Obama/Biden vs. McCain/Palin

[Jocephus]

religulous is a good movie

[ghostrunner]

Great op-ed from Chris Buckley, William F. Buckley's son and author of "Thank You for Smoking." This almost perfectly encapsulates where I'm coming from this time around.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and- ... for-obama/

As to the particulars, assuming anyone gives a fig, here goes:
I have known John McCain personally since 1982. I wrote a well-received speech for him. Earlier this year, I wrote in The New York Times—I’m beginning to sound like Paul Krugman, who cannot begin a column without saying, “As I warned the world in my last column...”—a highly favorable Op-Ed about McCain, taking Rush Limbaugh and the others in the Right Wing Sanhedrin to task for going after McCain for being insufficiently conservative. I don’t—still—doubt that McCain’s instincts remain fundamentally conservative. But the problem is otherwise.

McCain rose to power on his personality and biography. He was authentic. He spoke truth to power. He told the media they were “jerks” (a sure sign of authenticity, to say nothing of good taste; we are jerks). He was real. He was unconventional. He embraced former anti-war leaders. He brought resolution to the awful missing-POW business. He brought about normalization with Vietnam—his former torturers! Yes, he erred in accepting plane rides and vacations from Charles Keating, but then, having been cleared on technicalities, groveled in apology before the nation. He told me across a lunch table, “The Keating business was much worse than my five and a half years in Hanoi, because I at least walked away from that with my honor.” Your heart went out to the guy. I thought at the time, God, this guy should be president someday.
A year ago, when everyone, including the man I’m about to endorse, was caterwauling to get out of Iraq on the next available flight, John McCain, practically alone, said no, no—bad move. Surge. It seemed a suicidal position to take, an act of political bravery of the kind you don’t see a whole lot of anymore.

But that was—sigh—then. John McCain has changed. He said, famously, apropos the Republican debacle post-1994, “We came to Washington to change it, and Washington changed us.” This campaign has changed John McCain. It has made him inauthentic. A once-first class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change, and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the federal budget “by the end of my first term.” Who, really, believes that? Then there was the self-dramatizing and feckless suspension of his campaign over the financial crisis. His ninth-inning attack ads are mean-spirited and pointless. And finally, not to belabor it, there was the Palin nomination. What on earth can he have been thinking?

All this is genuinely saddening, and for the country is perhaps even tragic, for America ought, really, to be governed by men like John McCain—who have spent their entire lives in its service, even willing to give the last full measure of their devotion to it. If he goes out losing ugly, it will be beyond tragic, graffiti on a marble bust.

As for Senator Obama: He has exhibited throughout a “first-class temperament,” pace Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.’s famous comment about FDR. As for his intellect, well, he’s a Harvard man, though that’s sure as heck no guarantee of anything, these days. Vietnam was brought to you by Harvard and (one or two) Yale men. As for our current adventure in Mesopotamia, consider this lustrous alumni roster. Bush 43: Yale. Rumsfeld: Princeton. Paul Bremer: Yale and Harvard. What do they all have in common? Andover! The best and the brightest.

I’ve read Obama’s books, and they are first-rate. He is that rara avis, the politician who writes his own books. Imagine. He is also a lefty. I am not. I am a small-government conservative who clings tenaciously and old-fashionedly to the idea that one ought to have balanced budgets. On abortion, gay marriage, et al, I’m libertarian. I believe with my sage and epigrammatic friend P.J. O’Rourke that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take it all away.
But having a first-class temperament and a first-class intellect, President Obama will (I pray, secularly) surely understand that traditional left-politics aren’t going to get us out of this pit we’ve dug for ourselves. If he raises taxes and throws up tariff walls and opens the coffers of the DNC to bribe-money from the special interest groups against whom he has (somewhat disingenuously) railed during the campaign trail, then he will almost certainly reap a whirlwind that will make Katrina look like a balmy summer zephyr.

Obama has in him—I think, despite his sometimes airy-fairy “We are the people we have been waiting for” silly rhetoric—the potential to be a good, perhaps even great leader. He is, it seems clear enough, what the historical moment seems to be calling for.

