We'd Don't Need No Stinking Zapatero Questions!
I guess we'd best deal with McSame's latest gaffe right here at the top. As these things go, the speculation seems to have been all over the map: e.g., he doesn't remember why he agreed to this interview - any encounter with the Spanish language gives him hives, he doesn't know the name of the Prime Minister of Spain (I didn't either), he knows name but suddenly must let out some suppressed anger at Spain from withdrawal of troops from Iraq, he has forgotten the location of Spain and their membership in NATO, he's equivocated so many times on immigration that the mere metrics of Spanish trigger verbal tics, etc., etc. Ever-so-interestingly, the McShame campaign seems to be following the Bush program of believing that lying and upping the risk (e.g., offending important ally) is preferable to admitting to having misunderstood a question. The incredible vanity and narcissism does seem familiar, doesn't it? Pretty astonishing, considering the trouble they have gone to to avoid having the bush-atross ever be seen with them. Well that spectre is with them now.
As with so many things (bread-baking and love-making are first examples to come to mind), patience can be a virtue. A certain amount of smoke seems to have cleared now. I find Josh's sum-up at Talking Points Memo pretty cogent:
After a day of gasps, guffaws and eyes rolled over John McCain's decision to reassign Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero to run an unnamed country in Latin America, it seems we are arriving at a rough consensus about what happened and what part of it matters.
As I posited earlier today, the most logical conclusion is that McCain simply didn't understand the question and tried to wing it. It may have been due to fatigue, lack of attention, confusion or simply an inability to penetrate the interviewer's fairly thick accent, or perhaps a combination of one or more of the above. It is only if you insist on the preposterous assumption that McCain fully understood and grasped what the interviewer was asking him (i.e., the position of McCain's foreign policy advisor Randy Scheunemann) that you have to conclude that McCain believes that Spain is a country in Latin America which may be bent on America's destruction.
In itself mishearing or misunderstanding a question isn't the worse thing in the world, though being too proud to ask for the question to be repeated and going with the assumption that the mystery leader must be some Hugo Chavez type character out of Woody Allen's Bananas does suggest a certain recklessness of character.
The McCain campaign might simply have said that he was on the phone and didn't understand. But they're obviously unwilling to do that since they've staked so much of his candidacy on his foreign policy chops.
In any case, a consensus appears to be emerging that the really shocking lapse was not the original gaffe but how the campaign chose to deal with it. Rather than copping to the goof, they decided to stick to the nonsensical statements and risk, should McCain win in November, significant damage to our relations with a major NATO ally. Coming to basically similar conclusions are Newsweek, Joe Klein in Time, Chris Orr at The New Republic and many others.
So, to restate, I think the simplest explanation is that McCain didn't understand what he was being asked. And instead of trying to clarify, he assumed the interviewer, who had already asked him about Chavez and Castro, must be quizzing him on some other Latin American strongman who was up to know good. As so often with McCain, he tried to wing it. I think the available evidence is consistent which much less generous readings of the event. But this read is plausible. And Scheunemann, whose lack of experience in press work was painfully on display today, acted with characteristically knuckle-headed aggression and doubled-down on McCain's nonsensical statement.
And whatever the misunderstanding, let's face it. When a president or presidential nominees gets confused in an interview, appears to say that a European country is in the Western Hemisphere and inadvertently makes highly belligerent statements toward a major ally, that's a big problem.
(ed.note: For more on the Inane On Spain controversy, check out Americablog, where John Aravosis has been on the story all through the day.)
I gave that top billing mostly in the spirit of timeliness - these moments of what a critical observer might tick off as yet another fascinatingly different sign of creeping dementia are adding up, and there will likely be another trumping this one very soon. Far more consequential (assuming you have no problem with the idea of a latent dingbat swatting at imaginary moths as a candidate for president thanks to the solid credentials of his running-mate!) is McSame's stance(s) on the economic melt-down. For this I am turning to Ms. Huffington, whose intriguing "Right is Wrong" I have right here awaiting my attention (she is in line behind at least my current reads: Suskind's "Way of the World," Trimble's "Bargaining for Eden," and Eliz. David's "Mediterranean Food").
