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McCain Summer Fun Tour

Matthew DeLong — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 11:30:00 GMT

LAS CRUCES, N.M. – Today was one of those days that could very easily give a reporter following Sen. John McCain on the campaign trail a serious existential crisis. Why am I here? What am I doing? Is this really worth the astounding sums of money my employer is spending?

We began the day at a hotel near the New Orleans Airport in Kenner, La., and at that hotel we stayed -- until 3 p.m. Seven lucky reporters got to accompany Sen. John McCain this morning on what was, by all accounts, a pretty bad-ass helicopter ride to a photo-op on an oil rig 150 miles off the Louisiana coast in the Gulf of Mexico. Actually it wasn’t an oil rig -- it was a spar. Per the pool report, a spar floats on the water, while a rig has legs.

Anyway, McCain toured the spar, which he was supposed to do a couple of weeks ago, but Hurricane Dolly had other plans. Tropical Storm Fay was currently pulverizing Florida, too far east to literally rain on McCain’s parade once again. Following the tour, McCain gave his “We have to drill here, we have to drill now” spiel. The most newsworthy aspect of the event came as McCain was walking back to the helicopter to leave: A reporter asked him a question, and he answered. Unfortunately, it wasn’t very juicy. McCain’s answer: Yes, he enjoyed the tour, and it was his first time on an oil rig. You can read a fuller account of the trip here.

While all of this was going on, the bulk of the traveling press corps was at the hotel in Kenner, passing the time. Ironically, while McCain visited the oil platform, Noble Drilling Services, Inc. was holding a safety leadership workshop in one of the meeting rooms. Also staying at the hotel were some very large men, who turned out to be members of the New Orleans Saints.

Meanwhile, the chattering class was doing what it does about whether or not Sen. John McCain will choose Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) for his running mate -- and if so, what are the ramifications? The answers range from the smart: There will be blowback; to sputtering, mouth-foaming hyperbole: Lieberman will completely destroy the Republican Party and everything it stands for. I'll leave aside the wisdom of Lieberman as a vice presidential nominee, as others will certainly debate it ad infinitum over the course of the next week.

From a strategic point of view, even floating the possibility of a pro-choice veep -- which the McCain campaign has been doing in abundance recently -- represents a pretty big political risk. Getting Rush Limbaugh all worked up, and likely his legions of listeners as well, is probably never a smart move for a Republican seeking the White House. Not to mention the possible fallout from religious conservatives who may really withhold their votes because of a pro-choice running mate on the ticket, at least in theory.

But if it is just a head fake, it’s hard to see how much of a benefit the campaign can reap. McCain is quite possibly pissing off a very large percentage of the GOP base to make a play for some independent voters. But how many people really choose their presidential pick based on the vice presidential nominee anyway? Is it more than those who might be turned off in the process? Is McCain gambling that if he selects a pro-life running mate after floating the possibility of a pro-choicer, the pro-life crowd will be extra happy and thus extra supportive, while independent pro-choice voters will perceive the float as a wink and a nod? That’s an awfully convoluted head fake. My head hurts. Fortunately, there is a town hall on the schedule tomorrow, and with that comes the hope that maybe, just maybe, there might be some real news to report. If not, at least I have this nifty sticker:

When the Base Revolts

Sridhar Pappu — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 04:11:34 GMT

RALEIGH, N.C.--It seemed so right just two weeks ago. This was in Elkhart, Ind., and Sen. Evan Bayh, mentioned as a possible running mate of Sen. Barack Obama, the presumed Democratic nominee, seemed more than a long-shot possibility for the vice-presidential slot. That day, Bayh was more than probable. He was the one.

It made too much sense. Outside the packed high school gym, one couldn't help but understand why Bayh would be a perfect sidekick to the man. Here, from the nation's heartland, was a contemporary of Obama, who could help him take perhaps not only Indiana but also surrounding states -- maybe even Ohio. Bayh, son of a respected senator, had been a governor and had extensive foreign-policy experience.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

More important, at least that day, Bayh seemed to share Obama's boyish energy and fervor, speaking with eloquence as he introduced his fellow junior senator from the neighboring state. Bayh could help Obama run the table through the Midwest, even those still considered red states, or so I thought. Moreover, as men born of the same generation, they would make for a matched pair in the same vein of William Jefferson Clinton and Al Gore. Here were two handsome, erudite men who would stand for the next era in the Democratic Party.

Then came the vacation. While Obama took a much-needed rest with his family in Hawaii, the howl from the left grew louder and louder. Within days of the event and people talking about the probability of an Obama-Bayh ticket, the same people who had championed Obama during the Democratic primaries turned on him -- or, rather, his would-be running mate.

They set up websites and blogged nonstop, cursing Bayh as unworthy -- far too conservative to serve as second-in-command for the man whom the Democratic base considered heir to the great, unfinished dreams of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. As a result, as of this writing, most of the chattering class and thementioners have generally dismissed Bayh's chances for vice president as all but dead. The base, it seemed had roared and been heard.

But Bayh's apparent fall was only the most recent show of liberal muscle. In the past few months, Obama has taken some degree of heat for clinging to the yellow line of the middle of the road on everything from voting for the FISA bill to agreeing to offshore drilling as part of an overall energy bill. The question now seems to lurk near Obama like a tripwire: Has he forsaken progressive ideals to win the center? And if he hasn't, should he?

It is, of course, conventional wisdom that he must. Those of us who chronicle politics understand that, in the primaries, a candidate needs to appeal to the steadfast party base, the loyalists who want to see their ideals reflected in you. But it is also a truism that, after a candidate has done just that, a move to the center is essential. That's where general elections are won.

Yet, in today's environment, with a highly mobilized party base that has the rapid-response technology to fight vociferously against any such moves, one is left to wonder: CanObama even attempt that center-shift if he must fear the wrath of his base. Can he claim the vital center if the base won't let him?

This question was in full view Monday in New Mexico, when Obama, his sleeves rolled as usual, scanned the 1,800 people gathered at a town hall in the gymnasium of Rio Grande High School in Albuquerque, N.M. It was a balmy afternoon. That morning, Obama had admitted to 43 women he'd convened to talk about equal rights and gender issues that he was suffering from a cold -- actual proof of the chosen one's mortality. Memories of the primary season, of his ultimate victory over Sen. HillaryRodham Clinton and her well-heeled bickering machine, had begun to slip into memory. The Democratic National Convention was less than a week away, and, with it, his official entry into the general election. Now, as the Q-and-A period began, he readied himself for questions that all seemed to follow the same vein: Why the hell should we elect you?

Looking to the bleachers, he called first called on Dallas Timmons. Timmons, a woman with short-cropped hair and the ward chair of the local Democratic Party, didn't take much time to express both admiration and concern. She spoke about how she and others in the party had celebrated his stand against the war in Iraq. But, she said, they all now felt, on issues like his vote for the recentFISA bill, he had "peddled and compromised."

