“I hope I am as clear as I can be. So in case I am not, let me repeat, we don’t go after people’s families, we don’t get them involved in the politics, it is not appropriate and it is not relevant. Our people were not involved in any way in this and they will not be. And if I ever thought it was somebody in the campaign that was involved in something like that they would be fired.”—Barack Obama, 9/1/08“I hear all this talk about how the Republicans are going to work in dealing with parents who have both the joy, because there’s joy to it as well, the joy and the difficulty of raising a child who has a developmental disability, who were born with a birth defect. Well guess what folks? If you care about it, why don’t you support stem cell research?”—Joe Biden, 9/9/08OK, at the time that Sen. Obama made his statement, I wrote, “Based on the way Sen. Obama has run his campaign so far, there’s no plausible reason to doubt his statement.” Let’s see if I can still say that in a day or two. Sen. Biden’s comment is clearly directed toward Sarah Palin, with her son Trig who has Down Syndrome, and is clearly intended to score a partisan political point; that would be in violation of Sen. Obama’s edict that “we don’t go after people’s families, we don’t get them involved in the politics, it is not appropriate and it is not relevant.” Clearly, Sen. Biden disagrees, and I think we can safely call him “somebody in the campaign.” Now, he’s not just an ordinary Joe in the campaign, and I’m not sure Sen. Obama actually can fire him—sure, he picked the guy, but the convention nominated him, and I really don’t know what the rules would be on booting him off the ticket now, or even if there are any; but still, if Sen. Obama is to be true to the principles he articulated, some sort of discipline should be in order, and a sincere public apology (i.e., not “I’m sorry if anyone was offended, because I wasn’t being offensive”) should be shortly forthcoming from Sen. Biden. I look forward to hearing it.HT: Jennifer Rubin
Category Archives: Barack Obama
Community organizing and the vision of Barack Obama
Byron York has a good article up on the National Review website on Barack Obama’s time as a community organizer, his accomplishments, and the way in which that shaped his political vision and approach. (See also Stephen Malanga in City Journal for an account of his transition to politics.)
Snapshot of the presidential race
As of this evening, in the RealClearPolitics national polling average, John McCain has a 2.9 point lead over Barack Obama. That’s within the margin of error, of course, but still, it’s a pretty good bounce.
Much depends, of course, on whether the bounce is transitory or hangs around for a while, but there are reasons to think it might stick. One is that the huge edge in voter identification that Democrats enjoyed—it was 6% in November 2006 and had climbed over 10% this past May—has been steadily eroding; by last month it was down to 5.7%. Now, according to the Gallup/USA Today poll, that edge has dropped to just 1%, which is less even than the Democratic Party had in 2004. Another is that according to the Rasmussen tracking poll a higher percentage of McCain voters than Obama voters are certain about their vote (41%-38%); not only is Sen. Obama behind in the polls, more of those who say they plan to vote for him are open to changing their mind. It’s also worth noting that the ABC poll reports a 20-point swing in Sen. McCain’s favor among white women; Gallup finds a smaller shift among all women, but a huge shift in support among independents (now 52%-37% in his favor). As well, after all the talk about Sen. Obama reaching beyond the Democratic base, pursuing a 50-state strategy and drawing votes from Republican evangelicals, the focus is back on swing states and he’s doing no better with evangelicals than Kerry did.That said, if you take RCP’s electoral map with every state projected one way or the other, they do still give Obama/Biden the win in electoral votes, 273-265:
That’s somewhat misleading, however, because most of the state poll numbers they’re using are pretty old. Thus, for instance, New Hampshire:
As you can see, their average gives Sen. Obama a paper-thin lead—but the newest poll there was finished on the 18th of August, and the others are one and three and a half months older. Given that Sen. McCain has gained a fair bit on Sen. Obama in that time, it would seem likely that New Hampshire is now leaning the other way; and if you flip them and leave everyone else the same, you get a 269-269 tie.Other interesting cases to consider include Michigan, Pennsylvania and Colorado:
