Barack Hussein Obama was elected the 44th president of the United States on Tuesday, sweeping away the last racial barrier in American politics with ease as the country chose him as its first black chief executive.
The election of Mr. Obama amounted to a national catharsis — a repudiation of a historically unpopular Republican president and his economic and foreign policies, and an embrace of Mr. Obama’s call for a change in the direction and the tone of the country.
But it was just as much a strikingly symbolic moment in the evolution of the nation’s fraught racial history, a breakthrough that would have seemed unthinkable just two years ago.
Mr. Obama, 47, a first-term senator from Illinois, defeated Senator John McCain of Arizona, 72, a former prisoner of war who was making his second bid for the presidency.
To the very end, Mr. McCain’s campaign was eclipsed by an opponent who was nothing short of a phenomenon, drawing huge crowds epitomized by the tens of thousands of people who turned out to hear Mr. Obama’s victory speech in Grant Park in Chicago.
Mr. McCain also fought the headwinds of a relentlessly hostile political environment, weighted down with the baggage left to him by President Bush and an economic collapse that took place in the middle of the general election campaign.“If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer,” said Mr. Obama, standing before a huge wooden lectern with a row of American flags at his back, casting his eyes to a crowd that stretched far into the Chicago night.
“It’s been a long time coming,” the president-elect added, “but tonight, because of what we did on this date in this election at this defining moment, change has come to America.”
The focus shifted quickly on Wednesday to the daunting challenges facing the president-elect, with his supporters offering sober reflections of what lies ahead.
“We’re in deep trouble,” said Rep. John Lewis, a Georgia Democrat and leader in the civil rights movement, on NBC’s Today show.
“We’ve got to get our economy out of the ditch, end the war in Iraq and bring our young men and women home, provide health care for all our citizens,” Lewis said. “And he’s going to call on us, I believe, to sacrifice. We all must give up something.”
Mr. McCain delivered his concession speech under clear skies on the lush lawn of the Arizona Biltmore, in Phoenix, where he and his wife had held their wedding reception. The crowd reacted with scattered boos as he offered his congratulations to Mr. Obama and saluted the historical significance of the moment.
“This is a historic election, and I recognize the significance it has for African-Americans and for the special pride that must be theirs tonight,” Mr. McCain said, adding, “We both realize that we have come a long way from the injustices that once stained our nation’s reputation.”
Not only did Mr. Obama capture the presidency, but he led his party to sharp gains in Congress. This puts Democrats in control of the House, the Senate and the White House for the first time since 1995, when Bill Clinton was in office.
The day shimmered with history as voters began lining up before dawn, hours before polls opened, to take part in the culmination of a campaign that over the course of two years commanded an extraordinary amount of attention from the American public.
As the returns became known, and Mr. Obama passed milestone after milestone —Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Iowa and New Mexico — people rolled spontaneously into the streets to celebrate what many described, with perhaps overstated if understandable exhilaration, a new era in a country where just 143 years ago, Mr. Obama, as a black man, could have been owned as a slave.
For Republicans, especially the conservatives who have dominated the party for nearly three decades, the night represented a bitter setback and left them contemplating where they now stand in American politics.
Mr. Obama and his expanded Democratic majority on Capitol Hill now face the task of governing the country through a difficult period: the likelihood of a deep and prolonged recession, and two wars. He took note of those circumstances in a speech that was notable for its sobriety and its absence of the triumphalism that he might understandably have displayed on a night when he won an Electoral College landslide.
“The road ahead will be long, our climb will be steep,” said Mr. Obama, his audience hushed and attentive, with some, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson, wiping tears from their eyes. “We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you, we as a people will get there.” The roster of defeated Republicans included some notable party moderates, like Senator John E. Sununu of New Hampshire and Representative Christopher Shays of Connecticut, and signaled that the Republican conference convening early next year in Washington will be not only smaller but more conservative.
Mr. Obama will come into office after an election in which he laid out a number of clear promises: to cut taxes for most Americans, to get the United States out of Iraq in a fast and orderly fashion, and to expand health care.
In a recognition of the difficult transition he faces, given the economic crisis, Mr. Obama is expected to begin filling White House jobs as early as this week.
Mr. Obama defeated Mr. McCain in Ohio, a central battleground in American politics, despite a huge effort that brought Mr. McCain and his running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, back there repeatedly. Mr. Obama had lost the state decisively to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York in the Democratic primary.
Mr. McCain failed to take from Mr. Obama the two Democratic states that were at the top of his target list: New Hampshire and Pennsylvania. Mr. Obama also held on to Minnesota, the state that played host to the convention that nominated Mr. McCain; Wisconsin; and Michigan, a state Mr. McCain once had in his sights.
The apparent breadth of Mr. Obama’s sweep left Republicans sobered, and his showing in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania stood out because officials in both parties had said that his struggles there in the primary campaign reflected the resistance of blue-collar voters to supporting a black candidate.
“I always thought there was a potential prejudice factor in the state,” Senator Bob Casey, a Democrat of Pennsylvania who was an early Obama supporter, told reporters in Chicago. “I hope this means we washed that away.”
Mr. McCain called Mr. Obama at 10 p.m., Central time, to offer his congratulations. In the call, Mr. Obama said he was eager to sit down and talk; in his concession speech, Mr. McCain said he was ready to help Mr. Obama work through difficult times.
“I need your help,” Mr. Obama told his rival, according to an Obama adviser, Robert Gibbs. “You’re a leader on so many important issues.”
Mr. Bush called Mr. Obama shortly after 10 p.m. to congratulate him on his victory.
“I promise to make this a smooth transition,” the president said to Mr. Obama, according to a transcript provided by the White House .”You are about to go on one of the great journeys of life. Congratulations, and go enjoy yourself.”
For most Americans, the news of Mr. Obama’s election came at 11 p.m., Eastern time, when the networks, waiting for the close of polls in California, declared him the victor. A roar sounded from the 125,000 people gathered in Hutchison Field in Grant Park at the moment that they learned Mr. Obama had been projected the winner.
The scene in Phoenix was decidedly more sour. At several points, Mr. McCain, unsmiling, had to motion his crowd to quiet down — he held out both hands, palms down — when they responded to his words of tribute to Mr. Obama with boos.
Mr. Obama, who watched Mr. McCain’s speech from his hotel room in Chicago, offered a hand to voters who had not supported him in this election, when he took the stage 15 minutes later. “To those Americans whose support I have yet to earn,” he said, “I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your president, too.”
Initial signs were that Mr. Obama benefited from a huge turnout of voters, but particularly among blacks. That group made up 13 percent of the electorate, according to surveys of people leaving the polls, compared with 11 percent in 2006.
In North Carolina, Republicans said that the huge surge of African-Americans was one of the big factors that led to Senator Elizabeth Dole, a Republican, losing her re-election bid.
Mr. Obama also did strikingly well among Hispanic voters; Mr. McCain did worse among those voters than Mr. Bush did in 2004. That suggests the damage the Republican Party has suffered among those voters over four years in which Republicans have been at the forefront on the effort to crack down on illegal immigrants.
The election ended what by any definition was one of the most remarkable contests in American political history, drawing what was by every appearance unparalleled public interest.
Throughout the day, people lined up at the polls for hours — some showing up before dawn — to cast their votes. Aides to both campaigns said that anecdotal evidence suggested record-high voter turnout.
Reflecting the intensity of the two candidates, Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama took a page from what Mr. Bush did in 2004 and continued to campaign after the polls opened.
Mr. McCain left his home in Arizona after voting early Tuesday to fly to Colorado and New Mexico, two states where Mr. Bush won four years ago but where Mr. Obama waged a spirited battle.
These were symbolically appropriate final campaign stops for Mr. McCain, reflecting the imperative he felt of trying to defend Republican states against a challenge from Mr. Obama.
“Get out there and vote,” Mr. McCain said in Grand Junction, Colo. “I need your help. Volunteer, knock on doors, get your neighbors to the polls, drag them there if you need to.”
By contrast, Mr. Obama flew from his home in Chicago to Indiana, a state that in many ways came to epitomize the audacity of his effort this year. Indiana has not voted for a Democrat since President Lyndon B. Johnson’s landslide victory in 1964, and Mr. Obama made an intense bid for support there. He later returned home to Chicago play basketball, his election-day ritual.
Elisabeth Bumiller contributed reporting from Phoenix, Marjorie Connelly from New York and Jeff Zeleny from Chicago.
Yes, she won the debate by not imploding. But governing requires knowledge, and mindless populism is just that—mindless.
The question, the McCain campaign later acknowledged, was a fair one. In one of her sit-downs with Katie Couric of CBS News, Sarah Palin was asked to discuss a Supreme Court decision with which she disagreed. "Well, let's see," Palin replied, pausing. "There's, of course in the great history of America there have been rulings, that's never going to be absolute consensus by every American. And there are those issues, again, like Roe v. Wade, where I believe are best held on a state level and addressed there. So you know, going through the history of America, there would be others but …" Couric followed up: "Can you think of any?" Palin, still pondering, said: "Well, I could think of … any again, that could be best dealt with on a more local level. Maybe I would take issue with. But, you know, as mayor, and then as governor and even as a vice president, if I'm so privileged to serve, wouldn't be in a position of changing those things but in supporting the law of the land as it reads today." Asked about the exchange afterward, a McCain adviser who didn't want to be named talking about a sensitive matter said the question was fair, but added: "I wonder how many Americans would be able to name decisions they disagree with. The court is very important, but Palin is on the ticket because she connects with everyday Americans."
Palin is on the ticket because she connects with everyday Americans. It is not shocking to learn that politics played a big role in the making of a presidential team (ticket-balancing to attract different constituencies has been with us at least since Andrew Jackson ran with John C. Calhoun, a man he later said he would like to kill). But that honest explanation of the rationale for her candidacy—not her preparedness for office, but her personality and nascent maverickism in Alaska—raises an important question, not only about this election but about democratic leadership. Do we want leaders who are everyday folks, or do we want leaders who understand everyday folks? Therein lies an enormous difference, one that could decide the presidential election and, if McCain and Palin were to win, shape the governance of the nation.
In an interview before her debate with Sen. Joseph R. Biden, Palin offered a revealing answer to radio host Hugh Hewitt. "Governor, your candidacy has ignited extreme hostility, even some hatred on the left and in some parts of the media," Hewitt said. "Are you surprised? And what do you attribute this reaction to?"
On the phone from McCain's retreat in Sedona, Palin replied: "I think they're just not used to someone coming in from the outside saying, 'You know what? It's time that normal Joe Six-Pack American is finally represented in the position of vice presidency.' I think that that's kind of taken some people off guard, and they're out of sorts, and they're ticked off about it, but it's motivation for John McCain and I to work that much harder to make sure that our ticket is victorious, and we put government back on the side of the people of Joe Six-Pack like me, and we start doing those things that are expected of our government, and we get rid of corruption, and we commit to the reform that is not only desired, but is deserved by Americans." This is, presumably, good politics: it makes a strength out of a weakness, always a shrewd tactic.
A key argument for Palin, in essence, is this: Washington and Wall Street are serving their own interests rather than those of the broad whole of the country, and the moment requires a vice president who will, Cincinnatus-like, help a new president come to the rescue. The problem with the argument is that Cincinnatus knew things. Palin sometimes seems an odd combination of Chauncey Gardiner from "Being There" and Marge from "Fargo."
Is this an elitist point of view? Perhaps, though it seems only reasonable and patriotic to hold candidates for high office to high standards. Elitism in this sense is not about educational or class credentials, not about where you went to school or whether you use "summer" as a verb. It is, rather, about the pursuit of excellence no matter where you started out in life. Jackson, Lincoln, Truman, Eisenhower, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan and Clinton were born to ordinary families, but they spent their lives doing extraordinary things, demonstrating an interest in, and a curiosity about, the world around them. This is much less evident in Palin's case.
John McCain is a man of accomplishment and curiosity, of wide and deep reading, travel and experience. He is smart without being a snob. He has authored legislation and books. He is a man of parts—the kind of figure whom one could effortlessly imagine being president. Are there many politically attuned people in America now who can honestly say the same thing of Sarah Palin? That they can effortlessly envision President Palin in the Oval Office, ready on day one to manage a market meltdown or a terror attack? Whether one agrees or disagrees with his politics, there is no arguing that McCain is qualified to be president of the United States. But there is plenty of argument about Palin's qualifications. Why should we apply a different standard to the vice president who would stand to succeed him?
Even devoted Republicans doubt whether the Sarah Six-Pack case is the best one to make. After the vice presidential debate, a senior figure in the party, who asked not to be named because he was telling the truth, told me that Palin should talk less about being "just-folks" and more about being governor of a large state.
We have been here before. In 1970 a Nebraska senator, Roman L. Hruska, was defending Richard Nixon's nomination of U.S. circuit Judge G. Harrold Carswell to the Supreme Court. An underwhelming figure, Carswell was facing criticism that he was too "mediocre" for elevation. Hruska tried an interesting counterargument: "Even if he were mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren't they, and a little chance? We can't have all Brandeises, Frankfurters and Cardozos." Fair enough, but it still seems sensible to aspire to surpass mediocrity rather than embrace it.
The capacity of the common man (and now woman) to serve in government is the subject of ancient debate. The philosophers Robert Dale Owen and Jeremy Bentham believed in the principle of rotation in office—the idea that citizens could do the work of government for a time, then return to private life—and Andrew Jackson, in the beginning of the modern democratic era, spoke in similar terms about the federal government: "The duties of all public officers are, or at least admit to being made, so plain and simple that men of intelligence may readily qualify themselves for their performance." But Jackson was thinking about postmasters, not presidents.