"As president, you set the agenda for this country," Timmons said. "Are you gonna set an agenda of change or one of compromise of what the Republican minority is gonna allow you to do in the Congress?"

After praising Timmons' for being feisty, and addressing the issue of troop withdrawal and FISA, Obama finally said, "Even if we do well, there’s still gonna be almost half the country that votes for somebody else. So one of the things that we have to understand is that there’s nothing wrong with compromise -- as long as you understand what your core principles are. And my core principles are that I’m fighting for ordinary Americans to make sure that they can live out their American dream and I am fighting to make sure that our values and ideals enshrined in our Constitution and our Declaration of Independence are upheld."

The next day, David R. Gergen, director of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, who has served as a White House adviser to Presidents Richard M. Nixon, Gerald R. Ford, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, put the matter into some learned light.

"Winning elections and governing in America is a complex undertaking -- and it takes some recognition that most of the country is more moderate,"Gergen said. "More people identify themselves as moderates than either liberal or conservative. I think he's a moderate -- but a liberal moderate. And he's not running as an ideologue, which I think is important. I do think, though, he has to sharpen his message so that those moderates are comfortable with his values."

"I don't think he's changed positions," Gergen pointed out. "He's changed the emphasis in which he talks about things. He's in for a hard fight and there are large swatches of the country that are waiting to see if he's pretty close to them in terms of values. This hasn't been easy for Democrats to do. There's a reason Democrats have lost seven out of the last 10 elections for president. WithObama you've seen an emphasis on things like faith-based initiatives, which have always been part of his platform, but wasn't a major emphasis in the primary campaign."

What the candidate from either party finds on emerging from the internal bickering of the primary season is an electorate that's not only larger but, in many ways, almost the opposite of the party base that gave you the nomination. Primary voters are hyper-focused on the candidates -- parsing each word they say because they want someone who will best represent their party's beliefs to the country and the world. They rabidly seek out information about the candidates.

But the independent voter in the general election is someone who does not seek out a candidate. Rather, he or she is someone a candidate needs to find.

Bill Carrick, a Democratic strategist in California, explained this dichotomy. "There's always been this tension about whether you run a populist campaign -- geared towards middle-class voters, their needs, their angers."Carrick said, "or do you run a moderate, DLC [Democratic Leadership Council] model. The truth is we've come out of this hybrid of the two."

"He has to show people who don't live in Seattle or New York City that he's real," said the Democratic strategist Liz Chadderdon. "Campaigns aren't about issues. They're about emotions. Raw emotions. And he has to spend a lot of time speaking to people in the middle of America. He has to broaden his voice."

But broadening his voice might come with certain consequences in this Internet-triggered election.

The stark differences between Obama and McCain extend out to the relationship they have with the bases of their respective parties. Rising from the 10-car pileup that was the GOP primary process, McCain emerged the candidate, yes, but also as a man in many way at odds with the social conservatives and evangelicals that formed the base of the modern GOP.

By contrast, it was the liberal base, whose ideals remain rooted in the ideals of Franklin D. Roosevelt and John and Bobby Kennedy, who helped power the turbine ofObama's miraculous primary run. Just as McCain must win the trust of those within his party, Obama must do the opposite. He must reassure them that he will not give up their big causes and run straight to the center, that he will retain the ideals that have embodied his primary campaign.

Is this a genuine concern? Just ask Tony Coelho, the former House Majority whip who served as chairman of Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign. He thinks that the liberal wing of the party yawned at the thought of Gore -- viewing him as a too much of a centrist, running straight to the middle.

"I remind a lot of Democrats who didn't vote for Al Gore -- because he wasn't liberal enough -- that we got George Bush," Coelho said. "How did that help the liberal cause? Al Gore would not have gotten us into Iraq, and he wouldn't have appointed Supreme Court justices like JohnAlito and John Roberts. I am not one of those who sits back and says you're either 100 percent with us or you're against us. It doesn't make sense.Obama might be something you might not like to win in Pennsylvania or somewhere else. Governing is more important than purity. You've got to keep your ideals == but you have to be a realist."

Listening to Coelho speak, his words evoked a scene early in the run of "The West Wing." Sitting with an associate Supreme Court justice ready to retire, Martin Sheen's President Bartlet suddenly found himself under fire from the elderly jurist, who barked, "You ran great guns in the campaign. It was an insurgency, boy, a sight to see. And then you drove to the middle of the road the moment after you took the oath. Just the middle of the road. Nothing but a long line painted yellow....I wanted to retire five years ago. But I waited for a Democrat. I wanted a Democrat.Hmmph! And instead I got you."

The day after Timmons' challenge, Robert Gibbs, Obama's communications director was standing in the aftermath of another town hall, this one at the the North Carolina State Fair Grounds. He, along with the candidate and the press corps had woken early, attended an event in Orlando, and now faced the bright prospect of a few hours off from the trail. With his suit jacket flung over his left shoulder, and his tie slightly undone, Gibbs began to address the question of whether the campaign was moving to the center and the complexities of holding onto the Democratic base that broughtObama his historic nomination.

"If you look at where the American people are, we're where the American people are on issue after issue after issue," Gibbs said. "Whether it's getting responsibly out of Iraq; or forming an energy independence plan -- I think Sen.Obama's where the American public is.

"If you look at polling," Gibbs continued, "Democrats are two, three times more energized about their nominee than Republicans are about theirs. The great thing is that the base wants change and independents in this country want change. As a matter of fact, moderate Republicans want change. I think we're fortunate that we have a message that carries across all of those platforms."

Walking out soon after, one was enveloped by the darkness of the grounds. It was one of those moments on the campaign trail where one is suddenly returned to the quiet rhythms of American life. It is in such a physical and emotional space that you come to the important, if not obvious, realization that, beyond the walls you write and report in, is a whole country -- where this campaign is bigger than guessing who the vice presidential nominee will be.

It is about the future of this country, of the next chapter in our shared American story. It is a country Obama must draw to his cause -- as he has the foot-soldiers of the Democratic Party. Should he hope to win out in this razor-close race,Obama will do so as a candidate who can gain the trust of newcomers who've just now come to his message and story, while keeping the aspirations and dreams of the true-believers who've brought him this far more than just alive. They must be electric.

Obama Camp Hits McCain's Elitist Millionaire Delusion

Ari Melber — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 21:40:00 GMT

There's an old saying in American politics -- elections are not decided by the producer price index. Sen. Barack Obama's campaign is jumping on today's jump in the index, though, with a statement from Economic Policy Director Jason Furman assailing the Bush-McCain economic agenda:

The unexpected jump in the Producer Price Index announced today is just further confirmation of that our economy is failing hard-working American families. This economy may be working for the multimillionaires that John McCain considers part of the middle class, but with prices rising and wages stagnating, tens of millions of typical American families are falling behind.