Adrianna (if I may so call her) is egging Obama on to put some markers down on economic principles, at least beginning to move away from the absurdedly pro-corporation anti-person deregulation near-pogrom that even Bill could not resist signing up to. I'm not sure O is quite there yet, and that is a big concern.
Watching John McCain thundering against Wall Street greed is like tuning into to the old Lawrence Welk show to find him doing a polka version of a hard-core rap song ("A-one and a-two, motherfucker!").
Speaking yesterday outside an auto plant in Grand Rapids, Michigan, McCain read his populist rhetoric -- "These workers here are the best in the world. They are the backbone and foundation of our economy." -- with a robotic cadence dripping with inauthenticity.
Wall Street is melting down, and McCain and the GOP have no credible response. When your erstwhile economic guru, Phil Gramm -- a man whose 1996 run for the presidency McCain chaired, and who appears to remain influential behind-the-McCain-campaign-scenes -- is Patient Zero of this killer economic epidemic, it's pretty hard to suddenly start channeling Upton Sinclair.
McCain is so clearly clueless on this issue, the current battle over who is best suited to deal with the financial crisis should be a rout. And, so far, Obama has shown not just an incomparably greater grasp of the situation and substantive policies to deal with it, but a real fire in the belly in going after McCain's vulnerable flank.
But for Obama to show the kind of transformational leadership the crisis demands, he needs to do what so many of his critics have chided him for not doing: take a stand that puts him at odds with the establishment of his own party. He did it in 2002 with the war in Iraq. He can do it in 2008 with the economy.
He needs to start by making sure that the economic advisers he turns to extend beyond those he had on a conference call on Monday -- Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers, Laura Tyson, and Paul Volcker. It's great to include graybeards who have been through crises before, but he needs to go beyond the two Treasury Secretaries who were complicit in the 1990s deregulation orgy that has led to so many of the problems we are now seeing. And he needs to make it clear that the Clinton-era Democrats who put the interests of Wall Street ahead of the interests of Main Street are not going to be the primary voices he listens to.
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Speaking at a large rally in Las Vegas on Wednesday, Obama declared: "we can't steer ourselves out of this crisis if we're heading in the same disastrous direction. We can't steer ourselves out of this crisis using the same old map, we can't steer ourselves out of the crisis if the new driver is getting directions from the old driver, and that's what this election is all about."
Bull's-eye. Now he needs to make sure the old drivers in his own party don't have their hands on the wheel -- or are the loudest of his backseat drivers -- as the nation navigates this rocky financial road and charts a new direction.
And, for the record, the music cycling through here as I post has included Ben Harper's "Burn to Shine," the Allman Brothers' Hits, Tracy Chapman's "Telling Stories," and Billy Joel's "The Stranger."
Turning back now to Governor Palin. (I bet you knew we were headed there!)
Anonymous Liberal has some great stuff, taking the pulse of creatures I don't want to share a bus with (though I do):
With the latest round of polls confirming that Obama has recaptured the national lead and that Sarah Palin's favorability rating is sinking rapidly (two developments that I suspect are closely related), the realization that Palin may end up being a liability and not an asset is slowly starting to dawn on conservatives, and it's a sad sight to behold. Take, for example, this distraught post by Jay Nordlinger at the National Review. Nordlinger discusses the kinds of emails he's been getting from NRO readers:
Other readers said that Palin was finished, done: “I see that the polls have dramatically switched in Obama’s favor within just one week. I guess that the Borking — the destruction — of this governor is complete.” Another reader said, “I thought Sarah Palin would be a superstar. Now, she’ll be nothing more than a national joke. The Republicans haven’t fought back. The MSM has won.”
