an asset in adding electoral votes to the Democratic ticket? No. Would he make a Democratic ticket made up of two Senators? Obviously. But so what? None of those things matter nearly as much as the assets that he’d bring to the ticket and, yes, the country.

Bayh has served two terms as governor and is in his second Senate term. He comes from what has been a “red state” in presidential elections, and his moderate record as governor earned him praise even from Republicans. Cautious and reliable, Bayh is a team player who could be counted on not to say the wrong thing. He was a vocal supporter of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) during the primaries and picking him could also help unite the party.

Kaine is the purest play for underscoring Obama’s “change” message, since he would bring a non-Washington dimension that neither Biden nor Bayh would bring. And, of course, he comes from a Southern state that until recently was widely regarded as a Republican bastion and that could end up picking the next president.

Of the three officeholders mentioned for the second spot, however, Kaine has the least experience, which includes service on the Richmond City Council, including two terms as the city’s mayor, a single term as lieutenant governor and his current service as governor. Kaine, in short, doesn’t address any Obama experience deficiency.

The Republicans widely regarded as the most likely to be picked by McCain — former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty — bring much less to the table than do the three Democrats.

Pawlenty, 47, is a personable two-term governor who barely won re-election two years ago. An early McCain supporter, he is conservative enough to make the GOP base happy. But he likely wouldn’t bring Minnesota over into the Republican electoral vote column, and he certainly wouldn’t change the dynamic of the presidential race.

That leaves Romney, who has received more mention than any other Republican recently as McCain’s likely choice, the Arizona Republican’s obvious contempt for Romney during this year’s GOP primaries notwithstanding.

A former governor who is widely seen as comfortable discussing economic issues and who has survived extensive media scrutiny, Romney passes the political “smell test” on stature and on the ability to step into the nation’s top job if need be.

But like Pawlenty, Romney doesn’t dramatically enhance the appeal of the GOP ticket or change the election map. And some of the reasons given for Romney’s alleged appeal border on the absurd.

A number of observers have suggested that Romney could help McCain in Michigan, a potentially crucial state for the Republicans in November. The logic here, I suppose, is that Romney’s father, George Romney, was governor of the state, and Mitt’s ties there could help deliver the Wolverine State to the McCain column.

The last election that George Romney won in Michigan was in 1966 — 42 years ago. Given that only 12.5 percent of Michigan’s population was age 65 or older in 2006, according to a U.S. Census Bureau estimate, relatively few Michigan voters still alive could have voted for George Romney.

And if that doesn’t convince you that the Romney name isn’t a huge asset now and would bring very much political value to the Republican ticket in the state, consider that George Romney’s wife, Lenore, ran for Senate in Michigan in 1970, while her husband’s term as governor was expiring, and she drew less than 33 percent of the vote against Sen. Phil Hart (D).

It may well be that McCain doesn’t need a dramatic pick that changes the race’s landscape. After all, if Obama fails to close the deal with voters, the election could fall in McCain’s lap. Still, Democrats have to be upbeat that their party’s vice president choice could help cement Obama’s narrow advantage in the race.

Op-Ed Columnist

By Jonathan Weisman and Robert Barnes
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, August 3, 2008; A14

TITUSVILLE, Fla., Aug. 2 — Barack Obama’s two-day campaign swing through economically hard-hit areas of Central Florida and John McCain’s country concert extravaganza in the Panhandle Friday night put the nation on notice: After all the melodrama and bitterness of 2000 and 2004, Florida and its trove of 27 electoral votes are back in play.

The state that handed George W. Bush the White House with a few hundred disputed votes and a truncated recount again offers some of the best subplots of the campaign.

Will the oldest first-term presidential candidate dominate the crucial senior citizen bloc, especially veterans drawn to an aging war hero? Will African Americans, still convinced they were robbed of their votes in 2000, deliver Florida to the first black nominee of a major party? Will Jewish voters, a traditional Democratic bloc that sided with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in the state’s invalidated primary, cast their lot with a candidate that many remain uneasy about? Will the state’s Hispanic vote, now diversified beyond the Cuban American base that has solidly supported Republicans, be receptive to a Democrat?