The Obama campaign is bearing down on Sen. John McCain's risible statement at the Saddleback forum on Saturday, when he estimated that it takes a whopping $5 million annual income to be rich in America(!) (video below). Furman hit that point again after contrasting the candidates' economic plans:

While Sen. McCain continues to stand in the way of short-term assistance for these families, Barack Obama’s Emergency Economic Plan would immediately put $1,000 in the pocket of families to help them pay for gasoline and groceries this fall, and would invest $50 billion in immediate measures to save more than one million American jobs. Americans can’t afford another four years of a president who ignores the plight of working families because he believes that multi-millionaires are middle class.

This attack comes as other liberal groups, unaffiliated with Obama's campaign, are branding McCain as an "elitist," out-of-touch "multimillionaire who owns 10 luxurious homes." McCain's tax plan is regressive and his middle-class agenda is meager -- he has not even proposed a stimulus -- but linking those policies to his vast personal fortune should resonate more with voters than an analysis of the Producer Price Index.

Death by a Thousand Republican Jokes

Ari Melber — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 20:59:46 GMT

Sen. John McCain finally found a salient line of attack against Sen. Barack Obama's remarkably resilient public profile. Throughout the campaign, calling Obama a defeatist, elitist or troop-hater has not been so effective. Calling him a joke, however, may be lethal.

Today The Daou Report, a site run by Peter Daou, a sharp strategist who worked for the presidential campaigns of Sen. John Kerry and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, provides a must-read analysis of how McCain's greatest summer achievement was to pinpoint Obama's "mockability":

Ridicule is the GOP’s most reliable weapon. The political assault on Al Gore, Howard Dean, John Kerry and other Democratic leaders has centered on the right’s capacity to turn them into objects of ridicule. Right-wing talk radio is premised on the lampooning of liberals. [Obama had] deftly avoided becoming the target of right-wing derision. Like Hillary Clinton, he is disliked – and feared – by many on the right, but less often mocked or dismissed. Which is what makes Obama a dangerous foe to Republicans and Clinton a formidable nemesis.

After experimenting with a range of misleading attacks, McCain found his mark with the ads diminishing Obama as an overconfident, under-qualified, lightweight celebrity joke. The comedic gloss is vital, because it helps McCain sidestep responsibility for the nasty themes at work.

Overconfident treads close to "uppity," for example, an old dog-whistle knock against black Americans. Under-qualified is just hard to substantiate; Obama has sterling credentials as an attorney and a range of experience outside Washington, which voters tend to value more than decades of Senate committee hearings. When pressed on these issues, however, McCain and his surrogates say they're just joshing around. "Lighten up!," they say. But The Daou Report editors argue this is serious business:

McCain's barrage had its intended effect and that there is now an acceptable way to ridicule Obama... the right-wing attack machine has been effective in the past because it serves a singular purpose: diminishing opponents through mockery and marginalization... Think of how Coulter, Hannity, Limbaugh and their cohorts operate - it's all about the laughter, the joking, the snide remarks, the scoffing. It's about cutting someone down to size, making them look meek and meager...

Democratic/progressive attacks generally run the gamut from negative character association (X is just like Y) to policy contrasts (we can handle the economy better than X) to one-off hits and 'Macaca moments' (X flubbed the name of a country) to impugning the attacker (look how nasty my opponent is). These can be effective, particularly the latter, but they are qualitatively different from the right-wing machine's diminishment of an opponent's character.

That's something Democrats don't do as well. It's less about negative frames, contrasts, rapid response and all the other mainstays of political strategy and more about making your opponent the butt of a joke.

Republican and Democratic campaigns test themes incessantly, both positive and negative - it's why pollsters are always in demand. But the GOP has a functional template that Democrats lack, the political equivalent of schoolyard taunting, which they return to time and again. The right-wing machine's amplification of those attacks is second nature, which is why the likes of a 'Celeb' ad catches fire.

Parrying destructive jokes is Obama's challenge, of course. Yet the press still underestimates how these destructive jokes work. The New Yorker cartoon kerfuffle exposed this dynamic, as many thoughtful media types downplayed the impact of a little liberal "joke," while Obama sympathizers immediately identified the potential damage. Few people found the smear-riddled cartoon -- or McCain's ads -- to actually be laugh-out-loud funny. Republican operatives, however, got the last laugh.

CORRECTION: 2 Secret Service Agents, Pilot Involved In AZ Plane 'Hard Landing'

Matthew DeLong — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 20:22:28 GMT

The Glendale, Ariz. Public Information Officer has informed me that the information I initially provided is inaccurate. The plane carrying the two secret service officers was actually involved in a "hard landing" in nearby Peoria, Ariz., according to the PIO. As you can read in the original post below, the source of my information was the campaign, which has yet to issue a correction. My apologies for sharing faulty information. Here is the Glendale PIO's full email:

Hello, I have to inform you and request that you correct an article that Matt DeLong wrote about a plane carrying Secret Service agents landing in Peoria, Arizona.

He wrote in his article that a plane "crash landed in Glendale, Az."

This is not the case. The plane had what was called a, hard landing, in Peoria, Az., not Glendale.

Please print a retraction.

Matt Barnett
Public Information Officer
Glendale Police Department
Glendale, Az.

KENNER, La. -- A plane carrying two U.S. Secret Service agents en route to a possible McCain campaign event site has crash landed in Glendale, Ariz., near Phoenix. No one was injured. McCain Campaign Communiciations Director Jill Hazelbaker issued the following statement:

“Earlier today a plane carrying a pilot and two United States Secret Service agents crash landed in a field in Glendale, Arizona, en route to a potential McCain event site. John and Cindy McCain have expressed their deep concern for those involved and we are all thankful that none of the passengers suffered serious injuries.”

Secret Service agents are omnipresent on the campaign trail. This is one of the risks of flying all over the country on a daily basis. Fortunately, this was one of the rare instances where everyone involved actually survived a plane crash.

Democratic Obama Anxiety

Ari Melber — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 19:43:55 GMT

Maybe political junkies suffer from some reverse-seasonal disorder that makes for a depressing summer. While most Americans kick back in August, this is the classic time for dark assessments of the presidential campaign. Now, percolating just beneath the veepstakes rumors, Democratic activists, operatives and donors are worrying that Sen. Barack Obama's campaign is flailing.

Josh Marshall, a measured journalist with a large political following, captured the mood in an unusually bleak post yesterday. He argued that while Republicans charge Obama with "soft treason," he has not found "any consistent lines of attack" for punching back. Teeing off that critique, AmericaBlog reports that "a lot of people in [Democratic] politics" are worried:

There is an incredible discontent out there with the way this campaign is being run. The fact that the discontent isn't being recognized, isn't being assuaged, is disturbing.People aren't worried about the election, they're becoming despondent about it.

These fears are premature, by definition, and candid public hand-wringing is usually dicey in politics. The entire game is also about to change. This race is headed toward two running mate announcements, two conventions and televised debates that will dwarf the impact of petty attack ads by several orders of magnitude. Yet experienced pols are warning Obama anyway.

That's not only because August is shaping up as a net negative for his campaign, but also precisely because people fear he will simply ride the positive momentum of upcoming events -- without rolling out sharper attacks on Sen. John McCain. That's a strategy sure to leave Democrats very despondent.