In Michigan and Pennsylvania, Sen. Obama’s decent lead in the poll average is based largely on old polls; in the one up-to-date poll in each state, his lead is razor-thin—one point in Michigan, two points in Pennsylvania; when the other polls catch up, they will likely show the effects of the McCain bounce. At this point, while you’d have to say both are leaning toward him, the tilt would seem to be very slight; both states are very much in play. As for Colorado, there we see no such pattern, but there is a poll not included in this average, commissioned by the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which shows Sen. McCain up by two. Given that Rasmussen in Colorado shows no signs of a bounce for the McCain campaign, there doesn’t seem reason to expect the other polls to move significantly in his direction, leaving Colorado also leaning slightly against him.Others might ask, what about states that could flip the other way? What about Ohio? Well, take a look:
At this point, the numbers on Ohio don’t look promising for the Obama campaign; yes, the average is quite close, but the only recent poll, Rasmussen, gives Sen. McCain a seven-point lead, whereas even after the Democratic convention, Sen. Obama was only up two. Virginia‘s more interesting, though:
There, we have two polls which are up to date, and both show a two-point lead for Sen. McCain. He ought to be able to carry the state, but he’s not going to be able to take it for granted—it appears that the Old Dominion could readily go either way.So what does this all mean? Well, on my read, the truest picture of the race is this:
Looking at that, I tend to think there’s more opportunity for the GOP to pull states out of the Democratic column than vice versa; the momentum is going their way, and Sarah Palin looks like someone who will have particular effectiveness appealing to blue-collar Democrats in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Sen. Obama doesn’t have a similar advantage to help him go after states like Ohio, Virginia, Missouri and Florida.That, of course, is as of now; we need only look back at the serpentine course this presidential election has already taken to be reminded how quickly—and strangely—things can change. Certainly there’s no room for overconfidence on the part of the GOP; they’re in a dogfight, and at best have an even shot at coming out on top. But when you consider that most pundits expected them to be all but writing the concession speech at this point of the campaign, an even shot looks pretty good.
Barack Obama’s Ayers challenge
When reports of Sen. Obama’s connection to Weathermen Bill Ayers and Bernadette Dohrn first surfaced, he tried to dismiss Ayers as “a guy who lives in my neighborhood,” and Ayers’ misdeeds as ancient history. Skeptics pointed out that Ayers’ radical views aren’t past tense, but very much present tense, and saw Sen. Obama’s association with him, along with his close relationship with people like the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., as evidence of his comfort with radical leftist views, and of a general “no enemies to the left” policy.And that was about as much as people thought about it, until recently. I’m not sure who first raised the question of why Sen. Obama, with a pretty thin résumé that’s particularly lacking in executive experience, was no longer taking credit for his time as chairman of the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), a foundation which Ayers helped found. Given that the foundation had a considerable amount of money (I’ve seen the figure $50 million bandied about, but I don’t have any hard data), this would seem to be experience well worth talking about. Given that, why was Sen. Obama keeping it so quiet?Stanley Kurtz decided to try to find out—and that’s when the fun began. When he asked to see the CAC’s internal files, held by the Daley Library at the University of Illinois-Chicago, he was initially told he would be allowed to do so, and then the library began stonewalling him, offering a shifting collection of reasons to justify their actions.When Kurtz subsequently went on WGN-AM in Chicago to talk about his efforts with radio host Milt Rosenburg (audio here), the Obama campaign exploded. Rosenburg’s producer, Zack Christenson, invited the campaign to send someone to appear on the show with Kurtz, but they refused; instead, they tried to defeat the story by brute force. The campaign sent out an e-mail urging supporters to complain to WGN, calling Kurtz a “smear-merchant” and a “slimy character assassin” “pushing lies, distortions, and manipulations” via “divisive, destructive ranting.” Quite a lot of opprobrium for a guy who was just trying to get at some documents—he hadn’t even said anything yet. The e-mail also implicitly accused WGN of preventing the Obama campaign from responding to Kurtz, when in fact it was their choice not to send someone on the show.Now, this suggests one of two things. One, it’s possible that the Obama campaign’s reaction was justified by something truly explosive in those files. Honestly, though, that seems unlikely to me; I suppose nothing is impossible, especially in Chicago politics, but short of the CAC funding Sen. Obama’s 2004 run for Senate, it’s hard to see where there’s room for a true scandal in there. The most that would seem likely would be evidence that Sen. Obama and Bill Ayers were in fact close friends and