For someone who came to the US from Europe and thought European press was biased and one-sided, the recent developments in the presidential campaign have been absolutely astonishing. The US press has thrown away any pretense of balance and fairness. It has morphed into an almost unanimous mouthpiece for Obama while questioning every minuscule statement made by republicans.
Consider this. The press had an absolute field day with Sarah Palin's 17-year old daughter's pregnancy. Yet the same press almost completely ignored the persistent rumors about John Edwards' affair. Only the National Enquirer, which in any case is not a good standing member of the "official" press, investigated this for about a year. Yet no one bothered to check. Only when Edwards revealed the facts himself did it become clear that the democratic presidential candidate had an ongoing affair while running for president. Yet Palin's daughter got so much scrutiny you could fill an entire year's worth of newspaper clips.
Journalists and democratic lawyers are now rummaging the archives of the Wasilla town hall in the hopes of digging up dirt on Palin. Yet nobody has apparently looked into the earmark that Obama steered to his wife's employer, shortly after becoming a US senator. He got the hospital $1m, and shortly after that the hospital roughly tripled Michelle Obama's salary, from 121k to 316k. In most other countries this would be considered illegal, but few journalist in this country seem to care.
At the same time the media is castigating Sarah Palin for mentioning that she put the Alaska governor's jet up on eBay. Ah, the outrage goes, but the jet wasn't actually *sold* on eBay. The governor had to use an airline broker to sell it. The Associated Press devoted several pieces and coverage to this "revelation" and it was picked up by mainstream media.
This pettiness is truly unbelievable. Who in the world cares whether Palin sold the jet on eBay, Amazon.com or the local swap meet? The fact is, she put it on eBay, it didn't attract enough buyers there, so they got a broker to sell it. Bottom line: the jet is gone and Alaska's tax payers are better off.
I simply cannot recall a coverage more biased against the republican ticket than what we're witnessing now. I wonder if most Americans are tuning out at this point, resigned to the fact that they will have the last word in the voting booth on November 4th.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Change? What change?
The Obama camp's change message has basically two components.
One is a call for "post partisanship", an end to "politics as usual", and a farewell to cronyism, special interests and corruption.
The other part of that change message is about *policy* change. Obama wants to take the US in a different direction. There's talk about nationalizing health care, tax changes, global warming initiatives, pulling out of Iraq asap and so on.
Lately Obama has been emphasizing the second kind of change, the policy change, and for good reason: His track record doesn't back up the post partisanship type of change. He's got the most inflexible liberal voting record of any member of the senate. He grew up in Chicago politics and yet his campaign cannot point to a single instance where he challenged the old corrupt Chicago ways. For all his talk about ending politics as usual, Obama has zero track record to back this up.
McCain is now starting to eat Obama's lunch and it could get interesting. Simply put, McCain has a real authentic claim to the first kind of change. McCain demonstrably fought earmarks (he's never requested a single one), corruption (he led the charge against Abramoff, a republican lobbyist who's now in jail), and he's reached across the isle and worked with democrats on numerous issues, often infuriating his own party: Campaign finance reform, immigration, global warming etc.
The brilliance of McCain's choice of Sarah Palin is that it allows him to stress his independence. Voters always knew that the Obama claim that McCain was just "more of the same" was a stretch, but with Palin securing the conservative base, McCain is free to remind voters of his track record. If anything, Palin reinforces the reformer image, herself a political maverick who threw out the incumbent governor from her own party.
There will be a ferocious fight now about who's the "real candidate" of change. Obama has, for the first time, been put on the defensive on this his most crucial message. Predictably, he's saying that the choice of Palin is just "more of the same", but that clearly won't fly: A woman governor, mother of five, with a strong reformer image and no Washington background, cannot credibly be relegated to "more of the same".
Obama knows this and that's why democrats are furiously trying to reign back the "change" mantel and put Palin back in the box. But the genie is out of the bottle and the wheels are starting to come off the Obama bandwagon. This will be a more exciting election than anyone had imagined.