Obama Plans Illinois Events

Sridhar Pappu — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 19:30:00 GMT

RALEIGH, N.C.--And now some bad news for those eagerly awaiting Sen. Barack Obama's running-mate announcement. Today the Obama campaign said that the junior senator from Illinois and presumed Democratic nominee will hold an event at the state capital on Saturday, the same location where the senator announced his candidacy for president in February 2007. Meant as a "kick-off" to the Democratic convention in Denver, this follows a trip to Chicago beginning Thursday afternoon and lasting through Friday. Yours truly will do his best to cover both events from, um, Las Vegas where I will be attending my annual Fantasy Football League draft, which was a nightmare of errors last season. I am nothing but dedicated to my work. And football. And losing money at blackjack.

NYTs Reiterates: McCain is No Teddy Roosevelt

Mike Lillis — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 17:45:00 GMT

As environmentalists well know, John McCain is no friend of the environment. Somehow, though, the image of the GOP presidential hopeful as a rough-and-ready, saddle-for-a-pillow, earth-before-industry Teddy Roosevelt has seeped into the public consciousness as something approaching accurate. In this space, TWI's John Dougherty has, on several occasions, revealed why that's not the case (one here; another here; and another here ). And today, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert dispels the myth further:

Senator McCain will tell you outright: "I am a Teddy Roosevelt Republican."

That's about as elastic as the facts can get. In June, Mr. McCain ("We're gonna drill here! We're gonna drill now!") got a big boost in donations from oil industry executives after he reversed course and came out strongly in favor of offshore drilling. A Washington Post headline pointedly said: "Industry Gushed Money After Reversal on Drilling."

To put it mildly, that was not very Rooseveltian. Around the same time that the McCain campaign was pocketing its oil industry windfall, the historian Douglas Brinkley was poring over letters in which Roosevelt, running for his first full term as president in 1904, was indignantly ordering his campaign to return a $100,000 contribution from the Standard Oil Company.

[…]

But what is telling about this particular difference between Teddy Roosevelt and John McCain is that it is so illustrative of what Roosevelt was really about, and how fundamentally different that was from what Senator McCain and the latter-day Republican Party is about.

"The truth of the matter is that Roosevelt today would be on the left," said Mr. Brinkley, who is writing a biography of the former president titled "The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt's and the Crusade for America."

Roosevelt believed passionately in regulating industry and curbing the excesses of the great corporations. He favored the imposition of an inheritance tax and fought his party's increasing tendency to cater to the very wealthy. And, of course, he was a ferocious protector of the environment.

Nobody, it seems, told McCain.

Obama Defends Patriotism Before VFW

Sridhar Pappu — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:20:00 GMT

ORLANDO, Fla.--When people ask me when the tenor of this election changed, I point to late July when Sen. Barack Obama toured Afghanistan, Iraq and Europe, while his rival, Sen. John McCain angrily remained stateside, under the shadow of press darkness. Then McCain unveiled a line that has become part of his stump speech, where he brashly declared, "It seems to me Sen. Obama would rather lose a war to win a campaign."

Since then Obama has done his best to diffuse these comments which struck directly at his patriotism as well as his ability to lead. And while it might seem silly that we question McCain's motives, the depths of Obama's patriotism have been questioned time and again. But, as I've written several times, the fact that we question Obama's patriotism while McCain--a genuine American military hero--go unchallenged means that we are still very much a country and a people coming to grips about what it means to serve our country. It has been nearly 50 years since John F. Kennedy challenged the U.S. to do more to improve its standing in the world and then created the Peace Corps as a new way to fulfill one's national duty. And yet we still view the act of war as something more important, more elemental attribute in those who lead our country.

And while Obama has, for the most part, shrugged off McCain's attack, it was here, at the annual Veterans of Foreign Wars convention, where he gave his most stinging rebuke to date.

"I have never suggested that Senator McCain picks his positions on national security based on politics or personal ambition," Obama told the some-3,000 people assembled at the convention center. "I have not suggested it because I believe that he genuinely wants to serve America’s national interest. Now, it’s time for him to acknowledge that I want to do the same."

"Let me be clear," Obama continued, "I will let no one question my love of this country. I love America, so do you, and so does John McCain. When I look out at this audience, I see people of different political views. You are Democrats and Republicans and Independents. But you all served together, and fought together, and bled together under the same proud flag. You did not serve a Red America or a Blue America – you served the United States of America."

At the risk of sounding, well, like a candidate, when Obama spoke I was reminded of the words of a veteran I met in North Dakota in the days leading up to July 4. His name is Bill Anderson, and during his own service in Vietnam, he was left legally blind--a reaction to the anti-malaria drugs he and his fellow soldiers were given. Today he is still unable to read.

“There is more to patriotism than a lapel pin or an American legion cap on your head,” Anderson told me. “Patriotism is holding onto and advancing the ideals of liberty and justice. Just because you didn’t serve in the military doesn’t mean you’re not a patriot. And just because you did serve doesn’t make you a patriot."

As much as anything, this election has turned into a referendum on service and we will be left to judge which we value more. Will we choose the man who risked his life in combat and endured unspeakable acts of torture in the line of duty? Or will we choose a man who shunned a life in corporate and lucrative law to serve the under-served on the South Side of Chicago? The candidates have given us their patriotic credentials. Now it's our turn to decide which set we value in the next leader of the free countries of the Earth.

Is McCain Considering a Pro-Choice Veep?

Matthew DeLong — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 15:51:49 GMT

Yes, according to The National Review's Rich Lowry. In a post on the conservative magazine's Website late yesterday, Lowry wrote that the McCain campaign has been quietly putting out feelers with GOP officials around the country in an attempt to gauge what the fallout of picking a pro-choice running mate might be. From The National Review:

The campaign is asking about the reaction of conservative grass-roots activists to such a pick and whether a pro-choicer can be sold to them. This is an indication that the McCain campaign is serious about the possibility of a pro-choice VP nominee and that [Sen. John] McCain leaving the door open to Tom Ridge last week may not have been merely a friendly nod to a longtime supporter. In this scenario, McCain's emphatic pro-life statements Saturday night and his pledge that he'll run a "pro-life administration" would have been partly an attempt to reassure conservatives in the event of a pro-choice pick.

This comes less than a week after McCain initially floated the idea that he would be willing to consider someone who supports abortion rights for his vice presidential nominee, in an interview with The Weekly Standard's Steve Hayes. With two of the country's most prominent conservative magazines mentioning the possibility, is McCain seriously thinking about picking Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), whom McCain often refers to as his "favorite Democrat?"

Obviously, such a move could help shore up support among independents and inject an element of excitement into the campaign with the prospect of a bi-partisan ticket. But many religious conservatives have warned that this would spell disaster for McCain among this pillar of the GOP base.

