I recently read an article alleging that McCain is a loose canon and has a nasty temper that he can’t control. In fact, I’ve heard this charge trumpeted by liberals for the past several months. But this was the first time that I’d read a specific charge about a specific incident where the evidence was publicly available on youtube. Its a video entitled “John McCain losing his Cool” and involves a cross-examination of a witness during MIA/POW hearings.

So I watched the video. And McCain, while clearly upset, remained polite, logical, and civil. He never raised his voice, he kept his emotions in check, and he in no way lost his cool. So then I looked at another video entitled “John McCain Loses Temper With NY Times Reporter“. And another one “McCain gets Angry“. And if you watch them, you will note that he is respectful and courteous and doesn’t shout or do anything untoward.

In other words, McCain seems to do a commendable job of keeping his emotions in line and NOT losing his cool. The guy is under constant scrutiny, and anything he says that has the slightest hint of anger gets chronicled as him having a temper. That’s simply absurd. There are a number of reasons that one may not want to vote for McCain in this fall election, but so far as I can tell his temper is not one of them.

I naively thought that John McCain would have to do something to reconcile the inherent contradictions in his campaign. After all, he’s a maverick claiming the support of millions of Americans; a Bush opponent who champions Bush policies; a Republican candidate with support from the incumbent running on a platform of “change”. I thought that he would have to modify or reconcile those stances in order to achieve the Herculean task of convincing conservative pro-Bush Republicans on the convention floor to support him, at the same time that he sought the approval of anti-Bush moderates sitting at home. I was skeptical, but said that if he did pull off that task he would have given the greatest speech of this campaign.

I was wrong. Read the rest of this entry »

Sarah Palin just stood in front of a national television audience and told America that she doesn’t need polls to know what real Americans think; she just knows, by virtue of the fact that comes from a small town. She won’t let the polls tell her what to think! And the RNC loved it.

George W. Bush said something awfully similar eight years ago, and sure enough, he didn’t particularly care what the polls said. He didn’t care that the American people hated his policies or disapproved of the job that he was doing or wanted a major change in his foreign and domestic policies. He still doesn’t care.

That’s what the GOP is about. They’ll attack Democrats for being elitist, but then they’ll turn right around and tell you to your face that they couldn’t care less what you think about education, health care, economic policy, war, or anything else. That’s not Republican. That’s Absolutist.

Probably the two biggest scandals of the Bush Administration have been the politicization of the Justice Department (which led to the dismissal of Alberto Gonzalez) and the Valerie Plame scandal (which led to the prosecution of the Vice President’s Chief of Staff for perjury). In both cases, the Bush Administration consciously ruined the careers of government civil servants because of those civil servant’s political views. A similar approach has pervaded the Bush Administration from top to bottom: scientists in NASA and the EPA have complained about editing of scientific documents for political reasons, there have been reports that officials working in Iraq have been screened based on their abortion views, intelligence reports that conflict with official White House “truth” have been quashed or ignored… you get the idea. Republicans may taut their ability to work with the other side of the aisle in Congress, but the Bush Administration has shown zero interest in working with any Democrats (or even unfriendly Republicans) when it comes to the business of running the country.

We know all of this; it’s been news for years. So why do I bring it up now? Because, at least according to early reports coming out of Alaska, it seems that GOP Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin shares a similar outlook on executive leadership.
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Quick reality check here. Fred Thompson last night called Barack Obama “the most liberal, most inexperienced nominee to ever run for president”.

Obama isn’t even close.
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The most interesting comment that Barack Obama made in his speech last Thursday night was this passage that came about a third of the way through:

You see, we Democrats have a very different measure of what constitutes progress in this country.

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Can we stop all the “maverick” talk once and for all? Here are common definitions of “maverick”:

1) An unbranded calf or horse in the Western United States and Canada.
2) A person of independent or unorthodox views.
3) A dissenter

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I could do a number of posts on Obama’s speech last night at the DNC. But I’m fairly sure that Mike will be doing an analysis of it at some point, and I’d rather take potshots at his analysis from the peanut gallery than write my own (well, at least I’m honest about these things…).

But here’s one line I’d like to dissect and disagree with in the interim:

“In Washington, they call this the “Ownership Society,” but what it really means is that you’re on your own. Out of work? Tough luck, you’re on your own. No health care? The market will fix it. You’re on your own. Born into poverty? Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, even if you don’t have boots. You are on your own.”

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this rhetoric. Congressman Rush Holt used this approach about 4 years ago to an audience of policy majors at Princeton in describing the GOP. I disagreed with it then, and I disagree with it still. Here’s why:

There’s a big difference between government not helping you, and nobody helping you.
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McCain just announced his choice for Vice President: Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. From the brief bios coming out about her, Gov. Palin is a very socially conservative, anti-corruption crusader originally from Idaho, and is now in her second year as Governor. Before that she was mayor and councilwoman from a small Alaska town. She is 44 years old, has five kids–one of whom has Downs Syndrome–and her husband runs some kind of fishing business. By all accounts, she seems like a nice person, a good leader, and a good politician. She will be the first woman nominated by the GOP for either spot on the presidential ticket, and religious conservatives all over the country (the same ones who have repeatedly expressed concern or disdain for McCain) love her. Assuming she doesn’t turn out to be another Dan Quayle (the last relatively unknown Christian Conservative plucked by a Republican to shore up his religious right credentials) when it comes to speaking in front of the cameras, she is destined to be a media darling and probably the highlight of next week’s GOP convention. And yet, for all that, I think it was politically an awful move for John McCain.
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Its about 10 minutes before Obama gives his talk. I tuned in a bit early to be sure I didn’t miss it. I was intrigued by the “American Voices Program”… they have a bunch of normal Americans giving short talks about why Obama is their candidate. The speakers were carefully chosen to represent groups that are likely to be swing voters (although its not clear to me that any of these swing voters would be watching the talks).

Some of the talks seemed genuine and heartfelt. Some seem cliched and hackneyed. Some had clever turns of phrase. It made me wonder, did these people write their own speeches, or were they written by professional speech writers? If the latter, that seems a bit… disingenuous. If the former, then how do they ensure quality control? Do they have somebody proofing it? Do they give helpful tips and lessons? How do they ensure that one of the speakers doesn’t do the nightmare scenario (for the democrats) of endorsing John McCain?