Yes, the MSM has really conspired to bring her down. First, they investigated her background because no one knew anything about her. Then they backed off when Republicans screamed that that it was sexist to ask basic questions about her background and qualifications. Then they effusively praised her convention speech. Then, after she refused to submit to even a single media interview for weeks, they had the temerity to suggest that a Vice Presidential candidate really should be interviewed. Then when one reporter finally got the chance, he asked some basic questions that she didn't answer particularly well. That's quite a conspiracy. But Nordlinger continues:
Then there is continuing amazement over the sheer hatred that Palin has aroused: “I am almost 60 and come from Massachusetts. In all my years, I have never seen anything like this, and don’t want to see it ever again. I have a friend who is both feminist and left-leaning. I asked her why they hate Palin so much. She said, ‘Because she’s had it all: family, career. And she did it without a man like Bill Clinton helping her. She did it on her own.’”
Yeah, that's definitely why left-leaning women don't like her. Because she made it on her own. In all seriousness, that may be the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
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He concludes with this:
I consider myself a very patriotic person, and I have been teased or damned all my life for my pro-American views — particularly in academic settings. But, I’m sorry, this is, in many ways, a sick country.
Boo hoo. People don't like Sarah Palin, and therefore we're a sick country. I wonder, has Nordingler ever listened to the folks on right wing radio talk about Michelle Obama? They hate her, spewing endless vile about how she's some kind of angry anti-American militant. And this entire caricature is based on a few statements taken completely out of context. She too is a "warm, civic-minded, talented mother." For that matter, so is Hillary Clinton, who right-wingers have spent the last 18 years hating passionately. Same goes for Nancy Pelosi and virtually every other female Democratic politician who has been the object of Republican hatred.
But let's return to the subject of Sarah Palin. Is it really so hard to understand why a certain segment of the population is so turned off by her? After all, she introduced herself to the country with a speech that--while well-delivered--was very mean-spirited and filled with cheap shots directed at her opponents (who had been nothing but respectful to her). It was a speech designed to rally the Republican base and, therefore, axiomatically, to piss off the Democratic base. That was the goal. Mission accomplished.
Moreover, Palin has spent her first few weeks in the national spotlight making transparently cynical overtures to Clinton voters (who have nothing in common with her) and repeatedly lying about her own record. People don't like being lied to. Sometimes they even come to despise the people who continue to do so even after their lies have been exposed. This is a very predictable response and hardly evidence that our nation is "sick."
Conservatives really need to get a grip. Palin just isn't the magical savior you thought she would be. Stop whining.
And, for the record, did you hear about Ms. P's decorative talents and creative financing skills (courtesy Talbot at Salon):
Sarah Palin has been touting herself as fiscal watchdog throughout her political career. But Palin's tenure as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, was characterized by waste, cronyism and incompetence, according to government officials in the Matanuska Valley, where she began her fairy-tale political rise.
"Executive abilities? She doesn't have any," said former Wasilla City Council member Nick Carney, who selected and groomed Palin for her first political race in 1992 and served with her after her election to the City Council.
Four years later, the ambitious Palin won the Wasilla mayor's office -- after scorching the "tax and spend mentality" of her incumbent opponent. But Carney, Palin's estranged former mentor, and others in city hall were astounded when they found out about a lavish expenditure of Palin's own after her 1996 election. According to Carney, the newly elected mayor spent more than $50,000 in city funds to redecorate her office, without the council's authorization.
"I thought it was an outrageous expense, especially for someone who had run as a budget cutter," said Carney. "It was also illegal, because Sarah had not received the council's approval."
According to Carney, Palin's office makeover included flocked, red wallpaper. "It looked like a bordello."
Although Carney says he no longer has documentation of the expenditures, in his recollection Palin paid for the office face-lift with money from a city highway fund that was used to plow snow, grade roads and fill potholes -- essential municipal services, particularly in weather-battered Alaska.
Carney confronted Mayor Palin at a City Council hearing, and was shocked by her response.
