A Truly Wild Prediction

It's 9:47 p.m. I tried to listen to the 2nd Great Debate between John McCain and Barack Obama. I made it through the first question, and then I turned off my car radio.

I can easily believe that Barack Obama is the Democrat's choice for the White House. I can understand why he is there; I can easily understand why he is popular. What I can't believe is that John McCain is the Republican's choice. I really can't. For the life of me, I do not know how it happened.

In 2000, when I first really started paying attention to politics, I recall watching the first debate between all the contending Republicans. I can only recall a few of those candidates now: Lamar Alexander, George W. Bush, John McCain, Alan Keyes. Maybe this list isn't even right. But I remember what I thought of both Bush and McCain: "You've got to be kidding me?" I considered both men terrible.

Here's my wild totally out-there prediction: Within this very hour, Democrats will celebrate an Obama debate victory while Republicans will declare that their man won. I could be wrong. I know I am new at all of this heady stuff. But I have recently received some very revealing evidence, and here it is: Democrats generally like their candidate and Republicans generally like their's. Pretty esoteric, I admit.

Tomorrow, the gloating and the fact-checking will confirm that the Democrats were right and the Republicans were right. In such a wondrous moment the verdict will be clear: everyone's right. Americans will finally be united around one common bond. Perhaps we'll hear Maureen Dowd or Ann Coulter proclaim the good news: Your candidate is always best.

©2008. All Rights Reserved.

The Sage Of Delaware: In Touch

As reported in the Grapevine:


Veep Mistakes

During Thursday's vice presidential debate one of the candidates said, "Along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon," and, "Our commanding General in Afghanistan said the surge principle in Iraq will not work in Afghanistan," and that Barack Obama "did not say he'd sit down with Ahmadinejad."

None of those statements is true. So who made them? Was it Sarah Palin, whose lack of foreign policy knowledge was said to be a liability?

No, it was Joe Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

As The Wall Street Journal also notes today, Biden invited Americans to join him at Katie's Restaurant in Wilmington, Delaware, to witness the struggles of the middle class. Problem is, Katie's closed down about 20 years ago.

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Democrats: Joe Biden is not fit for the presidency (that's why we rejected him twice), but he is fit to be ONE heartbeat from the presidency; what qualifies him is his vast foreign policy experience. (We'll ignore the domestic blunder about Katie's Restaurant.)

Excellent!

©2008.

Hearing What We Want To Hear

During Thursday night's debate, I wasn't sure of what I heard. I turned to a couple of folks who were sitting with me in one of the local pubs; the big debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin had drawn a decent crowd (for these parts). I asked whether I had misheard Sarah Palin. "Did she just say 'Taliban?'" I inquired. One man, Bob, who operates a NH political website where I "work" as a blogger, corrected me. "She said, 'Talabani,'" he replied.

Apparently, well, not everyone who opines for a living asks rather simple questions. Perhaps since I do not opine for a living, I am in the habit of making sure I have the simplest things right. At least I try.

E.J. Dionne Jr., that esteemed but always left-leaning columnist from the Washington Post, got caught playing the charlatan on Friday's "The Diane Rehm Show," broadcast on National Public Radio. The ever-attentive James Taranto gives us an example of people hearing what isn't there, and of people unwilling to look anything less than omniscient. Read Taranto:

A hilarious example of press bias against Palin occurred last Friday on "The Diane Rehm Show," a production of Washington's WAMU-FM. The exchange between hostess Rehm, caller Tom of Norwich, Vt., and Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne begins at about 46:10 of the "10:00 News Roundup":

Tom: I just wonder why not more has been made of the statement by Palin during the debate last night that "Maliki and the Talabani"--this is a quote from the transcript--"also in working with us are knowing again that we are getting closer and closer to the point of victory." The Talibani obviously are our absolute enemy and have been since 9/11; Maliki, our central ally in Iraq. This to me is a tremendous blunder, revealing a very superficial familiarity with these sorts of terms.

Rehm: Thanks for calling, Tom. . . . E.J.?

Dionne: I think that "superficial" is absolutely the right word for the knowledge or the lack of knowledge Palin showed yesterday. I'm glad the caller raised that one, and I suspect there is going to be a scouring of that transcript for exactly that sort of gaffe. That has echoes of some of the stuff she said to Katie Couric.