associates.If that’s the case, then the Obama campaign appears to be overreacting in truly startling fashion. For one thing, it already seems pretty clear that Bill Ayers wasn’t just “a guy who lives in [Sen. Obama’s] neighborhood”; as Kurtz notes in the article linked above, the information that is publicly available leaves little doubt that they worked together pretty closely, and on a friendly basis. But if all there is in the CAC records is confirmation that they worked together and that Sen. Obama was comfortable with Ayers’ efforts and positions—well, honestly, conservatives already suspect that, liberals don’t care, and I don’t see that being an issue that sways a lot of folks in the middle. They probably half-suspect it as well, but it was a few years ago, and there are really more important things to worry about. If that’s all it is, the Obama campaign shouldn’t have tried to fight Kurtz; they should have just let him have his access, dig up what he’s going to dig up, and report it, then weathered the dust-up and gone on, confident that by November it will all be old news. Fighting as they did, if it wasn’t absolutely necessary, only hurts their candidate by drawing attention to the story and making it look as if he has something to hide—or, worse, something to be afraid of. That suggests that Sen. Obama’s biggest challenge isn’t Bill Ayers: it’s his own campaign.Update: of course, that assumes that Ayers doesn’t keep stirring the pot with stuff like this . . .
Barack Obama’s foreign-policy judgment
Sen. Obama: Iran is not a serious threat.
His mistake here: failing to understand that the Soviet Union, though a greater conventional military threat than Iran, was also a more predictable threat, and one with which we could negotiate on the basis of shared Western assumptions. Trying to deal with Iran on that basis would be like trying to keep vipers off your property by building a split-rail fence—just because it kept the neighbor’s bull where he belongs doesn’t mean it’s going to stop a snake.Here’s the McCain campaign’s take on that:
And here’s part of the reason why:
This man is not by any means representative of all Muslims—indeed, I would be surprised to find that his understanding of the world is even all that common among Muslims in most places—but he is representative of the sort of attitudes the ayatollahs of Iran are trying to foster and foment among Muslims around the world. Islam as such is not the enemy, but Islamic governments and movements which consider us to be the enemy (such as the government of Iran and its wholly-owned subsidiary, Hamas) most definitely are—and they’re enemies which cannot be dismissed as “not serious” simply because they don’t have large conventional forces. They have other ways of attacking us, they are perfectly capable of developing WMDs, and they are far, far harder to deter than the Soviet Union was because they don’t share a Western value system; telling them, “don’t do that or we’ll kill you” isn’t much of a threat if they’re convinced that doing that will please Allah and earn them a special place in paradise. As such, they’re perfectly capable of doing something perfectly crazy if we don’t take them very seriously as a threat.Sen. Obama doesn’t appear to understand this. Unfortunately, given that Joe Biden told the Israelis, “Iran is going to be nuclear—deal with it,” it appears his running mate doesn’t either. This doesn’t bode well if they win in November.
Memo to the movement: be careful
As thrilled as I was to see Gov. Sarah Palin capture the hearts of (most of) the Republican Party, there are a couple ironies here of which we need to be wary: concerns that we ourselves have raised about Barack Obama and the Democratic Party are in danger of becoming true of us as well. The lesser is the one that I’ve seen noted, that after invoking celebrity culture to critique Sen. Obama and Obamamania, the McCain campaign has most certainly, if not fully intentionally, created a celebrity of its own, and Palinmania is very real. We need to be careful not to get too caught up in it.
More serious, though, is the messianic aura and language of the Obama campaign, something for which the McCain campaign also jabbed him in its ad “The One.” I wrote about this a couple months ago thusly:
I don’t usually link to the same blog back-to-back, but there’s another post of Doug Hagler’s I want to point you to, one he titled “Idolatry American style: Barak Obama”; obviously we have very different views of the Republican Party (though even most Republican voters aren’t very happy with the Republican Party at the moment), but as I’ve written before, I think the idolatrous tendencies in American politics are a real problem, and I agree with Doug (and others) that they’re particularly pronounced around Sen. Obama. (I don’t think they’re the senator’s fault—rest assured, I’m not accusing him of having any sort of delusions in that regard—but I do think he’s yielded to the temptation to take advantage of them, and I really wish he hadn’t.)