We have had terrific presidents and vice presidents from humble backgrounds, and we have had terrible presidents and vice presidents from privileged ones. The unease with Palin is not class-based. It is empirically based. She is a rising political star, a young woman—she is only 44—who has done extraordinary things. It takes guts to offer oneself for election, and to serve. It is far easier to throw spitballs from the stands than it is to seek and hold office. She is a governor, and she has the courage to go into the arena. For that she should be honored and respected. If she were seeking a Senate seat, or being nominated for a cabinet post—secretary of energy, say, or interior—the conversation about her would be totally different.
But she is not seeking a Senate seat, nor is she being nominated for a cabinet post, and so it is only prudent to ask whether she is in fact someone who should be president of the United States in the event of disaster. She may be ready in a year or two, but disaster does not coordinate its calendar with ours. Would we muddle through if Palin were to become president? Yes, we would, but it is worth asking whether we should have to.
What do we know about Palin after, as she put it with a wink, "like, five weeks"? That she can be a superb political performer (she held her own against Biden, projecting an image of warmth and toughness) and she can be a poor one (too many questions in the debate went completely unanswered, and the Couric interview is full of moments no candidate would like to have out there). But that is only human. Everyone has good days and bad days. Her syntax is sometimes a world unto itself. But George H.W. Bush occasionally sounded as though English were more foe than friend, and he was an astute president who managed complexity with skill and balance. The arsenal of folksy phrases—"doggone it," "you betcha"—grates on some, but seems just great to others.
The story of Palin's brief national career helps explain her uneven performances. She had virtually no time to prepare, and has had virtually no time since. Her star turn began quickly, and mysteriously. When Nicolle Wallace and Matthew Scully, two former Bush aides who now work for McCain, showed up at a dingy Ohio hotel in late August to meet the new running mate, they had no idea who might be waiting for them. Just a day before, Wallace had been in a dentist's chair in New York, getting a root canal, when Steve Schmidt, McCain's top strategist, summoned her to Ohio. She tried to say no, but her dentist, a McCain fan, insisted she could make it, giving her a prescription for Vicodin to numb the pain. The next morning, dazed by the meds, Wallace arrived in Cincinnati and drove with Scully to Middletown, Ohio, where McCain's VP was holed up until the big announcement the following day.
As Wallace and Scully drove up, they were met outside by Schmidt and Mark Salter, McCain's longtime aide and speechwriter. Schmidt escorted the two upstairs, where he dramatically paused before a closed door. "You're No. 7 and 8," Schmidt said, referring to the number of people who were privy to McCain's choice. As the door opened, a woman rose to greet them, shaking their hands enthusiastically. Scully and Wallace, still numb from her procedure, smiled and introduced themselves. The woman, Sarah Palin, looked very familiar, but, as both later recounted to other McCain aides, they did not immediately know who she was. (McCain loves this story, relishing the success of his bid to keep the selection process secret.)
When she shook their hands, the governor of Alaska was already in the surreal bubble of a modern presidential campaign, an odd ethos in which one is rarely alone and yet often lonely. Remembering how John Edwards had brought his own staff to the ticket with John Kerry in 2004, creating immediate and lasting tensions, the McCain camp wanted to exert complete control over their running mate. Schmidt and others assembled a team of well-known Republican hands for the veep squad. The campaign pointedly did not hire anyone from Palinworld.
The governor, meanwhile, is only a recent visitor to McCainworld. After the announcement in Dayton, the Friday before the convention in St. Paul, aides gave her thick binders full of policies and arranged sit-downs with some of McCain's top advisers, including Randy Scheunemann, Doug Holtz-Eakin and Sens. Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham. On the day she was nominated, Palin, joining McCain on a bus tour, was given reading material: every policy speech McCain has given in this campaign.
Some who know her from Alaska suggest that Palin is a deft crammer, and her performance against Biden supports that. Larry Persily, a former Anchorage Daily News editorial-page editor, left the newspaper in May 2007 and worked as an associate director in Palin's Washington, D.C., office until June 2008. He says he left on good terms—Palin offered him another job when he resigned—but he believes she is not qualified to be vice president and is speaking out for that reason. He describes Palin as an easily distracted manager. "Her preppings [briefings] were accentuated by the brevity of them. She's not going to pore over briefing books and charts and white papers and reports for hours and hours. She knows how to connect with people, and it's like, 'Give me bullet points and I'll run with it' … I don't think she had trouble focusing. She didn't have an interest in focusing."
Her isolation in recent weeks has taken a toll, and she has been hungry for company. It has been difficult for Palin to be isolated from her friends not only by distance, but also electronically. Palin's Yahoo account was hacked into in mid-September and messages between her and friends were posted online. (In one such message, a colleague tells Palin not to let the negative press get to her.) Wasilla friend Kristan Cole says that in the initial days after Palin was picked she regularly communicated with Palin via e-mail. That stopped after the hacking incident. The women have always talked electronically. "You can do it on the go and respond at 2 o'clock in the morning, and with all the time changes that was the best way to communicate." Since Palin's account was hacked into, Cole has not sent her a single e-mail or received one from her. "I'm more gun-shy, because when you've had the relationship we have had—my son was in a critical car accident, and working through all that and her family and Trig—it's made me hesitant to say anything very personal [via e-mail], and that's sad."
A turning point came last week, when Kris Perry returned to Palin's immediate orbit. Perry, who worked as her scheduler, was stuck in Anchorage for the past month, waiting to see if she would be deposed in the ongoing "Troopergate" investigation. Only on the Friday before the Thursday debate, after a delay in the investigation, did Perry feel able to leave town and fly south. (Troopergate could make headlines again this Friday, when a special counsel is due to issue his report on the matter.) It was Perry who helped Palin relax and regain her footing prior to last Thursday night's debate.
Sealing Palin off from Perry, whom she met when both were in the hospital giving birth to their children six years ago (in Palin's case it was her fourth, daughter Piper), was a mistake, say those in Palinworld. Next to Todd, says one former aide who did not want to be named discussing sensitive personnel matters, Perry was the person most responsible for "creating a sense of peace around Sarah." Despite recent media reports of a wild temper, those who know Palin say she is more prone to anxiety and frantic overdrive than tantrums. "She's the world's worst multitasker," says the aide. "She'll have a cell phone in one hand, the BlackBerry in the other while she is reading two position papers. You have to tell her prior to the debate, 'Put that down, breathe deep.' They [the McCain staff] are not going to know that."
What Palin knows, and what the country knows about her, is an issue for the next few weeks. Barack Obama is not the Messiah, and Biden is no Simon Peter, but it stretches credulity to say that Obama is no more qualified to be president than Palin is. Though you may prefer McCain-Palin to Obama-Biden, there is not the same threshold question about the Democrats that is now being asked about Palin.
Sitting with her for part of the Couric interview, McCain implicitly compared Palin to Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan, saying that they, too, had been caricatured and dismissed by mainstream voices. The linkages are untenable. For all of his manifold sins, Clinton was a longtime governor, and George H.W. Bush's attacks on his qualifications failed for a reason: people may not have respected Clinton's character, but they did not doubt the quality of his mind. A successful two-term governor of California, Reagan had spent decades immersed in politics (of both the left and the right) before running for president. He did like to call himself a citizen-politician, and Lord knows he had an occasionally ambiguous relationship with facts, but he was a serious man who had spent a great deal of time thinking about the central issues of the age. To put it kindly, Palin, however promising a governor she is, has not done similar work.
I could be wrong. Perhaps Sarah Palin will somehow emerge from the hurly-burly of history as a transformative figure who was underestimated in her time by journalists who could not see, or refused to acknowledge, her virtues. But do I think I am right in saying that Palin's populist view of high office—hey, Vice President Six-Pack, what should we do about Pakistan?—is dangerous? You betcha.
With Holly Bailey, Karen Breslau, Suzanne Smalley, Michael Isikoff and Sarah Kliff
Posted Oct 8th 2008 3:21PM by TMZ Staff
Gotta give her points for trying to go green with her ECO friendly canvas bag -- although the tag line, "Real Women Hunt Moose" could use some work.
Guess when it comes to certain sneaky, and notoriously vicious animals, nothing makes a woman feel more alive than a well-placed bullet between the old antlers. So much for the PETA vote.
McCain’s Health Plan Puts at Least 56 Million People with Chronic Disease at Risk of Losing Health Coverage
Center for American Progress Action Fund
americanprogressaction.orgBy Jeanne LambrewApril 29, 2008The health plan proposed by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) would, by design, replace employer-based health insurance with individual-market insurance—a concern for people with chronic disease. Employers do not charge workers or their families different premiums based on their age, gender, health status, or health history. They also offer equal benefits and choices of plans. The individual market, however, plays by different rules. Individual insurers in most states can exclude people with pre-existing conditions directly by denying them coverage or indirectly by charging them exorbitant premiums.1This could be remedied with stronger rules for insurers—but the McCain plan moves in the opposite direction. It would allow insurers to play by the rules in any state—including the one that has the least protection for people with chronic diseases.According to an analysis of the National Health Interview Survey, 56 million non-elderly adults with employer-sponsor health insurance have at least one of 12 chronic illnesses.2This does not count chronically ill children with employer coverage who would also be at risk of losing coverage under the McCain plan. Employers insure 62 percent of all adults with chronic illness, including (note: numbers add to more than 56 million because some individuals have multiple diseases):21.2 million with hypertension18.5 million with arthritis7.8 million with asthma6.3 million with diabetes5.5 million with cancer4.5 million who experience disruptive anxiety or depression
If these Americans were to lose health coverage through employers, they might not be able to regain it. Research has shown that over 70 percent of individuals in poor health found it very difficult or impossible to find affordable, individual-market coverage.3Compared to people in excellent health, premiums in the individual market are 43 to 50 percent higher for people with major health problems.4Providing extra tax credits for high-risk people, as McCain has proposed, would reduce, but not eliminate, this problem. In short, the McCain plan may make it harder to get health insurance for people who need it the most.
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Data analysis by Katherine N. Arnold.Endotes1. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) offers continuously-insured individuals losing group insurance with guaranteed access to the individual market or a high-risk pool. But because this guarantee is not linked to limits on the premiums that can be charged, the law has not achieved effective access to individual-market insurance for people with pre-existing condition exclusions.2. These conditions include: heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, cancer, stroke, emphysema, hypertension, asthma, bronchitis, liver condition, severe migraines, and anxiety/depression. This definition was used in a recent report by the Urban Institute and University of Maryland at Baltimore County, “Uninsured Americans with Chronic Health Conditions: Key Findings from the National Health Interview Survey.” (Princeton, NJ: The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 2005). Percentages were applied to Census Bureau population estimates for 2006.3. S. Collins et al., “Squeezed: Why Rising Exposure to Health Care Costs Threatens the Health and Financial Well-Being of American Families” (New York: The Commonwealth Fund, 2006).4. J. Hadley and J.D. Reschovsky, “Health and the Cost of Non-Group Insurance,” Inquiry, 40 (3) (2003): 235-53..
Associated Press
Wed Oct 1, 12:47 AM ET
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin portrayed herself Tuesday as a champion of everyday people while noting her family's stock portfolio took a $20,000 hit last week.
"It's time that normal Joe Six-pack American is finally represented in the position of vice presidency," the Republican vice presidential candidate told radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt.
Palin said if she and John McCain win, they will "put government back on the side of the people of Joe Six-pack like me."
Palin said she and her husband, Todd, have been affected by the economic downturn.
"I know what Americans are going through," she said a day after a record 778-point plunge on Wall Street. "Todd and I, heck, we're going through that right now even as we speak, which may put me again kind of on the outs of those Washington elite who don't like the idea of just an everyday, working-class American running for such an office."
Palin makes $125,000 yearly as governor, and her husband makes about $90,000 a year combined from his commercial fishing business and his part-time job as a production operator on the North Slope.
Palin said her husband's 401(k) retirement account lost probably $20,000 in the last week as the market dropped.
According to the most recent state financial disclosure forms, filed March 10, 2008, the Palins had about $164,699 in a private investment account and $198,102 in a separate retirement account.
"The relatively low number of investments that we have, looking at the hit that we're taking, probably $20,000 last week in his 401(k) plan that was hit. I'm thinking, geez, the rest of America, they're facing the exact same thing that we are," she said.
Palin was asked to clarify why things are tight for her family.
"It's just the great financial crisis that America is in, as our savings accounts also, and a 401(k), they're being hit," she said.
She didn't explain how her savings account was being affected.
Estimable Newsweek columnist Fareed Zakaria has jumped on the pile:
Can we now admit the obvious? Sarah Palin is utterly unqualified to be vice president. She is a feisty, charismatic politician who has done some good things in Alaska. But she has never spent a day thinking about any important national or international issue, and this is a hell of a time to start. ...In these times, for John McCain to have chosen this person to be his running mate is fundamentally irresponsible. McCain says that he always puts country first. In this important case, it is simply not true.
Zakaria was piqued, as so many have been, by Palin's flabbergasting performance in an interview with Katie Couric last week, an interview in which she gave such rambling, dim-witted responses to predictable questions that "Saturday Night Live" lifted whole hunks of actual transcript verbatim and inserted them into a parody sketch over the weekend.
Syndicated liberal radio talk-show host Ed Schultz (heard locally from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on WCPT AM 820) has been saying this:
Capitol Hill sources are telling me that senior McCain people are more than concerned about Palin. The campaign has held a mock debate and a mock press conference; both are being described as "disastrous." One senior McCain aide was quoted as saying, "What are we going to do?" The McCain people want to move this first debate to some later, undetermined date, possibly never. People on the inside are saying the Alaska Governor is "clueless." (From his Web site)
All of which makes me wonder: Is it possible that the Couric interview -- so much worse, even, than Palin's unimpressive interview with Charlie Gibson -- and the supposed leaks to Ed Schultz are part of an audacious attempt to lower the bar down to floor for Palin in her debate Thursday with Democratic vice-presidential candidate Joe Biden?
Yes, lowering the bar for one's own candidate is a time-honored political tactic (or is it a strategy?).
