Fait Accompli?
"Only a fool would say that" - Steely Dan
It's hard to know what ground is safe to stand on these days. The jackalope pretending to run for president with an elephant on his sleeve can't even get out of his own weigh (pi).
At least James Fallows (h/t Josh at TPM) has some solid-ground comments on last Friday's debate:
The least self-aware moment for John McCain in last night's debate came at the half-way point, when he said, "I'm afraid Senator Obama doesn't understand the difference between a tactic and a strategy."
In a sense McCain was sticking to his battle plan in saying this -- the plan being on-message hammering-home of the "Obama doesn't understand" theme. In another sense, he lost his way, since he immediately segued not into a discussion of strategic matters in Iraq and Afghanistan but into an anecdote. But that kind of literal parsing of his answer -- tactical analysis, you might call it -- really misses the point.
There has been no greater contrast between the Obama and McCain campaigns than the tactical-vs-strategic difference, with McCain demonstrating the primacy of short-term tactics and Obama sticking to a more coherent long-term strategy. And McCain's dismissive comment suggests that he still does not realize this.
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Everything John McCain did on stage last night was consistent with trying to score tactical points in those 90 minutes. He belittled Obama with the repeated "he doesn't understand"s; he was explicitly insulting to him in saying at the end "I honestly don't believe that Senator Obama has the knowledge or experience" for the job (a line Joe Biden dare not use so bluntly on Sarah Palin); and implicitly he was shockingly rude and dismissive in refusing ever to look Obama in the eye. Points scored -- in the short term, to the cheers of those already on his side.
Obama would have pleased his base better if he had fought back more harshly in those 90 minutes -- cutting McCain off, delivering a similarly harsh closing judgment, using comparably hostile body language, and in general acting more like a combative House of Commons debater. Those would have been effective tactics minute by minute.
But Obama either figured out, or instinctively understood, that the real battle was to make himself seem comfortable, reasonable, responsible, well-versed, and in all ways "safe" and non-outsiderish to the audience just making up its mind about him. (And yes, of course, his being a young black man challenging an older white man complicated everything he did and said, which is why his most wittily aggressive debate performance was against another black man, Alan Keyes, in his 2004 Senate race.) The evidence of the polls suggests that he achieved exactly this strategic goal. He was the more "likeable," the more knowledgeable, the more temperate, etc. (Update: though from here on out he doesn't have to say "John is right..." anywhere near as often as he did last night.) .
For years and years, Democrats have wondered how their candidates could "win" the debates on logical points -- that is, tactics -- but lose the larger struggle because these seemed too aggressive, supercilious, cold-blooded, or whatever. To put it in tactical/strategic terms, Democrats have gotten used to winning battles and losing wars. Last night, the Democratic candidate showed a far keener grasp of this distinction than did the Republican who accused him of not understanding it.
There was Good Stuff back there at that "-clip-." Don't be shy about visiting the link.
Back to McSame shortly. Palin can almost inspire pity after the ridicule she has been rightly subjected to based on her extremely limited and supposedly controlled recent appearances. I'm not going to waste a lot of empathy on her - the incredible vanity and narcissism required to actually accept the inane McShame's desperate invite is her calling-card.
Jane Smiley has some terrific insights based on turning off Sarah's sound-track. What a concept! Dubyah certainly exposes his inner demons sotto voce. And his protege McDespicable? You did watch the debate didn't you? He channels the smirker!
So, I watched pieces of the Palin interviews with Katie Couric and Charles Gibson. I turned off the sound just so that I could read her facial expressions. I recommend it. Her facial expressions and her hand gestures are quite interesting because they are those of someone who knows she is bullshitting and is trying to put it over by being extra emphatic. She is full of resentment and entirely exasperated that she is not being accepted in the way she thinks of herself. Don't you know Alaska is right next to Russia? Don't you know only a small strip of ocean separates the two? Putin might raise his head! (except that Moscow is 6000 miles from Alaska). Her every expression says, "How dumb are you, that you don't know what I know." She is so ignorant that she doesn't even know that others know things that she doesn't know. She is confident in her belief that Henry Kissinger, of all people, is naive. Many in the liberal blogosphere are beginning to feel sorry for Sarah Palin, but I don't think we should go there, even for a moment. Every report out of Alaska indicates that she is ruthless above all, that she uses and exploits others for her own purposes, then betrays them when they are no longer useful. When I see her talking, I can see that -- her face shows impatience with the process -- why bother, she is saying, let me just have what I want.
