Optimism! October 24, 2008

The media depresses me, but also uplifts! Here is a good article from Peggy Noonan from today:

43% Isn’t Nothing

Obama looks like a winner, but it’s not over yet.

It’s all going fast, the whirl of images on the screen, words on the page, data flashing by. Barack Obama’s up here, his lead now in the double digits there. In green rooms on book interviews, I see quietly angry former Reagan staffers, defensive former Bush aides, harried McCain spokesmen, and almost-jaunty Democrats. A network correspondent with a reputation for fairness—no one knows how this reporter votes—came by one day and shrugged with frustration. Everyone asks me about media bias. Of course the media loves Obama, but I can’t say it. I didn’t take notes, but I think that’s word for word. Soon after, I received an email from a different journalist who referred, in passing, to where many journalists stand.

Neither of these people is conservative. When nonconservatives see the Obama love, and refer to it without prompting, the Obama love is deep. Remember how John McCain used to refer jokingly to the press as “my base”? Now it’s part of Mr. Obama’s. But if Mr. McCain loses, the reason will not be press bias.

The press knows who the press is for, and it isn’t generally the one to the right. This has been true all my life. What has also been true is that the Republican had to get around it with the truth of his stands, the force of his arguments, the un-ignorability of his words, the power of his presence. You have to go over the head of the interpreters and gently seize the country by its lapels. Mr. McCain never got much over their heads. This is not because they’re so tall. His campaign was not so much about meaning as it was, in the end, a series of moments—a good interview with Rick Warren, a good convention, Joe the Plumber . . .

And yet: It’s not over. For one thing, Mr. McCain has got to be reading Steven Stark’s piece in the Boston Phoenix, which imagines the forces that could produce a McCain upset. What if Mr. Obama underperforms on Election Day, just as he did in the final primaries with Hillary Clinton? What if senior citizens turn out in record numbers and vote for the older guy, and the financial crisis seems to fade, and Mr. McCain finds new grounding on the issue of taxes, and the Obama campaign undermines itself with premature triumphalism . . .

Mr. McCain has endless faith in his ability to come back. He’s been doing it for 40 years, from Vietnam, where, with the injuries he’d sustained and the torture he experienced, he might have died, was likely to die, and yet survived, to exactly a year ago, when he was out of money and out of luck. And then he won New Hampshire. When he says, “We got ‘em where we want ‘em” he must mean: They think they are looking at a corpse. No one in politics has so repeatedly relished coming back from the dead.

Not a single poll has Mr. McCain ahead. The RealClearPolitics average of national polls as I write, rounded off, is Obama 50%, McCain 43%. Actually Mr. Obama has 50.1%, and if that is true and holds, it would make him the first Democratic presidential nominee since Jimmy Carter to break 50%. But I find myself thinking of what that 43% means. It’s a big number, considering that this is the worst Republican year in generations. Amid two wars, a deep economic crisis, a fractured base, too much cynicism, and a campaign with the wind not at its back but head on in its face—with all of that working against Mr. McCain, 43% of the American people say, right now, in these polls, they are for him. And there are a significant number of undecideds. Four years ago about 122 million people voted. Forty-three percent of 122 million is 52 million people, more or less. A huge group, one too varied to generalize about because it includes flinty elderly Republicans from New England, home-schooling mothers in Ohio, libertarianish Republicans in Colorado, suburban patriots outside the big cities, and many others.

They are the beating heart of conservatism, and to watch most television is to forget they exist, for they are not shown much, except at rallies. But they are there, and this is a center-right nation, and many of them have been pushing hard against the age for 40 years now, and more. For some time they have sensed that something large and stable is being swept away, maybe has been swept away, and yet you still have to fight for it. They will not give up without a fight, and they will make their way to the polls.

And they will be a rock-hard challenge to Mr. Obama if he wins.

This is the thing: If Mr. Obama wins, and governs as a moderate liberal, not veering left, not seeming to be the cap that pops off a kettle that’s been boiling for eight years, but governs to a degree, at least in general approach, as Bill Clinton did—as a moderate Democrat well aware of the terrain—he may know some success. And he may be able to tamp down the insistence of the long-simmering left by the force of his own popularity, which will grow once he is president among grateful Democrats, and others. But if he goes left—if it comes to seem as if the attractive, dark-haired man has torn open his shirt to reveal a huge S, not for Superman but for Socialist, if he jumps toward reforms such as a speech-limiting new Fairness Doctrine, that won’t yield success. It will yield trouble, and unneeded domestic arguments. We have enough needed ones.

