… will you regret inviting Sarah “Lucy” Palin to play with you?
Mr. Fish captures the feeling with a wink to Charles Schultz in this cartoon, and today the New York Times publishes a poll that shows 59% of Americans do not think that the Alaska governor is ready to be vice-president, up from 50% at the beginning of the month. (Complete poll results here).
The week started with a record – Barack Obama collected 150 million dollars in September – and a new tune from the McCain/Palin campaign: their democrat rival is really a “socialist”.
VP candidates caused problems on both tickets. Joe Biden had a “Joe the senator” moment on Tuesday, when he spoke with what the democrats decided to call “flourish” about the international test the new president would be put through within six months of entering the White House.
Sarah Palin showed that her “maverick” temperament could occasionally mean she’d publicly disagree with the decisions of the top of the ticket. It appeared she is the main reason republicans and independents are deserting John McCain. She gave those worriers more to worry about when it became clear she had no idea what the job description of the vice-president is. It also turned out that the reformer had had Alaskans taxpayer foot the bill for her children’s travels, and that the RNC had spent 150 000 dollars making her look good.
On Wednesday night, the “Daily Show” did the journalists work, and unearthed a clip of John McCain, in 2000, arguing about the value and the fairness of a progressive income tax, and explaining to a student that it had nothing to do with socialism. At the time, he was campaigning against George Bush’s tax cut proposals.
In the midst of this week when Barack Obama seemed to firm his lead, John McCain and Sarah Palin gave a duet interview to NBC. Little news was made, except for the fact that the candidates looked awkward together, and that Sarah Palin changed her mind: she’s not a feminist, after all. She does not like labels, she says (except of course when it comes to labeling Barack Obama a “socialist”, or his “pal” Billy Ayers a “terrorist”).
On Friday, hours before her deposition in the administrative inquiry regarding the “troopergate”, Sarah Palin gave her first (and last?) policy speech – about children with special needs. Barack Obama had taken time off to visit his ailing grandmother, the woman who help raise him when he came back to Hawaï at age 10, and his last living relative. What was very obviously an hoax (except for those inclined to believe in big black bogeyman attacking defenseless little white McCain volunteers and carving backward letters in their face) was confirmed to be so.
John McCain concluded the week with an appearance at “Meet the Press”, on the 41st anniversary of his capture in Hanoï. He tried to demonstrate that he is not a prisoner to George Bush’s policies, but the republican rebel he once had been. The papers, at the same time, have already started dissecting the failures of his campaign, while conservative bicker amongst themselves.
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In the French media:
Dominique Nora, who blogs for the NouvelObs, got a dose of guilt-by-marketing that she took in stride – an email campaign to make sure to “get out the vote”: here.
In the midst of the current crisis, Le Figaro talks to the French ex wonder boy Jean-Marie Messier, nicknamed “J6M” (a riff on his “J2M”, turned into “Jean-Marie Messier moi-même maître du monde”, Jean-Marie Messier myself master of the world) who, after his downfall at Vivendi Universal was given a second chance in New York – where else? He does not say much except to preach “moderation”: here.
Could this explain the GOP obsession with new voter registrations?
An ABC/Washington Post poll shows that Americans who will vote for the first time this year favor Barack Obama by a huge margin (73% – as opposed to 26% for John McCain). By contrast, 50% of those who have voted in previous elections favor Barack Obama; 47%, John McCain.
Today’s polls show John McCain trailing Barak Obama by ten points (NBC/Wall Street Journal, as well as Gallup)…. but all is not lost.
John McCain is ahead by eight points in Georgia.
No, not the Atlanta Georgia – the Tbilissi Georgia, the one he was ready to fight for this summer. He could get elected in the Philippines as well. Or, just barely, in Lao.
And the rest of the world, as represented by this poll? It’s voting for Barack Obama who enjoys a popularity not seen since the Clinton era. He has George Bush to thank for that.