Somehow or other, we need a countercampaign to bring the people of this country around to a critically important truth: Politics will not save us. We keep getting sucked in to the idea that if we can just win this vote or elect this candidate, that will take care of our problems, and it just isn’t going to happen; Doug’s dead on when he writes, “Nothing messianic is coming from either party any time soon.” Nor any time later, either. Politics will not save us, government will not save us, no institution is going to save us; only God can save us, and he builds his people from the bottom up, one life at a time. If we want to work to address our problems in a way that will actually make a difference, it certainly helps to have a government (and other institutions likewise) that facilitates our efforts rather than making matters worse, but in the end, all we can do is follow God’s example. One life at a time, one family at a time, one small group of people at a time. From the bottom up. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.
The danger of all the excitement over Gov. Palin, glad though I am to see it, is that we could all too easily lose sight of this; we could all too easily turn her into our own secular messiah, with “salvation” defined as a McCain victory in November. For this, too, we must remember that politics will not save us, and government will not save us—a McCain government no less, and no more, than an Obama government. Vote for McCain/Palin, yes, work for them, yes, as I am able; but remembering always that that is, at best, the lesser hope. Remember always that they too are only human, and flawed.
Update: for another, and quite interesting, perspective on this, check out this post from ShrinkWrapped. HT: The Anchoress)
By contrast, the MSM should be ashamed of themselves
So, Barack Obama laid down the law to the media, forcefully, absolutely correctly and in no uncertain terms: “I have heard some of the news on this and so let me be as clear as possible: I have said before and I will repeat again, I think people’s families are off limits, and people’s children are especially off limits. This shouldn’t be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Governor Palin’s performance as governor, or her potential performance as a VP. And so I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories.” Are they listening? No. It’s not an unreasonable request, that they treat Gov. Palin and her family the same way they treated Al Gore and his son, or John Edwards and his wife and mistress; but as the Anchoress points out here, here, and here, they just can’t bring themselves to follow it. Forget feminism—we have a bunch of folks here who aren’t afraid to drag out every sexist trope in the book if it will help them beat up on Gov. Palin; forget fairness and logical consistency; forget Sen. Obama, even. Whatever crowbar they can find to hand, they clearly intend to use.But there is a cost to this behavior. For one thing, it makes Sen. Obama’s message of change, and of bringing a new spirit to American politics, ring ever more hollow with every slander; the more people feel this campaign is ugly and hateful, the more they’re going to pull back—and given the nature of Sen. Obama’s appeal and campaign, predicated on raising turnout and getting out new voters, that’s going to hurt him more than it does his opponent. For another, this kind of behavior feeds distrust and dislike of the media, and further erodes their credibility. For a third, it only works in the short term if they can in fact destroy Sarah Palin; if she refuses to crack, keeps her cool, rises above the mud, and handles it all with grace and strength, she’ll come out of it looking—well, positively presidential. Tonight is her first chance to go over the heads of the media who have abused her to the American people; if she does her usual thing, the whole attack will start to backfire on the media in a big way. If Gov. Palin can get through this, no one’s going to wonder what Joe Biden will do to her, because there’s no way anything he could do could top what’s already been done.And fourth, all of this makes Sen. Obama look very, very bad. We rightly applauded him for showing leadership in response to the Palin attacks—but leadership doesn’t exist without followership, and nobody’s following him.
This is the test of Barack Obama’s lifetime. It’s not whether or not he can be President. He’s tied in the polls, so the possibility is is clearly there. However, the question of him actually being able to lead people (to be a leader) remains to be seen. He’s never had to lead. Now he does, and those who are his strongest supporters . . . are not following his instructions on even a simple, logical, common sense, clearly honorable request: leave Bristol alone.If they can’t do that, then how can he lead them to war in Iraq for another 16+months min., or Iran, or Pakistan, or Afghanistan, or elsewhere?
