Should the Worst Happen...

Sarah Palin is not a blithering idiot. She is only woefully underprepared to speak on the issues facing our nation. She can speak in broad terms. She can speak in terms of "Protect America" and "Stand With Our Allies" and "Defend Freedom," but, when asked for specifics... for "tactics," if you will, she falls flat. Therefore, Biden shouldn't have to win this debate, for Palin will lose it for him in a manner like unto my beloved Lakers this past summer. Woefully unprepared, green, with potential, but undeveloped.

But, should the worst happen, and she prove herself likeable and not fumbling. Should she come out and shine and not answer questions but still look goll-darned likeable while she's not answering questions... well, the "Liberal Media" will jump all over it. 

• Could she be the comeback kid for McCain?
  
• New Life for the McCain campaign? 
  
• Palin resuscitates the race?
  

Und So Weiter. And the polls may shift a bit, and McCain may gain some in the battleground states, and the talk will shift back to What Can Obama Do to Counter Palin, the Thorn in His Side? etc etc etc. 

Before any of that has the chance of happening, I just want to predict--should Palin do moderately okay--a surge for McCain which will be quashed following the next presidential debate. This is an easy prediction, but I just want it on the record. 

Hitting is timing, Joe...no need to pull the ball...

Dude, I loved that Chris Webber clip so much, here's an analogue:

Man set a breaking ball down and in, where ostensibly no righthanded hitter can do anything with it, and Manolo somehow gets the bat head out in front of that thang and we out. Peace. Folks said he wasn't a team player, that he'd lost the heart to compete, that he was a showboat, that he couldn't play left field, that Youkilis should have messed up his face back in June or whenever...I say he's a consummate veteran who understands the task at hand, that nothing matters until the end of the month when the champion is crowned.

Does any of this sound like Joe Biden? Blowhard, slacking off in the Senate, picking silly fights with people (A noun and verb and 9/11? Isn't 9/11 a noun?), prone to fits of pique. The only lesson of Manny Ramirez' career that Joe needs to learn, really, is to smile...your job is the greatest game in the world, you will go down in history either as a bum or a titan. Choose.

And the baseball metaphor I'm thinking of, I suppose is actually from the West Wing.

Bartlet: You think the strike against me is people don't like the smartest kid in the class.

Ziegler: It's not a strike unless you watch it as it sails by.

Seriously, Joe, you can get the head out in front of a bad-looking slider. Crush 'em...
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Laugh to keep from crying (havoc and letting slip the dogs of war)

This is past absurdity. It's like one of those jokes on Family Guy. You know: Peter hits his knee and then sits on the ground and winces and moans for like two minutes. It goes from being WTF? to being chuckleworthy to being hilarious at how long they're drawing it out to being OK when are they done with this to being Okay, it's funny again.

Yeah, it's like that. Except there's no commercial break. Except it's real. A number of commentators have pointed out that Palin's appeal is that she's "one of us." (oneofus. oneofus. oneofus.) Don't read much beyond the local paper--mostly the funnies. love that Sally Forth--but gosh darnit, if we just got some reg'lar folks in the Oval Office and cut through the horsehocky, by gosh, we could get this country back on the right track-- and get rid of them Messicans while we're at it.

(Me? I'm in the John Stewart camp: I want a president who's Embarrassingly Superior to me. But what do I know? I'm typing this on a Macbook, smoking American Spirits and tabbing between Blogger and The Atlantic.)

Yeah, Palin's for real. Her stunning ignorance as to any matter outside of Alaska and the rearing head of Vladimir is real and very much in line with oneofus status in a nation in which something like half the populace hasn't finished a book in the last year. No laugh track for her, though. The laughs--to keep from crying--should be saved for when she tries to appoint Judge Joe Brown to the Supreme Court in a year and a half after McCain's face falls off.

Brooks: Let's not split hairs here, they were threatening castration...

Lot of different threads today...the first is the vertiginous ascent of the young right wing within the GOP as of this weekend's bailout failure. This is interesting to me because I can see the next generation of GOP leadership (whatever that means for politics in this country, good/ill, we report, you decide) budding beneath the klieg lights, like the 1948 election that brought Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon to Congress all at once, and no wonder McCan, Famous Air Pirate had to jump ship and split to D.C. for a day, because these men, Hensarling, Cantor and Ryan (and how remiss I was to exclude out of ignorance Rep. Hensarling, when he was the main man calling George Bush's plan socialistic; a thousand apologies) are going to be running the show. Cantor reps suburban Richmond, is a huge fundraiser, which presumably is how these (insert a derogation if you must) got into the negotiating room and got John Boehner to put their "plan" forward in the first place. Power is on display.

