brainiac conspiracy

More Oxford Post-Mortems

Even assuming a slight Democratic bias in the polling sample, all I can say is, wow.

Thinking about the following characteristics and qualities, please say whether you think each one better described Barack Obama or John McCain during tonight's debate:

Was more intelligent: Obama 55%, McCain 30%

Expressed his views more clearly: Obama 53%, McCain 36%

Spent more time attacking his opponent: McCain 60%, Obama 23%

Was more sincere and authentic: Obama 46%, McCain 38%

Seemed to be the stronger leader: Obama 49%, McCain 43%

Was more likeable: Obama 61%, McCain 26%

Was more in touch with the needs and problems of people like you: Obama 62%, McCain 32%

---Vitelius

Gotta-Read of the Day . . .

Man oh man, there are a whole lot of revealing little factoids in Jonathan Weisman's front-pager on the backroom dealing over the bailout bill in the Post today. If nothing else, it's a fascinating case study in Passive-Aggressive behavior.

First up, a sterling example of Bold and Decisive Leadership™ from the Straight Talker himself:

Pelosi said Obama would speak for the Democrats. Though later he would pepper Paulson with questions, according to a Republican in the room, his initial point was brief: "We've got to get something done."

Bush turned to McCain, who joked, "The longer I am around here, the more I respect seniority." McCain then turned to Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to speak first.

Next, how the Master of Strategy & Tactics™ won the day:

Boehner was blunt. The plan Paulson laid out would not win the support of the vast majority of House Republicans. It had been improved on the edges, with an oversight board and caps on the compensation of participating executives. But it had to be changed at the core. He did not mention the insurance alternative, but Democrats did. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, pressed Boehner hard, asking him if he really intended to scrap the deal and start again.

No, Boehner replied, he just wanted his members to have a voice. Obama then jumped in to turn the question on his rival: "What do you think of the [insurance] plan, John?" he asked repeatedly. McCain did not answer.

One Republican in the room said it was clear that the Democrats came into the meeting with a "game plan" aimed at forcing McCain to choose between the administration and House Republicans. "They had taken McCain's request for a meeting and trumped it," said this source.

Finally, a Profile in Courage®:

McCain and Graham made just that point at the Tex-Mex lunch, but McCain also spoke in the starkly personal terms of a presidential candidate in trouble: "You all put me on the hook for $700 billion," he told his colleagues, according to an aide familiar with the lunch.

Country First, as always, eh?

Update: Having ruminated over this column for a spell, I think it's becoming clearer why Huggy's Mercy Mission to Washington on Thursday was such a huge mistake: Primarily, for the simple reason that there was no strategy to it at all, that it was simply a stunt intended to throw a monkeywench into the machinery rather than a sincere attempt to broker an honest bailout deal, and because of this, he burned a lot of people in his own party who had already put their necks on the line for passage of the Paulson bill in the middle of an election campaign. This kind of double-dealing might not come back to haunt him in any way that's transparent to the voters right away, but one has to imagine that there will be more than a few GOP Senators who will be conspicuously MIA at various McCain campaign events in the closing weeks of the contest. For a guy who's been lagging behind Obama in fundraising all season, this is not a promising prospect.

Then again, it's been obvious to me for quite awhile: any man who repeats the phrase "my friends" so often in public probably doesn't have any. For good reason.

---Vitelius

About Last Night . . .

Okay, so we've all had time to analyze what happened in Oxford last night, and amid all the thousands of column-inches that've already been devoted to it, this single sentence probably sums it up best to my mind:

Here's the politically incorrect way of phrasing one of the central questions about tonight's presidential debate: Did John McCain come across as too much of a grumpy old man?

It's all too easy for those of us who obsess over politics and policy for hours each day to forget that most people in America simply don't give a shit about this stuff the way we partisans do. Millions of Americans still look at the presidency---and elections---the way they did in high school, where the subjects being debated in student-body elections don't carry nearly as much weight as the personalities involved. People still tend to gravitate towards candidates whose personalities they can "relate" to, as we saw (much to our chagrin) in 2000 and again in 2004 when the clearly "superior" debater was seen to have lost to his more likable, if less polished, opponent.