The National Review also featured an editorial yesterday warning McCain that Lieberman is too liberal on abortion -- his rating 8 percent rating from the American Conservative Union is just one point higher than that of Sen. Barack Obama. Strong support among evangelical voters was a key to President George W. Bush's electoral victories in 2000 and 2004. As an article in The Washington Times notes, McCain is already losing ground among this voting bloc -- which could tip the balance in a closely fought election. From The Washington Times:

Polls of religious voters have showed two trends: Mr. McCain has less support from conservative Christians than President Bush did in 2004, but the relatively high support for Mr. Obama as a Democrat has started to slip.

A Pew poll last week showed Mr. McCain leading Mr. Obama among evangelical voters by 68 percent to 24 percent. In June, Mr. McCain led 61 percent to 25 percent. Mr. Bush received 77 percent of the evangelical vote in 2004.

"The more conservative element of the Christian population is slowly coming to grips with what an Obama presidency might be like," said George Barna, head of the Barna Group, an evangelical research organization.

The Washington Times article focuses on how Obama may be risking a backlash among pro-life voters -- but if McCain goes with a pro-choice pick, he may take that issue off the table. It might draw in some independents, but could turn off many conservatives -- and that could be bad news for his chances in November.

McCain to Announce Veep in Ohio

Matthew DeLong — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 12:53:19 GMT

Politico's Mike Allen appears to confirm what many already suspected -- Sen. John McCain will announce his running mate Aug. 29 -- the day after the Democratic National Convention ends, as well as McCain's birthday -- in Dayton, Ohio. According to Allen, the McCain campaign hopes to hold a large rally of up to 10,000 people for the announcement in Dayton, with another appearance with the vice presidential pick in Pennsylvania following soon after. From Politico:

Senior Republicans are in the dark about who he’ll name, although they say former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty are prime contenders after a trial balloon by McCain gave him very negative feedback about the idea of picking an abortion-rights running mate such as Tom Ridge, the former governor of Pennsylvania and the first secretary of homeland security.

Sources close to McCain say he has wrestled with the choice, torn between a high-stakes, high-reward pick like Ridge or Connecticut Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman — the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2000 — or a safer and more conventional selection such as Romney or Pawlenty...

The announcement strategy — provided McCain doesn’t change it — calls for naming the pick early Friday morning to try to suppress Obama’s bounce coming out of his convention.

Hamilton County [Ohio] GOP Chairman Alex Triantafilou tipped off observers about the impending rally with a weekend blog post that said "Sen. McCain is expected to host a rally on August 29 in Dayton and is looking for a BIG venue and for a BIG crowd. He'll get it. This is not yet public. I guess I just made it so." That information was subsequently removed.

With the Ohio rally, the McCain is clearly hoping to shore up support in the state. FiveThirtyEight.com, the electoral handicapping Website, changed the state's status yesterday -- from slightly favoring Sen. Barack Obama's to slightly favoring McCain -- in the wake of a new statewide poll that found Obama's eight-percentage point lead has evaporated. A Public Policy Polling survey [PDF] found Obama and McCain are now in a dead heat in Ohio with 45 points each. This change also puts McCain slightly ahead in the Website's electoral vote projection. From FiveThirtyEight.com:

With Ohio now trailing behind Obama's numbers nationally -- we regard Obama as a 1.0-point favorite in the national popular vote, but McCain an 0.6-point favorite in Ohio -- McCain now rates as slightly more likely to win the electoral college than the popular vote, a reversal of the trend apparent for most of the past couple of months.

Of course, the obvious problem with projections like this is there is still more than two months until the general election, and anything can happen in that time. However, McCain also leads by 1.5 percentage points in the RealClearPolitics average for statewide polls in Ohio. If McCain can boost his numbers in the state and put it out of Obama's reach, he may win the election. After all, Ohio is the bellwether -- having picked the winner in every presidential election since 1960.

Obama Reportedly Narrows to Biden, Kaine or Bayh

Ari Melber — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 12:02:18 GMT

Today's New York Times reports that Sen. Barack Obama's long search for a political soulmate has narrowed to three likely candidates:

Going into the final days, Mr. Obama was said to be focused mainly on three candidates: Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia and Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware... Mr. Obama’s advisers said he all but reached his decision while on vacation in Hawaii.

Obama could announce his choice as early as tomorrow, the article predicts, first notifying supporters by email and text messages and then campaigning in several swing states. The buzz is breaking for Biden now. The New Republic's Jonthan Cohn runs through the recent signs, from rumors to Hawaii intrigue, while the InTrade political markets show Biden's odds are rising faster than every other potential Obama veep:

Considering the Obama campaign's emphasis on message discipline, however, Kaine still seems like the most logical choice out of the three. (Bayh would be the least likely out of the Times' trio, for the reasons I've laid out before.) Then again, given the premium on veepstakes secrecy, it is entirely possible that the leaks about Obama's short-list, including three names for The Times, are orchestrated to throw everyone off track.

Obama to McCain: 'Economic Disaster Is Happening Right Now'

Sridhar Pappu — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 22:31:31 GMT

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.--There are lines that resonate. They stay in your gut long after they're said and are recalled as pivotal moments during the course of a campaign. Standing in a sweltering gymnasium during a town hall here today--whose crowd included my big sister Suguna and her daughters, Maya and Samsara--the presumptive Democratic nominee might have delivered such a line, such a blow.

After recalling the sentiments about the economy expressed by his republican rival, Sen. John McCain, Sen. Barack Obama struck back with great precision, saying "Mr. McCain, let me explain to you, the economic disaster is happening right now."

Such a statement couldn't have come at a better time. While on vacation last week, Obama ceded the news cycle to McCain, allowing him to show off his presidential chops as he spoke of the Georgia-Russia crisis daily, making sure to tell each crowd he addressed that he was on the phone with his good friend with whom he jet-skied with on the Black Sea, the Georgian president, Mikheil Saakashvili, daily. It was McCain as the statesman, the experienced foreign policy expert, the safe choice for a world in peril.

Now Obama is back. And while Russia continues to plunge the free world into an existential crisis, the junior senator form Illinois has redirected the course of the conversation back to the immediate concerns of most Americans. It's been 18 years since Bill Clinton used the economy to defeat a president who'd won a war abroad only to find an economy in recession at home. Now he's truly starting to use the Clinton playbook in earnest. And while things on the surface remain frosty at best between Obama and the 42nd president, it's clear that Obama is ready to fully embrace the Clinton playbook. Barack Obama is ready to feel your pain.

Does McCain Really Want to Make Foreign Policy Judgment The Central Theme Of His Candidacy?

Spencer Ackerman — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 21:30:00 GMT

All signs point to yes, but his Veterans of Foreign Wars speech today is basically him walking into a trap. F'rinstance:

Thanks to the courage and sacrifice of our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines and to brave Iraqi fighters the surge has succeeded. And yet Senator Obama still cannot quite bring himself to admit his own failure in judgment. Nor has he been willing to heed the guidance of General Petraeus, or to listen to our troops on the ground when they say -- as they have said to me on my trips to Iraq: "Let us win, just let us win." Instead, Senator Obama commits the greater error of insisting that even in hindsight, he would oppose the surge. Even in retrospect, he would choose the path of retreat and failure for America over the path of success and victory. In short, both candidates in this election pledge to end this war and bring our troops home. The great difference is that I intend to win it first.