Our candidate doesn't really shine in the debate format, whereas our opponent is a veritable forensic champion. Yet we will do our humble best.
This positions your candidate to "win" the debate simply by exceeding expectations.
And it's fair to say that expectations for Palin almost couldn't be lower. Her ditzy ramblings have reinforced the image of her as a sparkly naif that the late-night comics have seized on:
John McCain wants to suspend his debate with Barack Obama until the economic crisis is over. And Sarah Palin wants to suspend her debate with Joe Biden until she can find Europe on a map.....Jay Leno
Similarly bar-lowering was the campaign's decision (tactic? strategy?) to keep Palin under wraps after Friday night's debate instead of coming forward, as Joe Biden did, to speak to reporters and declare victory for the running mate.
So now Palin doesn't have to do better than Joe Biden on Thursday night to "win." She just has to do better than Miss South Carolina did in the Miss Teen USA pageant in 2007. Which, of course, she will.
Won't she?
UPDATE -- I'm going out on a limb here and predicting, at 3 p.m. Monday, that Thursday's debate will not go on as scheduled, and that this will be the result of some annoucement or decision from the McCain camp. Palin will cite a need to return to Alaska to help the state cope with the economic crisis or she will say it's inappropriate to have such a debate when things are so up in the air or she will be ill or she will withdraw from the race to spend more time with her family. Feel free to come back here and taunt me Thursday night when I'm proven wrong.
UPDATE TWO-- Poor, poor victimized Sarah Palin: A Voter Asks A Question, And It's "Gotcha Journalism"
ONLINE:• `If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself.' (re. Kathleen Parker column) • Palin's foreign policy chops
James Wolcott on the lowered bar:
It's the conservative men who are now the most condescending to Palin, treating her gaffes and knowledge gaps as trifles because she brings something fresh and telegenic to the ticket. Today on Chris Matthews, David Brooks, setting the bar so low for Palin a cricket could hop it, lamely defended her as "smart" and said that if she improved in her debate with Biden, she might rise to the level of "mediocre," the shruggy wave of his hands indicating that mediocre was enough to pass muster with him. Over at NRO, that little scamp Mark Steyn, echoing the cry of Let Sarah Be Sarah, conceded that Palin Unfiltered might be Malaprop City, but what the hey:All Governor Palin should insist on...is that every interview be live. And, if they're all disasters, they'll wind up like Biden's gaffes or Clinton's adulteries. As Stalin remarked in another context, one is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.Not the choicest analogy.
It's the conservative men who are now the most condescending to Palin, treating her gaffes and knowledge gaps as trifles because she brings something fresh and telegenic to the ticket. Today on Chris Matthews, David Brooks, setting the bar so low for Palin a cricket could hop it, lamely defended her as "smart" and said that if she improved in her debate with Biden, she might rise to the level of "mediocre," the shruggy wave of his hands indicating that mediocre was enough to pass muster with him. Over at NRO, that little scamp Mark Steyn, echoing the cry of Let Sarah Be Sarah, conceded that Palin Unfiltered might be Malaprop City, but what the hey:
All Governor Palin should insist on...is that every interview be live. And, if they're all disasters, they'll wind up like Biden's gaffes or Clinton's adulteries. As Stalin remarked in another context, one is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.
Not the choicest analogy.
The Moderate Voice:
All [Palin] has to do in her debate with Democratic Sen. Joe Biden is to put in a credible performance and not make any gaffes. She has been kept away from the press by McCain’s high command so she already suffers from a bad press due to her inaccessibility. She has become a comedian’s punchline. And she has been lampooned mercilessly by satirists. If she comes across the debate as being serious, thoughtful and able to respond aggressively with accurate facts to back up her responses, many will consider it a win. Expectations — and Fey’s two SNL parodies — have now been set so low that even a blah performance with no major gaffes will allow Palin’s partisans to proclaim it a home run and Biden in the eyes of public opinion could indeed be overshadowed
Jeffrey Goldberg at the Atlantic,com:
How can it be that some people still pretend that Sarah Palin is suited for high office? This country has never seen someone so comprehensively unprepared for the vice presidency; Dan Quayle was Metternich by comparison. I've watched Sarah Palin's interview with Katie Couric three times, and my astonishment does not diminish. Her nonsensical answer about Russia has deservedly been highlighted, but let me focus on another question...The issue here is not that Palin didn't know the answer. ...The issue here is that she didn't know the question.
Andrew Malcolm at LATimes.com on the lowered bar:
[The Democrats] They have so successfully mocked, derided and lowered expectations for Palin in Thursday night's VP debate that if she doesn't drool or speak in tongues, many millions still open to persuasion will be impressed. Al Gore's campaign made the exact same mistake going into the 2000 debates. So all Texas Gov. George W. Bush had to do was not lose. In that sense, Democrats may have played right into a PR cul-de-sac. Biden, for instance, described Palin as merely better-looking than him. A far better communications strategy would have been to insincerely portray Palin with superlatives as a superwoman, making it harder, not easier, for her to impress. Too late now.
Over at Salon, Joan Walsh lowers the bar still further:
Palin "didn't blink" when McCain asked her to join the ticket, didn't think twice, because she's a supremely self-confident woman with a limited worldview, impressed with her own greatness and not terribly curious about anyone else. ...McCain risked his entire reputation for integrity with his cynical choice of Palin, and he'll have to live with the consequences. One consequence is the loss of respect by many journalists who once admired him. ... Boy, Republicans have to be dreading the Thursday debate, huh?
...and Rebecca Traister muses on what might have/should have been:
Let's consider that there are any number of women who could have been John McCain's running mate -- from Olympia Snowe to Christine Todd Whitman to Kay Bailey Hutchison to Elizabeth Dole to Condoleezza Rice -- who would not have provoked this reaction. Democrats might well have been repulsed and infuriated by these women's policy positions. But we would not have been sitting around worrying about how scared they looked....[Palin] boldly tries to pass off incuriosity and lassitude as regular-people qualities, thereby doing a disservice to all those Americans who also work two jobs and do not come from families that hand out passports and backpacking trips, yet still manage to pick up a paper and read about their government and seek out experience and knowledge.... When you don't have enough regard for your country or its politics to cram effectively for the test -- a test that helps determine whether or not you get to run that country and participate in its politics -- I don't feel bad for you.
Andrew Sullivan makes an important point about the gender issue:
Until Sarah Palin agrees to a full and open press conference, she should not even be considered as a possible vice-president of the United States. What has been going on with her and access to her is an outrage to democratic discourse and the entire electoral system. Since she was selected, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has held more press conferences with American reporters than she has. Forget all this debate spin or pre-spin. Just give her a microphone, a roomful of inquisitive reporters and be done with it. If she were a man, this wouldn't even be debatable. That we are being told these lower standards are acceptable for a woman candidate is sexist cant. When will the press simply stop cooperating with this farce?
US elections: Barack Obama's team believes he can win by a landslide
By Tim Shipman in Washington Last Updated: 8:18PM BST 27 Sep 2008
Barack Obama's senior aides believe he is on course for a landslide election victory over John McCain and will comfortably exceed most current predictions in the race for the White House.
Aides are convinced that Barack Obama has a strong chance of winning no fewer than nine states won by George W. Bush in the closely contested 2000 election.
Their optimism, which is said to be shared by the Democratic candidate himself, is based on information from private polling and on faith in the powerful political organisation he has built in the key swing states.
Insiders say that Mr Obama's apparent calm through an unusually turbulent election season is because he believes that his strength among first time voters in several key states has been underestimated, both by the media and by the Republican Party.
Mr Obama has come under fire from within Democratic ranks over his message and his tactics. Critics say he has failed to connect with the blue-collar workers seen as crucial to winning the election, and too reluctant to make direct attacks on Mr McCain.
But his aides are convinced that he has a strong chance of winning no fewer than nine states won by George W.Bush in the closely contested 2000 election, including former Republican strongholds like North Carolina, Virginia and even Indiana, which have not voted Democrat for a generation.
David Axelrod, Obama's chief strategist, said last week that Obama had "a lot of opportunity" in states which Mr Bush won four years ago.
But in private briefings in Washington, a member of Mr Obama's inner circle of policy advisers went much further in spelling out why the campaign's working assumptions far exceed the expectations of independent observers.
"Public polling companies and the media have underestimated the scale of new Democratic voters registration in these states," the campaign official told a friend. "We're much stronger on the ground in Virginia and North Carolina than people realise. If we get out the vote this may not be close at all."
To win the presidency, Mr Obama must win 270 votes in the Electoral College, which awards votes to the winner of each state broadly in proportion to the size of the population.
Statewide surveys put the likely Electoral College result at a slender Obama win, 273-265. But his campaign staff believe they have a good chance of securing between 330 and 340 votes, and could win up to 364 votes, a landslide on the scale of Bill Clinton's wins.
The senior Obama advisor said that the Democratic nominee is confident of winning all the states held by John Kerry, the Democratic candidate four years ago, a total of 252 votes.
But his team believes he can also bank victories in Iowa, where he first emerged as a force in the campaign in January, and New Mexico, where Mr Kerry only lost by 20,000 votes in 2004. Those states would leave him just six votes short of outright victory.
Taking Colorado, as Mr Obama's team are very confident of doing, would put him over the top. Even winning the smaller state of Nevada, with its five electoral votes, would be enough to guarantee a 269-269 tie with Mr McCain. If that happens, the US consititution would hand the decision over to the Democrat dominated US House of Representatives, which would presumably come down in Mr Obama's favour.
Most pollsters would regard those expectations as uncontroversial. But the Obama camp is also confident of winning Ohio and Virginia, which commentators believe are "toss up" states with the two candidates chances at 50/50.
Last week Mr Obama began investing heavily in advertising in Indiana, Florida and North Carolina, which many had supposed to be a waste of time and money.
A Washington official who has discussed the electoral mathematics with one of Mr Obama's senior advisers told The Sunday Telegraph that the campaign is spending money only in states which it believes can, and indeed ought to, be won.
"Obama has many more paths to the nomination than McCain," the source said. "They think they can defend the Kerry states. Iowa is gone. That's five votes. New Mexico is in the bag. Then Obama has four or five different ways of winning. He can go Nevada or Colorado, Virginia, any of those, even Indiana.
"McCain has got to run the board, the whole Bush table. He can probably lose New Mexico and Iowa. He can't afford to lose anything else."
The official added: "The poll numbers say Florida's back in play. McCain hasn't spent a single penny there and that's Obama's calculation, that he can capitalise on that. The Republicans can't lose Florida or they're done for."
Conventional wisdom among pollsters is that Mr Obama is at risk of losing both Michigan and Pennsylvania and possibly even Wisconsin, all large Kerry states whose loss would be a damaging blow.
But the Obama camp believes that Wisconsin in safe and that he has strengthened his position in Pennsylvania with a good ground operation. Michigan, home of the Reagan Democrats, is a concern because Mr Obama did not campaign there in the primaries and race relations are raw, but they are confident they can hang on to his slender lead in the polls.
Mainstream pollsters on both sides of the aisle last week called the election as a dead heat. Mark Mellman, who was John Kerry's polling guru, said the 2008 election is "increasingly resembling the real map of 2004" and Matthew Dowd, a top strategist on Bush's re-election campaign, added: "States that were reliably red are reliably red, and states that were reliably blue are reliably blue."
But Mr Obama's campaign team reject that analysis. Their confidence that good organisation will more than compensate for latent racism will be reassuring to some Democrats, who were concerned by a poll last weekend that found Mr Obama would be six points higher in the polls if he were white.
The scale of their ambition will trouble those Democratic sceptics who consider Mr Obama's aides to be complacent and inexperienced in national campaigns.
September 28, 2008
For McCain and Team, a Host of Ties to Gambling
By JO BECKER and DON VAN NATTA Jr.
Senator John McCain was on a roll. In a room reserved for high-stakes gamblers at the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut, he tossed $100 chips around a hot craps table. When the marathon session ended around 2:30 a.m., the Arizona senator and his entourage emerged with thousands of dollars in winnings.
A lifelong gambler, Mr. McCain takes risks, both on and off the craps table. He was throwing dice that night not long after his failed 2000 presidential bid, in which he was skewered by the Republican Party’s evangelical base, opponents of gambling. Mr. McCain was betting at a casino he oversaw as a member of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, and he was doing so with the lobbyist who represents that casino, according to three associates of Mr. McCain.
The visit had been arranged by the lobbyist, Scott Reed, who works for the Mashantucket Pequot, a tribe that has contributed heavily to Mr. McCain’s campaigns and built Foxwoods into the world’s second-largest casino. Joining them was Rick Davis, Mr. McCain’s current campaign manager. Their night of good fortune epitomized not just Mr. McCain’s affection for gambling, but also the close relationship he has built with the gambling industry and its lobbyists during his 25-year career in Congress.
As a two-time chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee, Mr. McCain has done more than any other member of Congress to shape the laws governing America’s casinos, helping to transform the once-sleepy Indian gambling business into a $26-billion-a-year behemoth with 423 casinos across the country. He has won praise as a champion of economic development and self-governance on reservations.
“One of the founding fathers of Indian gaming” is what Steven Light, a University of North Dakota professor and a leading Indian gambling expert, called Mr. McCain.
As factions of the ferociously competitive gambling industry have vied for an edge, they have found it advantageous to cultivate a relationship with Mr. McCain or hire someone who has one, according to an examination based on more than 70 interviews and thousands of pages of documents.
Mr. McCain portrays himself as a Washington maverick unswayed by special interests, referring recently to lobbyists as “birds of prey.” Yet in his current campaign, more than 40 fund-raisers and top advisers have lobbied or worked for an array of gambling interests — including tribal and Las Vegas casinos, lottery companies and online poker purveyors.