To that colorful trove of identity politics there is another that could trump them all: the economy. With the state reeling from the housing crisis and soaring energy and insurance costs, Democrats believe the ground has shifted in their favor.

“Here’s what I think is different,” Obama said Saturday, discussing why he can win a state that Sen. John F. Kerry lost by five percentage points in 2004. “We’ve had four more years of bad economic policies that have run the economy into a very bad place.”

Obama’s tour through Central Florida underscored how his campaign hopes to capitalize on the state’s economic troubles. Rather than focus his efforts on his base in urban centers, he is paying attention to traditionally conservative regions, many devastated by plunging house values, rising foreclosures and vanishing jobs.

On Friday, he stopped by a mobile home dealer in Lakeland, a mid-size Republican town between Tampa Bay and Orlando, to speak to residents buffeted by the subprime mortgage crisis.

“He made me feel better that there’s the possibility that business as usual will stop,” said Scott Cullen, the nearly broke owner of a pool-cleaning company that has lost 90 percent of its business as customers have lost their homes to foreclosure. Cullen, who told his story to Obama in a model double-wide trailer on the lot of PJ’s Dream Home Center, said that for the first time in his life, he is going to vote for a Democrat for president.

At a town hall meeting near Cape Canaveral in Titusville on Saturday morning, Obama talked of protecting Social Security, funding space and ocean research, dealing with the threat posed by climate change and getting a home-cooked meal.

Florida is “within striking distance,” said Sen. Bill Nelson, one of only two Democrats in statewide elective office. “The way you win Florida is you do what he’s doing.”

In 2000 and 2004, Florida was a bright spot on the nation’s economic landscape, reaping the rewards of a building boom that was drawing people to the state, filling government coffers and supplying jobs from construction to real estate sales to financial speculation. But Obama awoke Friday to a banner headline in the St. Petersburg Times declaring, “In Florida, it’s recession.”

The state’s economy contracted by 1.6 percent in April, May and June. The Labor Department reported on Wednesday that the Cape Coral-Fort Myers area recorded the second-largest jump in jobless rates in the nation in June, a 2.8 percent increase. The Naples metropolitan area ranked third, and the once booming Bradenton-Sarasota metropolitan area was fourth.

“When it comes to the economy, it’s night and day,” compared with 2000 and 2004, said Mark Bubriski, Obama’s Florida campaign spokesman.

Obama has blanketed the state with television ads since becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee, spending more money here than in any other state, according to the Wisconsin Advertising Project at the University of Wisconsin at Madison that tracks candidate media spending. Obama has spent more than $5 million since June 3 on television advertisements, airing more than 7,000 ads, the group estimates.

McCain has not been on the air in Florida since the January primary, when he spent about $1.5 million.

Equally striking is where Obama spent the money. He aired more ads in Pensacola — the conservative Panhandle city where Navy pilots, including McCain, are trained — than in Miami. Democrats in 2000 and 2004 ceded the Panhandle to Republicans, not airing any ads there, said the advertising project’s director, Ken Goldstein.

“I never understood that,” Goldstein said. “Those are areas that are going to go Republican, but it’s not like the electoral college. Every African American voter you bring out in the Panhandle offsets a Cuban voter in Miami” likely to vote Republican.

McCain has gambled that, for now, he could spend his money in other states, even though recent polls show a dead heat and Florida is crucial to his electoral strategy.

Even Democrats concede McCain has advantages in Florida. He will have appeal with veterans and elderly voters, a huge bloc in Florida that Obama had difficulty with nationwide against Clinton.

Another bloc with whom McCain could make inroads comprises Jewish voters. Although recent national polling suggests Obama is taking 60 percent of Jewish support, that is well below what previous Democrats have received. The popularity of Republican Gov. Charlie Crist, who is mentioned as a vice presidential possibility for McCain, will also likely help McCain with independents and some Democrats.