In a way, Mr. Obama can more easily go left in foreign relations for the precise reason no one knows what going left is, because no one knows what going right in foreign relations is, at least if “right” means “conservative.” Mr. Obama has a great chance, in this area, to confuse the world. And a confused world is not all a bad thing. His persona, name, color, youth and approach will, at least initially, jumble up long-settled categories. Radicals enjoy hating America, but a particular picture of America. He is not that picture. He will give calculating Western European leaders an opening to be friendly to America again; they will feel that Mr. Obama’s victory constitutes the rebuke of the Bushism they desire. They will befriend the rebuker.

People wonder if he is decisive. It is clear he is decisive in terms of his own career: He decides to go for president of the law review, to move to Chicago, to roll the dice for a U.S. Senate seat, to hire David Axelrod, to take on Hillary, to campaign with discipline and even elegance. When it comes to his career, his decisions are thought through and his judgments sound. But when it comes to decisions that have to do with larger issues, with great questions and not with him, things get murkier. There is the long trail of the missed and “present” votes, the hesitance on big questions. One wonders if in the presidency he’ll be like the dog that chased the car and caught it: What’s he supposed to do now?

It is mean out there, and in the next week it will get darker still, perhaps spectacularly so. To me, the biggest nightmare would be a tie. The worst resolution would be no resolution. And the quarrel would not, for even a moment, abate.

I need to remember that there are lots of good people out there. By good, I mean, conservative. Heh. I especially like this part, “They are the beating heart of conservatism, and to watch most television is to forget they exist, for they are not shown much, except at rallies.” Because that is exactly what has happened to me. The media depresses me, and I know it does, but I still read and listen.

I should not be so moved by what I read though. I should have the integrity and thought to sustain me and give me confidence despite what others are saying.

Oh what depressing times October 17, 2008

I’m a conservative Republican, but mostly I’m just a conservative. I’m not sure what the Republican party is about anymore. Well, I know what I THINK it is about, but not what the Republican “leaders” think it is about. I mean, we have nominated John McCain. Is that because he didn’t betray any expectations? As my husband said, I ended up liking Obama better in Thursday’s debate because he surpassed the very low expectations I had for him. I had somewhat higher expectations for McCain and he didn’t even meet them. Except on issues like taxes. He is right–why should people, any people, pay more taxes right now? Obama said he doesn’t like taxes, but he’s still going to raise them. That is dumb. Be honest. You want to have social programs so you want to raise taxes. You like social programs better than cutting taxes. McCain was right to call him out on that. But McCain: are you going to cut spending too? Anyway, the point is, we should be a party that loves America, hates spending money, is wise, is for traditional marriage, is against pork barrel spending, loves people, stands for what is right, encourages family, is financially prudent and encourages Americans to be as well, has leaders, encourages people to give to each other and take care of each other, is tough on terrorism, defends religion, works to have a small government, communicates with Americans often, helps paint a big picture, helps people understand the relationship between government and the people, defends the family, takes responsibility, owns up, is honest. Yeah, in a perfect world right?

Another Really Good One September 3, 2008

The Wall Street Journal‘s Opinion Journal editorial from today is fantastic as well. Here is the link. And here is the full editorial:

Even as the Obama camp ponders how best to handle John McCain’s veep pick of Sarah Palin, the high priests and priestesses of the media have marked her as an apostate. The Beltway class is in full-throated rebellion against a nondomesticated conservative who might pose a threat to their coronation of Barack Obama and the return of Camelot-on-the-Potomac.

Here is a sampler of media comment on Governor Palin this week:

- Eleanor Clift, the McLaughlin Group: “If the media reaction is anything, it’s been literally laughter in many places across newsrooms.”

- Sally Quinn, Newsweek: “It is a political gimmick . . . I find it insulting to women, to the Republican party, and to the country.”

- E.J. Dionne, Washington Post: “Palin is, if anything, less qualified for the vice presidency (and the presidency) than [Harriet] Miers was for the court. But there is one big difference: Palin passes all the right-wing litmus tests.”

- Maureen Dowd, New York Times: “They have a tradition of nominating fun, bantamweight cheerleaders from the West.”

- Ruth Marcus, Washington Post: “But as a parent in the media, I also know that the Palins assumed this risk. Anyone who watched coverage of the Bush twins’ barroom exploits knew that the avert-your-eyes stance toward candidates’ children has its limits.”

