The Bailout

With both parties agreeing to a $700 billion (at least) bailout of Wall Street, I'm more convinced that voting Libertarian is the best thing to do this November. Neither candidate is very reassuring on this crisis. McCain's call for the resignation of Chris Cox at the SEC followed by his suggestion of Andrew Cuomo for the job was kind of bizarre, especially considering the recent Village Voice article assigning some of the blame for the subprime mess on Cuomo. Christopher Hitchens calls Obama "vapid, hesistant, and gutless."

It's the Economy!

The latest chaos is pretty alarming. Obama and his supporters are fools if they don't focus all of the energy to the economy. They can, with good reason, claim that the economy is teetering on a cliff, that we have to take dramatic action to prevent a financial meltdown. While I am extremely skeptical that their solutions are the right ones, I think that politically that's the one approach that would be the most successful. They can point to actual events such as the collapse of a string of major financial institutions from Bear Stearns to Fannie and Freddie to Lehman Brothers to Merrill Lynch.

To keep focusing on Palin and her less than stellar qualifications is insane. Yet, liberal bloggers and columnists keep attacking her, pointing to her supposed lies. In many cases the alleged lies are either extremely trivial such as whether she actually travelled to Iraq or just visited US troops on the Kuwaiti side of the Iraqi border. In another case, her change in position in global warming is claimed to be a lie. Yet virtually all politicians moderate their positions. Her two statements on global warming reflected an increased concession that human activity has had an impact on climate change. Of course, as a running mate she has to stay in synch with the presidential candidate who has generally accepted the idea of global warming and endorsed the cap and trade scheme. This is certainly no worse of a lie than Obama telling voters in Ohio that he would renegotiate NAFTA, which was exposed when his advisor was caught reassuring the Canadians not to worry about it. Thus, I still maintain that many of the attacks on Palin are completely unfair and one-sided. Her critics are applying a much higher standard against her and viewing all of her actions in the most negative light possible, which they won't do to her opponents. Nonetheless, it is clear that she is lacking in foreign policy expertise.

In any case, Palin is a diversion. She clearly is a cultural candidate who was chosen in large part to appeal to a certain voter. Attacking her experience or her dishonesty won't work because so many people identify with her and will resent the attacks. Obama has to scare people about the economy and take advantage of what is happening on Wall Street. I don't think that constantly taking about change is going to cut it. He should scare people. It should be easy because there are in fact a lot of scary things going on right now.

More Palin

John McCain's pick of Sarah Palin keeps looking better and better. The attacks on Palin by the left are probably helping the Republican more than anything else. Today on Salon, we have one story comparing her to a dominatrix while another claims that she is no different than Islamic extremists. Both are patently absurd. The claims in the Cole piece arguing that she is like a Muslim fundamentalist are greatly exaggerated and illogical. The story that she banned books is basically false - she never banned a single book although she apparently asked a hypothetical question about removing some books. The list of titles she supposedly tried is censor is a complete fraud. Further, he equates her support for including intelligent design as an alternative in schools with the banning of teaching of evolution in Saudi Arabia. I'm not a fan of ID but obviously there is a huge difference between supporting an alternative to a particular theory and banning the theory altogether. Cole completely ignores this obvious difference.

These unfair and biased (not to mention crackpot) attacks on Palin will probably only serve to cause people to rally around the Alaskan governor. If I were advising Obama I would tell him to do the opposite: praise Palin personally as much as possible and then point out the policy differences.

Palin Doubts and Hysteria

Charles Krauthammer raises some legitimate concerns about the Palin pick in his most recent column. However, he does so in a reasoned and balanced way, completely unlike Andrew Sullivan's hysterical and unbalanced posting of every negative story about her. So, saying that Krauthammer "agrees" with him is a stretch. Krauthammer also says that Palin "is an admirable and formidable woman." Sullivan sees her as a fanatic Christianist who is only halfway educated and is just a telegenic sportcaster. His coverage is so biased and unfair that he's becoming a parody of himself. He interprets every part of her background in absolutely the most negative way while viewing everything about Obama in the most favorable light. Thus, she gets no credit for taking on the corrupt incumbent Republican governor (only acting out of spite and ambition) while Obama gets credit for "passing" the 2007 Ethics Reform Act. How does a single Senator pass a piece of legislation by himself? In fact, he co-sponsered the bill which was introduced by Russ Feingold. Another co-sponser was Joe Lieberman, a supporter of McCain-Palin ticket. Sullivan has sunk to new lows in attacking Palin by printing many stories that have been proven to be false such as the ridiculous rumour that she faked her pregnancy. Just because he's acting in the role of blogger shouldn't mean he totally disregards all standards of decency. A list of debunked Palin rumors is here. So far, McCain's pick of Palin is the best thing he's done and it gives him a fighting chance in a year that remains extremely tough for any republican.