When rules being considered by Congress threatened a California tribe’s planned casino in 2005, Mr. McCain helped spare the tribe. Its lobbyist, who had no prior experience in the gambling industry, had a nearly 20-year friendship with Mr. McCain.
In Connecticut that year, when a tribe was looking to open the state’s third casino, staff members on the Indian Affairs Committee provided guidance to lobbyists representing those fighting the casino, e-mail messages and interviews show. The proposed casino, which would have cut into the Pequots’ market share, was opposed by Mr. McCain’s colleagues in Connecticut.
Mr. McCain declined to be interviewed. In written answers to questions, his campaign staff said he was “justifiably proud” of his record on regulating Indian gambling. “Senator McCain has taken positions on policy issues because he believed they are in the public interest,” the campaign said.
Mr. McCain’s spokesman, Tucker Bounds, would not discuss the senator’s night of gambling at Foxwoods, saying: “Your paper has repeatedly attempted to insinuate impropriety on the part of Senator McCain where none exists — and it reveals that your publication is desperately willing to gamble away what little credibility it still has.”
Over his career, Mr. McCain has taken on special interests, like big tobacco, and angered the capital’s powerbrokers by promoting campaign finance reform and pushing to limit gifts that lobbyists can shower on lawmakers. On occasion, he has crossed the gambling industry on issues like regulating slot machines.
Perhaps no episode burnished Mr. McCain’s image as a reformer more than his stewardship three years ago of the Congressional investigation into Jack Abramoff, the disgraced Republican Indian gambling lobbyist who became a national symbol of the pay-to-play culture in Washington. The senator’s leadership during the scandal set the stage for the most sweeping overhaul of lobbying laws since Watergate.
“I’ve fought lobbyists who stole from Indian tribes,” the senator said in his speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination this month.
But interviews and records show that lobbyists and political operatives in Mr. McCain’s inner circle played a behind-the-scenes role in bringing Mr. Abramoff’s misdeeds to Mr. McCain’s attention — and then cashed in on the resulting investigation. The senator’s longtime chief political strategist, for example, was paid $100,000 over four months as a consultant to one tribe caught up in the inquiry, records show.
Mr. McCain’s campaign said the senator acted solely to protect American Indians, even though the inquiry posed “grave risk to his political interests.”
As public opposition to tribal casinos has grown in recent years, Mr. McCain has distanced himself from Indian gambling, Congressional and American Indian officials said.
But he has rarely wavered in his loyalty to Las Vegas, where he counts casino executives among his close friends and most prolific fund-raisers. “Beyond just his support for gaming, Nevada supports John McCain because he’s one of us, a Westerner at heart,” said Sig Rogich, a Nevada Republican kingmaker who raised nearly $2 million for Mr. McCain at an event at his home in June.
Only six members of Congress have received more money from the gambling industry than Mr. McCain, and five hail from the casino hubs of Nevada and New Jersey, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics dating back to 1989. In the presidential race, Senator Barack Obama has also received money from the industry; Mr. McCain has raised almost twice as much.
In May 2007, as Mr. McCain’s presidential bid was floundering, he spent a weekend at the MGM Grand on the Las Vegas strip. A fund-raiser hosted by J. Terrence Lanni, the casino’s top executive and a longtime friend of the senator, raised $400,000 for his campaign. Afterward, Mr. McCain attended a boxing match and hit the craps tables.
For much of his adult life, Mr. McCain has gambled as often as once a month, friends and associates said, traveling to Las Vegas for weekend betting marathons. Former senior campaign officials said they worried about Mr. McCain’s patronage of casinos, given the power he wields over the industry. The officials, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on condition of anonymity.
“We were always concerned about appearances,” one former official said. “If you go around saying that appearances matter, then they matter.”
The former official said he would tell Mr. McCain: “Do we really have to go to a casino? I don’t think it’s a good idea. The base doesn’t like it. It doesn’t look good. And good things don’t happen in casinos at midnight.”
“You worry too much,” Mr. McCain would respond, the official said.
A Record of Support
In one of their last conversations, Representative Morris K. Udall, Arizona’s powerful Democrat, whose devotion to American Indian causes was legendary, implored his friend Mr. McCain to carry on his legacy.
“Don’t forget the Indians,” Mr. Udall, who died in 1998, told Mr. McCain in a directive that the senator has recounted to others.
More than a decade earlier, Mr. Udall had persuaded Mr. McCain to join the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. Mr. McCain, whose home state has the third-highest Indian population, eloquently decried the “grinding poverty” that gripped many reservations.
The two men helped write the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988 after the Supreme Court found that states had virtually no right to control wagering on reservations. The legislation provided a framework for the oversight and growth of Indian casinos: In 1988, Indian gambling represented less than 1 percent of the nation’s gambling revenues; today it captures more than one third.
On the Senate floor after the bill’s passage, Mr. McCain said he personally opposed Indian gambling, but when impoverished communities “are faced with only one option for economic development, and that is to set up gambling on their reservations, then I cannot disapprove.”
In 1994, Mr. McCain pushed an amendment that enabled dozens of additional tribes to win federal recognition and open casinos. And in 1998, Mr. McCain fought a Senate effort to rein in the boom.
He also voted twice in the last decade to give casinos tax breaks estimated to cost the government more than $326 million over a dozen years.
The first tax break benefited the industry in Las Vegas, one of a number of ways Mr. McCain has helped nontribal casinos. Mr. Lanni, the MGM Mirage chief executive, said that an unsuccessful bid by the senator to ban wagering on college sports in Nevada was the only time he could recall Mr. McCain opposing Las Vegas. “I can’t think of any other issue,” Mr. Lanni said.
The second tax break helped tribal casinos like Foxwoods and was pushed by Scott Reed, the Pequots’ lobbyist.
Mr. McCain had gotten to know Mr. Reed during Senator Bob Dole’s 1996 presidential campaign, which Mr. Reed managed. Four years later, when Mr. McCain ran for president, Mr. Reed recommended he hire his close friend and protégé, Rick Davis, to manage that campaign.
During his 2000 primary race against George W. Bush, Mr. McCain promoted his record of helping Indian Country, telling reporters on a campaign swing that he had provided critical support to “the Pequot, now the proud owners of the largest casino in the world.”
But Mr. McCain’s record on Indian gambling was fast becoming a difficult issue for him in the primary. Bush supporters like Gov. John Engler of Michigan lambasted Mr. McCain for his “close ties to Indian gambling.”
A decade after Mr. McCain co-authored the Indian gambling act, the political tides had turned. Tribal casinos, which were growing at a blazing pace, had become increasingly unpopular around the country for reasons as varied as morality and traffic.
Then came the biggest lobbying scandal to shake Washington.
Behind an Inquiry
At a September 2004 hearing of the Indian Affairs Committee, Mr. McCain described Jack Abramoff as one of the most brazen in a long line of crooks to cheat American Indians. “It began with the sale of Manhattan, and has continued ever since,” he said. “What sets this tale apart, what makes it truly extraordinary, is the extent and degree of the apparent exploitation and deceit.”
Over the next two years, Mr. McCain helped uncover a breathtaking lobbying scandal — Mr. Abramoff and a partner bilked six tribes of $66 million — that showcased the senator’s willingness to risk the wrath of his own party to expose wrongdoing. But interviews and documents show that Mr. McCain and a circle of allies — lobbyists, lawyers and senior strategists — also seized on the case for its opportunities.
For McCain-connected lobbyists who were rivals of Mr. Abramoff, the scandal presented a chance to crush a competitor. For senior McCain advisers, the inquiry allowed them to collect fees from the very Indians that Mr. Abramoff had ripped off. And the investigation enabled Mr. McCain to confront political enemies who helped defeat him in his 2000 presidential run while polishing his maverick image.
The Abramoff saga started in early 2003 when members of two tribes began questioning Mr. Abramoff’s astronomical fees. Over the next year, they leaked information to local newspapers, but it took the hiring of lobbyists who were competitors of Mr. Abramoff to get the attention of Mr. McCain’s committee.
Bernie Sprague, who led the effort by one of the tribes, the Saginaw Chippewas in Michigan, hired a Democratic lobbyist who recommended that the tribe retain Scott Reed, the Republican lobbyist, to push for an investigation.
Mr. Reed had boasted to other lobbyists of his access to Mr. McCain, three close associates said. Mr. Reed “pretty much had open access to John from 2000 to at least the end of 2006,” one aide said.
Lobbyist disclosure forms show that Mr. Reed went to work for the Saginaw Chippewa on Feb. 15, 2004, charging the tribe $56,000 over a year. Mr. Abramoff had tried to steal the Pequots and another tribal client from Mr. Reed, and taking down Mr. Abramoff would eliminate a competitor.
Mr. Reed became the chief conduit to Mr. McCain’s committee for billing documents and other information Mr. Sprague was digging up on Mr. Abramoff, Mr. Sprague said, who said Mr. Reed “did a great to service to me.”
“He had contacts I did not,” Mr. Sprague said. “Initially, I think that the senator’s office was doing Reed a favor by listening to me.”
A few weeks after hiring Mr. Reed, Mr. Sprague received a letter from the senator. “We have met with Scott Reed, who was very helpful on the issue,” Mr. McCain wrote.
Information about Mr. Abramoff was also flowing to Mr. McCain’s committee from another tribe, the Coushatta of Louisiana. The source was a consultant named Roy Fletcher, who had been Mr. McCain’s deputy campaign manager in 2000, running his war room in South Carolina.
It was in that primary race that two of Mr. Abramoff’s closest associates, Grover Norquist, who runs the nonprofit Americans for Tax Reform, and Ralph Reed, the former director of the Christian Coalition, ran a blistering campaign questioning Mr. McCain’s conservative credentials. The senator and his advisers blamed that attack for Mr. McCain’s loss to Mr. Bush in South Carolina, creating tensions that would resurface in the Abramoff matter.
“I was interested in busting” Mr. Abramoff, said Mr. Fletcher, who was eventually hired to represent the tribe. “That was my job. But I was also filled with righteous indignation, I got to tell you.”
Mr. Fletcher said he began passing information to John Weaver, Mr. McCain’s chief political strategist, and other staff members in late 2003 or January 2004. Mr. Weaver confirmed the timing.
Mr. McCain announced his investigation on Feb. 26, 2004, citing an article on Mr. Abramoff in The Washington Post. He did not mention the action by lobbyists and tribes in the preceding weeks. His campaign said no one in his “innermost circle” brought information to Mr. McCain that prompted the investigation.
The senator declared he would not investigate members of Congress, whom Mr. Abramoff had lavished with tribal donations and golf outings to Scotland. But in the course of the investigation, the committee exposed Mr. Abramoff’s dealings with the two men who had helped defeat Mr. McCain in the 2000 primary.
The investigation showed that Mr. Norquist’s foundation was used by Mr. Abramoff to launder lobbying fees from tribes. Ralph Reed was found to have accepted $4 million to run bogus antigambling campaigns. And the investigation also highlighted Mr. Abramoff’s efforts to curry favor with the House majority leader at the time, Tom DeLay, Republican of Texas, a longtime political foe who had opposed many of Mr. McCain’s legislative priorities.
Mr. McCain’s campaign said the senator did not “single out” Ralph Reed or Mr. Norquist, neither of whom were ever charged, and that both men fell within the “scope of the investigation.” The inquiry, which led to guilty pleas by over a dozen individuals, was motivated by a desire to help aggrieved tribes, the campaign said.
Inside the investigation, the sense of schadenfreude was palpable, according to several people close to the senator. “It was like hitting pay dirt,” said one associate of Mr. McCain’s who had consulted with the senator’s office on the investigation. “And face it — McCain and Weaver were maniacal about Ralph Reed and Norquist. They were sticking little pins in dolls because those guys had cost him South Carolina.”
Down on the Coushattas reservation, bills related to the investigation kept coming. After firing Mr. Abramoff, the tribe hired Kent Hance, a lawyer and former Texas congressman who said he had been friends with Mr. McCain since the 1980s.
David Sickey, the tribe’s vice chairman, said he was “dumbfounded” over the bills submitted by Mr. Hance’s firm, Hance Scarborough, which had been hired by Mr. Sickey’s predecessors.
“The very thing we were fighting seemed to be happening all over again — these absurd amounts of money being paid,” Mr. Sickey said.
Mr. Hance’s firm billed the tribe nearly $1.3 million over 11 months in legal and political consulting fees, records show. But Mr. Sickey said that the billing statements offered only vague explanations for services and that he could not point to any tangible results. Two consultants, for instance, were paid to fight the expansion of gambling in Texas — even though it was unlikely given that the governor there opposed any such prospect, Mr. Sickey said.
Mr. Hance and Jay B. Stewart, the firm’s managing partner, defended their team’s work, saying they successfully steered the tribe through a difficult period. “We did an outstanding job for them,” Mr. Hance said. “When we told them our bill was going to be $100,000 a month, they thought we were cheap. Mr. Abramoff had charged them $1 million a month.”
The firm’s fees covered the services of Mr. Fletcher, who served as the tribe’s spokesman. Records also show that Mr. Hance had Mr. Weaver — who was serving as Mr. McCain’s chief strategist — put on the tribe’s payroll from February to May 2005.
It is not precisely clear what role Mr. Weaver played for his $100,000 fee.
Mr. Stewart said Mr. Weaver was hired because “he had a lot of experience with the Senate, especially the new chairman, John McCain.” The Hance firm told the tribe in a letter that Mr. Weaver was hired to provide “representation for the tribe before the U.S. Senate.”
But Mr. Weaver never registered to lobby on the issue, and he has another explanation for his work.
“The Hance law firm retained me to assist them and their client in developing an aggressive crisis management and communications strategy,” Mr. Weaver said. “At no point was I asked by Kent Hance or anyone associated with him to set up meetings with anyone in or outside of government to discuss this, and if asked I would have summarily declined to do so.”