But the failure in judgment is in invading and occupying Iraq. The idea that the proper response to a hellish war is to stay until it's less-hellish is not worthy of a serious presidential candidate. Obama can make mincemeat out of this by simply pointing to this other war, and the deterioration of this other country, that happen to be, like, you know, where al-Qaeda actually is. (Oh and for good measure, McCain has no intention of actually bringing the troops home from Iraq, nor does he have any idea how to win in Iraq, nor even what winning means.)

McCain Camp Denies Any Connection to Solzhenitsyn 'Cross in the Dirt' Story

Matthew DeLong — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 21:11:01 GMT

Whenever Sen. John McCain is asked about his faith, he usually recounts a moving anecdote from his days as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. Here's the story in a nutshell: McCain was let out of his cell on Christmas Day, along with his fellow prisoners, to observe the holiday. This was an unusual occurrence for the prisoners, usually kept in isolation and prevented from communicating. One of his Vietnamese captors -- whom McCain also says had displayed compassion by loosening the ropes binding his arms and legs for the duration of the guard's shift -- came over to McCain and silently drew a cross in the dirt with the toe of his sandal. According to McCain, both men looked at the cross in silence for a few moments before the guard rubbed it out with his foot and walked away. Here's a McCain campaign ad released just before Christmas last year, telling a version of the story:

Before an audience consisting largely of Evangelical Christians at the Saddleback Church candidate forum Saturday, McCain, when asked what role faith plays in his daily life, again related the story.

A heart-warming tale, no doubt. But is it true? A diarist over at Daily Kos did some digging and found that the late Russian Nobel prize-winning author and dissident Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn tells a similar story in "The Gulag Archipelago." Here it is, recounted by Luke Veronis:

Leaving his shovel on the ground, he slowly walked to a crude bench and sat down. He knew that at any moment a guard would order him to stand up, and when he failed to respond, the guard would beat him to death, probably with his own shovel. He had seen it happen to other prisoners.

As he waited, head down, he felt a presence. Slowly he looked up and saw a skinny old prisoner squat down beside him. The man said nothing. Instead, he used a stick to trace in the dirt the sign of the Cross. The man then got back up and returned to his work.

As Solzhenitsyn stared at the Cross drawn in the dirt his entire perspective changed. He knew he was only one man against the all-powerful Soviet empire. Yet he knew there was something greater than the evil he saw in the prison camp, something greater than the Soviet Union. He knew that hope for all people was represented by that simple Cross. Through the power of the Cross, anything was possible.

Solzhenitsyn slowly rose to his feet, picked up his shovel, and went back to work. Outwardly, nothing had changed. Inside, he had received hope.

[From Luke Veronis, "The Sign of the Cross"; Communion, issue 8, Pascha 1997.]

The Jed Report has compiled a small mountain of circumstantial evidence that seems to raise questions about the veracity of the story. Among the findings: McCain apparently began telling the story in 1999, when he first decided to run for president; in the past, McCain told it in the third-person; and, his thorough 12,000-word account detailing his experiences as a POW, published by U.S. News and World Report in 1973, contains no mention of the story.

Also, tangentially-related, is the op-ed article McCain published in the New York Sun after Solzhenitsyn's death, in which McCain heaped praise upon the author:

He was a writer with unusual gifts, utterly devoted to his art, brilliant and exacting, producing work that would stun not just literary worlds but the entire Cold War political world[.]

A McCain campaign spokesman denied there is any truth to this story. Michael Goldfarb compared the controversy to recent smears against Sen. Barack Obama and said any similarities between the two stories are a coincidence:

"There's no connection. I imagine people have drawn crosses in the dirt before, after and since."

Goldfarb said he recently spoke to a former POW who was imprisoned with the presumed Republican nominee, who said McCain had told the story as early as the summer of 1971 -- well before "The Gulag Archipelago" was published in 1973.

The way McCain tells the story, it is impossible to disprove -- because McCain was the only American present, no other POWs would be able to corroborate the story. It is possible that McCain, in an amazing coincidence, had a very similar experience to that of an author he admires. The only people who know for sure are McCain and possibly the Vietnamese guard. It is also a fact that his POW experience has been more or less off-limits to any examination by the media. What is perhaps most amazing is that it took this long for anyone to notice the similarities between the two stories. Maybe we all need to read more.

Arizona's Go-To Senator

John Dougherty — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 19:44:16 GMT

PHOENIX, Ariz.--When Arizona's business leaders need Congress to act, they don't go to the Republican presumptive presidential nominee Sen. John McCain.

Instead, for complicated issues that require a proven ability to reach political consensus, patience and attention to detail, Arizona's leaders often seek out the state's junior senator, Republican Jon Kyl. While McCain has been in the national spotlight for more than a decade, focusing on broad issues, Arizona leaders know that he tends to brush aside state issues and condemn earmarks, even for needed local projects. Kyl, meanwhile, has regularly accomplished the heavy lifting on legislation that is honed to state needs.

Kyl continues the tradition of focusing first on the needs of the state set by his predecessor, Democrat Dennis DeConcini. During his years in the Senate, DeConcini served in the long shadow of another Republican national leader and presidential nominee, Sen. Barry M. Goldwater.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

"From the Arizona business community's perspective, if you need something done in Congress the guy to go is Sen. Jon Kyl," said Chuck Coughlin, a prominent Arizona lobbyist and political consultant. "His staff and he will spend the time and attention to address the issues.”

Coughlin, who managed McCain's 2000 Arizona presidential primary campaign, said McCain's "career has been more focused on national issues, foreign relations, national-security issues -- issues that effect the country as a whole rather than just an issue that is pertinent to Arizona.”

Last November, Kyl, a hard-line conservative, was elected assistant Senate Republican leader, culminating years of behind-the scenes work and shrewd diplomacy. Depending on the outcome of the presidential race, Kyl may eclipse McCain as the most powerful legislator from Arizona. Then again, if McCain wins the White House, Arizona will be in enviable position -- with two native sons in powerful posts.

Phoenix Democratic political analyst Barry Dill said the state-focused roles adopted by DeConcini and Kyl are more a function of their personalities than the fact the state's senior senator at the time are men who ran for president. "Both DeConcini and Kyl are detailed-oriented and like the minutia of legislating and the legilsative process," Dill said. "Goldwater and McCain weren't or aren't as enamored with the process of legislation as they were and are, with the bigger global picture."

Like DeConcini before him, Dill said Kyl has earned a reputation of a studious legislator who puts in the long hours necessary to pass difficult legislation, and does not seek the media attention that helped turn Goldwater and McCain into national political figures. "I believe both Kyl and DeConcini fall in the workhorse categatory rather than the showhorse category," said Dill, who ran DeConcini's state office in the 1990s.