So I guess it comes down to your mood: if you're scared to death of financial meltdowns, Great Depressions and mass unemployment, and you're looking for some calm reassurance from a confident and collected leader who understands your problems, Obama comes out better. If you're pissed off about it, and you think the solution is to raise hell and kick global ass in Washington and elsewhere, McCain wins. I think most Americans want a president who ideally possesses some degree of both "cool" and "hot" characteristics, but after eight years of nasty and divisive politicking, a disastrous and costly war, and now, the specter of collective bankruptcy staring us all down, I suspect most Americans would really, really like to tone down the rhetoric, forget about who's more "liberal" or who "doesn't understand", and get about the dull and somber business of rebuilding the country. After eight years of a Cowboy Presidency awash in endless High Drama, folks are looking, quite simply, for a break---dare I say, a return to normalcy.

And I think this helps explain why the earliest tracking polls of undecided voters who tuned in last night tended to indicate that Obama won. Decisively. That's certainly not the debate I saw, at least in terms of forensics, but taken at a more personal level, it makes sense: with his confrontational and almost contemptuous approach, his finger-pointing and scapegoating of naiive liberals who don't understand what a Big Bad World is waiting for us Out There, McCain was basically speaking to that already-energized sector of the electorate that regularly watches Fox News and has already made up its mind about Obama. With his calm demeanor and reassuring words for worried middle-class voters, Obama was speaking to everyone else---and that's where this election is going to be won. And who kept bringing up strategy and tactics last night?

Eugene Robinson gets the last word:

. . . we in the commentariat tend to forget that the electorate always, and I mean always, sees a presidential debate very differently from the way we see it. If you read the papers in the fall of 2000, for example, you learned that Al Gore wiped the floor with George Bush in their encounters---but voters thought otherwise. Demeanor and body language have been important in every debate I can think of, so I can't imagine why they wouldn't be important in this one. The candidate who projects affability and optimism is usually seen to have bettered the candidate who projects resentment and gloom. If that is the case with tonight's debate, Obama won and McCain lost.

Next up: The car wreck on the 405 Freeway Palin-Biden debate.

---Vitelius

The Bottom Line

Lest we forget what's waiting in the wings.

---Vitelius

Debate Live-Blogging

5:15 pm PST: Okay, the debate's not starting for another hour, so time for a little pointless diversion: a long, long time ago, I used to hang out in Oxford from time to time, doing background research for various stories I was writing when I worked at a newspaper in northeast Mississippi. The Ole Miss campus is quite pretty---in a slightly creepy-Gothic, antebellum fashion---and the university library was a treasure trove for local historians; I swear, they must've had just about every issue of every newspaper published in the entire state since the Civil War stored on microfiche in the basement of that library, and many were the hours I spent combing through slide after slide of old articles dating back a century or more, and going back again and again to request still more reams of film from the patient and overworked library staff. It's been a few years since I've been back there, but if memory serves, it was one of the few bastions of progressive political thought you'd ever find in that corner of the country, and a pleasant place to take an afternoon stroll. If you love American literature, there's plenty of history around---Faulkner, Welty and Willie Morris all lived and drank and taught there---and if you should ever visit the place yourself, be sure to stop at Square Books, one of America's truly great indy booksellers. I spent a lot of time shopping there, and I'm happy to see they're still in business after all these years.

5:30 pm: Should we play a Debate Drinking Game tonight? Say, one drink for every time McCain premises his remarks with the phrase "my friends"? . . . Nah, we'll never make it to the end of 90 minutes. Then again, would it matter?

5:40 pm: Fantasy Question I Guess We Won't Hear tonight: "Senator, do you still believe your running mate is qualified to be Vice President of the United States?" Okay, maybe Jim Lehrer can re-phrase the question more delicately: "Senator, do you believe that geographical proximity to the Russian mainland makes one better prepared to formulate policy when Putin rears his head like a big bull moose in the middle of the spring rut?" Oh well . . . perhaps not.

6:00 pm: As promised, McCain showed up. Break out the Tanqueray!

6:05 pm: Obama goes on the offense, hits Huggy on deregulation.