One is a call for "post partisanship", an end to "politics as usual", and a farewell to cronyism, special interests and corruption.
The other part of that change message is about *policy* change. Obama wants to take the US in a different direction. There's talk about nationalizing health care, tax changes, global warming initiatives, pulling out of Iraq asap and so on.
Lately Obama has been emphasizing the second kind of change, the policy change, and for good reason: His track record doesn't back up the post partisanship type of change. He's got the most inflexible liberal voting record of any member of the senate. He grew up in Chicago politics and yet his campaign cannot point to a single instance where he challenged the old corrupt Chicago ways. For all his talk about ending politics as usual, Obama has zero track record to back this up.
McCain is now starting to eat Obama's lunch and it could get interesting. Simply put, McCain has a real authentic claim to the first kind of change. McCain demonstrably fought earmarks (he's never requested a single one), corruption (he led the charge against Abramoff, a republican lobbyist who's now in jail), and he's reached across the isle and worked with democrats on numerous issues, often infuriating his own party: Campaign finance reform, immigration, global warming etc.
The brilliance of McCain's choice of Sarah Palin is that it allows him to stress his independence. Voters always knew that the Obama claim that McCain was just "more of the same" was a stretch, but with Palin securing the conservative base, McCain is free to remind voters of his track record. If anything, Palin reinforces the reformer image, herself a political maverick who threw out the incumbent governor from her own party.
There will be a ferocious fight now about who's the "real candidate" of change. Obama has, for the first time, been put on the defensive on this his most crucial message. Predictably, he's saying that the choice of Palin is just "more of the same", but that clearly won't fly: A woman governor, mother of five, with a strong reformer image and no Washington background, cannot credibly be relegated to "more of the same".
Obama knows this and that's why democrats are furiously trying to reign back the "change" mantel and put Palin back in the box. But the genie is out of the bottle and the wheels are starting to come off the Obama bandwagon. This will be a more exciting election than anyone had imagined.
The convention sensation
The best line in this year's Republican convention came from Mike Huckabee. Confronting all the gossip about Palin's lack of experience, Huckabee retorted:
"Sarah Palin got more votes running for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, than Joe Biden got running for president of the United States".
In fact, Biden got some 9000 votes in this year's Democratic primary. (By the way, Hillary Cliton, who was passed over for the VP slot, got 18 million).
And Biden has run for president before, in 1987. Most people have forgotten (or never knew) about Biden's earlier run, but The Economist unceremoniously reminds us in the August 28 edition. In that race, Biden not only borrowed a speech from Neil Kinnock, the British Labor leader, and presented it as his own. He even plagiarized Kinnock's life story, claiming to be the first in his family to go to college and that his ancestors worked in a coal mine (both untrue). Of course, when this came out, Biden's campaign collapsed like a house of cards.
You've got to wonder when and how Biden will blow up in this race. It could get quite spectacular.
Apart from the Huckabee kick, Sarah Palin's own speech was quite a ride. She went after Obama in a way no one has done before, exposing the hypocrisy and self-aggrandizement. A couple of good ones off the top of my head:
- "Obama has written two auto biographies but not authored a single significant bill"
- "We prefer people who don't speak to us one way when they're in Scranton and then in another way when they're in San Francisco" (a dig at Obama's "bitter" comments)
- "Here's a candidate who can give an entire speech about the war in Iraq without once mentioning the word Victory, except when he talks about his own campaign".
- "I guess a mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except you have actual responsibilities".
The reason why the media and the left wing bloggers are going so hard after Palin is because she's dangerous. They all expected an Obama coronation in November, with the elections a minor nuisance on the path to glory. If you saw the Obama Europe tour earlier this year, you may even have thought he'd skipped the US presidential elections all together and was running for world president.