But not just power; grace. They are demonstrating an ability to see the long march ahead. Realizing that George Bush has crippled their brand for a generation (or whatever period our accelerated media represents as a generation, one possible rule being the distance between Oliver North's testimony before Congress in 1987 to his 1994 campaign for the Senate, so call the media-refractory period seven years), the RSGers have to purge the President and his followers. It's not that Bushites got us into trouble with the war, it's that they've repeatedly sold out conservative principles. Run to the right, on an eternal return to the party's Goldwater core.

David Brooks' problem with this (Nihilists? Really?) is that the short-term destruction wrought by House Republicans (and the story at this point is that liberal Democrats jumped ship when it became apparent that Pelosi had no help across the aisle) is enough to doom McCain and the Party. Perhaps. But the Hensarling clique has to figure that Walnuts was doomed from the start (who's been raising 50 million a month since February?), that the short-term damage is not only inevitable (seriously, Indiana is in play, the financial crisis has scared enough natural conservatives out of voting that Virginia and North Carolina are Obama's by like 5 and 3 points, respectively; these are things that should not occur; for the times, they are a-etc.) but is, as any free-marketer worth his salt will tell you, a form of creative destruction, clearing out the dead wood of leadership for the benefit of new growth. After Republicans lose 30 seats in the House and 5 in the Senate, betcha John Boehner is out of work, Roy Blunt gets to be minority leader, maybe, if by that point he's still considered ideologically pure, and Cantor gets min. whip.

Don't get me wrong, I don't like these men, but it's at least possible to like them. The way one likes Nixon. They do have an ethos. Eric Cantor may be a wild-eyed, exurban crypto-fascist itching for the opportunity to zap Tehran with Rods from God, but on the whole I prefer knowing where people stand, as opposed to having to sift through PR-speak and intentionally foggy jargon and blatant, opaque bullshit to get the nuts. Compassionate conservatism, and all the other 1990s Luntz-Rove memes are now consigned to the ash heap of history.

Now, other thread: what all that means for our continued influence in the multipolar world is anybody's guess. It is, and will be for the next decade, politically expedient to keep American troops out of harm's way. Period. Witness Joe Biden talking about Iraqis rebuilding their own country. But it's clear that Russia can't step into the void; the adventure in Georgia shocked foreign investors and prompted Putin's own bailout. This may be a period more like 1992, where there was a recession, no clear geopolitical balance of power, a rookie president, and all this anxiety about foreign ownership of American assets.

At the very least, our anxiety about our place in the world ought to shut up the Chomskyite "American Hegemon" fringe, because obviously, and you can ask Ho Chi Minh about this, the US was never a hegemon, we just played one on T.V. And again, let's talk about Dagestan, Chechnya, Igushetia, North Ossetia, the Transdnestr: the Russian Federation can't get its pants on straight, much less project power over oceans, or start naming towns "St. Putinburg."

Seriously, would you rather own dollars or rubles?

And finally, on hegemony, the Yankees' and Mets' seasons are over, the Boston Megalith has squeaked into the playoffs by the back door, the glorious Anaheim Angels of Los Angeles, who Pythagorically speaking should have gone like 89-73 instead finish 100-62...the Phillies play the Brewers tomorrow...and there's a one-game play-off for the AL Central today. Holy Cow...
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Form of: Hegemony!

Really, what kind of world do we live in when we've ceded the leadership role on international terrorism to the Russians?

Russia has called for a revival of the global anti-terrorism coalition that formed after Sept. 11, 2001, but that started to unravel with what it called the subsequent domination by a single power - a veiled reference to the United States.

"The solidarity of the international community fostered on the wave of struggle against terrorism turned out to be somehow 'privatized,"' Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov of Russia said Saturday at the UN General Assembly annual ministerial meeting.

Oh, I know what kind of world: a multipolar one. Oh, joy!

"It has become crystal clear that the solidarity expressed by all of us after 9/11 should be revived, without double standards, when we fight against any infringements upon the international law," he said.

Lavrov also called for "solidarity" within the international community and a strengthened United Nations, saying that only in the post-Cold War world could the organization "fully realize its potential" as a source of "open and frank debate and coordination of the world policies on a just and equitable basis, free from double standards."

"This is an essential requirement, if the world is to regain its equilibrium," he said.