- Charlie Cook, Beltway pundit, on PBS’s “Charlie Rose”: “I had a friend that had a young person tell them that they had three interviews to get a job as a server at Ruby Tuesday! So this is like putting a whole — for someone that hasn’t played on a national — Geraldine Ferraro had more — Dan Quayle had undergone more scrutiny, had played on a bigger stage than this. This is putting an enormous risk on someone he didn’t know. And he has to just pray that it works!”

This is the same media whose chant for weeks — no, months — has been “let McCain be McCain.” If we know anything about John McCain, it is that he is by instinct a reformer, sometimes to a fault. Yet when he acts like McCain and picks a maverick reformer in his own mold, his former media cheering squad turns on him for not conforming to Beltway mores and picking someone they’ve all met 10 times in the CNN green room.

They want a VP to be a kind of parliamentary choice, someone they have already vetted, someone who’s made them laugh with insider jokes at the Gridiron dinner. The Beltway class whines constantly about how it wants fresh voices in politics, but we guess this means a first-term Democratic Senator rather than a first-term Republican Governor from some godforsaken U.S. state few of them have ever been to.

We are instructed that Mrs. Palin isn’t qualified, because she lacks Washington experience. But until recently that was said to be a virtue in Mr. Obama, who is at the top of his ticket. Meanwhile, there’s hardly a peep of media notice that the Obama campaign is preposterously trying to remake Joe Biden into a poor scrapper from Scranton when he’s been in the Senate for 36 years. They all know Joe. But when Mr. McCain picks an authentic middle-class mother who is also a Governor, we are told she’s not up to the job.

The spin du jour is that her choice reflects poorly on Candidate McCain because she wasn’t properly vetted. Yet this seems to be false. Campaign vetter A.B. Culvahouse, White House counsel under Ronald Reagan, says Mrs. Palin told the campaign about her pregnant daughter and her husband’s DUI at the age of 22. On Monday, Time magazine’s Nathan Thornburgh wrote from Wasilla, Alaska, that Bristol Palin’s pregnancy had been known by virtually everyone there, with little made of it. But what do these private family matters have to do with Mrs. Palin’s credentials to be Vice President in any case?

The press in 2000 ignored marijuana use by Al Gore’s son, as it should have. But now we are told a teenage pregnancy is going to raise second thoughts among evangelicals and “family values voters” about Mrs. Palin’s ability to be both a mother and a public official. This is also false.

Leaving aside the embarrassing reality that the Beltway press corps barely knows any evangelicals, religious leaders this week greeted the pregnancy news with support for the Palins. Offering support for unwed pregnant women and their families is a primary activity of these churches from one end of America to the other. That might even make a good story for someone this weekend.

What’s really going on here is that the Beltway class can see how popular the Palin pick is with Republicans outside Washington, and especially with middle-class conservatives. As Richard Land, a leader with the Southern Baptist Convention, said Monday, John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin closed the “enthusiasm gap” between the two parties.

There is nothing more dangerous to entrenched Washington power than a populist conservative who looks unlikely to buy into Washington’s creature comforts. Take a close look at Governor Palin’s record on ethics and energy in Alaska, and it becomes clear what this Beltway outburst is actually about. The irony is that while Senator Obama is running on change, his acceptance speech made explicit that he’s promising only more power and money for Washington. Sarah Palin’s history of taking on the career politicians of a corrupt Alaskan GOP machine — her own party — shows that she’s the more authentic change agent.

* * *

If Sarah Palin succeeds as a national candidate, she could help John McCain proceed to a reform Presidency. Even if he loses while she does well, she could emerge as a major figure in GOP politics for years to come. This is why the media and political classes are so eager to discredit her. They can’t let it happen.

We hope Mr. McCain and the GOP are prepared to fight back. On the evidence this week, it looks like an army of volunteers is forming up to help them.

And!! September 3, 2008

And, liberals are apparantly snobs. Democrats and liberals are supposedly for the people, yet they deride Sarah Palin because she is only an Alaska governor and so she therefore hasn’t thought anything about United States domestic and foreign policy? And how do they know? Does she need to go to school to learn those things? How does anybody get qualified to run the country? To be worthy, does a candidate have to be well-educated? Do they have to have the “smartest” people around them? Is their spouse not allowed to be a “blue collar” worker? Where is the liberals confidence in people who aren’t like them? Who are of a lower class monetarily and educationally? And that is the problem with liberal elites: they don’t care about or believe in normal people. They just want to take care of them. Their razing of Sarah Palin is a prime example. I don’t get it. You’d think liberals and Democrats would celebrate her, but they can’t, because she’s pro-life and pro-limited government.