If you look at the debate transcript, however, you will see that the reference is not to "the Talabani" but to Talabani--as in Jalal Talabani, the president of Iraq.

Indeed, it is quite clear Gov. Palin was talking about Talabani, and not the Taliban; because I was in the back of the pub while watching the debate I can excuse myself for mishearing her. But I at least asked someone who did not mishear -- someone who did not strike a pose but rather got things right. And I recall wondering whether what Gov. Palin said -- or DIDN'T say -- would be leapt on by the extremist blogosphere. Who would've thought that E.J. Dionne and his interlocutor TOM would have spoken with authority, or some semblance of it, on something never said?

(I do find it interesting that in the above quote Taliban is spelled both Talabani and Talibani; I have no idea why but it does strike me as a curiosity.)

Regardless. The fact is that there is an a priori assumption out there that Gov. Palin is a dope -- a lot like the dope in the White House. She's Bush with lipstick while McCain possesses Cheney's age and pugnacity, and very little else. The McCain/Palin ticket is merely a pastiche, even an inversion of the Bush/Cheney ticket. Palin HAD to have meant the Taliban precisely because TOM had never heard of Talabani AND because she is, as we all know, just plain stupid (and TOM is not).

Good thing that E.J. Dionne Jr., who is often on Ms. Rehm's show on Fridays for the "News Roundup," has instilled confidence in his readers.

©2008. All Rights Reserved.

An Unbelievable Embarrassment: Cringe Reflex On High

I am afraid I will have to offend some of my readers today. Not that it will do any good, but I offer my apologies in advance of what I am about to say: Readers, forgive me.

Last night, as I watched the much-awaited debate between Sen. Joe Biden and Gov. Sarah Palin, I found myself unable to sit or stand still. I was doing everything I could not to pace; instead, I stood and fidgeted, I trod a small circle. I left the room, I went outside. I flinched. I winced. I said "Ouch!" I did everything I could to stay cheerfully mild. I discovered, to my shame, that I could not.

In the end all I could do was say, "Poor, poor Joe Biden."
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Senator Joe Biden. He's a legend in Delaware. He's a legend in the Senate. Nay, he IS the Senate, at least for most of us who were mere children when he first took office. He's a fixture of the Democratic Party. He has been the stuff of some of the wildest tales told about Senate hearings: He has reproached, chided, upbraided, rebuked, rebuffed, and rejected the likes of Robert Bork. He has raised his voice to men who now preside on the Supreme Court, men who barely made it through the very gauntlet which is Joe Biden.

This senatorial and legislative behemoth, this veritable leviathan of legislation, renowned for his 35 years of service to this country, failed -- abjectly, fully and undeniably publicly -- to put an upstart country-girl-small-state governor in her place. Not only did he not annihilate her in the debate's first five minutes, he permitted her to remain relatively equal to him in nearly every way. He did not impress us with his vast and superior command of all things political: his responses were adequate, and that's all. But mere adequacy is grossly insufficient; in a debate like this, adequacy is failure. Clearly, he never really distanced himself from his opponent. She remained doggedly confident; she did not lose a single ounce of confidence, her aplomb. She remained controlled, poised, eager -- and defiantly cheery. And she without a hint of embarrassment looked directly into the camera and spoke what we all knew -- and she knew that we all knew -- were some clearly canned set-pieces. But the fact is that she did all of this with pride, gusto, elegance; she laughed at diffidence and shame, and made her case to America. She came out of the debate liked by more Americans than when she went in.

But the Great Peacemaker's Great Elder Statesman, Joe Biden, made himself look like a dried-up old Washington insider who merely played verbal games: Instead of blowing Gov. Palin and the country away, he simply failed. The rookie was not fanned by the legendary CY Young award-winning pitcher; in fact, the rookie ended up on first with a 13-pitch walk. The novice was never schooled by her master. In that, Joe Biden's performance was a profound and legendary embarrassment.

A dear acquaintance of mine (I love him but we are not close) wrote a very well-received op-ed in New Hampshire's only state-wide daily paper. He was pitching for an Obama victory as the state headed into the last week's of the NH primary season. And in that ably written op-ed, my friend compared essentially the length of time it took Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to get where they were in December 2007. Hillary Clinton, far older than Barack Obama, had begun at a higher social rung than did he (at birth); she had a privileged upbringing, attending the best schools; she was a lawyer and first lady, and yet at her age was only now ready to run for president. By comparison, Barack Obama had actually accomplished far more in far less time, and he began with far less. The op-ed writer remarked:

"Obama's accomplishments show greater efficiency and clarity of purpose, forming productive alliances, making the most of his comparatively short career."