So, I wish him all the best. We are all in this together. Necessity is the mother of bipartisanship. And so, for the first time in my life, I’ll be pulling the Democratic lever in November. As the saying goes, God save the United States of America.

[clement]

Good God, what in the world is Mike Huckabee doing? I'm watching some talk show he's hosting on Fox and it's just terrible. I guess he can't be expected to be a competent talk show host overnight, but this looks more low-budget and unprofessional than most public access TV shows I've seen. Why is he doing this? I'm starting to get the feeling he wanted to be a celebrity more than he wanted to be president.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

Good God, what in the world is Mike Huckabee doing? I'm watching some talk show he's hosting on Fox and it's just terrible. I guess he can't be expected to be a competent talk show host overnight, but this looks more low-budget and unprofessional than most public access TV shows I've seen. Why is he doing this? I'm starting to get the feeling he wanted to be a celebrity more than he wanted to be president.

yeah. its pathetic. i wrote him an email and said shut it. i think hes doing it to get his name out there. i also told him hes doing it on the most unprofessional bull [expletive] organization on america. don't think he will take the [expletive] part of it well, but whatever. he's losing all credibilty and making hemself llook foolishg

[PujolJunkie]

Good God, what in the world is Mike Huckabee doing? I'm watching some talk show he's hosting on Fox and it's just terrible. I guess he can't be expected to be a competent talk show host overnight, but this looks more low-budget and unprofessional than most public access TV shows I've seen. Why is he doing this? I'm starting to get the feeling he wanted to be a celebrity more than he wanted to be president.

It really isn't the Uncle Mike I've grown to love.

[AdmiralKird]

A year ago, when everyone, including the man I’m about to endorse, was caterwauling to get out of Iraq on the next available flight,

The GRB Word of the Forever has returned.

[Popeye_Card]

I respect McCain greatly for standing up to the fear driven rhetoric.

[/youtube]

Yes, it is good that he reminded them that Obama is human and capable of procreation.

I'm no McCain apologist, and it's clear to me that he flamed the rhetoric early on, but I also don't think his attempt to "tone down the rhetoric" should be so easily discounted either. IMO, this is not an "easy" stand for McCain to take - especially when it goes against his current campaign strategy and hurts his chances at rallying the GOP base.

Like clement pointed to, his conscious is getting the better of him.

Moments like that make me sad for McCain. He is a better man and a better politician than the campaign he's been running, which has driven his reputation into the ground with a lot of people who respected his candor and what he brought to the national discussion.

I think part of his problem is that in order to have any chance of success he has to cooperate and make enormous concessions to the GOP apparatus, the occasional oppostion to which being the foundation of his reputation as a pragmatist. Depending on it to get elected has pulled him in too many directions at once. Adding Sarah Palin to the ticket is the best example of this. I can't imagine he would even give her the time of day if his handlers hadn't cynically chosen her for VP.

David Brooks had a good column the other day that I think sums up the problems the GOP is currently facing. Link

Plus plus.

And I think it's important to note that McCain isn't really being hypocritical here. Yes, his campaign has been working lately to tie Obama to some fringe lunatic characters he's been associated with (Ayers, Wright). Never have they (publicly) said that he's Arab, or a Muslim terrorist, etc.

I respect John McCain for standing up a bit to his lunatic fringe base. I hope that Obama would do the same if someone tried to call McCain's character into question in front of him as well. I believe both candidates are better men than most of us.

[GatewaySnayke]

I just don't understand why the people at the McCain rallies are worried about Obama being a terrorist when we've been living under one for close to eight years. My friend was trying to tell me that the country will be "sold out" under Obama and he's an "inside man" even though he can't provide me one instance that would prove this. Nor does he understand that our country was long ago sold out under Reagan.