Kyl, 66, sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee and is said to have played a key role in undermining President George W. Bush's nomination of Harriett Miers to the Supreme Court. Kyl is also a member of the Senate Finance Committee, where he's considered an expert in the intricacies of public finance. A well-known hawk, Kyl is the honorary co-chairman, along with Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.), and former Secretary of State George Shultz, for the Committee of Present Danger, a Cold War-era anti-communist group revived in 2004. The committee says one of its goals is "to stiffen American resolve to confront the challenge presented by terrorism and the ideologies that drive it."

Kyl has dedicated much of his Senate career to addressing complex issues that have profound effect on Arizona's economy and future development. These are the essential elements of life for most Western states -- water, public lands, Native Americans and rural economic development. The most important state issue Kyl has untangled involves Indian water-rights settlements. In many cases, disputes over Indian water-rights claims have dragged on for most of the 20th Century.

Kyl was instrumental in reaching a 2004 comprehensive water-rights settlement agreement with several Arizona Indian tribes, giving them control of 47 percent of Arizona's share of Colorado River water diverted by the Central Arizona Project canal.The tribes will lease the water back to growing municipalities, generating hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for reservations mired in poverty for more than 100 years. McCain joined Kyl as a co-sponsor of the Arizona Water Settlements Act of 2004, but it was Kyl who hammered out the complicated and often contentious bill.

"That was huge deal," Coughlin said of Kyl's persistence in passing the bill. "Trying to bring everybody together in that deal was equivalent to negotiating the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.”

McCain, Coughlin said, generally has not been focused on dealing with complex issues that effect Arizona. "John McCain has, with a few exceptions, not had the staying power to be involved and invest the time and energy that it takes to resolve really sticky issues in Arizona," Coughlin said.

One recent exception, Coughlin said, was McCain's work to secure funding to buy land around Luke Air Force Base, ensuring a buffer zone between the base and the rapidly expanding communities west of Phoenix. But this was more than a local issue. The Luke base trains fighter pilots who use the Barry Goldwater Gunnery Range, to the southwest, for practice. Securing land around the base for an accident protection zone was, Coughlin said, "an issue of national security."

The deal has been criticized, however, because it involved the state's largest utility, Pinnacle West Capital Corp., one of McCain's major campaign contributors. The government paid Pinnacle West's subsidiary, SunCor, twice the military's appraised value for 122 acres, according to USA Today.

While McCain and Kyl have sharply contrasting styles, Time Magazine in 2006 included both men in its list of the top 10 U.S. senators.

Kyl, Time noted, "has succeeded by mastering a tactic that is crucial in a body in which any one member can bring the place to a halt as a ploy or out of pique: subterfuge." Calling Kyl "The Operator," Time said Kyl knows how to stay in the background and then step forward to attain his goals. "You can accomplish a lot if you're not necessarily out in front on everything," Kyl told Time.

Time dubbed McCain "The Mainstreamer" for his "rare ability to put an issue on the U.S. agenda that wouldn't naturally be there." Time noted that McCain's military background and years as a POW gives him a bully-pulpit few senators can match. "McCain has earned that moral authority over the years by being patient and making the big play," Time said. "Many of the problems McCain tackles are entrenched and unexciting: they challenge the rules in Washington and the cynicism of voters at home."

The contrasting styles of McCain and Kyl are reflected in the major contributors to their senatorial campaigns. In McCain's 2004 senate campaign, four of his five top contributors were companies outside Arizona, according to Opensecrets.org. McCain's top out-of-Arizona contributors included Goldman Sachs with $92,865, Merrill Lynch at $73,150, Viacom Inc. with $65,804 and Microsoft Corp. at $54,349. The only major contributor with direct ties to Arizona was Qwest Communications, with $69,100. While Qwest is a major telecommunications provider in Arizona, the company is based in Denver.

Four out of five of Kyl's contributors to his 2006 senate campaign, meanwhile, had major operations in Arizona. Kyl faced a strong challenge from Democratic developer Jim Pederson, who spent more than $10.9 million of his own money on the campaign. Kyl defeated Pederson by a 53 percent to 44 percent margin to win this third term.

Kyl's major contributors included Phoenix-based Viad Corp., with $61,800; the Phoenix law firm of Snell & Wilmer with $56,6500; the law firm of Squire, Sanders & Dempsey, which maintains a large office in Phoenix, with $55,250 and Pinnacle West, with $42,500. Kyl's biggest supporter came from the conservative economic advocacy group, the Club for Growth, with $155,753.

The Club for Growth's strong support is based on Kyl's conservative voting record and consistent support for tax cuts and reduced spending, said club spokeswoman Nachama Soloveichik. While the Club for Growth holds Kyl in high esteem, it is far more wary of McCain -- whose failure to support the Bush tax cuts hurt his credibility with conservatives.

The Club for Growth sharply criticized McCain late last month when he stated that, if he were president, everything would be on the table concerning Social Security reform -- suggesting a tax increase was possible. McCain responded to the criticism later, stating he would not support a tax hike.

Such political wavering has never been a problem for Kyl, who always takes solidly conservative stands.

"Sen. Kyl does not have any of these issues on his record," Soloveichik said. "McCain has a great record on some things but he also occasionally has a habit of kicking off some conservatives. Sen. Kyl is just great across the board.”

Why Does McCain Need a 'Big Venue' in Ohio?

Matthew DeLong — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 19:14:12 GMT

Via Marc Ambinder. The head of the Hamilton County [Ohio] GOP, Alex Triantafilou, posted this on his blog yesterday:

Sen. [John] McCain is expected to host a rally on Aug. 29 in Dayton and is looking for a BIG venue and for a BIG crowd. He'll get it. This is not yet public. I guess I just made it so

This information has since been removed. Aug. 29 is the day after the Democratic National Convention ends. Obviously, this would be an ideal date for McCain to announce his vice presidential pick if he wants to "kill the bump" that Obama will likely receive after delivering his acceptance speech before a crowd of 75,000 at Denver's Invesco Field.

1. This is the plan. Ohio is a key battleground state that McCain needs to win, so it would make sense to make a big announcement there. If he does, could this suggest that Rep. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) might be the running mate? His name was frequently mentioned early on, but has since subsided.

2. This is just a head fake. This seems unlikely, because usually such diversions are meant to grab headlines and are done more overtly -- and would the McCain campaign really rely on a GOP county chairman to try to make big news?

However, if McCain is planning to do something big in Dayton, Triantafilou just ruined the element of surprise.

Barack Obama Has a Cold

Sridhar Pappu — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 18:38:53 GMT

ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico--Sitting in a downtown public library here I began to blog about how the presumed Democratic nominee for president, Barack Obama, seemed somehow more subdued. In truth, over the months I've traveled with him, listening to him speak before 20,000 people one night and 1,500 the following day, I had never heard his voice behave this way. It was lower in pitch, more somber--something I began to attribute to the time off he'd taken last week or even to the smallness of the group of 43 women that had assembled to hear him talk about equal pay and fairness in the workplace. And then, as one woman asked a question and was asked to do it again, Obama said he needed to blow his nose. Yes, the great orator and junior senator from Illinois had a cold.