But now this woman comes along and throws a wrench in the plans. Palin is something very unusual in this campaign: She comes across as genuine, a fighter who has taken unpopular positions, fought corruption in her own party, and thrown out incumbents. She connects extremely well with ordinary folks. So clearly the left needs to discredit her achievements. They're throwing the kitchen sink at her and is looking to see what sticks.
The real danger to Obama's campaign here is that Palin is about to reveal what has been the case the whole time: Obama is not the agent of change he proclaims. In his first important decision as candidate, he picked Biden, the 35-year Washington insider, as his sidekick.
And looking at Obama's record, nothing points to the kind of post partisanship or change he talks about all the time. In fact, he completely squandered the opportunity to clean up Chicago politics when he was a state senator (something that would have provided real benefits but also earned him enemies in his own party). He never stood up to the old boys network in Chicago politics, and he has no significant achievements to talk about in the US senate. (By the way, he's been a member of the US senate for 3 1/2 years, half of which (at least) was spent campaigning for president. So I guess that gives him about 1 1/2 years of actual "experience" in the senate.)
The democrats are in trouble and they know it. If Obama loses the freshness and "change" veneer you've got to wonder what is left of his campaign.
"Sarah Palin got more votes running for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, than Joe Biden got running for president of the United States".
In fact, Biden got some 9000 votes in this year's Democratic primary. (By the way, Hillary Cliton, who was passed over for the VP slot, got 18 million).
And Biden has run for president before, in 1987. Most people have forgotten (or never knew) about Biden's earlier run, but The Economist unceremoniously reminds us in the August 28 edition. In that race, Biden not only borrowed a speech from Neil Kinnock, the British Labor leader, and presented it as his own. He even plagiarized Kinnock's life story, claiming to be the first in his family to go to college and that his ancestors worked in a coal mine (both untrue). Of course, when this came out, Biden's campaign collapsed like a house of cards.
You've got to wonder when and how Biden will blow up in this race. It could get quite spectacular.
Apart from the Huckabee kick, Sarah Palin's own speech was quite a ride. She went after Obama in a way no one has done before, exposing the hypocrisy and self-aggrandizement. A couple of good ones off the top of my head:
- "Obama has written two auto biographies but not authored a single significant bill"
- "We prefer people who don't speak to us one way when they're in Scranton and then in another way when they're in San Francisco" (a dig at Obama's "bitter" comments)
- "Here's a candidate who can give an entire speech about the war in Iraq without once mentioning the word Victory, except when he talks about his own campaign".
- "I guess a mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except you have actual responsibilities".
The reason why the media and the left wing bloggers are going so hard after Palin is because she's dangerous. They all expected an Obama coronation in November, with the elections a minor nuisance on the path to glory. If you saw the Obama Europe tour earlier this year, you may even have thought he'd skipped the US presidential elections all together and was running for world president.
But now this woman comes along and throws a wrench in the plans. Palin is something very unusual in this campaign: She comes across as genuine, a fighter who has taken unpopular positions, fought corruption in her own party, and thrown out incumbents. She connects extremely well with ordinary folks. So clearly the left needs to discredit her achievements. They're throwing the kitchen sink at her and is looking to see what sticks.
The real danger to Obama's campaign here is that Palin is about to reveal what has been the case the whole time: Obama is not the agent of change he proclaims. In his first important decision as candidate, he picked Biden, the 35-year Washington insider, as his sidekick.
And looking at Obama's record, nothing points to the kind of post partisanship or change he talks about all the time. In fact, he completely squandered the opportunity to clean up Chicago politics when he was a state senator (something that would have provided real benefits but also earned him enemies in his own party). He never stood up to the old boys network in Chicago politics, and he has no significant achievements to talk about in the US senate. (By the way, he's been a member of the US senate for 3 1/2 years, half of which (at least) was spent campaigning for president. So I guess that gives him about 1 1/2 years of actual "experience" in the senate.)
The democrats are in trouble and they know it. If Obama loses the freshness and "change" veneer you've got to wonder what is left of his campaign.
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