6:08 pm: Nice touch by McCain offering kind words for Ted Kennedy. Then hints at domestic drilling as an economic stimulus!

6:10 pm: McCain invokes Eisenhower and D-Day and honor and accountability and that's why Chris Cox should be fired from the SEC.

6:12 pm: Obama calls out Huggy on Strong Fundamentals™.

6:15 pm: McCain blames earmarks: A "gateway drug." Calls out DNA research of bears in Montana. How about that $3 million for seal DNA research that Sarah Palin asked for?

6:16 pm: Huggy just walked into a trap . . . $300 billion for tax cuts vs. $18 billion for seal DNA.

6:20 pm: Does McCain really believe that American voters give a rat's ass about earmarks for grizzly DNA when the freaking republic is going broke?

6:25 pm: Huggy: Cut the business tax to stimulate prosperity . . . my friends! (Glug, glug.)

6:25 pm: Obama plays the populist card, calls out McCain for taxes on health-care costs.

6:26 pm: Obama strikes me as quite a bit scrappier than I would have expected thus far. McCain is apparently going to sink or swim on tax cuts and earmarks from now until Election Day.

6:30 pm: McCain has no answer for the future but cost cuts. Will this really energize American voters at this point in time? Corporate America has largely been run by cost-cutters for the past 20 years.

6:35 pm: Jim Lehrer needs to move to another question . . .

6:36 pm: Huggy: we can create 700,000 Homer Simpsons if we build 45 Springfield nuclear plants!

6:40 pm: Cut spending . . . cut spending . . . low taxes . . . cut spending . . .

6:42 pm: McCain makes second reference to Miss Congeniality, lies on torture, puffs himself. Calls out his running mate?!? Who prepped this guy?

6:45 pm: Obama is taking Huggy to the woodshed on the invasion of Iraq and WMDs.

6:47 pm: McCain: claims "peace and prosperity" is coming to Iraq, then lies about troop funding. Jesus, this debate approach can't be working, can it?

6:50 pm: Now we are down to the usual regurgitated talking points on Iraq, Afghanistan et al. Jim Lehrer seems to have no questions that challenges the candidates to think outside the box. So does it end up coming down to personalities after all this?

6:55 pm: How is it that a guy who graduated at the bottom of his class at Annapolis, and whose most pivotal wartime experience was getting his plane shot down by a bunch of Vietnamese peasants, became an expert in military strategy and tactics? Obama is missing some opportunities here.

6:56 pm: Senator Obama "doesn't understand" . . . We've heard this a half dozen times in the last ten minutes. Time to hit back, Barry!

7:00 pm: McCain admits, he wants to fight the war in Vietnam, again and again and again. His personal humiliation must be vitiated in Iraq. This guy really is emotionally unfit to serve in government anywhere at this point, let along the presidency.

7:05 pm: Huggy equates existential threat to Israel as existential threat to America. I need a drink.

7:10 pm: McCain can barely pronounce "Ahmadinejad" but has coherent foreign policy. Calls out more boogeymen, Chavez, Castro, blah blah blah . . .

7:12: Obama nails Huggy on Kissinger and negotiations with Iran. Ouch!

7:12 pm: He forgot Spain! Caramba!

7:15 pm: Huggy: "Obama doesn't understand" . . . fear, fear, fear. And North Koreans are midgets because they live in a dictatorship.

7:20 pm: Huggy seems pleased with himself tonight. The Fox News boys no doubt will agree.

7:22 pm: It's becoming apparent that McCain is waging a scorched-earth debate. It makes sense, given the pounding he's taken in the polls over the last two weeks. He can't afford to play it safe and---dare we say---look presidential in a presidential debate since, after all, he's down 5 or 7 points in the polls and it's all about Country First, after all.

7:25 pm: Does anybody really give a rat's ass about Georgia and Ukraine? The fucking country is going broke!!!

7:25 pm: Obama turns Georgia on a dime into a domestic energy issue. Smart move. McCain now splits hairs over reprocessed nuclear fuel. This really is boiling down to a Big Picture vs. Small Picture vision of the republic, and it's not hard to figure out which candidate is articulating which vision.

7:30 pm: Huggy: we're safer after 9/11, but we're still not safe. I'm proud of that, but you must still be afraid.