This is not, by the way, a criticism of Sen. Obama, who’s doing what he can do; it is, rather, a serious question about those who purport to be his followers. I’ve wondered before whether the leaders of his party are actually following him, or just using him to get what they want. Others have wondered whether he’s actually running the campaign machine, or if he’s really it’s creation. To see his leadership ignored in this way just reinforces the idea that it’s the latter, not the former, and that makes me worry—for our country, and for Sen. Obama.Update: when one of his own senior volunteers isn’t following his lead either, that only increases the worry. Either that or it suggests that he’s saying one thing and doing another. Whichever it is, it isn’t good.
Barack Obama should be proud of himself
Well, the despicable innuendos that Bristol Palin, Gov. Sarah Palin’s 17-year-old daughter, is the real mother of four-month-old Trig Palin have been abruptly decapitated by brute fact: Bristol Palin is in fact five months pregnant. The McCain campaign knew about it and decided to make the matter public in order to silence the baseless rumors.As a pastor, I’ve married a fair number of couples; I’ve only had one who were still virgins when they said “I do.” I wish that wasn’t the reality in our society, but it is—as, I suspect, it has been in most societies, though the sex-drenched nature of ours makes it harder. I believe premarital sex is a sin and an unhelpful behavior, but I also know full well that we are all sinners, and many of us guilty of far worse. In my own ministry, I choose to address that particular sin by moving couples toward marriage and toward spiritual and relational maturity, including a deeper understanding of the meaning of sex and its place in their relationship. If a couple is willing to accept that responsibility, and its consequences, and make the commitment to building a strong marriage, that’s all I ask of them. I could wish that Ms. Palin had not had sex with her boyfriend, as I could wish for many girls around this country; the fact that she had the courage and grace to commit to her unborn child and to that child’s father is admirable, especially in the face of the public scrutiny that that would entail. (To accept the even greater scrutiny that was bound to come with the VP nomination, when she was surely given a veto by her mother, is admirable as well.) To do as she did—yes, she fell short of what she had been taught, as we all do; and then as Christ calls us to do, she got up and, together with her family, responded to it as redemptively as possible. To have done otherwise would have been a far greater sin than any she has in fact committed.All this is a very common drama in homes around this country. We as Christians try to raise our children to do what is best, and I hope none of my daughters will ever find themselves in this position; but they’re sinners just as we’re sinners. Given the power of sexual attraction and the drive of our hormones, we may do our best to teach and encourage them to save sex for marriage, but even with the best of intentions, they may not. If they get pregnant before marriage, we won’t love them any less, though it will be less than what we hope for them; we will stand by them and give them the support and care they need to go forward from that point as God would have them live. I think it’s a sad commentary on this day and age that such a story could produce a headline like “Assessing the Political Impact of Bristol Palin’s Pregnancy”; that such a thing should have a political impact just seems wrong.This is where I give major, major kudos to Barack Obama. I’ve written about him sharply at points, in large part because of my disappointment—I had hoped for a great deal from him, perhaps more than was really realistic of anyone, and especially of someone in politics; but there are moments when I can still see clearly the reasons for my initial hopes. This is one of them.
Barack Obama addressed a gaggle of reporters this afternoon to discuss the latest goings-on with Hurricane Gustav. After brief opening comments on the much-hyped, overly politicized hurricane, reporters were curious about one thing: 17-year-old Bristol Palin’s pregnancy, made public today.“I have heard some of the news on this and so let me be as clear as possible: I have said before and I will repeat again, I think people’s families are off limits, and people’s children are especially off limits. This shouldn’t be part of our politics,” the Democrat said forcefully. “It has no relevance to Governor Palin’s performance as governor, or her potential performance as a VP. And so I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories,” he continued.The candidate who himself was born to a teenage mom, reminded reporters, “You know my mother had me when she was 18, and how a family deals with issues and you know teenage children, that shouldn’t be the topic of our politics and I hope that anybody who is supporting me understands that’s off limits.”