"I braced her about it," he said. "I told her it was against the law to make such a large expenditure without the council taking a vote. She said, 'I'm the mayor, I can do whatever I want until the courts tell me I can't.'"
"I'll never forget it -- it's one of the few times in my life I've been speechless," Carney added. "It would have been easier for her to finesse it. She had the votes on the council by then, she controlled it. But she just pushed forward. That's Sarah. She just has no respect for rules and regulations."
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As with so many things (bread-baking and love-making are first examples to come to mind), patience can be a virtue. A certain amount of smoke seems to have cleared now. I find Josh's sum-up at Talking Points Memo pretty cogent:
After a day of gasps, guffaws and eyes rolled over John McCain's decision to reassign Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero to run an unnamed country in Latin America, it seems we are arriving at a rough consensus about what happened and what part of it matters.
As I posited earlier today, the most logical conclusion is that McCain simply didn't understand the question and tried to wing it. It may have been due to fatigue, lack of attention, confusion or simply an inability to penetrate the interviewer's fairly thick accent, or perhaps a combination of one or more of the above. It is only if you insist on the preposterous assumption that McCain fully understood and grasped what the interviewer was asking him (i.e., the position of McCain's foreign policy advisor Randy Scheunemann) that you have to conclude that McCain believes that Spain is a country in Latin America which may be bent on America's destruction.
In itself mishearing or misunderstanding a question isn't the worse thing in the world, though being too proud to ask for the question to be repeated and going with the assumption that the mystery leader must be some Hugo Chavez type character out of Woody Allen's Bananas does suggest a certain recklessness of character.
The McCain campaign might simply have said that he was on the phone and didn't understand. But they're obviously unwilling to do that since they've staked so much of his candidacy on his foreign policy chops.
In any case, a consensus appears to be emerging that the really shocking lapse was not the original gaffe but how the campaign chose to deal with it. Rather than copping to the goof, they decided to stick to the nonsensical statements and risk, should McCain win in November, significant damage to our relations with a major NATO ally. Coming to basically similar conclusions are Newsweek, Joe Klein in Time, Chris Orr at The New Republic and many others.
So, to restate, I think the simplest explanation is that McCain didn't understand what he was being asked. And instead of trying to clarify, he assumed the interviewer, who had already asked him about Chavez and Castro, must be quizzing him on some other Latin American strongman who was up to know good. As so often with McCain, he tried to wing it. I think the available evidence is consistent which much less generous readings of the event. But this read is plausible. And Scheunemann, whose lack of experience in press work was painfully on display today, acted with characteristically knuckle-headed aggression and doubled-down on McCain's nonsensical statement.
And whatever the misunderstanding, let's face it. When a president or presidential nominees gets confused in an interview, appears to say that a European country is in the Western Hemisphere and inadvertently makes highly belligerent statements toward a major ally, that's a big problem.
(ed.note: For more on the Inane On Spain controversy, check out Americablog, where John Aravosis has been on the story all through the day.)
I gave that top billing mostly in the spirit of timeliness - these moments of what a critical observer might tick off as yet another fascinatingly different sign of creeping dementia are adding up, and there will likely be another trumping this one very soon. Far more consequential (assuming you have no problem with the idea of a latent dingbat swatting at imaginary moths as a candidate for president thanks to the solid credentials of his running-mate!) is McSame's stance(s) on the economic melt-down. For this I am turning to Ms. Huffington, whose intriguing "Right is Wrong" I have right here awaiting my attention (she is in line behind at least my current reads: Suskind's "Way of the World," Trimble's "Bargaining for Eden," and Eliz. David's "Mediterranean Food").
Adrianna (if I may so call her) is egging Obama on to put some markers down on economic principles, at least beginning to move away from the absurdedly pro-corporation anti-person deregulation near-pogrom that even Bill could not resist signing up to. I'm not sure O is quite there yet, and that is a big concern.