Beautiful. How much of a clusterfuck has the Bush administration proved to be? Seven and a half years in, we're getting lectured on multilateralism and international law by the Russians. And, strangely enough, world opinion is in agreement:

Some 29% of people said the "war on terror" launched by President George W Bush in 2001 had had no effect on the Islamist militant network.

According to 30% of those surveyed, US policies have strengthened al-Qaeda.

Asked who is winning "the conflict between al-Qaeda and the US", 49% said neither side while 22% believed the US had gained the upper hand. Just 10% said al-Qaeda was winning.

So the Russians--of course, taking their airs of magnanimity with a grain of salt and a ton of vodka--are calling for a strengthened UN and international cooperation regarding terrorism, rightly calling out the US for flouting international opinion in invading Iraq and calling us on "double standards" with regard to Georgia and Kosovo's independence movement. Meanwhile, the Famous Air Pirate is still tipping his Cold Warrior hand, still wanting to keelhaul Russia and make 'em walk the plank out of the G8. And the Beauty Queen continues to ramble on--to the embarrassment of those who should be supporting her--spouting something about the disembodied head of Czar Putin hovering over the Aleutian Islands.

Aurora Putinalis aside, the real issue here is just how right BHO is when he says "McCain just doesn't get it." The Russians get it. The Chinese are counting on it. The Europeans--if we may judge by their reaction to Georgian episode--get it. The Germans definitely get it. But Bush, the Air Pirate, the Beauty Queen, and most of America don't get it: the Post-American Moment is here in full force.

So, while the Air Pirate, et al, wax fanciful about some new Superfriends League of Righteous Democracies--Wonder Twin Powers, Activate! Form of: Eternal Hegemony!--the Rest of the World is very much moving on. One only hopes that BHO, with his talk of being a citizen of the world and the need to fill the position of Leader of the Free World, gets it. Otherwise, it's a harder drop to the level playing field than it needs to be.

Various adventures of McCan, Famous Air Pirate...once more crashing his own plane...

Whoa. About that debate that Walnuts promised not to go to...also re: which see Letterman on getting stiffed...did McCain actually say that he would veto every spending bill that came across his desk? I was at a party at Skylab, watching it on a 9-inch b/w TV, so I had to check the transcript...

As president of the United States, I want to assure you, I've got a pen. This one's kind of old. I've got a pen, and I'm going to veto every single spending bill that comes across my desk. I will make them famous. You will know their names.

Ohhh you have to love this week: McCan the Air Pirate (last week I read DFW's essay collection CtL, which has a long-form 2000 campaign piece called "Up, Simba"), hero to the Vietnamese, lies to David Letterman about when he's leaving New York (which is forgivable, because a man has to sleep sometime), flees to Washington in a pale attempt to off the debate (to which BHO said, This is not Nam; here there are rules), plainly realizing that Palin ain't gonna hack it (and what if she doesn't, what if she's a Harriet-Miers-esque smokescreen built to make an unpalatable choice seem palatable just because said choice will actually know you know some things, and if so who is this masked man, and if campaigning in the internet age has sped up the news cycle such that a VP resignation would be destructive for about 48 hours, why not just nominate the obnoxious dude first and let the controversy fade, which brings us to the conclusion that McCan, Air Pirate's real VP is not noxious to the electorate, he's just cranky and boring: he is/will be Joseph Isadore Lieberman), and while negotiators are wringing concessions from Bush (inlcuding caps on executive pay for companies in the New Fund, an equity stake for the American people, extended bankruptcy protection and payouts to homeowners, all of which at week's beginning were poison pills for the WH, all swallowed without complaint by Thursday night), McCan the Air Pirate sweeps in and conjures some far-right Sedona caucus, growing up Rep.s from the ground like Cadmus, whose terroristic threats include the scuttling of all consensus in favor of some far-fetched insurance scheme (Q: If a bank doesn't have the liquidity to lend to another bank because so much of its shit is in credit default swaps, why do you think it has the liquidity to buy insurance from the USG to cover its assets? And a follow-up Q: In the event that the assets covered by this new insurance are unsaleable, isn't the USG more broadly on the hook for covering their full, i.e. original cost? And if not -- assuming we write the coverage to pay companies say 9 cents on the dollar when their swaps hit 0 -- isn't that paltry amount of protection just going to shock the system further? In other words, whose ass-brained idea was this? A: Eric Cantor (R-VA), Paul Ryan (R-WI), et alia. Q: Cantor?! No f'n wonder!), which within hours was scaled back to demanding insurance be only a part of the overall bailout (which is kind of like AQIM capturing a French diplomat, demanding a total retreat of all Algerian gov't forces from the countryside, then settling for a plate of babaghannouj. Send any thoughts on spelling of babbaganoush c/o the Editors, Dark Steer, 1 Terminal Plaza, Cleveland OH); if that didn't constitute an awesome week, then the burgeoning media interest in SP would make it so: Palin got zoning aid, gifts.

