Interesting political notes and a very real Russian challenge
By LisaB on August 22, 2008 at 4:30 PM in Current Affairs
1) An excellent article from the London Times Online today. It often seems like the best political reporting on our election comes from overseas. This article attempts to look at why Obama’s campaign isn’t doing much better.
The author begins by reminding readers that Obama was doing so well this past spring and summer – particularly during his European tour. Then he says this:
All true. But as cruel geography and the selfish designs of the American Founding Fathers would have it, Europeans don’t get to choose the US president. Somewhere along the way to the Obama presidency, somebody forgot to ask the American people.
And wouldn’t you know it, they insist on looking this gift thoroughbred in the mouth. Who’d have thought it? You present them with the man who deigns to deliver them from their plight and they want to sit around and ask hard questions about who he is and what he believes and where he might actually take the country. The ingrates!
Read the rest ->
Of course, the conventional view is that it’s all the work of that most terrifyingly effective piece of artillery since the invention of the howitzer, the Republican Attack Machine.
The credulous American voter, we’re told, has been subjected in the last month to a televised blitzkrieg of right-wing lies about the hapless Democrat. . . . Gullible Americans are going to fall for it, just as they fell for Stupid George W over Brilliant Al Gore and Brave John Kerry.
Forgive me for interrupting this reverie but in the real world something else is going on.
In the reality-based community the rest of us inhabit, the first thing to be said about the current state of the race is that the actual shift in the campaign’s dynamics is not quite as dramatic as the pundit class would have you believe. A month ago, according to an average of polls for Real ClearPolitics.com, Senator Obama had about a four-point lead over Senator McCain. This week the tally suggests the lead is about one percentage point.
——————–
First, it’s true that the negative campaigning by John McCain has hurt him somewhat. . . . it’s perfectly reasonable for the Republicans to make the case against him, and the attacks have been fair.
The fact is that the 47-year-old Democrat, less than four years in the Senate, is still largely a blank page for American voters: a great orator and an attractive figure, but unknown and untested. The Republicans have been filling in some of the gaps and pointing out how thin his real biography is.
The second problem is that Senator Obama is having difficulty – curiously enough – with Democratic voters.
—————–The third problem is that events have not helped the Democrats. The war in Georgia has emphasised that the world is a dangerous place, and that simply being willing to talk to your enemies, as Senator Obama sometimes seems to suggest, isn’t going to keep your people safe.
The author finishes by saying that if the election remains “all about Obama” the less he’s likely to win it. Worth the read, even if I have excerpted a lot already.
But how does a campaign turn from a cult of personality to a governing plan?
2) At realclearpolitics is an interesting piece by about, surprise, why Obama is in trouble. It revisits the idea of Democrats being split into Jacksonians (culturally more conservative, blue collar, etc) and academics (culturally more liberal, more educated, etc. etc). First, he asks why Obama is having some poll trouble:
Ask the typical Obama supporter why this should be so and you’ll get a range of answers. Some just stare at the poll numbers the way my late basset hound would look at me when I tried to feed him a grape: with pure unblinking incomprehension. Others act like the guy who sits alone with his shopping bags at the public library, muttering about Fox News conspiracies and how Karl Rove-like aliens are doing terrible things with probes of proctological exactitude. Still others just shake their heads at the racism of anyone who could possibly have a problem with a very left-wing politician with almost no experience, who often sounds like his campaign slogan is: “People of Earth! Stop Your Bickering. I Am From Harvard, And I’m Here To Help.”
Then comes the bits about cultural liberalism being a problem for national politicians and a history lesson about the last few successful Democratic presidents being more Jacksonian. He finishes with this:
Obama may still win, of course, proving that America is not only ready for a black president, but a cultural liberal as well. If he loses, though, you can be sure Democrats will claim he lost not because he is a black and more charming Michael Dukakis, but simply because he is black. Because liberals are never wrong.
I think most of us would agree that if Obama loses, it’ll be the race question that informs the discussion.
3) Bloomberg notes that a recent poll shows Americans are slightly less pessimistic about the economy. That usually doesn’t bode well for Democrats.
4) The Politico has a short piece saying HRC was never even asked for the usual vetting paperwork by the Obama campaign.
If you’ll remember, Obama’s response to whether or not he would consider HRC for VP was something along the lines of, “she’s on anybody’s short list.”
Apparently anybody but Obama. But don’t act surprised. I’m not.
5) Also at Politico, the perils of politics and technology. The Obama campaign promise to text message has spawned lots of. . . .
wait
for
it
hoax messages.
By the time Barack Obama is ready to announce his vice presidential pick, will anyone believe him?
In recent days, as speculation and anticipation has mounted, so too have phony text messages declaring Obama’s supposed running mate – from Evan Bayh and Hillary Rodham Clinton to Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps.
—————–
In the absence of real information, pranksters have filled the gap with guidance from the website Wonkette – and maybe Howard Stern, too.
Well, as far as pranks go, I actually think that’s pretty weak. Texting all those ‘bots to watch Fox for the announcement during Bill O’Reilly would have been much better.
6) Lastly, on a more serious note. The next American president will have a seriously resurgent Russia to think about. I’ve also heard that Britain’s MI6 may have placed Russia back on its “biggest danger to the UK” list. The article from realclearpolitics outlines some of what might be happening.
What did Putin seek when he sent his revitalized military and its vicious auxiliaries across the Great Caucasus? Three things:
1. To punish Georgia for its Westward yearnings and to destroy its president. Putin meant to make it clear that Moscow’s former possessions will not be allowed to create freewheeling, Western-allied democracies on Russia’s borders. Additionally, Putin resembles Bush in one odd respect: Both men personalize diplomacy, but where Bush has a Texan confidence that he can make a friend of anyone, Putin assesses every interlocutor as a potential enemy. Now Putin is venting his personal hatred of Georgia’s president, who had the audacity to talk back to the new czar.
2. To send a message to the strayed states of the old Russian (not Soviet) empire that Moscow still intends to rule all that the czars once ruled. Hungary, the Czech Republic and their Central European brethren aren’t included in Putin’s present appetite, but the entire Caucasus, Central Asia, the Baltic triplets, Ukraine and eastern Poland are on the Kremlin’s strategic menu.
3. To gain hegemony over the last non-Russian-controlled pipelines delivering gas and oil from the Caspian Basin and Central Asia to the West. Like many historically minded Russians, Putin recalls how desperate the World War II-era Germans were to reach Baku and its oil fields. The lesson he’s drawn is that, instead of merely depriving Panzers and Stukas of gasoline, reborn Russia can deny fuel to all of Europe in a crisis. Given that Kremlin-backed Russian energy interests have been able to hire a former German chancellor for a handful of Euros, it’s difficult to envision Europe uniting to diversify its energy sources: Europe is strolling open-eyed into energy slavery.
The essential point here is that Russia has a strategic vision, while the West does not. Putin
What do our presidential candidates offer in terms of “strategic vision?”
OK. I can’t leave you that somber. Here’s Jackie Broyles and Dunlap on Russia, Georgia, and Georgia.
, the basis for the Best Motion Picture Nominee (Golden Globes) starring Brad Pitt.
, the novel by John Le Carre, a new motion picture starring Gary Oldman and Colin Firth.
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