You can say what you want about the "Obama as Celebrity" focus the McCain campaign has taken. However, it's true Obama is a man who has been able to move thousands of people through his voice, which he deftly uses to take digs at his opponent while offering America an entirely new vision, formed out of the principles of a better America laid out by those who sacrificed their lives for the New Frontier. As much as he relies on the strength of his policies, he finds a great deal of power through, by what even his opponents will say, is his supreme command of language and the eloquent delivery he's able to summon.

Upon hearing his admission and the cause--his two young daughters--I was instantly reminded of the words Gay Talese wrote in Esquire in his famous, epic profile of Frank Sinatra from 1966, in a piece, not coincidentally titled "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold." It is a story that many attribute to the canon of "new journalism" formed by such writers as Tom Wolfe and Joan Didion, and carried forth by modern-day writers like my one-time teacher Tracy Kidder and Mark Singer.

"Sinatra with a cold is Picasso without paint," Talese wrote all those years ago. "Ferrari without fuel -- only worse. For the common cold robs Sinatra of that uninsurable jewel, his voice, cutting into the core of his confidence, and it affects not only his own psyche but also seems to cause a kind of psychosomatic nasal drip within dozens of people who work for him, drink with him, love him, depend on him for their own welfare and stability. A Sinatra with a cold can, in a small way, send vibrations through the entertainment industry and beyond as surely as a President of the United States, suddenly sick, can shake the national economy."

The same would seem true with Obama. The cold robs Obama of his pinpoint control, his ability to move from a zinger about George Bush and John McCain to larger ideas of change and hope which have remained central to his campaign since he began running a year-and-a-half ago. More importantly, it's his voice that's able to transform a political event into a spirited rally around the man and the movement he represents. But like Sinatra in that piece, a Democratic supporter would assume Obama can overcome this physical setback--to rise above his physical situation and stand before the 70,000 people in Denver upon his acceptance of his party nomination, a man who needs all his strength for perhaps the great political race of our time.

McCain Camp Charges NBC's Mitchell With Bias, Admits She's Right

Matthew DeLong — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 17:53:54 GMT

The McCain campaign is apparently angry with NBC's Andrea Mitchell for reporting that the Obama campaign staff suggested Sen. John McCain may have been able to hear some of Sen. Barack Obama's answers to Pastor Rick Warren's questions at the Saddleback Church forum Saturday. Before McCain's appearance at the forum, Warren told the audience that while Obama was onstage, McCain was sequestered in a "cone of silence" -- presumably a room in which he would not hear his opponent's answers to Warren's questions. (Clearly, he didn't remember that on the TV show, "Get Smart," where the "cone of silence" was a running bit, it never worked.)

Politico's Mike Allen reports that McCain Campaign Manager Rick Davis sent an angry letter to NBC News President Steve Capus, challenging the objectivity of the network's coverage. From the letter:

We are extremely disappointed to see that the level of objectivity at NBC News has fallen so low that reporters are now giving voice to unsubstantiated, partisan claims in order to undercut John McCain.

Nowhere was this more evident than with NBC chief correspondent Andrea Mitchell's comments on "Meet the Press" this morning. In analyzing last night's presidential forum at Saddleback Church, Mitchell expressed the Obama campaign spin that John McCain could only have done so well last night because he "may not have been in the cone of silence and may have had some ability to overhear what the questions were to Obama." Here are Andrea Mitchell's comments in full:

Mitchell: "The Obama people must feel that he didn't do quite as well as they might have wanted to in that context, because what they are putting out privately is that McCain may not have been in the cone of silence and may have had some ability to overhear what the questions were to Obama. He seemed so well-prepared." (NBC's "Meet The Press," 8/17/08)

Make no mistake: This is a serious charge. Andrea Mitchell is repeating, uncritically, a completely unsubstantiated Obama campaign claim that John McCain somehow cheated in last night's forum at Saddleback Church. Instead of trying to substantiate this blatant falsehood in any way,

The only problem is: Andrea Mitchell and her unnamed sources within the Obama campaign were right. According to The McCain Report blog on the campaign's Website, McCain spent at least part of the time in a limousine en route to the forum. He may have had some ability to overhear the questions. But, as Politico's Ben Smith notes, this doesn't mean McCain cheated:

[T]here was no TV in the car...There were, presumably, blackberries; though in fact, no evidence has emerged that McCain had the (obvious!) questions early, and Warren, not McCain, made the claim that he was in a sealed room.

McCain campaign spokeswoman Nicolle Wallace fell back on the Arizona senator's experience as a prisoner of war as a blanket defense against any criticism, according to The New York Times:

“The insinuation from the Obama campaign that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, cheated is outrageous,” Ms. Wallace said.

Of course, it's hard to understand what McCain's former POW status has to do with anything. But in any case, even if McCain heard every word of Obama's interview, it was of no consequence. First, Warren gave both candidates a heads up on some of the questions. Second, this was just another campaign event for McCain. At no point during the forum did McCain veer far from his standard stump speech. Anyone who has attended one of McCain's town hall meetings in the last few months has heard just about every story McCain told Saturday. Clearly, since McCain held fast to his daily script -- and told the audience exactly what they wanted to hear -- Obama's answers did not have, and could not have had, any bearing on his performance.

Clark on the Convention

Ari Melber — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 16:05:27 GMT

As I mentioned earlier, in a confounding decision, it appears that organizers for the Democratic National Convention are denying any speaking role to the party's most prominent military leader, former Gen. Wesley Clark.

Clark's office told The Washington Note that the Obama campaign did not ask him to speak or play any role in Denver, so he does not plan to attend the convention. An aide added, however, that Clark would rearrange his schedule to come "play any constructive role" that the campaign desired.

This weekend, Wesley Clark Jr. emphasized that his father's plan to skip the convention was "not a fake-out or some secret plan," and he predicted that Clark "isn't going to be VP or probably anything else in an Obama administration, assuming he's elected." Responding to blog commenters who were brainstorming how to support the retired general, Clark Jr. also dismissed the efficacy of grass-roots efforts to pressure Obama:

I know some you think you can change this by launching VP [blog] diaries a couple times a day in hopes that Obama will be swayed by the "netroots." Dude, when has that ever worked with this campaign?

Yet the political question is not whether Team Obama cares that bloggers like Clark. The big question earlier is this:

Why is the 2008 Democratic Convention boxing out one of the most popular people in the party?

Put aside the netroots, and Clark consistently ranks as one of the most requested surrogate speakers for all Democratic events and fund-raisers across the country. (That means lots of swing states.) Add in the four-star factor -- in a race against a GOP war hero -- and a convention night devoted to honoring the military and this choice looks downright delusional. I'll outline some possibilities in the next post.