In effect, or so I believe, the op-ed writer could have been asking, "If Ms. Clinton was only ready to be president when she turned 61, how much more ready would Barack Obama be when he was 61 if he was ready at 47?"

Undoubtedly the same kind of question could be asked of Sarah Palin. If Gov. Palin is clearly fit to debate Joe Biden with only five weeks' experience, what would she be like when she was Joe Biden's age? If an inexperienced candidate can be considered by many pundits to have equaled the vastly more experienced Joe Biden in a debate, what does that say about her potential compared to his -- or even Barack Obama's?

The fact is clear in the plainest political sense. This sense may not be common sense; it may not spill over into the general populace. But the fact is that Sen. Joe Biden lost last night, terribly. No, he did not walk off the stage blushing, weeping, looking utterly dejected. No, he did not appear to wobble, nor did he begin to mutter circumlocutions like a doddering old man. But that Sarah Palin was able to walk off the stage last night in St. Louis, Missouri, waving and smiling and remarking that the whole thing was fun -- without being the slightest bit delusional -- proves that Joe Biden lost every second of last night's debate. Every second.

Lastly, even Sen. Biden's strongest points were utterly weak. He had an enormous debate advantage: he is a senator. Since Gov. Palin is not, he could pretend to talk authoritatively and knowingly about John McCain and Barack Obama's Senate records. Why would a governor know anything about such records, many of which are obscured by legislative politics and the trivialities that such politics engenders? Sarah Palin, as an obvious outsider, could not counter what the presumably all-knowing senator claimed to know. But it was precisely her outsider status that Joe Biden assiduously avoided: he did not argue against her record as governor -- for then he was in unknown territory -- he argued instead against John McCain's alleged record as a senator. Of course, today we are all learning that Sen. Biden essentially fabricated both Sen. McCain's and Sen. Obama's records in the Senate; he could do so simply by taking advantage of Sarah Palin's strength, namely, her outsider status. Last night, Sen. Biden was quite safe dropping complete or half-truths about his two colleagues in the senate chambers, realizing his interlocutor could not counter him during a live televised debate.

But all this shows the weakness of Sen. Biden, for even with his fabrications and assumed privileged position, he still failed to render Sarah Palin irrelevant, inconsequential or uninformed.

That is why the Contratimes poll, indubitably infallible, shows that, of those who were asked to declare who REALLY won the debate, 0 percent said Joe Biden won.

0 percent! That is just a few points lower than his class placement in his graduating class from law school. OK. Unfair. But could I really resist?

©2008/All Rights Reserved.

Denigrating Mediocrity Denigrates Democracy? Dismissing The Palin Candidacy

In 2004, on the eve of the general election, I wrote a letter to my local newspaper in which I explored a brilliant comment by the well-known Republican satirist, P. J. O'Rourke. I had heard Mr. O'Rourke, who lives nearby in this part of New Hampshire, speaking earlier in the year on New Hampshire Public Radio. Concerning what he said during that broadcast, I wrote, in part:

‘Let us stipulate that George Bush is a mediocrity, that he’s not particularly bright,’ said Mr. O’Rourke (and I paraphrase). ‘OK, fine. But to say that a mediocrity is unfit for the Oval Office is essentially antidemocratic, going against the very ideals of the American Dream. For if Mr. Bush is unfit for office because he isn’t brilliant, then the alternative is that only smart people can hold that office. If that’s the case, we’ve become a meritocracy, even an aristocracy of the mind.’

I would like readers for a moment to simply insert any name into Mr. O'Rourke's unarguably astute observation. Just add Barack Obama's name, or Joe Biden's. But maybe you should put Sarah Palin's name in the whole of O'Rourke's equation -- in bold letters.

Let us indeed concede, at least for the sake of argument, that Sarah Palin is the most mediocre person in the world, at least the Republican world. Considered it so conceded.

But are we not at worst conceited if we insist that a mediocre person -- and surely none of us here is one whit tepid, bland, or insipid -- is unfit for the vice presidency of the United States?