In June 2005, the tribe informed Mr. Hance that his services were no longer needed.
Change in Tone
After the Abramoff scandal, Mr. McCain stopped taking campaign donations from tribes. Some American Indians were offended, especially since Mr. McCain continued to accept money from the tribes’ lobbyists.
Resentment in Indian Country mounted as Mr. McCain, who was preparing for another White House run, singled out the growth in tribal gambling as one of three national issues that were “out of control.” (The others were federal spending and illegal immigration.)
Franklin Ducheneaux, an aide to Morris Udall who helped draft the 1988 Indian gambling law, said that position ran contrary to Mr. McCain’s record. “What did he think? That Congress intended for the tribes to be only somewhat successful?” Mr. Ducheneaux said.
Mr. McCain began taking a broad look at whether the laws were sufficient to oversee the growing industry. His campaign said that the growth had put “considerable stress” on regulators and Mr. McCain held hearings on whether the federal government needed more oversight power.
An opportunity to restrain the industry came in the spring of 2005, when a small tribe in Connecticut set off a political battle. The group, the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation, had won federal recognition in 2004 after producing voluminous documentation tracing its roots.
The tribe wanted to build Connecticut’s third casino, which would compete with Foxwoods and another, the Mohegan Sun. Facing public opposition on the proposed casino, members of the Connecticut political establishment — many of whom had received large Pequot and Mohegan campaign donations — swung into action.
Connecticut officials claimed that a genealogical review by the Bureau of Indian Affairs was flawed, and that the Schaghticoke was not a tribe.
The tribe’s opponents, led by the Washington lobbying firm Barbour Griffith & Rogers, turned to Mr. McCain’s committee. It was a full-circle moment for the senator, who had helped the Pequots gain tribal recognition in the 1980s despite concerns about their legitimacy.
Now, Mr. McCain was doing a favor for allies in the Connecticut delegation, including Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, a close friend, according to two former Congressional aides. “It was one of those collegial deals,” said one of the aides, who worked for Mr. McCain.
Barbour Griffith & Rogers wanted Mr. McCain to hold a hearing that would show that the Bureau of Indian Affairs was “broken,” said Bradley A. Blakeman, who was a lobbyist for the firm at the time.
“It was our hope that the hearing would shed light on the fact that the bureau had not followed their rules and had improperly granted recognition to the Schaghticoke,” Mr. Blakeman said. “And that the bureau would revisit the issue and follow their rules.”
Mr. McCain’s staff helped that effort by offering strategic advice.
His staff told a lobbyist for the firm that the Indian Affairs Committee “would love to receive a letter” from the Connecticut governor requesting a hearing, according to an e-mail exchange, and offered “guidance on what the most effective tone and approach” would be in the letter.
On May 11, 2005, Mr. McCain held a hearing billed as a general “oversight hearing on federal recognition of Indian tribes.” But nearly all the witnesses were Schaghticoke opponents who portrayed the tribe as imposters.
Mr. McCain set the tone: “The role that gaming and its nontribal backers have played in the recognition process has increased perceptions that it is unfair, if not corrupt.”
Chief Richard F. Velky of the Schaghticokes found himself facing off against the governor and most of the state’s congressional delegation. “The deck was stacked against us,” Mr. Velky said. “They were given lots of time. I was given five minutes.”
He had always believed Mr. McCain “to be an honest and fair man,” Mr. Velky said, “but this didn’t make me feel that good.”
Mr. Velky said he felt worse when the e-mail messages between the tribe’s opponents and Mr. McCain’s staff surfaced in a federal lawsuit. “Is there a letter telling me how to address the senator to give me the best shot?” Mr. Velky asked. “No, there is not.”
After the hearing, Pablo E. Carrillo, who was Mr. McCain’s chief Abramoff investigator at the time, wrote to a Barbour Griffith & Rogers lobbyist, Brant Imperatore. “Your client’s side definitely got a good hearing record,” Mr. Carillo wrote, adding “you probably have a good sense” on where Mr. McCain “is headed on this.”
“Well done!” he added.
Cynthia Shaw, a Republican counsel to the committee from 2005 to 2007, said Mr. McCain made decisions based on merit, not special interests. “Everybody got a meeting who asked for one,” Ms. Shaw said, “whether you were represented by counsel or by a lobbyist — or regardless of which lobbyist.”
Mr. McCain’s campaign defended the senator’s handling of the Schaghticoke case, saying no staff member acted improperly. The campaign said the session was part of normal committee business and the notion that Mr. McCain was intending to help Congressional colleagues defeat the tribe was “absolutely false.”
It added that the senator’s commitment to Indian sovereignty “remains as strong as ever.”
Within months of the May 2005 hearing, the Bureau of Indian Affairs took the rare step of rescinding the Schaghticokes’ recognition. A federal court recently rejected the tribe’s claim that the reversal was politically motivated.
Making an Exception
That spring of 2005, as the Schaghticokes went down to defeat in the East, another tribe in the West squared off against Mr. McCain with its bid to construct a gambling emporium in California. The stakes were similar, but the outcome would be far different.
The tribe’s plan to build a casino on a former Navy base just outside San Francisco represented a trend rippling across the country: American Indians seeking to build casinos near population centers, far from their reservations.
The practice, known as “off-reservation shopping,” stemmed from the 1988 Indian gambling law, which included exceptions allowing some casinos to be built outside tribal lands. When Mr. McCain began his second stint as chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee three years ago, Las Vegas pressed him to revisit the exceptions he had helped create, according to Sig Rogich, the Republican fund-raiser from Nevada.
“We told him this off-reservation shopping had to stop,” Mr. Rogich said. “It was no secret that the gaming industry, as well as many potentially affected communities in other states, voiced opposition to the practice.”
In the spring of 2005, Mr. McCain announced he was planning a sweeping overhaul of Indian gambling laws, including limiting off-reservation casinos. His campaign said Las Vegas had nothing to do with it. In a 2005 interview with The Oregonian, Mr. McCain said that if Congress did not act, “soon every Indian tribe is going to have a casino in downtown, metropolitan areas.”
Prospects for the proposed California project did not look promising. Then the tribe, the Guidiville Band of Pomo Indians, hired a lobbyist based in Phoenix named Wes Gullett.
Mr. Gullett, who had never represented tribes before Congress, had known Mr. McCain since the early 1980s. Mr. Gullett met his wife while they were working in Mr. McCain’s Washington office. He subsequently managed Mr. McCain’s 1992 Senate campaign and served as a top aide to his 2000 presidential campaign. Their friendship went beyond politics. When Mr. McCain’s wife, Cindy, brought two infants in need of medical treatment back to Arizona from Bangladesh, the Gulletts adopted one baby and the McCains the other. The two men also liked to take weekend trips to Las Vegas.
Another of Mr. McCain’s close friends, former Defense Secretary William S. Cohen, was a major investor in the Guidivilles’ proposed casino. Mr. Cohen, who did not return calls, was best man at Mr. McCain’s 1980 wedding.
Scott Crowell, lawyer for the Guidivilles, said Mr. Gullett was hired to ensure that Mr. McCain’s overhaul of the Indian gambling laws did not harm the tribe.
Mr. Gullett said he never talked to Mr. McCain about the legislation. “If you are hired directly to lobby John McCain, you are not going to be effective,” he said. Mr. Gullett said he only helped prepare the testimony of the tribe’s administrator, Walter Gray, who was invited to plead his case before Mr. McCain’s committee in July 2005. Mr. Gullett said he advised Mr. Gray in a series of conference calls.
On disclosure forms filed with the Senate, however, Mr. Gullett stated that he was not hired until November, long after Mr. Gray’s testimony. Mr. Gullett said the late filing might have been “a mistake, but it was inadvertent.” Steve Hart, a former lawyer for the Guidivilles, backed up Mr. Gullett’s contention that he had guided Mr. Gray on his July testimony.
When asked whether Mr. Gullett had helped him, Mr. Gray responded, “I’ve never met the man and couldn’t tell you anything about him.”
On Nov. 18, 2005, when Mr. McCain introduced his promised legislation overhauling the Indian gambling law, he left largely intact a provision that the Guidivilles needed for their casino. Mr. McCain’s campaign declined to answer whether the senator spoke with Mr. Gullett or Mr. Cohen about the project. In the end, Mr. McCain’s bill died, largely because Indian gambling interests fought back. But the Department of Interior picked up where Mr. McCain left off, effectively doing through regulations what he had hoped to accomplish legislatively. Carl Artman, who served as the Interior Department’s assistant secretary of Indian Affairs until May, said Mr. McCain pushed him to rewrite the off-reservation rules. “It became one of my top priorities because Senator McCain made it clear it was one of his top priorities,” he said.
The new guidelines were issued on Jan. 4. As a result, the casino applications of 11 tribes were rejected. The Guidivilles were not among them.
Kitty Bennett and Griff Palmer contributed to reporting.
September 27, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Palin’s Words Raise Red Flags
By BOB HERBERT
The country is understandably focused on the financial crisis. But there is another serious issue in front of us that is not getting nearly enough attention, and that’s whether Sarah Palin is qualified to be vice president — or, if the situation were to arise, president of the United States.
History has shown again and again that a vice president must be ready to assume command of the ship of state on a moment’s notice. But Ms. Palin has given no indication yet that she is capable of handling the monumental responsibilities of the presidency if she were called upon to do so.
In fact, the opposite is the case. We know that there are some parts of Alaska from which, if the day is clear and your eyesight is good, you can actually see Russia. But the infantile repetition of this bit of trivia as some kind of foreign policy bona fide for a vice presidential candidate should give us pause.
The McCain campaign has done its bizarre best to shield Ms. Palin from any sustained media examination of her readiness for the highest offices in the land, and no wonder. She has been an embarrassment in interviews.
But the idea that the voters of the United States might install someone in the vice president’s office who is too unprepared or too intellectually insecure to appear on, say, “Meet the Press” or “Face the Nation” is mind-boggling.
The alarm bells should be clanging and warning lights flashing. You wouldn’t put an unqualified pilot in the cockpit of a jetliner. The potential for catastrophe is far, far greater with an unqualified president.
The United States has been lucky in terms of the qualifications of the vice presidents who have had to step in over the last several decades for presidents who either died or, in Richard Nixon’s case, were forced to leave office. Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson became extraordinary presidents in their own right. Gerald Ford successfully guided the nation through the immediate aftermath of one of the most traumatic political crises in its history.
For those who think Sarah Palin is in that league, there is no problem. But her unscripted public appearances would lead most honest observers to think otherwise. When asked again this week about her puerile linkage of foreign policy proficiency and Alaska’s proximity to Russia, this time by Katie Couric of CBS News, here is what Ms. Palin said she meant:
“That Alaska has a very narrow maritime border between a foreign country, Russia, and on our other side, the land — boundary that we have with — Canada.”
She went on, but lost her way midsentence: “It’s funny that a comment like that was kind of made to — cari — I don’t know, you know? Reporters ...”
Ms. Couric said, “Mocked?”
“Yeah, mocked,” said Ms. Palin. “I guess that’s the word. Yeah.”
It is not just painful, but frightening to watch someone who could become the vice president of the United States stumbling around like this in an interview.
Ms. Couric asked Ms. Palin to explain how Alaska’s proximity to Russia “enhances your foreign policy credentials.”
“Well, it certainly does,” Ms. Palin replied, “because our, our next-door neighbors are foreign countries, there in the state that I am the executive of. And there—”
Gently interrupting, Ms. Couric asked, “Have you ever been involved in any negotiations, for example, with the Russians?”
“We have trade missions back and forth,” said Ms. Palin. “We do. It’s very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia. As Putin rears his head and comes into the airspace of the United States of America, where do they go? It’s Alaska. It’s just right over the border. It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to our state.”
It was surreal, the kind of performance that would generate a hearty laugh if it were part of a Monty Python sketch. But this is real life, and the stakes couldn’t be higher. As Ms. Palin was fumbling her way through the Couric interview, the largest bank failure in the history of the United States, the collapse of Washington Mutual, was occurring.
The press has an obligation to hammer away at Ms. Palin’s qualifications. If it turns out that she has just had a few bad interviews because she was nervous or whatever, additional scrutiny will serve her well.
If, on the other hand, it becomes clear that her performance, so far, is an accurate reflection of her qualifications, it would behoove John McCain and the Republican Party to put the country first — as Mr. McCain loves to say — and find a replacement for Ms. Palin on the ticket.
GOP concerns about Palin grow By: Alexander Burns and David Paul Kuhn September 28, 2008 07:52 AM EST
A growing number of Republicans are expressing concern about Sarah Palin’s uneven — and sometimes downright awkward — performances in her limited media appearances. Conservative columnist Kathleen Parker, a former Palin supporter, says the vice presidential nominee should step aside. Kathryn Jean Lopez, writing for the conservative National Review, says “that’s not a crazy suggestion” and that “something’s gotta change.” Tony Fabrizio, a GOP strategist, says Palin’s recent CBS appearance isn’t disqualifying but is certainly alarming. “You can’t continue to have interviews like that and not take on water.” “I have not been blown away by the interviews from her, but at the same time, I haven’t come away from them thinking she doesn’t know s—t,” said Chris Lacivita, a GOP strategist. “But she ain’t Dick Cheney, nor Joe Biden and definitely not Hillary Clinton.” There is no doubt that Palin retains a tremendous amount of support among rank-and-file Republicans. She draws huge crowds, continues to raise a lot of money for the McCain campaign, and state parties report she has sparked an uptick in the number of volunteers. Asked about Palin's performance in the CBS interview, a McCain official briefing reporters on condition of anonymity said: "She did fine. She's a tremendous asset and a fantastic candidate." But there is also no doubt many Republican insiders are worried she could blow next week’s debate, based on her unexpectedly weak and unsteady media appearances, and hurt the Republican ticket if she does. What follows is a viewer’s guide to some of Palin’s toughest moments on camera so far. Speaking this week with CBS’s Katie Couric, Palin seemed caught off-guard by a very predictable question about the status of McCain adviser Rick Davis’ relationship with mortgage lender Freddie Mac. Davis was accused by several news outlets of retaining ties — and profiting from — the companies despite his denials. Where a more experienced politician might have been able to brush off Couric’s follow-up question, Palin seemed genuinely stumped, repeating the same answer twice and resorting to boilerplate language about the “undue influence of lobbyists.”