Straight on, square up, dead on point, and absolutely right. Sen. Obama truly should feel proud, because he’s struck a blow for the good here, and not least for decency and fairness in our politics; I think there are a lot of folks in this country who don’t understand that this kind of thing is off limits, and that unfortunately places like Democratic Underground and Daily Kos are among them, but the more people listen to him here, the better off we are. (And if anyone could get people to listen on this point, it’s probably him.)Incidentally, I’m also in complete agreement with Sen. Obama on this:
When asked about an “unnamed McCain advisor” accusing the Obama campaign of spreading despicable rumors surrounding Bristol Palin online, Obama interrupted the reporter mid-question. “I am offended by that statement. There is no evidence at all that any of this involved us,” he said directly. “Our people were not involved in any way in this, and they will not be. And if I ever thought that it was somebody in my campaign that was involved in something like that—they’d be fired,” he added.
Based on the way Sen. Obama has run his campaign so far, there’s no plausible reason to doubt his statement. And if there was in fact someone on the McCain campaign staff accusing his campaign of doing this—well, let’s just say that John McCain has fired people for less already this political season, and in that case, he should put boot to butt personally.HT: JustJuls
The Palin conundrum for Barack Obama
Several months ago, I was interested to read an article in Salon by one Rebecca Traister on the sexism of some of Sen. Obama’s supporters, one which suggested the beginnings of disaffection with him among some female voters (including some who were supporting him over Hillary Clinton). Earlier this week, I began to notice signs that that disaffection had become very real, such as his dropping poll numbers among women, not to mention the blogger who asked, “Why is Barack Obama so afraid of women?” I posted on that, but unfortunately, I didn’t get it phrased quite the way I wanted it, which resulted in a discussion in the comments that never really explored the key question: is Sen. Obama dealing with a perception problem among women—is he giving women the feeling that he doesn’t like or appreciate them properly, or that he has a problem with powerful women, and if so, how can he address this? (The latter is a question which I didn’t try to answer, because I don’t have an answer.) To my way of thinking, the idea seems absurd—would he have married his wife if he had a problem with powerful women? From where I sit, aside from the Senate service, she’s more qualified for this race than he is. I’m starting to think, though, that after the long, bruising battle with Sen. Clinton—and perhaps more importantly, his treatment of her after he secured the nomination—that maybe a lot of people, and especially women, don’t find it so absurd. If that’s so, then it seems to me that would add up to a real problem for Sen. Obama.In light of that, I was quite interested to hear Dick Morris, in the middle of a paean to Sarah Palin (whom he called “great” and “brilliant” and a terrific pick for John McCain), say this:
She’ll demonstrate that the Republicans, unlike Barack Obama, are open to women and believe that women ought to be promoted. Now you have Barack Obama, who spent his whole primary trying to stop a woman from being President, and now he’s going to spend the whole general trying to stop a woman from being Vice President, and he’s trying to do that with women’s votes.
Ouch.I’ve been arguing hard for two months now for Gov. Palin on the GOP ticket because of all the things I have been and remain firmly convinced (despite the naysayers) that she brings to Sen. McCain’s campaign; but I’m starting to think, as a political matter, that the challenge she poses to the Obama campaign might be important as well. (Update: so does the New York Post’s Kirsten Powers, who calls the pick “a brilliant trap” for the Obama campaign.) I said earlier today that I thought the Democrats were making a mistake trying to dismiss her out of the gate as “Geraldine Quayle,” a lightweight, rather than taking her seriously, because she isn’t another Quayle, she isn’t a lightweight; but as well, from some of the reactions I’ve seen, I’m starting to think that kind of approach has real potential to tick off female voters. Honestly, the GOP should take Morris’ quote and plaster it everywhere they can find the wall space, because the more people look at the matter in that way (and I’m starting to think that a lot of folks already do), the more of a problem Gov. Palin is going to pose for Barack Obama and (especially) Joe Biden. I think they’re going to find that she’s a lot harder to attack than they realize, regardless; but the more voters see the race in the terms in which Morris casts it, the greater the chance the McCain/Palin ticket will really have to peel away not only conservative but also moderate Democrats, and the better their chances of getting to 270 in November.
Kudos also to John McCain for class
My understanding is that this ad, congratulating Barack Obama on his victory and noting the poetic nature of his accepting his party’s nomination on the 45th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech, is set to run tonight during the Democratic convention.