Let's talk about blinking. Lots of us who jumped on Palin's case when she first got tapped as VP candidate were taken to task for not giving her a chance. Aside from the fact that it's all important when dealing with Republicans to jump right on them and start the fight on your own terms, we also had an intuition, a la Malcolm Gladwell's Blink, that she just wasn't right -- that her manner and her life choices didn't add up to a full deck, and, speaking for lots of women, that the white Right men had gone for the pin up girl without asking her to pass the exam. Le voila, as they say in France. No amount of cramming has prepared her to pass the exam, and the way she thinks gets more and more edgy, disorganized, mixed up, and aggressive.
So. It's working. As I said last week, attack attack, attack, expose expose expose. Only two things are possible if McCain wins--Americans will knowingly go for the two least defensible candidates in living memory, or we will have those candidates thrust upon us by fraud. I hope it goes to Obama. But we have nothing to lose from taking the fight to them. Kathleen Parker over at the National Review Online says that Palin should drop out. I say keep her. Sarah Palin IS the evidence that John McCain doesn't know what he's doing, and that the Republican party is a bankrupt, empty, greedy, power-mad cabal. I want that on display.
Weisman at the Post has an intriguing account of the McSlime blitzkrieg. I gather he has not been able to drag his sorry ass in for a vote on any-damn-thing for months, but he made a major production out of pretending to "suspend his campaign" when he sensed a photo-op. Of course he blew the op not once but twice. I think we should check again on the details of his HS and Annapolis records. This guy's loser act would make the cartoon cowboy proud. There is more at that clip.
When Sen. John McCain made his way to the Capitol office of House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) just past noon on Thursday, he intended to "just touch gloves" with House Republican leaders, according to one congressional aide, and get ready for the afternoon bailout summit at the White House.
Instead, Rep. Paul D. Ryan (Wis.), the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee, was waiting to give him an earful. The $700 billion Wall Street rescue, as laid out by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., was never going to fly with House Republicans, Ryan said. The plan had to be fundamentally reworked, relying instead on a new program of mortgage insurance paid not by the taxpayers but by the banking industry.
McCain listened, then, with Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.), he burst into the Senate Republican policy luncheon. Over a Tex-Mex buffet, Sens. Robert F. Bennett (Utah) and Judd Gregg (N.H.) had been explaining the contours of a deal just reached. House Republicans were not buying it. Then McCain spoke.
"I appreciate what you've done here, but I'm not going to sign on to a deal just to sign the deal," McCain told the gathering, according to Graham and confirmed by multiple Senate GOP aides. "Just like Iraq, I'm not afraid to go it alone if I need to."
For a moment, as Graham described it, "you could hear a pin drop. It was just unbelievable." Then pandemonium. By the time the meeting broke up, the agreement touted just hours before -- one that Sen. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), the No. 3 GOP leader, estimated would be supported by more than 40 Senate Republicans -- was in shambles.
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The breakdown was serious enough that word reached Paulson. Just 25 minutes before the scheduled meeting at the White House, Paulson phoned House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to alert her to trouble, according to a Senate Democratic leadership aide. When congressional leaders converged on the White House, the Democrats peeled off into the Roosevelt Room to discuss the revolt over the insurance plan. President Bush was kept waiting, something he has always hated.
After the cameras left the Cabinet room, Bush thanked everybody for their spirit of cooperation and said he knew it was not an easy vote. He knew elements still needed to be worked out and said he wanted to go around the table to hear people's views.
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.
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.
Congressional aides from both parties were standing in the lobby of the West Wing, unaware of the discord inside the Cabinet room, when McCain emerged alone, shook the hands of the Marines at the door and left. The aides were baffled. The plan had been for a bipartisan appearance before the media, featuring McCain, Obama and at least a firm statement in favor of intervention. Now, one of the leading men was gone.
The rest of the actors poured out of the room still highly agitated. Democrats clustered in the hall between the lobby and the Oval Office, pressing Bachus to explain what had happened to the deal. The Democrats discussed whether to go before the cameras waiting in front of the White House, but Obama refused. Without McCain next to him, he said, he would be skewered for using the White House as a backdrop. As the talk grew louder, Obama asked if they could duck into a room, and back they went to the ornate, windowless Roosevelt Room.