These missteps could be attributed to inadequate preparation and don’t necessarily reflect more deeply on Palin’s ability to perform as vice president. But when reporters have tried to probe Palin’s thinking on subjects such as foreign policy, she’s been similarly opaque. In an interview with ABC’s Charlie Gibson, Palin gave a muddled answer to a question about her opinion of the Bush Doctrine. And given the chance to describe her foreign policy credentials more fully, Palin recited familiar talking points, telling Gibson that her experience with energy policy was sufficient preparation for dealing with national security issues. In the same interview, Palin let Gibson lead her into saying it might be necessary to wage war on Russia — a suggestion that most candidates would have avoided making explicitly and that signaled her discomfort in discussing global affairs. Then, asked this week by Couric to discuss her knowledge of foreign relations — in particular, her assertion that Alaska’s proximity to Russia gave her international experience — Palin tripped herself up explaining her interactions with Alaska’s neighbor to the west.
© 2008 Capitol News Company, LLC
In a world exclusive The NATIONAL ENQUIRER names GOP VP Candidate Sarah Palin's secret lover! No less than three members of the man’s family including one by sworn affidavit have claimed that Sarah Palin engaged in an extramarital affair with husband Todd’s former business partner, Brad Hanson. These sources have named Hanson as Palin’s secret love, and say their affair nearly wrecked both their marriages. Hanson owned a snowmobile dealership with Palin’s husband Todd, who immediately dissolved the partnership after he heard stories about the affair, which occurred around 1996, according to the sources. At the time, Palin was mayor of Wasilla. Palin has vehemently denied cheating on her husband, and Hanson insisted to The NATIONAL ENQUIRER that he was never romantically involved with the 44-year-old Republican vice presidential candidate. However, Hanson family insider, Jim Burdett, has gone on the record and passed a rigorous polygraph test, revealing details of the affair to The NATIONAL ENQUIRER in a world exclusive interview. Burdett is a former brother-in-law of Hanson’s estranged wife Carolyn's brother, Craig Batton, and still speaks with many family members. “I’ve known about Brad having had an affair for a long time, but it wasn’t until just recently that I learned his affair was with Sarah Palin,” Burdett told The NATIONAL ENQUIRER. “Sarah was elected mayor of Wasilla, Brad became a city council member in the nearby town of Palmer, and they started an affair. “Todd found out about the affair and was so mad he broke up their partnership at the snowmobile dealership,” Burdett claimed. Another source, who preferred to remain anonymous for fear of repercussions, provided The NATIONAL ENQUIRER with a sworn affidavit attesting to the Palin-Hanson story. “Todd was away on business a lot and Sarah felt lonely. Brad was a good listener, and Sarah talked to him at length. Eventually, she realized she was falling in love with him,” one insider divulged. “When Todd got back from one of his trips, Sarah told him that she had begun to have feelings for Brad.” For the full story and exclusive details of the shocking allegations of Sarah Palin’s affair pick up the latest issue of the NATIONAL ENQUIRER!
If at one time women were considered heretical for swimming upstream against feminist orthodoxy, they now face condemnation for swimming downstream — away from Sarah Palin. To express reservations about her qualifications to be vice president — and possibly president — is to risk being labeled anti-woman. Or, as I am guilty of charging her early critics, supporting only a certain kind of woman. Some of the passionately feminist critics of Palin who attacked her personally deserved some of the backlash they received. But circumstances have changed since Palin was introduced as just a hockey mom with lipstick — what a difference a financial crisis makes — and a more complicated picture has emerged. As we’ve seen and heard more from John McCain’s running mate, it is increasingly clear that Palin is a problem. Quick study or not, she doesn’t know enough about economics and foreign policy to make Americans comfortable with a President Palin should conditions warrant her promotion. Yes, she recently met and turned several heads of state as the United Nations General Assembly convened in New York. She was gracious, charming and disarming. Men swooned. Pakistan’s president wanted to hug her. (Perhaps Osama bin Laden is dying to meet her?) And, yes, she has common sense, something we value. And she’s had executive experience as a mayor and a governor, though of relatively small constituencies (about 6,000 and 680,000, respectively). Finally, Palin’s narrative is fun, inspiring and all-American in that frontier way we seem to admire. When Palin first emerged as John McCain’s running mate, I confess I was delighted. She was the antithesis and nemesis of the hirsute, Birkenstock-wearing sisterhood — a refreshing feminist of a different order who personified the modern successful working mother. Palin didn’t make a mess cracking the glass ceiling. She simply glided through it. It was fun while it lasted. Palin’s recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity, and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League. No one hates saying that more than I do. Like so many women, I’ve been pulling for Palin, wishing her the best, hoping she will perform brilliantly. I’ve also noticed that I watch her interviews with the held breath of an anxious parent, my finger poised over the mute button in case it gets too painful. Unfortunately, it often does. My cringe reflex is exhausted. Palin filibusters. She repeats words, filling space with deadwood. Cut the verbiage and there’s not much content there. Here’s but one example of many from her interview with Hannity: “Well, there is a danger in allowing some obsessive partisanship to get into the issue that we’re talking about today. And that’s something that John McCain, too, his track record, proving that he can work both sides of the aisle, he can surpass the partisanship that must be surpassed to deal with an issue like this.” When Couric pointed to polls showing that the financial crisis had boosted Obama’s numbers, Palin blustered wordily: “I’m not looking at poll numbers. What I think Americans at the end of the day are going to be able to go back and look at track records and see who’s more apt to be talking about solutions and wishing for and hoping for solutions for some opportunity to change, and who’s actually done it?” If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself. If Palin were a man, we’d all be guffawing, just as we do every time Joe Biden tickles the back of his throat with his toes. But because she’s a woman — and the first ever on a Republican presidential ticket — we are reluctant to say what is painfully true. What to do? McCain can’t repudiate his choice for running mate. He not only risks the wrath of the GOP’s unforgiving base, but he invites others to second-guess his executive decision-making ability. Barack Obama faces the same problem with Biden. Only Palin can save McCain, her party, and the country she loves. She can bow out for personal reasons, perhaps because she wants to spend more time with her newborn. No one would criticize a mother who puts her family first. Do it for your country.
McCain will go to debate By: Politico Staff September 26, 2008 11:37 AM EST
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) ended three days of suspense on Friday morning and announced that he will leave bailout negotiations in Washington and fly to Oxford, Miss., for the opening presidential debate. McCain had said he would suspend his campaign until an agreement was reached on the administration's $700 billion mortgage proposal. No such an agreement has been reached, but Republicans said the standoff was hurting McCain's campaign, and he would look terrible if he ruined the nationally televised, eagerly anticipated debate while Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) was ready to go onstage. The text of the statement:
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) announces: "The McCain campaign is resuming all activities and the senator will travel to the debate this afternoon. Following the debate, he will return to Washington to ensure that all voices and interests are represented in the final agreement, especially those of taxpayers and homeowners.
The text of a statement from his camapign at about 11:20 a.m. Eastern:
John McCain’s decision to suspend his campaign was made in the hopes that politics could be set aside to address our economic crisis. In response, Americans saw a familiar spectacle in Washington. At a moment of crisis that threatened the economic security of American families, Washington played the blame game rather than work together to find a solution that would avert a collapse of financial markets without squandering hundreds of billions of taxpayers’ money to bailout bankers and brokers who bet their fortunes on unsafe lending practices. Both parties in both houses of Congress and the administration needed to come together to find a solution that would deserve the trust of the American people. And while there were attempts to do that, much of yesterday was spent fighting over who would get the credit for a deal and who would get the blame for failure. There was no deal or offer yesterday that had a majority of support in Congress. There was no deal yesterday that included adequate protections for the taxpayers. It is not enough to cut deals behind closed doors and then try to force it on the rest of Congress — especially when it amounts to thousands of dollars for every American family. The difference between Barack Obama and John McCain was apparent during the White House meeting yesterday, where Barack Obama’s priority was political posturing in his opening monologue defending the package as it stands. John McCain listened to all sides so he could help focus the debate on finding a bipartisan resolution that is in the interest of taxpayers and homeowners. The Democratic interests stood together in opposition to an agreement that would accommodate additional taxpayer protections. Senator McCain has spent the morning talking to members of the administration, members of the Senate, and members of the House. He is optimistic that there has been significant progress toward a bipartisan agreement now that there is a framework for all parties to be represented in negotiations, including Representative Blunt as a designated negotiator for House Republicans. The McCain campaign is resuming all activities and the senator will travel to the debate this afternoon. Following the debate, he will return to Washington to ensure that all voices and interests are represented in the final agreement, especially those of taxpayers and homeowners.
MAD ABOUT LETTERMAN
By DON KAPLAN
September 26, 2008 --
CBS News executives were red- faced yesterday trying to explain how David Letterman used unaired news footage of Sen. John McCain with Katie Couric to embarrass the Republican presidential candidate.
McCain canceled his appearance on Letterman's show late Wednesday, several hours before he was due to appear - claiming he had to return to Washington to deal with the financial crisis.
But when Letterman discovered the Senator sitting down with Couric at the same time he was supposed to be taping "Late Night," he unloaded on McCain.
"I'm more than a little disappointed by this behavior," Letterman told viewers. "This doesn't smell right."
"This is not the way a tested hero behaves. Somebody's putting something in his Metamucil," he said.
Later in the show, Letterman showed an internal, live video of McCain being tended to by a make-up artist before the Couric interview. Both Couric and Letterman are on CBS.
Letterman said on the air that McCain had called him personally to apologize and said he was racing to the airport.
"He doesn't seem to be racing to the airport, does he?" Letterman told viewers.
"I feel like we've caught him getting a manicure," Letterman quipped, as a make-up woman dabbed at McCain's face.
Asked if CBS officials had a problem with Letterman using the internal news feed, a spokeswoman for "The Evening News" refused to address the issue.
But several CBS News executives - who asked not to be identified - said that the stunt did not go down well within the news division.
"If we had done something like that to him, someone around here would end up getting fired," one said.
News officials found out Letterman was using the internal feed shortly after it showed up on an internal CBS feed carrying the "Late Show" taping.
"They were pretty aggravated," a CBS News source told The Post.
"But they were not about to start a fight with Letterman," the source said. "We're in the middle of a heavy, heavy news cycle and Letterman is Letterman.
"He does whatever he wants and always has."
McCain spokeswoman Nicole Wallace said that the campaign canceled on Letterman because it "felt this wasn't a night for comedy."
By LIZ SIDOTI, Associated Press WriterThu Sep 25, 11:44 PM ET
Prospects were questionable at best that John McCain and Barack Obama would meet Friday for their first presidential debate as progress appeared to dissolve between Congress and the Bush administration on a $700 billion financial industry bailout.
McCain didn't plan to participate in the debate unless there was a consensus. Obama still wants the face-off to go on and was scheduled to travel to the debate site in Oxford, Miss., on Friday.
"I believe that it's very possible that we can get an agreement in time for me to fly to Mississippi," McCain said late Thursday. "I understand how important this debate is and I'm very hopeful. But I also have to put the country first."
In turn, Obama said: "Obviously the biggest priority is making sure that we get this deal done. But I also think it's important to describe to the American people where the next president wants to take the country and how he's going to deal with this crisis."
Both candidates made the rounds on network evening news programs after meeting on the crisis with President Bush and bipartisan congressional leaders at the White House. McCain did not participate in late-night negotiations on Capitol Hill but worked the phones from his Virginia home. A senior McCain official said McCain hasn't signed on to any one proposal, though he agreed there needs to be greater protection for taxpayers.
The debate over the debate is the latest campaign twist as McCain and Obama try to navigate the uncharted politics of the financial meltdown and show leadership at a time of national angst.
In Mississippi, debate organizers continued to prepare, and Gov. Haley Barbour, a Republican, told a news conference he expected the debate to go on. "This is going to be a great debate tomorrow night," Barbour said.
Television networks, too, said they were moving forward.
Presidential politics ran smack into the delicate discussions over how to stop further weakening the sagging economy.
As McCain returned to Washington at midday, Democratic and Republican negotiators emerged from a closed-door meeting to report an agreement in principle. An Obama campaign official said the Illinois senator called into the meeting. McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said McCain didn't participate, but held talks with Republican leaders afterward.
A few hours later, the rivals attended the private White House meeting. They sat three seats away from the president, McCain to his right, Obama to his left. As the meeting broke up, it became apparent that any tentative agreement had started to dissolve.
Afterward, Obama said he tried to understand the objections to the approach being taken by congressional leaders and the Bush administration.
"The question I asked was, 'Well, do we need to start from scratch or are there ways to incorporate some of those concerns?'" Obama said. "At this point the president, the secretary of the Treasury and those who are expressing some of these concerns have to provide some clarity."
Several Republicans and Democrats briefed on the White House meeting said House Republican Leader John Boehner raised the concerns of some of his rank and file about the emerging plan, and McCain urged cooperation by all parties to craft a compromise proposal.
McCain said he knew going in to the meeting that progress wasn't as far along as it seemed.
"There never was a deal, but I do believe the meeting was important to move the process along," McCain said. "It gave us a renewed sense of urgency and I'm confident we will move forward, and I'm confident that we will reach a conclusion."
Obama, for his part, held a news conference at a Washington hotel and suggested McCain was part of the problem.
"I'm not clear that in a very difficult situation like this that doing things in the spotlight and injecting presidential politics is necessarily useful," Obama said.