I recall arguing with a liberal Democrat friend during the 2000 election cycle. He had worked himself into quite a fury; I swear there were flecks of foam gathered in the corners of his mouth. You see, he could not comprehend that anyone could consider George W. Bush a viable candidate; my friend denounced the man as an idiot, a dolt, a veritable ingrate.

As you should all know by now, I've never been a big fan of Mr. Bush's. And I can assure you that in 2000, the man was nowhere to be found on my political radar screen. But I was at the very least somewhat taken aback that my friend would call George W. Bush stupid and incompetent. To counter this, I recall making this foolish statement:

"I don't quite know how you can call him 'stupid.' That man can't be all that stupid who earn degrees from two Ivy League schools (Yale and Harvard's Business School)."

I cannot tell you how counter-effective my statement instantly became. My friend became even more irate, denouncing me as stupid for not realizing that Bush was a "mere legacy" child of Yale and Harvard, that he was an "affirmative action" placement for the stupid but obscenely rich.

It struck me as odd how quickly my liberal friend had turned against such an esteemed credential as an Ivy League diploma; I noted a paradox. For only years earlier, America had been told that the "men of the people," the good old southern boy Bill Clinton and his sidekick Al Gore, were proud holders of Ivy League degrees (Clinton, a Georgetown undergrad, earned his JD at Yale). These added to their bona fides; they could not possibly be typical dopes. But amazingly, George W. Bush in 2000 was dismissed for being nothing but a privileged white kid whose daddy bribed Yale to serve as his son's reform school.

And then, of course, 2008 came along and we find ourselves constantly reminded that Barack Obama is qualified to be president because he holds degrees from two Ivy League schools.

(Did you know that George W. Bush actually performed better at Yale than his contemporary, Sen. John Kerry? You probably didn't, but, oh, how we heard about that C-student in the White House!)

Now comes Sarah Palin. Note that the Democrats, the leftist media, and even some of her own Republican colleagues have turned the American Dream upside down: Not everyone can be what they want to become, Sarah, and you should just cease aspiring to America's highest echelons. As I wrote in 2004 in my letter, such language does destroy the American Dream:

[Mr.] O’Rourke’s comments are quasi-revolutionary. For he affirms nearly every high school and university commencement address given over the last 30 years (‘Believe in yourself and you can be anything’), and yet subverts the popular paradigm. To oppose Bush or any president on grounds of intellectual inferiority is tantamount to declaring that some people - the mediocre - should not be allowed to fulfill their dreams. Only the brilliant should be in high places.

In other words, a democracy such as ours is only open up to a certain point. There are some places the mediocre cannot go, at least when it comes to participating in the governance of what is, or so it is said in theory, a nation governed by its own people.

I've already spotted, like you have, extremely damning commentary about Sarah Palin's lack of academic credentials. Writers have mocked her for attending the obscure North Idaho College and less-obscure University of Idaho. Curiously, nary a word is said about Joe Biden's self-described profoundly mediocre academic ventures at both Delaware and Syracuse (and we all know that neither school can ever pretend to be Ivy League). Sen. Biden's Wikipedia is rather telling (if true):

Biden attended the Archmere Academy in Claymont, where he was athletically, not academically, oriented and a natural leader among the students. He graduated in 1961.

Biden attended the University of Delaware in Newark, Delaware, where by his own later description he was a lazy student. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts with a double major in history and political science in 1965, ranked 506th of 688 in his class.

He went on to receive his JD from Syracuse University College of Law in 1968, where by his own description he again underperformed and ranked 76th of 85 students.

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Thursday night is the "big debate" between Gov. Palin and Sen. Biden. It is a one-shot deal for both of them. Here's hoping they both do well. But we can expect a billion words printed, published and voiced about "mediocrity" in the coming days. In anticipation of those words, I would like to conclude here the same way I concluded my letter in 2004 (with slight modifications):

One must consider carefully: We’ve all known smooth talkers who chat themselves into great jobs, only to drive co-workers and employers batty. Often the less stellar interviewee for a job turns out to be a winner. No doubt Bush has milked the diamond-in-the-rough image effectively, while oleaginous Kerry has become all-things-to-all-men so completely, he is nearly no one. All to say that – and please forgive the doggerel – a master of oration may be a disaster for a nation.

If we are truly committed to diversity and tolerance, if we are to dance about celebrating our grand differences, then ousting [or rejecting] a president [or candidate] because he [or she] is intellectually mediocre is philosophically repugnant.

©2008. All Rights Reserved.