It's hard to know what ground is safe to stand on these days. The jackalope pretending to run for president with an elephant on his sleeve can't even get out of his own weigh (pi).
At least James Fallows (h/t Josh at TPM) has some solid-ground comments on last Friday's debate:
The least self-aware moment for John McCain in last night's debate came at the half-way point, when he said, "I'm afraid Senator Obama doesn't understand the difference between a tactic and a strategy."
In a sense McCain was sticking to his battle plan in saying this -- the plan being on-message hammering-home of the "Obama doesn't understand" theme. In another sense, he lost his way, since he immediately segued not into a discussion of strategic matters in Iraq and Afghanistan but into an anecdote. But that kind of literal parsing of his answer -- tactical analysis, you might call it -- really misses the point.
There has been no greater contrast between the Obama and McCain campaigns than the tactical-vs-strategic difference, with McCain demonstrating the primacy of short-term tactics and Obama sticking to a more coherent long-term strategy. And McCain's dismissive comment suggests that he still does not realize this.
-clip-
Everything John McCain did on stage last night was consistent with trying to score tactical points in those 90 minutes. He belittled Obama with the repeated "he doesn't understand"s; he was explicitly insulting to him in saying at the end "I honestly don't believe that Senator Obama has the knowledge or experience" for the job (a line Joe Biden dare not use so bluntly on Sarah Palin); and implicitly he was shockingly rude and dismissive in refusing ever to look Obama in the eye. Points scored -- in the short term, to the cheers of those already on his side.
Obama would have pleased his base better if he had fought back more harshly in those 90 minutes -- cutting McCain off, delivering a similarly harsh closing judgment, using comparably hostile body language, and in general acting more like a combative House of Commons debater. Those would have been effective tactics minute by minute.
But Obama either figured out, or instinctively understood, that the real battle was to make himself seem comfortable, reasonable, responsible, well-versed, and in all ways "safe" and non-outsiderish to the audience just making up its mind about him. (And yes, of course, his being a young black man challenging an older white man complicated everything he did and said, which is why his most wittily aggressive debate performance was against another black man, Alan Keyes, in his 2004 Senate race.) The evidence of the polls suggests that he achieved exactly this strategic goal. He was the more "likeable," the more knowledgeable, the more temperate, etc. (Update: though from here on out he doesn't have to say "John is right..." anywhere near as often as he did last night.) .
For years and years, Democrats have wondered how their candidates could "win" the debates on logical points -- that is, tactics -- but lose the larger struggle because these seemed too aggressive, supercilious, cold-blooded, or whatever. To put it in tactical/strategic terms, Democrats have gotten used to winning battles and losing wars. Last night, the Democratic candidate showed a far keener grasp of this distinction than did the Republican who accused him of not understanding it.
There was Good Stuff back there at that "-clip-." Don't be shy about visiting the link.
Back to McSame shortly. Palin can almost inspire pity after the ridicule she has been rightly subjected to based on her extremely limited and supposedly controlled recent appearances. I'm not going to waste a lot of empathy on her - the incredible vanity and narcissism required to actually accept the inane McShame's desperate invite is her calling-card.
Jane Smiley has some terrific insights based on turning off Sarah's sound-track. What a concept! Dubyah certainly exposes his inner demons sotto voce. And his protege McDespicable? You did watch the debate didn't you? He channels the smirker!
So, I watched pieces of the Palin interviews with Katie Couric and Charles Gibson. I turned off the sound just so that I could read her facial expressions. I recommend it. Her facial expressions and her hand gestures are quite interesting because they are those of someone who knows she is bullshitting and is trying to put it over by being extra emphatic. She is full of resentment and entirely exasperated that she is not being accepted in the way she thinks of herself. Don't you know Alaska is right next to Russia? Don't you know only a small strip of ocean separates the two? Putin might raise his head! (except that Moscow is 6000 miles from Alaska). Her every expression says, "How dumb are you, that you don't know what I know." She is so ignorant that she doesn't even know that others know things that she doesn't know. She is confident in her belief that Henry Kissinger, of all people, is naive. Many in the liberal blogosphere are beginning to feel sorry for Sarah Palin, but I don't think we should go there, even for a moment. Every report out of Alaska indicates that she is ruthless above all, that she uses and exploits others for her own purposes, then betrays them when they are no longer useful. When I see her talking, I can see that -- her face shows impatience with the process -- why bother, she is saying, let me just have what I want.
