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.