7:30 pm: Obama believes in missile defense? Jesus, you gotta be kidding me!!!

7:30 pm: Obama still closes strong with argument for nuke non-proliferation and repairing America's image abroad. Once again, the Big Picture in practice.

7:30 pm: Huggy closes with Iraq. Obama asks "Where's bin Laden?"

7:33 pm: McCain closes with Georgia?!? The Surge?!?

7:35 pm: McCain calls for "more flexibility" in our next president. In other news, Sarah Palin calls for a ban on teaching creationism.

7:40 pm: Oh Christ, the POW shit again?!?

7:42 pm: McCain knows how to "heal the wounds of war" . . . by waging perpetual war against Iraq, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea. I have no idea how this insanity is going to play across the public over the weekend, and besides, it's getting late and I need to rustle up some grub. so I'll save all my Trenchant Insights® for later.

---Vitelius

Credit Where Due

With all the manic madness in the air over defaults, debates, and sundry signs of the Apocalypse, I guess we really should take a moment to give out a shout to the local Boys in Blue for winning the NL West. It used to be that we just expected these dudes to make the playoffs every year, the way the Lakers do . . . but it's kinda been a long time since Jimmy Carter was president, now isn't it? But either way, congrats to Joe, Ned, Russell, Andre, James, Casey, Angel, Chad, Brad, Derek, and that dude with the dreads too. Pretty good hitter for a dirty stinking hippie.

On a related note, here's a way cool blog that one of their most talented young players started up. He writes pretty well, and amazingly enough, it ain't about baseball.

---Vitelius

Come Back, Chauncey Gardner. All is Forgiven . . .

This quote, if accurate, actually makes Sarah Palin sound like Cicero:

What was McCain's input at the lunch? According to [Lindsey] Graham, "John was getting ready to leave, literally going out the door with me. He said, thank you for all you have done for me. I don't know the terms of the deal. We need a deal. I am appreciative of the need for a deal."

Honestly, is this man completely well? I'm not quite ready to swallow the droopy-eyed stroke rumors swirling about the Internets, but man, you sure gotta wonder sometimes.

---Vitelius

Loafing We Can Believe In

These people should all be fired. And their mortgages foreclosed. And their banks shuttered up and their savings accounts drained, and . . . oh, that's happening anyway. Never mind.

---Vitelius

Alternate Realities We Can Believe In

It takes a very special idiot to craft an essay such as this:

After all the doom and gloom, pundits were then somehow surprised when McCain decided to temporarily suspend his presidential campaign and return to his day job in Congress, where he tried to work out a bailout deal with his colleagues. Well, at least most of his colleagues.

Despite having decried the economic crisis in near-apocalyptic terms in an attempt to lay blame on President Bush and, by association, McCain, the junior senator from Illinois didn't feel the urgency to show up for work and try to do what he could to address it. Obama certainly has standing and more than his share of influence. This is, after all, the de-facto leader of the Democratic Party.

Unfortunately, he also looks like someone who is so focused on what he hopes will be his next job that he has lost interest in his current one.

McCain showed real leadership this week. And frankly, if we were more accustomed to seeing that sort of thing from our elected officials, we might be less cynical and better able to recognize it on the rare occasions when it surfaces. (Emphasis added.)

I'm not sure what's worse: The fact that CNN actually runs an online column from this clown, or the fact that he sits on the editorial board of one American's largest metropolitan dailies. And ya wonder why so many people still believe Saddam had WMDs?

I guess we don't need to lose much sleep worrying over who the San Diego Trib is going to endorse next month . . .

Than again, I guess this caliber of writing is about what you'd expect from a guy who lives in San Diego---as in, like, right next to the Mexican border---and who can still coin a quaint little phrase like this:

Earlier this week, McCain abruptly suspended his campaign and requested that the debate be postponed until Congress finishes the heavy lifting of approving a bailout. That put Obama and McCain in a classic Mexican standoff with each trying to look presidential, while attempting to map out a course that would benefit him politically. (Emphasis added.)

What is it with these people, anyway? Are they simply born assholes, or does Republicanism somehow distort their pathology?