Later, McCain's campaign issued a statement that said the White House meeting "devolved into a contentious shouting match" and implied Obama was at fault. Democrats differed.
As the day began, McCain portrayed his announced halt to campaign events, fundraising and advertising as an example of putting the country before politics. But in doing so he also hoped to get political credit for a decisive step on a national crisis as polls show him trailing Obama on the economy and slipping in the presidential race.
And politics continued on all sides nonetheless.
Despite McCain's stated hiatus, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, visited memorials in lower Manhattan to those killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and McCain aides appeared on news programs. Chief strategist Steve Schmidt said all television advertising was "down." But a McCain ad was later seen on local television in Las Vegas, and perhaps elsewhere.
Industry officials said Obama's campaign was inquiring about buying airtime made available where McCain was absent.
Schmidt said Obama was acting in "politically predatory fashion" by seeking McCain's abandoned air time. But Obama spokesman Bill Burton called Schmidt's claim "categorically false."
Burton also derided McCain's claim to have halted activity as a political stunt, saying: "John McCain hasn't suspended his campaign, he only wants us to suspend disbelief."
Obama, for his part, didn't curtail any of his campaign activities.
In fact, the Democrat also rolled out a new 60-second, TV ad in which he cited economic policies endorsed by Bush and McCain as essentially to blame for the troubles.
"For eight years we've been told that the way to a stronger economy was to give huge tax breaks to corporations and the wealthiest. Cut oversight on Wall Street. And somehow all Americans would benefit," Obama says in the ad. "Well now we know the truth."
___
Associated Press writers Jim Kuhnhenn, Nedra Pickler, Christopher Wills and Beth Fouhy contributed to this report.
HuffingtonPost.com
by: Bob Cesca
There are several reasons why Senator Obama is enjoying a double-digit lead in the "honest and trustworthy" category (47 percent to 36 percent according the new ABC News/Washington Post poll). First, Senator Obama doesn't, you know, lie to the American people every damn day. Second, Senator Obama didn't vote with the dishonest, corrupt Bush administration 90 percent of the time.
But one of the main reasons why the nation appears to be lining up against Senator McCain's insanely obvious lack of integrity could be because his very serious and mavericky campaign strategy can be described in four simple words:
Blurt Out Random Crap.
"Crap," in this context, is defined as everything from lies to weasel-words to inexplicably weird nonsense. And it seems like Senator McCain does this a lot. So much so that we can only conclude that it's intentional.
The goal: Get McCain on record saying something no matter how ridiculous. This way, he can hit the stump later and boast that he said something with regards to scary stuff in the news. I said something [that didn't make any sense and was probably a lie] and Senator Obama didn't say anything [also a lie]! My friends! And whenever he's accused of routinely blurting out random crap, Senator McCain trucks out the old punishment theorem: If Senator Obama had only agreed to the town halls, I wouldn't be selling-out the last shreds of my honor or integrity just to get elected. Can't you see? Senator Obama turned me into a hack, dammit!
First thing that pops into his head. Is it truthful? Doesn't matter. Sex education for kindergarteners, for instance. "Palin sold her jet on eBay," for instance. Does it even make sense or is it just a bunch of words strung together to form a sentence? Who cares. "President Putin of Germany," for instance. "Delivering bottled hot water to dehydrated babies," for instance.
I'll admit that the latter category is more fun to document. However, the lying is especially infuriating -- and maybe that's the idea -- piss off the liberals. But it can't be helping with independents and undecideds who are discovering quite rapidly that the mythology of "John McCain" doesn't match the real-life John McCain. The Real McCain is rapidly coming into focus for those in the middle. McRage. McLiar. McPanderer. McIncompetent. McBush. And the Obama campaign only needs to tweak these frames. After all, the McCain campaign is doing all of the heavy lifting by itself.
And as we witnessed with the Zapatero episode, as soon as Senator McCain blurts out random crap, his staff scrambles onto the stage with pronouncements and excuses so as to make it seem as if McCain meant to say what he said -- a routine which only serves to compound the farcical nature of it all.
So it comes as no surprise that the McCain-Palin strategy on the economic crisis is to -- that's right! -- blurt out random crap.
All along and without regard to the actual status of the economy, Senator McCain has blurted out the well-known talking point "the fundamentals of the economy are strong." Why? Because that's the Bush Republican position. Those exact words. And shortly after President Paulson announced his bailout plan when it appeared as if we were on the verge of a complete meltdown, Senator McCain, in the most Pavlovian sense, couldn't help himself and -- WHOOPS! -- he said it again. Why? Because that's what he always says about the economy.
When he was immediately and appropriately called out for being a doof, he blurted out that everyone in the world misunderstood him. The "fundamentals," he claimed, meant "the workers." In other words, American workers are strong. What the hell does that have to do with the status of the economy? Does it mean the workforce can lift heavy things -- like factory equipment that's being shipped to China? How does one quantify worker "strength" as an economic indicator? Even if a crazy economist somewhere includes the morale of the workforce as a fundamental of the economy, the McCain campaign clearly overlooked the reality that we've lost 1.75 million jobs this year and unemployment spiked to 6.1 percent two days after Sarah Palin's overrated acceptance speech. Not strong, McCain. Bad! But, then again, he really didn't mean "the workers" in the first place anyway.
When this failed, he blurted out something about averting the impending economic meltdown by convening a government commission, ostensibly to study the urgent crisis and perhaps issue a recommendation sometime in the future. Decisive!
When that didn't work, he called for the firing of the head of the SEC, Chris Cox, even though Phil Gramm, the author of McCain's economic plan (pre-crisis), is also responsible for the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 -- a piece of legislation which, along with Reaganomics and Alan Greenspan's love of all things bubble-shaped, is directly responsible for this present mess. Phil Gramm. A man who said that the economic crisis is mostly a figment of our whiny imagination. A man who could be our next Treasury Secretary and steward of the economy. Hire him, but fire the other guy. Because that'll somehow help. Oh, Magoo.
It's worth noting that while that idea was failing, Senator McCain inexplicably called for the firing of the head of the Federal Elections Commission, Donald F. McGahn II. Poor McGahn II. Minding his own business, and suddenly McCain's on television calling him out for screwing the economic pooch.
When that failed, Senator McCain rolled out one of his most egregious lies to date, claiming that Senator Obama, of all people, has been directly responsible for the crisis. Why? Because the former CEO of Fannie Mae, Franklin Raines, once talked on the phone with someone associated with the Obama campaign. Like 16 months ago. And that somehow makes Raines a close economic advisor. Never mind that Rick Davis, McCain's campaign manager, was on the Freddie Mac payroll as recently as a couple of weeks ago.
Which leads us to Senator McCain blurting out that no-one on his staff is associated in any way with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.
What's next, McCain campaign? A Mogwai ate a sandwich after midnight; morphed into a Gremlin; then caused the economic crisis? Or will it be Marty McFly's sports almanac screwing up the space-time continuum? Or will it be Reverend Wright putting a curse on the banks? Whatever is next is bound to be crazier than what's already been said.
And now -- wait. What's this? As I wrap this up, it's being reported that Senator McCain wants to delay the debates so he can focus on the economic crisis. Oh, and now he wants to suspend campaigning. If what we've seen from the senator so far is him "focusing" on the economy -- what the hell is he like when he's multitasking? What's next, McCain? Suspending the election?
So what will a McCain administration economic policy look like? From the lack of foresight and leadership we've witnessed so far, we can assume that McCain might choose a new economic policy totally at random, depending on how saucy he feels from minute to minute. "I'll have a muffin with my Egg Beaters, and replace Bernanke with that hooplehead who weedwacks the knoll." Two minutes later... "Hey Phil, we don't need the Nasdaq anymore. Kill it." Two minutes later... "My God! What have I done! Quickly -- nationalize the paintball industry! Go!"
One thing is for sure. Expecting a workable solution to this economic meltdown from a man as knee-jerk, dishonest and incomprehensible as John McCain would be an exercise in national self-destruction. He doesn't have anything real to say, and what he does say, he can't sell. He simply can't do the gig. A vote for McCain-Palin is absolutely a vote for the end of America as we know it.
Huffington Post
by: Drew Westen
It was Tuesday afternoon last week, and I was heading back from San Diego to the East Coast when I caught a piece of a speech on the economy by Barack Obama. I almost missed my flight because I couldn't walk away from it. My immediate response: This was a game-changer, and we ought to see a five-point shift in the polls if he keeps this up for the rest of the week.
I was wrong. The shift was bigger. He leapt from 2 points behind John McCain to 6 points ahead at one point by the end of the week. His newfound voice in fact yielded dividends. The question is whether he and his campaign will draw the right conclusions about why he earned those dividends or whether they do what they have done so many times before: drop their gloves and start getting beaten up again after having their opponent down on the canvas.
Indicting McCain
Mark Sept 16, 2008 as the date Obama may have turned the election around. What he did in that speech in Colorado was something he had only done once before, in his convention address: not just to inspire voters about himself and his vision for the future, but to make the case against John McCain. The truth, he stated with the razor sharpness of a good prosecutor making his closing statement, is that what McCain was saying in response to the extraordinary financial crisis that was unfolding "fits with the same economic philosophy that he's had for 26 years...It's the philosophy that says even common-sense regulations are unnecessary and unwise. It's a philosophy that lets Washington lobbyists shred consumer protections and distort our economy so it works for the special interests instead of working people...We've had this philosophy for eight years. We know the results. You feel it in your own lives. Jobs have disappeared, and peoples' life savings have been put at risk. Millions of families face foreclosure, and millions more have seen their home values plummet. The cost of everything from gas to groceries to health care has gone up, while the dream of a college education for our kids and a secure and dignified retirement for our seniors is slipping away. These are the struggles that Americans are facing. This is the pain that has now trickled up."
What had he just done? He had said implicitly, as he later made explicit, that the economic pain Americans are experiencing isn't accidental. It isn't an act of God. It is an act of ideology and incompetence, and it reflects the failed ideology of the Republican Party and the conservative movement whose standard bearer in this election is John McCain. And he had spoken in evocative ways about what is happening in real people's lives, not just about how McCain wants to privatize Social Security or seems indifferent to big businesses that are increasingly considering their obligations to their retiring workers optional, but about how the dream of a "dignified retirement" is slipping away. His terms were evocative, up close, and personal.
He went on to compare and contrast what he and McCain had done that might have prevented the collapse of the housing market (and with it the largest asset most middle class Americans have, the equity in their homes) and the tumbling of seemingly rock-solid financial giants like Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch. He took his listeners back two years, to February 2006, when he introduced legislation to prevent fraudulent or abusive mortgage practices. "A year later," he went on, "before the crisis hit, I warned Secretary Paulson and Chairman Bernanke about the risks of mounting foreclosures and urged them to bring together all the stakeholders to find solutions to the subprime mortgage meltdown. Senator McCain did nothing." After walking his listeners through a timeline of events that transformed a topic that could so easily have seemed dull and lifeless into a riveting whodunit, he made clear that the mystery had been solved: "This is what happens when you confuse the free market with a free license to let special interests take whatever they can get, however they can get it. This is what happens when you see seven years of incomes falling for the average worker while Wall Street is booming...Americans have always pursued our dreams within a free market that has been the engine of our progress. It's a market that has created a prosperity that is the envy of the world, and rewarded the innovators and risk-takers who have made America a beacon of science, and technology, and discovery. But the American economy has worked in large part because we have guided the market's invisible hand with a higher principle-that America prospers when all Americans can prosper. That is why we have put in place rules of the road to make competition fair, and open, and honest."
This is the language of the heart, not the cerebrum. It raises not just the pocketbook issues that have Americans so worried but the values of honesty, fairness, and community that are central to what parents teach their children. It speaks of "rules of the road" rather than just "regulations." Sure, his words reflect a grasp of the issues that shines through, giving voters the sense that this is a man and a mind who understands what's wrong and how it needs to be righted. But what was present in this speech was precisely what has been absent from his campaign from the start: a sense of outrage at what Bush and those such as McCain who have been complicit in his malfeasance and mismanagement have done, and a willingness to put aside the campfire songs to tell a campfire story about his opponent as someone who is not the right person to lead.
It is no accident that his poll numbers jumped after his convention address, when commentator after commentator said something along the lines of, "Hey, he can throw a punch." And it is no accident that his numbers jumped again after a speech -- and several days of continued attack on McCain's ability to lead the nation out of the economic wilderness -- with words like these: "Make no mistake: my opponent is running for four more years of policies that will throw the economy further out of balance. His outrage at Wall Street would be more convincing if he wasn't offering them more tax cuts. His call for fiscal responsibility would be believable if he wasn't for more tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, and more of a trillion dollar war in Iraq paid for with deficit spending and borrowing from foreign creditors like China. His newfound support for regulation bears no resemblance to his scornful attitude towards oversight and enforcement. John McCain cannot be trusted to reestablish proper oversight of our financial markets for one simple reason: he has shown time and again that he does not believe in it."
But what was different about this speech wasn't just the words. It was the way he delivered them. Obama has always been a brilliantly inspiring orator, at least when he chooses to turn on the electricity. But he has always seemed to shy away from a fight, and you don't beat an incumbent party on the ropes by making the election a referendum on the challenger. This time Obama spoke with a dignified but aggressive air of authority that screamed the words, "Commander-in-Chief." He made people feel comfortable with the thought of putting their families' economic security in his hands. He stood tall, with his tall visage framed between two flags, in a way that seemed both presidential and unwavering. And he did not waver the rest of the week, as he peppered his speeches -- and McCain -- with the kind of tough humor we have not seen from him, as when he taunted, "If you think the fundamentals are sound, I have a bridge in Alaska to sell you," and "The old boy network? In the McCain campaign, that's called a staff meeting."