Watching John McCain thundering against Wall Street greed is like tuning into to the old Lawrence Welk show to find him doing a polka version of a hard-core rap song ("A-one and a-two, motherfucker!").
Speaking yesterday outside an auto plant in Grand Rapids, Michigan, McCain read his populist rhetoric -- "These workers here are the best in the world. They are the backbone and foundation of our economy." -- with a robotic cadence dripping with inauthenticity.
Wall Street is melting down, and McCain and the GOP have no credible response. When your erstwhile economic guru, Phil Gramm -- a man whose 1996 run for the presidency McCain chaired, and who appears to remain influential behind-the-McCain-campaign-scenes -- is Patient Zero of this killer economic epidemic, it's pretty hard to suddenly start channeling Upton Sinclair.
McCain is so clearly clueless on this issue, the current battle over who is best suited to deal with the financial crisis should be a rout. And, so far, Obama has shown not just an incomparably greater grasp of the situation and substantive policies to deal with it, but a real fire in the belly in going after McCain's vulnerable flank.
But for Obama to show the kind of transformational leadership the crisis demands, he needs to do what so many of his critics have chided him for not doing: take a stand that puts him at odds with the establishment of his own party. He did it in 2002 with the war in Iraq. He can do it in 2008 with the economy.
He needs to start by making sure that the economic advisers he turns to extend beyond those he had on a conference call on Monday -- Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers, Laura Tyson, and Paul Volcker. It's great to include graybeards who have been through crises before, but he needs to go beyond the two Treasury Secretaries who were complicit in the 1990s deregulation orgy that has led to so many of the problems we are now seeing. And he needs to make it clear that the Clinton-era Democrats who put the interests of Wall Street ahead of the interests of Main Street are not going to be the primary voices he listens to.
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Speaking at a large rally in Las Vegas on Wednesday, Obama declared: "we can't steer ourselves out of this crisis if we're heading in the same disastrous direction. We can't steer ourselves out of this crisis using the same old map, we can't steer ourselves out of the crisis if the new driver is getting directions from the old driver, and that's what this election is all about."
Bull's-eye. Now he needs to make sure the old drivers in his own party don't have their hands on the wheel -- or are the loudest of his backseat drivers -- as the nation navigates this rocky financial road and charts a new direction.
And, for the record, the music cycling through here as I post has included Ben Harper's "Burn to Shine," the Allman Brothers' Hits, Tracy Chapman's "Telling Stories," and Billy Joel's "The Stranger."
Turning back now to Governor Palin. (I bet you knew we were headed there!)
Anonymous Liberal has some great stuff, taking the pulse of creatures I don't want to share a bus with (though I do):
With the latest round of polls confirming that Obama has recaptured the national lead and that Sarah Palin's favorability rating is sinking rapidly (two developments that I suspect are closely related), the realization that Palin may end up being a liability and not an asset is slowly starting to dawn on conservatives, and it's a sad sight to behold. Take, for example, this distraught post by Jay Nordlinger at the National Review. Nordlinger discusses the kinds of emails he's been getting from NRO readers:
Other readers said that Palin was finished, done: “I see that the polls have dramatically switched in Obama’s favor within just one week. I guess that the Borking — the destruction — of this governor is complete.” Another reader said, “I thought Sarah Palin would be a superstar. Now, she’ll be nothing more than a national joke. The Republicans haven’t fought back. The MSM has won.”
Yes, the MSM has really conspired to bring her down. First, they investigated her background because no one knew anything about her. Then they backed off when Republicans screamed that that it was sexist to ask basic questions about her background and qualifications. Then they effusively praised her convention speech. Then, after she refused to submit to even a single media interview for weeks, they had the temerity to suggest that a Vice Presidential candidate really should be interviewed. Then when one reporter finally got the chance, he asked some basic questions that she didn't answer particularly well. That's quite a conspiracy. But Nordlinger continues:
Then there is continuing amazement over the sheer hatred that Palin has aroused: “I am almost 60 and come from Massachusetts. In all my years, I have never seen anything like this, and don’t want to see it ever again. I have a friend who is both feminist and left-leaning. I asked her why they hate Palin so much. She said, ‘Because she’s had it all: family, career. And she did it without a man like Bill Clinton helping her. She did it on her own.’”