[Radbird]

Great op-ed from Chris Buckley, William F. Buckley's son and author of "Thank You for Smoking." This almost perfectly encapsulates where I'm coming from this time around.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and- ... for-obama/

As to the particulars, assuming anyone gives a fig, here goes:
I have known John McCain personally since 1982. I wrote a well-received speech for him. Earlier this year, I wrote in The New York Times—I’m beginning to sound like Paul Krugman, who cannot begin a column without saying, “As I warned the world in my last column...”—a highly favorable Op-Ed about McCain, taking Rush Limbaugh and the others in the Right Wing Sanhedrin to task for going after McCain for being insufficiently conservative. I don’t—still—doubt that McCain’s instincts remain fundamentally conservative. But the problem is otherwise.

McCain rose to power on his personality and biography. He was authentic. He spoke truth to power. He told the media they were “jerks” (a sure sign of authenticity, to say nothing of good taste; we are jerks). He was real. He was unconventional. He embraced former anti-war leaders. He brought resolution to the awful missing-POW business. He brought about normalization with Vietnam—his former torturers! Yes, he erred in accepting plane rides and vacations from Charles Keating, but then, having been cleared on technicalities, groveled in apology before the nation. He told me across a lunch table, “The Keating business was much worse than my five and a half years in Hanoi, because I at least walked away from that with my honor.” Your heart went out to the guy. I thought at the time, God, this guy should be president someday.
A year ago, when everyone, including the man I’m about to endorse, was caterwauling to get out of Iraq on the next available flight, John McCain, practically alone, said no, no—bad move. Surge. It seemed a suicidal position to take, an act of political bravery of the kind you don’t see a whole lot of anymore.

But that was—sigh—then. John McCain has changed. He said, famously, apropos the Republican debacle post-1994, “We came to Washington to change it, and Washington changed us.” This campaign has changed John McCain. It has made him inauthentic. A once-first class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change, and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the federal budget “by the end of my first term.” Who, really, believes that? Then there was the self-dramatizing and feckless suspension of his campaign over the financial crisis. His ninth-inning attack ads are mean-spirited and pointless. And finally, not to belabor it, there was the Palin nomination. What on earth can he have been thinking?

All this is genuinely saddening, and for the country is perhaps even tragic, for America ought, really, to be governed by men like John McCain—who have spent their entire lives in its service, even willing to give the last full measure of their devotion to it. If he goes out losing ugly, it will be beyond tragic, graffiti on a marble bust.

As for Senator Obama: He has exhibited throughout a “first-class temperament,” pace Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.’s famous comment about FDR. As for his intellect, well, he’s a Harvard man, though that’s sure as heck no guarantee of anything, these days. Vietnam was brought to you by Harvard and (one or two) Yale men. As for our current adventure in Mesopotamia, consider this lustrous alumni roster. Bush 43: Yale. Rumsfeld: Princeton. Paul Bremer: Yale and Harvard. What do they all have in common? Andover! The best and the brightest.

I’ve read Obama’s books, and they are first-rate. He is that rara avis, the politician who writes his own books. Imagine. He is also a lefty. I am not. I am a small-government conservative who clings tenaciously and old-fashionedly to the idea that one ought to have balanced budgets. On abortion, gay marriage, et al, I’m libertarian. I believe with my sage and epigrammatic friend P.J. O’Rourke that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take it all away.
But having a first-class temperament and a first-class intellect, President Obama will (I pray, secularly) surely understand that traditional left-politics aren’t going to get us out of this pit we’ve dug for ourselves. If he raises taxes and throws up tariff walls and opens the coffers of the DNC to bribe-money from the special interest groups against whom he has (somewhat disingenuously) railed during the campaign trail, then he will almost certainly reap a whirlwind that will make Katrina look like a balmy summer zephyr.

Obama has in him—I think, despite his sometimes airy-fairy “We are the people we have been waiting for” silly rhetoric—the potential to be a good, perhaps even great leader. He is, it seems clear enough, what the historical moment seems to be calling for.

So, I wish him all the best. We are all in this together. Necessity is the mother of bipartisanship. And so, for the first time in my life, I’ll be pulling the Democratic lever in November. As the saying goes, God save the United States of America.

Great article, ghost. Sums things up nicely.

[Jocephus]

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