I hope he and his advisors do not take away the wrong message from this speech, that it was his six-point policy prescription at the end that turned things around. Sure, that prescription was good to hear, just as the meat he put on the bones of change in his convention address was important in spelling out what change it is we are supposed to believe in. But I left for the East Coast before he ever got to those policy prescriptions, and I already knew this speech was a game-changer.
What Obama Needs to Do in the Debates
Unfortunately, with a four-point lead that means little, especially for a black candidate who needs to be up by 10 points in battleground states to be safe, the game isn't over yet. The next potential game-changer is his first debate with John McCain, and what he needs to do in the debates is precisely what he has not done thus far in that format, and what no Democrat other than Bill Clinton has done effectively in decades: to connect with voters in a way that makes them feel like they know and share his values, feel confident that he will keep them and their families safe, and will do right by people like them.
How does he do that? By following some basic principles, many of which Democrats would do well to follow in every debate at every level of government:
1. Think of your answers as sandwiches, with emotionally evocative and values-driven language at the beginning and end and with the "meat" in the middle. Emotionally evocative opening and closing statements serve three functions: they draw voters' attention (one of the major function of emotions from an evolutionary standpoint), they signal voters what you are passionate about, and they provide the sound bites that will be replayed over and over on television. The emotional "bread and butter" at the beginning and end can elicit or address voters' anger, hope, concerns, sense of patriotism, faith, or whatever informs your position and moves voters, or it can be a story from your own life or the lives you've encountered on the campaign trail. That is the bread and butter of what voters will remember. Follow it with the "meat": first, how we got here (indicting the GOP for what it has done and making the causal link to the pain people are experiencing and our moral standing in the world), and second, a very brief bulleted description of what you plan to do (no more than three points, which is the most voters will remember). For example, on health care, start with something like, "I believe in a family doctor for every family. Right now, 50 million working Americans and their families can't take their kids to the doctor, and the rest of us are watching our co-pays shoot through the roof and our security disappear as insurance companies are raking in record profits." Then compare McCain's "you're on your own, pal" plan that would knock 150 million people off their employer-provided insurance (which would scare the hell out of most voters if they only knew about it -- and for good reason) with your own, emphasizing the most central points of your plan: if you're happy with your doctor or health plan, you will be able to stay with what you have; if you're not, you'll have choices, including not only an array of private plans that will have to compete for your dollar but the same plan members of Congress get. End with something that again inspires emotion, "If that plan is good enough for people like me in the Senate, it's good enough for the people who pay my salary -- the American taxpayer."
2. Clearly enunciate your principles in virtually every response. Why do you take the position you do, and how does that principle reflect mainstream American values? Get to the specifics after you've established the principle, because it cues voters that you're a person of conviction. The usual Democratic statements such as "I'm for the Second Amendment but for limited regulation of x,y,z" is not a principle, any more than was Al Gore's debate response in 2004, that he supported regulation of new handguns but not old ones. (What's the principle? That old guns are rusty? Voters saw through it and thought he wanted to support gun control but didn't want to say it.) Here's a principle, and one that distinguishes him clearly from McCain and the GOP: "My basic principle on guns is this: I believe in the rights of law-abiding Americans. That's why I support the rights of law-abiding Americans to own firearms to hunt and protect their families, and why I support the rights of parents to send their kids to school in the morning and know they'll come home safely." That sets the framework for a principled position, for example, against assault weapons (e.g., "If you're hunting with an M-16, you're not bringing that meat home for dinner").
3. Look at the audience and know where the camera is at all times. In his Saddleback performance, Obama split his eye contact between his interviewer, Rick Warren, and his shoelaces. He rarely turned to the camera and his broader television audience. Eye contact and body posture are crucial nonverbal cues in primates including humans, and voters unconsciously process those cues about dominance, sincerity, and so forth. Downcast eyes readily suggest shame, low status, or evasiveness. McCain had been coached by a good media coach to respond to his interview with direct eye contact, often using his name, and then to pivot away toward the audience within one to two seconds. Democrats routinely fail to make use of people who can help them enunciate their positions with strength, conviction, and humor.
4. Avoid dispassionate, meandering, intellectualized answers. Nuance and emotional appeal are not mutually exclusive. Sure, it's harder to enunciate a principle that recognizes ambiguity than one that emanates from a Manichean worldview of the good guys vs. the bad guys. But people are often relieved when someone speaks to their ambivalence. It isn't hard to say that business is the engine of our prosperity but that leadership is about keeping that engine on the right track. Nor is it hard to say what most people feel in their gut, that government shouldn't be in the business of forcing one person to live by another person's faith, which is why Sarah Palin has no right to plan our families for us, but that you ought to have a very good reason (e.g., the mother's life or health is seriously in danger) to abort a late-term fetus.
5. Inspire and indict. As I argued in The Political Brain, and in multiple posts here, you can't win a campaign with one story (about why you should be elected), and no one has ever won the presidency by saying only nice things about himself and his opponent. You have to control the dominant story of who you are (and answer attacks on that story directly and immediately) and the story of who your opponent is and why he's not the right person for the job or the times.
6. Don't run from any issue. State your principles clearly and with conviction, and if you worry that the public isn't with you, turn that into a virtue (by making it a mark of genuineness and courage). The failure to state a clear position on hot-button issues has been a standard Democratic error for decades. Republicans never make this mistake. They've been running on a position on abortion that's at 30% in the polls for years--that life begins at conception, and there's no room for compromise--and this year they've even taken the more extreme position that every rapist has the right to choose the mother of his child. If Democrats don't run on abortion and contraception this year, when Republicans have governed or threaten to govern with positions so far to the right that you can't find them on a map of America (e.g., forcing teenagers to have their rapists' babies, perpetuating the cycle of poverty by making contraceptives unavailable to poor women, teaching only abstinence when it's nearly impossible to name a Republican who ever practiced it--they deserve another 3 Alitos and a Scalia for good measure.
7. Don't run from any attack. Answer it with an attack on the attacker. The two biggest mistakes Democrats repeatedly make are to fail to answer an attack and to get on their heels and try to answer every charge. Answer the weakest link in your opponent's attack and go after him for making it. For example, Obama could easily have addressed the "elitist" charged by simply saying, "Let me get this straight. The guy who has to ask his staff how many homes he has, whose wife says you just can't get around Arizona without a private jet, and who's worth over a hundred million dollars is calling the black guy who just recently paid off his student loans elitist? That dog ain't gonna hunt."
8. Don't worry about looking like the angry black man. People don't see you that way. Your bigger worry is that you don't look masculine, muscular, and aggressive enough. Don't let grandpa push you around. (And Joe, that goes for soon-to-be Grandma Palin.)
9. Remember your first mission: to convey, particularly to white voters who are on the fence, that you share their values and understand and care about people like them. Speak their language, talk about what you want and fear for your kids (which is likely the same as what they want and fear for theirs), and don't hide your values in the fine print of your policy prescriptions. Speak from the gut about what matters to you. A campaign isn't a debate on the issues. One strong values statement (e.g., "It's time we had an economy that works again for people who work for a living") or one strong metaphor (okay, something other than lipstick on a pig) is worth a thousand ten-point plans.
10. Remember your second mission: to make people worry about what would happen if they vote for McCain and Palin. Do you really want to lose your employer-based health insurance and be left on your own to fend for yourself? Do you really want a return to coat-hanger abortions and increase the rate of unwanted pregnancies among poor women and teenagers? Do you really want your teenage son drafted (since there's no other way to maintain our security while keeping tens of thousands of troops in Iraq and deterring people with "the right stuff" from signing up and staying in the military)? Stress your theme of unity, and contrast it with the hate-fest in Minneapolis and the divide-and-conquer tactics the Republicans have been using since Lee Atwater and Karl Rove came on the scene.
11. Use humor, especially when throwing a punch. Humor is disarming, and well-timed lines will be replayed on cable over and over and will be the only thing people who didn't watch the debate will know about your performance.
12. Don't "dumb down" your language, but use words that connect with people and don't make them feel ignorant. They don't need to hear about "marginal tax rates." They need to hear what's going to happen to their paychecks if you're in charge of the tax code. Avoid all acronyms and Washington inside baseball. If you're about to say "S-CHIP," try instead, "I believe people who work for a living ought to be able to take their kids to the doctor when they're sick. Plain and simple. My opponent thinks that if your kid has asthma or you have a bad back and can't get health insurance because of a 'pre-existing condition,' tough break."
13. Keep in mind at all times what stories the other side has effectively told about you (you're an empty celebrity, uppity, elitist, weak, and outside the mainstream) and counter them at every turn. Keep in mind at all times what stories you want voters to be telling the next day about your opponent (that he's out of touch with the concerns of everyday Americans; that if you like how things are going now, vote for him; and that he claims to be a straight-talking maverick, but it's hard to know which McCain would show up at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue because he's been on virtually every side of every issue), and reinforce them at every turn.
14. Remember who your two audiences are: the people who support you already who you want to show up at the polls, and the people who are on the fence who you want to get off on your side. Don't worry about offending people who already detest you and everything you stand for.
15. Be genuine. Don't take any position you don't really believe in. People can tell. And you don't need to be anything but genuine. The American people agree with you on about 80% of the issues, and as Stan Greenberg and I recently found in polling 10,000 likely voters and putting together a Handbook for Progressive Messaging, Democrats can win on every one of the major issues, from economics, to abortion, to national security, to the role of government, with well crafted, emotionally evocative messages.
This isn't an exhaustive list, but it's a start. Personally, I'd throw away the briefing books and study this list. The debates won't be won or lost on who jams the most facts into 90 minutes. McCain can't tell a Sunni from a Shiite. If you don't know your position and the reasons for it on every issue after two years of campaigning, you're not going to learn it this week, so don't bother trying. There are more important things to get right--like making eye contact with your audience.
People want to know who their potential President is, and they want to like, trust, and be able to identify with him.
That's what Obama needs to accomplish in the debates.
Drew Westen, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at Emory University, founder of Westen Strategies, and author of "The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation," recently released in paperback with a new postscript on the 2008 election.
Palin Once Blessed To Be Free From 'Witchcraft' Sep 25, 7:11 AM (ET)By GARANCE BURKE / myway.com
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - A grainy YouTube video surfaced Wednesday showing Sarah Palin being blessed in her hometown church three years ago by a Kenyan pastor who prayed for her protection from "witchcraft" as she prepared to seek higher office.
The video shows Palin standing before Bishop Thomas Muthee in the pulpit of the Wasilla Assembly of God church, holding her hands open as he asked Jesus Christ to keep her safe from "every form of witchcraft."
"Come on, talk to God about this woman. We declare, save her from Satan," Muthee said as two attendants placed their hands on Palin's shoulders. "Make her way my God. Bring finances her way even for the campaign in the name of Jesus. ... Use her to turn this nation the other way around."
Palin filed campaign papers a few months later, in October 2005, and was elected governor the next year.
Palin does not say anything on the video and keeps her head bowed throughout the blessing. The Republican vice presidential candidate was baptized at the church but stopped attending regularly in 2002.
A spokesman for the McCain campaign declined to comment. A person who answered the phone at the Wasilla church confirmed the video was from May 2005 but declined further comment.
Palin was baptized Roman Catholic as a newborn.
Pentecostals are conservative in their reading of the Bible. Unlike most other Christians - including most evangelicals - Pentecostals believe in "baptism in the Holy Spirit." That can manifest itself through speaking in tongues, modern-day prophesy and faith healing, which includes the laying on of hands.
Maria Comella, a spokeswoman for the McCain-Palin campaign, has said Palin attends different churches and does not consider herself Pentecostal.
On a visit to the church in June 2008, Palin spoke fondly of the Kenyan pastor and told a group of young missionaries that Muthee's prayers had helped her to become governor.
"Pastor Muthee was here and he was praying over me, and you know how he speaks and he's so bold," she said. "And he was praying 'Lord make a way, Lord make a way' ... He said, 'Lord make a way and let her do this next step.' And that's exactly what happened."
The Rev. Zipporah Ndiritu, who studied under Muthee in the Kiambu, Kenya-based Word of Faith Church, said the bishop is revered among evangelicals there. In a phone interview from Mombasa, Kenya, she said church doctrine focuses on ridding the world of demons - and witches.
"Even in the days of Jesus Christ, according to the Bible there were witches who were manifesting through demonic forces," she said. "You can seek from the Lord, and if you find demonic forces you cast them out."
Ndiritu said she did not know Palin.
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On the Net:
Palin-Muthee video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?vkj-on3kfWuE&featurerelated
NEW YORK (CNN) – Sarah Palin and the foreign leaders she has met with in New York have said very little to reporters over the last two days, but the press happened to be in the room on Wednesday for one eyebrow-raising exchange, as the new president of Pakistan lavished praise on Palin's looks.
On entering a room filled with several Pakistani officials this afternoon, Palin was immediately greeted by Sherry Rehman, the country's Information Minister.
"And how does one keep looking that good when one is that busy?," Rehman asked, drawing friendly laughter from the room when she complimented Palin.
"Oh, thank you," Palin said.
Pakistan's recently-elected president, Asif Ali Zardari, entered the room seconds later. Palin rose to shake his hand, saying she was “honored” to meet him.
Zardari then called her "gorgeous" and said: "Now I know why the whole of America is crazy about you."
"You are so nice," Palin said, smiling. "Thank you."
A handler from Zardari's entourage then told the two politicians to keep shaking hands for the cameras.
"If he's insisting, I might hug," Zardari said. Palin smiled politely.
The Alaska governor did not answer questions from reporters at her first two appearances on Wednesday, when she joined McCain in meetings with Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili and Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko, and then traveled downtown to meet with Iraqi president Jalal Talabani.
But she did offer brief remarks to a reporter at the Zardari meeting who asked about her day.
"It's going great," Palin said. "These meetings are very informative and helpful, and a lot of good people sharing appreciation for America."