“We’re in a good place in Florida, but it is one of those states you’ve got to work at to win,” a McCain campaign strategist said. “It has trended in the right direction for us, both at the presidential and state level.” Crist was elected in a bad year for Republicans, and only one statewide election official in state government is a Democrat. The strategist added that, “Democrats who win in Florida are far more centrist than Barack Obama.”

But Democrats believe those good feelings will fade along with the economy. Obama has also sought to exploit local issues — and McCain’s positions — against him. A national catastrophic homeowners insurance fund may not sound sexy, but in Florida it resonates in both parties. The first questioner at an Obama town hall meeting in St. Petersburg on Friday asked his position on such a fund, making note that homeowners insurance in the state is skyrocketing. Obama is for it. McCain is against it.

McCain also voted against a major water resources law that he denounced as pork-barrel waste. But inside that barrel was $2 billion in authorized funding to restore the Everglades, funding secured by Democratic lawmakers and sought by Crist.

And as in other states, Democrats appear to have an enthusiasm edge. From Jan. 1 to June 30, the Democratic Party registered 196,110 new voters, compared with 105,927 newly registered Republicans.

To the state’s elected Republicans, all that is hype, reminiscent of Kerry’s promises of revenge for the debacle of 2000. House Republican Conference Chairman Adam Putnam, who represents a piece of Central Florida where Obama campaigned Friday, even ventured that the state isn’t even in play.

“Sure, there are college towns and some areas where he will do very well, but it does not appear he will do significantly better than base Democratic vote in Florida,” Putnam said with a shrug. “McCain is doing better at this point than Bush was doing in 2004.”

Scientists Mimic Essence Of Plants’ Energy Storage System

ScienceDaily (Aug. 1, 2008) — In a revolutionary leap that could transform solar power from a marginal, boutique alternative into a mainstream energy source, MIT researchers have overcome a major barrier to large-scale solar power: storing energy for use when the sun doesn’t shine.

Until now, solar power has been a daytime-only energy source, because storing extra solar energy for later use is prohibitively expensive and grossly inefficient. With today’s announcement, MIT researchers have hit upon a simple, inexpensive, highly efficient process for storing solar energy.

Requiring nothing but abundant, non-toxic natural materials, this discovery could unlock the most potent, carbon-free energy source of all: the sun. “This is the nirvana of what we’ve been talking about for years,” said MIT’s Daniel Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT and senior author of a paper describing the work in the July 31 issue of Science. “Solar power has always been a limited, far-off solution. Now we can seriously think about solar power as unlimited and soon.”

Inspired by the photosynthesis performed by plants, Nocera and Matthew Kanan, a postdoctoral fellow in Nocera’s lab, have developed an unprecedented process that will allow the sun’s energy to be used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. Later, the oxygen and hydrogen may be recombined inside a fuel cell, creating carbon-free electricity to power your house or your electric car, day or night.

The key component in Nocera and Kanan’s new process is a new catalyst that produces oxygen gas from water; another catalyst produces valuable hydrogen gas. The new catalyst consists of cobalt metal, phosphate and an electrode, placed in water. When electricity — whether from a photovoltaic cell, a wind turbine or any other source — runs through the electrode, the cobalt and phosphate form a thin film on the electrode, and oxygen gas is produced.

Combined with another catalyst, such as platinum, that can produce hydrogen gas from water, the system can duplicate the water splitting reaction that occurs during photosynthesis.

The new catalyst works at room temperature, in neutral pH water, and it’s easy to set up, Nocera said. “That’s why I know this is going to work. It’s so easy to implement,” he said.

Giant leap for clean energy

Sunlight has the greatest potential of any power source to solve the world’s energy problems, said Nocera. In one hour, enough sunlight strikes the Earth to provide the entire planet’s energy needs for one year.

James Barber, a leader in the study of photosynthesis who was not involved in this research, called the discovery by Nocera and Kanan a “giant leap” toward generating clean, carbon-free energy on a massive scale.