If that weren't enough, there are some serious acts of cognitive dissonance in McCan's bran that need to be addressed. For my money the most serious is the one going on between the personal-responsibility-fiscal-probity wing and his maverick-bozo wing. (This is fundamentally a subset of the Big McCain Question: What is it to be a Maverick? Does being a maverick mean making deals with your opponents when your party demands absolute fealty, i.e., is the maverick a pragmatist? Or does it mean bucking the demands of everyone and snarling the works until you get your own way [a la E. Cantor], i.e., is the maverick a fanatic? Seriously, I don't know what you mean by The Original Mavericks. Are we selling jeans?) Witness twice in the debates, McCain's assertion that the system corrupted the people, not (as it is in fact) the other way round:

We Republicans came to power to change government, and government changed us. And the -- the worst symptom on this disease is what my friend, Tom Coburn, calls earmarking as a gateway drug, because it's a gateway. It's a gateway to out-of-control spending and corruption.

And we have former members of Congress now residing in federal prison because of the evils of this earmarking and pork-barrel spending.

Okay, first of all, has Tom Coburn ever smoked weed? That's interesting. But what I really like is that "government" and "spending" are entities that exist outside of individual agency. Government changed Republicans. Spending put people in jail! If only Bob Ney had known about that line of defense at his trial! Nevermind the obvious hypocrisy: when Republicans game the system, it's the system's corrupting influence; when Democrats do it, it's "Chicago-style politics." Which I didn't know was a thing; deep dish, sauce on top politics? Second:

Maybe to Senator Obama it's not a lot of money. But the point is that -- you see, I hear this all the time. "It's only $18 billion." Do you know that it's tripled in the last five years? Do you know that it's gone completely out of control to the point where it corrupts people? It corrupts people.

That's why we have, as I said, people under federal indictment and charges. It's a system that's got to be cleaned up.

I have fought against it my career. I have fought against it. I was called the sheriff, by the -- one of the senior members of the Appropriations Committee. I didn't win Miss Congeniality in the United States Senate.

Seriously, who was the last conservative to run on a platform of taking a mulligan on personal responsibility? William Jennings Bryan? Didn't Americans screw themselves to that Cross of Gold? Walnuts sounded like he was reviving the Temperance movement, blaming the ills of Washington not on the people in it, who are of course his friends and neighbors, but on some extra-human miasma, and he might as well be blaming Demon Rum for the evils of our age...dead in the water...
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Once you're off black...

...you never go back. (via the indispensable Juan Cole):

Why wouldn't the Kingdom want to squeeze the maximum out of customers? The Saudis have long memories and recall how high prices can cut into consumption; it happened in the 1980s and it's happening again now. Any threat to oil's leading role as a source of energy is a big worry for a country that sits on reserves of some 260 billion barrels. "We are concerned about the permanent destruction of demand," says a senior Saudi official. "Those who buy hybrid vehicles are not going back to SUVs."

This from Business Week, in an article titled "Saudi Oil, OPEC's Ire," or, maybe, "Once You Go Black, They Never Want You to Go Back."

The Saudi opinion as to American oil consumption, of course, contains No Surprises. Keep them Yankees hooked on their quiet lives and handshakes of carbon monoxide. Fine. How to turn this to politicadvantage? Easy... we stick BHO in Detroit. Speech to an auto workers' union.

"I was reading Business Week on the drive over. You know, they had an article about the Saudis and how their economy is affected by oil prices. And a Saudi minister said... and I'm quoting here... He said "Those who buy hybrid vehicles are not going back to SUVs." [crowd alternately boos and cheers] Now I don't know about you, but it sounds to me like even the Saudis know the way forward for America in the 21st Century. That's why I supported extending aid to the American auto industry so that we can build the cars of tomorrow and jumpstart our economy. That's why I'm calling for investing American tax dollars to make sure blah blah blah..."

Seems so easy. Just wanted to point that out. I'd love to see BHO set out in plain terms exactly how futile the Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less movement is. Say yeah we're going to drill, but it's not our top priority. Twist the blade in Palin, who said we could drill our way out of the problem. Really set out what a 21st Century American energy economy would look like... I think it's coming, and I think it's the knockout blow.