---Vitelius

Witchcraft Economics We Can Believe In

Looks like he was for Hank Paulson before he was against him:

---Vitelius

Snark of the Day . . .

Tantrums we can believe in:

The John McCain campaign sometimes reminds me of a well-worn maxim for lawyers: If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and argue like hell.

---Vitelius

The Arsonist

Hard to believe the House Republican leadership would actually risk scuttling a bailout deal to, uhhh, bail out His Maverickyness' faltering campaign, but that appears to be what's happening behind the scenes tonight.

You can understand the stratagem, though only in the most short-sighted and self-interested terms. There's a great wave of resentment and anger engulfing the populace right now over this deal. Liberals hate it. Conservatives hate it. Everybody hates it. Hell, I hate it too. I am certain that McCain and his people are gambling (what, again?) that they can ride the crest of this populist wave all the way to the White House in November by re-casting themselves as scourges of Wall Street and champions of the common man. And in any other election year, they might well have been able to pull off the charade. And who knows, they still might now. But I think a number of factors at play this year would suggest, strongly, that this is a surefire loser of a bet.

1. Yes, Americans are pissed off about bailing out Wall Street, but Americans---heavily mortgaged working-class Americans in particular---also crave stability and security in times of turmoil. They want to know that their jobs will still be waiting for them tomorrow, that their company health insurance will still carry them until they get their kid's braces paid off in three months, that they won't be arbitarily foreclosed on by some lender that declared insolvency this morning. What happens if McCain actually convinces his comrades to scotch the bailout compromise, and the Dow dumps 500 points the next day in response? And another 400 the day after that? Will His Maverickyness still look like a man of high principle, or an arsonist in a fireworks factory?

2. McCain has lost his most crucial base. No, not the neocons, but the media. It all started with the media-bashing GOP convention and has continued to the present day. So far, he's gotten a free pass on his pivotal enabling role in our last National Economic Meltdown---the Keating Five scandal twenty years ago. Do you think the moratorium will hold if he tries to reinvent himself as Wall Street's Worst Nightmare® for the next thirty days? For some reason, I doubt it. The man has simply made too many enemies at this point.

3. Barack Obama has staked his campaign to the premise---however dubious---of post-partisan politics devoid of the usual party loyalties and ideological infighting. A lot of people admire him for that. A lot of people---around 25 percent of the public, give or take---still admire President Bush, too. So when the photos start appearing on front pages across the country of Dear Leader and Secretary Paulson and Chairman Bernanke shaking hands with Obama, and Harry Reid and Chris Dodd, and maybe a sane Republican or two such as Dick Lugar or Chuck Hagel, how does this not burnish Obama's image in the larger public eye as a post-partisan reformer who can work past party allegiances to solve intractable problems and get results, while McCain, empty-handed, continues to rail against a problem most Americans no longer want to hear about?

4. Sarah Palin. The longer she is on the ticket, the greater a liability she becomes, no matter what McCain does. Now, onward to Oxford!

---Vitelius

The Maverick's Playbook Made Simple

First down: Hail Mary.
Second down: Hail Mary.
Third down: Hail Mary.
Fourth down: Blame the media.

---Vitelius

Profiles in Maverickyness

This is just what the paying customers love to see.

---Vitelius

Principles of Voodoo Witchcraft Economics Explained

Submitted without comment.

---Vitelius

The Israelites, That's How They Work . . .

I wasn't going to post any more video tonight, but Kagro X made me do it.

John McCain's spare heartbeat. At least she is free of witchcraft . . . or was, once.

---Vitelius

Quotations of Daddy Warbush

I didn't catch the recipe to Save The Republic tonight. Did I miss anything?

---Vitelius

Most of My Heroes Don't Appear on No Stamps, Either

Hard to argue with this pick. We need these dudes, and this tune, more than ever across the airwaves right now.

Vitelius

Uhh, Weren't We Talking About Credit Swapping?

Channeling Andrew Sullivan, in my own perverse way: Politics first, country last, pussy always!

---Vitelius

Trenchant Insight of the Day

After this campaign is over, Sarah Palin will be eminently qualified . . . to run the FBI's Witness Protection program.

---Vitelius