“This is a major discovery with enormous implications for the future prosperity of humankind,” said Barber, the Ernst Chain Professor of Biochemistry at Imperial College London. “The importance of their discovery cannot be overstated since it opens up the door for developing new technologies for energy production thus reducing our dependence for fossil fuels and addressing the global climate change problem.”

Just the beginning

Currently available electrolyzers, which split water with electricity and are often used industrially, are not suited for artificial photosynthesis because they are very expensive and require a highly basic (non-benign) environment that has little to do with the conditions under which photosynthesis operates.

More engineering work needs to be done to integrate the new scientific discovery into existing photovoltaic systems, but Nocera said he is confident that such systems will become a reality.

“This is just the beginning,” said Nocera, principal investigator for the Solar Revolution Project funded by the Chesonis Family Foundation and co-Director of the Eni-MIT Solar Frontiers Center. “The scientific community is really going to run with this.”

Nocera hopes that within 10 years, homeowners will be able to power their homes in daylight through photovoltaic cells, while using excess solar energy to produce hydrogen and oxygen to power their own household fuel cell. Electricity-by-wire from a central source could be a thing of the past.

This project was funded by the National Science Foundation and by the Chesonis Family Foundation, which gave MIT $10 million this spring to launch the Solar Revolution Project, with a goal to make the large scale deployment of solar energy within 10 years.

After watching the video, what are you thoughts and/or questions on this topic?

You may only post/respond to one video per week for credit as a post/response.

After watching the video, what are you thoughts and/or questions on this topic?

You may only post/respond to one video per week for credit as a post/response – just trying something different.

Fri, Aug. 01, 2008

David Lightman | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Barack Obama Friday dropped his opposition to offshore oil drilling, saying he could go along with the idea if it was part of a broader energy package.

Obama made his comments in St. Petersburg during an interview with the Palm Beach Post. “My interest is in making sure we’ve got the kind of comprehensive energy policy that can bring down gas prices,” he said.

“If, in order to get that passed, we have to compromise in terms of a careful, well thought-out drilling strategy that was carefully circumscribed to avoid significant environmental damage – I don’t want to be so rigid that we can’t get something done,” the paper quoted Obama as saying.

The change is dramatic because Obama often pointed to his opposition to drilling as a key difference between himself and presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain.

“I will keep the moratorium in place and prevent oil companies from drilling off Florida’s coasts,” Obama said in Florida in June.

Friday, he said he was still not a fan of drilling, telling the Palm Beach paper, “I think it’s important for the American people to understand we’re not going to drill our way out of this problem.”

Obama also said, in a separate statement issued by his campaign, that he supported the bipartisan energy plan offered by 10 senators Friday.

“Like all compromises, it also includes steps that I haven’t always supported,” he said. “I remain skeptical that new offshore drilling will bring down gas prices in the short-term or significantly reduce our oil dependence in the long-term, though I do welcome the establishment of a process that will allow us to make future drilling decisions based on science and fact.”

The proposal would end most of the ban on drilling. It would allow a 50-mile buffer on the east coast, as well as Florida’s west coast. Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia and South Carolina would be permitted to start oil and natural gas exploration outside the buffer.

Any oil, the senators said, would have to stay in this country.

McCain reacted quickly to Obama’s switch in positions, telling the Associated Press, “We need oil drilling and we need it now offshore. He has consistently opposed it. He has opposed nuclear power. He has opposed reprocessing. He has opposed storage.”

Experts estimate that even if drilling proves to sharply increase oil supplies, its effects will not be felt for at least seven and probably 10 years.

But the concept has proven popular, and McCain has made it a centerpiece of his stump speeches and some of his television ads.

Political momentum has been moving in favor of opening up U.S. coastlines. There were two bars to offshore drilling, one first imposed by Congress in 1981 and another signed by President Bush’s father in 1990 and renewed in 1998 by President Clinton. Bush lifted the executive ban last month; Congress, which left Friday for a five-week recess, has not acted.