Yeah, that's definitely why left-leaning women don't like her. Because she made it on her own. In all seriousness, that may be the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
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He concludes with this:
I consider myself a very patriotic person, and I have been teased or damned all my life for my pro-American views — particularly in academic settings. But, I’m sorry, this is, in many ways, a sick country.
Boo hoo. People don't like Sarah Palin, and therefore we're a sick country. I wonder, has Nordingler ever listened to the folks on right wing radio talk about Michelle Obama? They hate her, spewing endless vile about how she's some kind of angry anti-American militant. And this entire caricature is based on a few statements taken completely out of context. She too is a "warm, civic-minded, talented mother." For that matter, so is Hillary Clinton, who right-wingers have spent the last 18 years hating passionately. Same goes for Nancy Pelosi and virtually every other female Democratic politician who has been the object of Republican hatred.
But let's return to the subject of Sarah Palin. Is it really so hard to understand why a certain segment of the population is so turned off by her? After all, she introduced herself to the country with a speech that--while well-delivered--was very mean-spirited and filled with cheap shots directed at her opponents (who had been nothing but respectful to her). It was a speech designed to rally the Republican base and, therefore, axiomatically, to piss off the Democratic base. That was the goal. Mission accomplished.
Moreover, Palin has spent her first few weeks in the national spotlight making transparently cynical overtures to Clinton voters (who have nothing in common with her) and repeatedly lying about her own record. People don't like being lied to. Sometimes they even come to despise the people who continue to do so even after their lies have been exposed. This is a very predictable response and hardly evidence that our nation is "sick."
Conservatives really need to get a grip. Palin just isn't the magical savior you thought she would be. Stop whining.
And, for the record, did you hear about Ms. P's decorative talents and creative financing skills (courtesy Talbot at Salon):
Sarah Palin has been touting herself as fiscal watchdog throughout her political career. But Palin's tenure as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, was characterized by waste, cronyism and incompetence, according to government officials in the Matanuska Valley, where she began her fairy-tale political rise.
"Executive abilities? She doesn't have any," said former Wasilla City Council member Nick Carney, who selected and groomed Palin for her first political race in 1992 and served with her after her election to the City Council.
Four years later, the ambitious Palin won the Wasilla mayor's office -- after scorching the "tax and spend mentality" of her incumbent opponent. But Carney, Palin's estranged former mentor, and others in city hall were astounded when they found out about a lavish expenditure of Palin's own after her 1996 election. According to Carney, the newly elected mayor spent more than $50,000 in city funds to redecorate her office, without the council's authorization.
"I thought it was an outrageous expense, especially for someone who had run as a budget cutter," said Carney. "It was also illegal, because Sarah had not received the council's approval."
According to Carney, Palin's office makeover included flocked, red wallpaper. "It looked like a bordello."
Although Carney says he no longer has documentation of the expenditures, in his recollection Palin paid for the office face-lift with money from a city highway fund that was used to plow snow, grade roads and fill potholes -- essential municipal services, particularly in weather-battered Alaska.
Carney confronted Mayor Palin at a City Council hearing, and was shocked by her response.
"I braced her about it," he said. "I told her it was against the law to make such a large expenditure without the council taking a vote. She said, 'I'm the mayor, I can do whatever I want until the courts tell me I can't.'"
"I'll never forget it -- it's one of the few times in my life I've been speechless," Carney added. "It would have been easier for her to finesse it. She had the votes on the council by then, she controlled it. But she just pushed forward. That's Sarah. She just has no respect for rules and regulations."
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posted by Sir Gumbo at 11:09 PM
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