Let's talk about blinking. Lots of us who jumped on Palin's case when she first got tapped as VP candidate were taken to task for not giving her a chance. Aside from the fact that it's all important when dealing with Republicans to jump right on them and start the fight on your own terms, we also had an intuition, a la Malcolm Gladwell's Blink, that she just wasn't right -- that her manner and her life choices didn't add up to a full deck, and, speaking for lots of women, that the white Right men had gone for the pin up girl without asking her to pass the exam. Le voila, as they say in France. No amount of cramming has prepared her to pass the exam, and the way she thinks gets more and more edgy, disorganized, mixed up, and aggressive.
So. It's working. As I said last week, attack attack, attack, expose expose expose. Only two things are possible if McCain wins--Americans will knowingly go for the two least defensible candidates in living memory, or we will have those candidates thrust upon us by fraud. I hope it goes to Obama. But we have nothing to lose from taking the fight to them. Kathleen Parker over at the National Review Online says that Palin should drop out. I say keep her. Sarah Palin IS the evidence that John McCain doesn't know what he's doing, and that the Republican party is a bankrupt, empty, greedy, power-mad cabal. I want that on display.
Weisman at the Post has an intriguing account of the McSlime blitzkrieg. I gather he has not been able to drag his sorry ass in for a vote on any-damn-thing for months, but he made a major production out of pretending to "suspend his campaign" when he sensed a photo-op. Of course he blew the op not once but twice. I think we should check again on the details of his HS and Annapolis records. This guy's loser act would make the cartoon cowboy proud. There is more at that clip.
When Sen. John McCain made his way to the Capitol office of House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) just past noon on Thursday, he intended to "just touch gloves" with House Republican leaders, according to one congressional aide, and get ready for the afternoon bailout summit at the White House.
Instead, Rep. Paul D. Ryan (Wis.), the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee, was waiting to give him an earful. The $700 billion Wall Street rescue, as laid out by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., was never going to fly with House Republicans, Ryan said. The plan had to be fundamentally reworked, relying instead on a new program of mortgage insurance paid not by the taxpayers but by the banking industry.
McCain listened, then, with Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.), he burst into the Senate Republican policy luncheon. Over a Tex-Mex buffet, Sens. Robert F. Bennett (Utah) and Judd Gregg (N.H.) had been explaining the contours of a deal just reached. House Republicans were not buying it. Then McCain spoke.
"I appreciate what you've done here, but I'm not going to sign on to a deal just to sign the deal," McCain told the gathering, according to Graham and confirmed by multiple Senate GOP aides. "Just like Iraq, I'm not afraid to go it alone if I need to."
For a moment, as Graham described it, "you could hear a pin drop. It was just unbelievable." Then pandemonium. By the time the meeting broke up, the agreement touted just hours before -- one that Sen. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), the No. 3 GOP leader, estimated would be supported by more than 40 Senate Republicans -- was in shambles.
-clip-
The breakdown was serious enough that word reached Paulson. Just 25 minutes before the scheduled meeting at the White House, Paulson phoned House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to alert her to trouble, according to a Senate Democratic leadership aide. When congressional leaders converged on the White House, the Democrats peeled off into the Roosevelt Room to discuss the revolt over the insurance plan. President Bush was kept waiting, something he has always hated.
After the cameras left the Cabinet room, Bush thanked everybody for their spirit of cooperation and said he knew it was not an easy vote. He knew elements still needed to be worked out and said he wanted to go around the table to hear people's views.
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.
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.
Congressional aides from both parties were standing in the lobby of the West Wing, unaware of the discord inside the Cabinet room, when McCain emerged alone, shook the hands of the Marines at the door and left. The aides were baffled. The plan had been for a bipartisan appearance before the media, featuring McCain, Obama and at least a firm statement in favor of intervention. Now, one of the leading men was gone.
The rest of the actors poured out of the room still highly agitated. Democrats clustered in the hall between the lobby and the Oval Office, pressing Bachus to explain what had happened to the deal. The Democrats discussed whether to go before the cameras waiting in front of the White House, but Obama refused. Without McCain next to him, he said, he would be skewered for using the White House as a backdrop. As the talk grew louder, Obama asked if they could duck into a room, and back they went to the ornate, windowless Roosevelt Room.
posted by Sir Gumbo at 10:33 PM
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