The government bans exploration and drilling on the Pacific and Atlantic coasts and most of the eastern Gulf of Mexico, to protect U.S. beaches and fisheries from pollution.

Related Story:  Senators unveil energy deal

Compromise keeps drilling ban, eases limits on exploration

Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu, right, is among the bipartisan senators who call themselves the Gang of 10 and created the compromise. Associated Press (Associated Press ) related news Floridians support drilling, poll finds WASHINGTON – With gas prices hovering at $4 a gallon, a majority of Floridians now support drilling for oil in protected areas offshore, according to a new poll. The survey finds support for drilling at 60 percent, with 10 percent of respondents telling pollsters that they’d opposed offshore drilling in the past. Thirty-six percent of respondents said they remain opposed to offshore drilling. The poll of 1,248 likely Florida voters was conducted July 23-29 by Quinnipiac University and has a margin of error of 2.8 percentage points. The numbers show a stark partisan divide: Eighty-six percent of Republicans polled back offshore drilling, while only 38 percent of Democrats surveyed are in favor. The university also polled in the key swing states of Ohio and Pennsylvania and found likely voters in all three states more concerned about energy than the war in Iraq. – McClatchy

Richard Simon
Los Angeles Times
August 2, 2008

WASHINGTON – In a possible breakthrough on energy, a bipartisan group of senators unveiled a compromise Friday that would preserve the oil drilling ban off the West Coast while easing restrictions on exploration off the East Coast and in the Gulf of Mexico.

Their proposal would also provide billions of dollars for an Apollo-like project to greatly expand the availability of vehicles powered by alternative fuels.

In unveiling the ambitious plan, 10 senators – five Democrats and five Republicans who call themselves the Gang of 10 – hope to break a partisan standoff that sent lawmakers home on their monthlong summer recess Friday without action on major legislation to address high gasoline prices.

However, the proposal’s prospects appear a long shot for this year, with time running out on the congressional session. And in a politically charged election year, parties are stepping up attacks to highlight differences on issues such as energy policy.

Included are proposals to expand drilling in the Gulf to within 50 miles of Florida, help revive the nuclear industry and boost efforts to convert coal into motor vehicle fuel. Shortly after it was announced, the plan drew criticism from Florida’s senators.

The legislation is the first sign of bipartisan progress on an issue that has stirred political anxiety and animosity on Capitol Hill.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he was hopeful the compromise plan “can begin to break the current legislative stalemate on the Senate floor.” The proposal would offer a concession to Republicans who have called for increased domestic production by allowing Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia to grant permits for drilling 50 miles off their shorelines and opening a new area in the Gulf of Mexico, 50 miles off Florida’s coast, to energy exploration.

The senators excluded any effort to lift the long-standing ban on new drilling off the California coast or to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to energy exploration as too contentious and likely to complicate passage of a compromise bill.

In a significant shift, the group’s Republicans agreed to repeal a key oil industry tax break and force oil companies to pay billions of dollars in royalties to the U.S. Treasury for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

Democrats have tried to repeal oil industry tax breaks in the past but have been thwarted by a Republican-led Senate filibuster. But a number of Republicans are finding it hard to defend the oil industry tax breaks while oil companies record profits.

An estimated $30 billion that would be paid by the oil companies over 10 years would help fund initiatives such as $7.5 billion to help U.S. automakers expand the production of alternative fuel vehicles. Funding would also be provided for tax credits to encourage consumers to buy more fuel-efficient cars and extend tax credits to promote energy efficiency and development of cleaner energy sources such as solar and wind power.

In a statement, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, welcomed the proposal, saying it includes measures he has advocated such as repealing oil industry tax breaks. But Obama said he remains skeptical that new offshore drilling “would bring down gas prices in the short term or significantly reduce our oil dependence in the long term.”

Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, of Arizona, has called for lifting the offshore drilling ban. In a statement, his campaign said the country needs an ” ‘all of the above’ approach” and chided Obama for opposing expansion of offshore drilling.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said the Bush administration would take a look at the legislation.

Gee, I wonder why, if you have a black man running for high public office — say, Barack Obama or Harold Ford — the opposition feels compelled to run low-life political ads featuring tacky, sexually provocative white women who have no connection whatsoever to the black male candidates.

Spare me any more drivel about the high-mindedness of John McCain. You knew something was up back in March when, in his first ad of the general campaign, Mr. McCain had himself touted as “the American president Americans have been waiting for.”

There was nothing subtle about that attempt to position Senator Obama as the Other, a candidate who might technically be American but who remained in some sense foreign, not sufficiently patriotic and certainly not one of us — the “us” being the genuine red-white-and-blue Americans who the ad was aimed at.

Since then, Senator McCain has only upped the ante, smearing Mr. Obama every which way from sundown. On Wednesday, The Washington Post ran an extraordinary front-page article that began:

“For four days, Senator John McCain and his allies have accused Senator Barack Obama of snubbing wounded soldiers by canceling a visit to a military hospital because he could not take reporters with him, despite no evidence that the charge is true.”

Evidence? John McCain needs no evidence. His campaign is about trashing the opposition, Karl Rove-style. Not satisfied with calling his opponent’s patriotism into question, Mr. McCain added what amounted to a charge of treason, insisting that Senator Obama would actually prefer that the United States lose a war if that would mean that he — Senator Obama — would not have to lose an election.

Now, from the hapless but increasingly venomous McCain campaign, comes the slimy Britney Spears and Paris Hilton ad. The two highly sexualized women (both notorious for displaying themselves to the paparazzi while not wearing underwear) are shown briefly and incongruously at the beginning of a commercial critical of Mr. Obama.

The Republican National Committee targeted Harold Ford with a similarly disgusting ad in 2006 when Mr. Ford, then a congressman, was running a strong race for a U.S. Senate seat in Tennessee. The ad, which the committee described as a parody, showed a scantily clad woman whispering, “Harold, call me.”

Both ads were foul, poisonous and emanated from the upper reaches of the Republican Party. (What a surprise.) Both were designed to exploit the hostility, anxiety and resentment of the many white Americans who are still freakishly hung up on the idea of black men rising above their station and becoming sexually involved with white women.

The racial fantasy factor in this presidential campaign is out of control. It was at work in that New Yorker cover that caused such a stir. (Mr. Obama in Muslim garb with the American flag burning in the fireplace.) It’s driving the idea that Barack Obama is somehow presumptuous, too arrogant, too big for his britches — a man who obviously does not know his place.

Mr. Obama has to endure these grotesque insults with a smile and heroic levels of equanimity. The reason he has to do this — the sole reason — is that he is black.

So there he was this week speaking evenly, and with a touch of humor, to a nearly all-white audience in Missouri. His goal was to reassure his listeners, to let them know he’s not some kind of unpatriotic ogre.

Mr. Obama told them: “What they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me. You know, he’s not patriotic enough. He’s got a funny name. You know, he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills, you know. He’s risky.”

The audience seemed to appreciate his comments. Mr. Obama was well-received.

But John McCain didn’t appreciate them. RACE CARD! RACE CARD! The McCain camp started bellowing, and it hasn’t stopped since. With great glee bursting through their feigned outrage, the campaign’s operatives and the candidate himself accused Senator Obama of introducing race into the campaign — playing the race card, as they put it, from the very bottom of the deck.

Whatever you think about Barack Obama, he does not want the race issue to be front and center in this campaign. Every day that the campaign is about race is a good day for John McCain. So I guess we understand Mr. McCain’s motivation.

Nevertheless, it’s frustrating to watch John McCain calling out Barack Obama on race. Senator Obama has spoken more honestly and thoughtfully about race than any other politician in many years. Senator McCain is the head of a party that has viciously exploited race for political gain for decades.

He’s obviously more than willing to continue that nauseating tradition.

August 02, 2008

By Michael Barone

Just when you think you’ve got the presidential race figured out, something comes along to upend your carefully wrought conclusions.

Mainstream media provided lavish coverage of Barack Obama’s trip abroad the week of July 21-25 and predicted he would get a bounce in the polls. Some of his supporters believe he has put the election away. Other observers employ the hackneyed and meaningless phrase, “It’s his to lose.”

The poll numbers tell a different and more nuanced story. The two national tracking polls showed Obama getting a bounce while he was in Europe, especially after his speech before 200,000 or so Berliners in the Tiergarten. Gallup showed him rising from a 46 percent-42 percent lead on July 22 to a 49 percent-40 percent lead on July 26. The Rasmussen tracking poll showed him rising from a 47 percent-45 percent lead on July 23 (reflecting the previous days’ polling) to 49 percent to 43 percent on July 26.

But over the next several days, Obama bounced back down. Gallup showed him leading by a statistically insignificant 45 percent to 44 percent as of July 31. That’s the closest the race has been in Gallup all that month. Rasmussen had him down to 48 percent to 46 percent on the same day. The world tour bounce has begun to look like a bubble.

Obama may have gotten some lasting benefits from the trip. He can now say that he has been in Afghanistan and that he has visited Iraq for the first time since January 2006. Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki’s seeming acceptance of Obama’s withdrawal timetable may have undermined John McCain’s argument that an Obama presidency could lead to disaster there. And there are a substantial number of American voters who will be attracted by a candidate who seems to pass what John Kerry in 2004 called a “global test.”

Still, the basic dynamics of the race haven’t changed. Obama appears to have a small lead. But he doesn’t come close to maximizing the Democratic vote. And there is some evidence that the balance of enthusiasm has shifted and that young people — who seemed to turn out and vote for Obama in unusually high numbers in the primaries and caucuses — are no long so enthusiastic about him.

The first bit of evidence comes from the July 10-13 ABC/Washington Post poll. It asked registered voters if they were “certain” to vote. Only 46 percent of voters under 30 said they were — substantially lower than the 66 percent who said so in the ABC/Washington Post poll taken Feb. 28-March 2, at a time when Obama was enjoying a string of primary and caucus victories and before the sermons of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright were circulated on youtube.com on March 13. The 46 percent of young voters saying in July they were certain to vote was far lower than the 79 percent of 65 and over voters who said they were.

The second bit of evidence comes from the Gallup/USAToday poll taken July 25-27. This poll showed that when you narrowed the base of respondents down from registered voters to likely voters, John McCain was ahead 49 percent to 45 percent. That’s a vivid contrast from the contemporaneous Gallup and Rasmussen tracking polls, and it was the first national poll since May showing McCain ahead.

The Gallup/USAT poll employs an unusual technique to decide who is a likely voter, and accordingly its results tend to vary more widely than other polls; political insiders tend to take its numbers seriously less as an indication of where the race is than as an indication of which candidate is benefiting, at least for a moment, from the balance of enthusiasm.

For most of this year, the balance of enthusiasm has been in favor of Democrats and Obama. Turnout in Democratic primaries was about 50 percent higher than in Republican primaries while both parties’ nominations were seriously contested; Democrats generally and Obama in particular have raised far more money than Republicans; McCain voters have typically expressed less enthusiasm for their candidate than Obama voters have for theirs.

These poll results suggest that something — the rantings of the Rev. Wright or Obama’s skinbacks on issues like Iraq and terrorist surveillance — has dampened enthusiasm for him, particularly among the young. The hope that his candidacy would benefit from a historically unprecedented turnout of young voters seems more audacious than it did a short time ago.

Nothing about an election is harder to predict than turnout, and experience shows that the balance of enthusiasm can change abruptly and in unpredicted ways. The poll numbers examined here are of course not the final word, or anything close to it, and this campaign could take many twists and turns before it is over. But you could do worse than expected the unexpected.