This was the week of the last debate, when John McCain asserted that “the very fabric of democracy” was put in danger by ACORN’s less than perfect efforts to register new voters and hoisted “Joe the Plumber” to national fame.
On Monday, Barack Obama started the week with a 10 point advantage in the polls. “Right where we want him“, said John McCain. Oh, really?
On Tuesday, John McCain retooled his economic message, and introduced the country to Joe the Plumber and attacked Barack Obama for talking of “spreading the wealth”. The republican candidate also gave new emphasis to his guilt-by-associations attacks on Barack Obama, and insisted that a massive electoral fraud was about to be perpetrated by ACORN.
On Wednesday, John McCain had his best debate performance ever, but that was still not enough to close the gap. Reluctant to give the victory to Barack Obama as the polls had, he declared: “Joe the Plumber is the winner”.
The next day, of course, we learned that Joe the Plumber was neither a Joe nor a plumber, and that he was a republican voter. We also learned that his last name was misspelled on his electoral registration – which added a dose of irony to the Ohio republican party’s legal proceedings regarding the 200 000 names of local voters that did not seem to match the public database.
On Friday, the Supreme Court sided with the Ohio secretary of State in charge of elections, a democrat. The federal appeals court was not competent in the matter; its order was void. However, that same day, the information was leaked that the FBI had followed up on the request by several republican member of Congress to open an investigation on ACORN.
On Saturday, a lawyer for the Obama campaign also wrote Attorney General Mukasey – this time to ask that these maneuvers by the RNC be examined, and added to the task of the independent prosecutor currently looking into possible indictments after the firing of US prosecutors by the Bush administration.
On Sunday, Colin Powell made the most complete case for his choice to vote for Barack Obama… and a total indictment of John McCain: “unsure” on the economical crisis, with questionable judgment as he selected Sarah Palin “incompetent to be President” as his running mate. The centrist republican hits every note that might resonate with independent undecided voters: his anxiety regarding appointments to the Supreme Court, the tone and the divisiveness of the republican campaign. He denounced in particular the vitriolic “robocalls” that the McCain/Palin campaign had launched in swing States.
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READ THIS WEEK (a little extra from the French viewpoints):
President Sarkozy’s visit to Camp David (with the president of the European commission) gets more play in the French press, obviously, than it does in the US. The financial summit to be organized in November, after the American presidential election, will be the ultimate lame-duck experience for President Bush, a fact not entirely lost on the vocal Europeans.
The internal investigation of Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s conduct at the IMF (revealed by the always zealous Wall Street Journal, when it comes to such matters) also gets a different play – if only because the notion of private and public life are markedly different in each country… or should I write “were different”, considering the increased “pipolisation” – as in “people-ization” of French politics by Ségolène Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy? In this case, DSK’s wife is famous in her own right. She’s a well-known journalist; she writes a blog on which she thanked those who sent her sympathetic messages and assured them that, as far as she and her husband is concerned, this brief incident is already in the past. She hopes for swift conclusions from the investigation, a desire that can only be shared by the many that think that, in the midst of the most consequential economical crisis in recent history, the IMF has more pressing issues to consider.
So “Joe the Plumber” is not a Joe after all… He’s at best a “Sam”, as in “Samuel J. Wulzerbacher”. And he’s not really a plumber either. And he is in no imminent danger of being hit by the tax increase Barack Obama proposes for those who earn more than $250 000 a year. Well, at least we know he’s a republican, thanks to his vote in the republican primary last March – we won’t nitpick on the fact that, while the Ohio republican party is frantic about the risks of registration fraud, he’s actually registered to vote as “Wolzerbacher”.
It just begs the question: who, in the McCain team, suggested turning “Joe the Plumber” into the star of the presidential debate (actually, its “winner”, according to John McCain) and did not do a basic check before casting the bold bald-headed unknown under the national spotlight? Ah, must be that same person who thought it would be fine to check Sarah Palin’s possible liabilities after she would have been announced as McCain’s running mate.
So this was the worst week for Wall Street. It was also the worst week on the campaign trail.
As the Dow plunged on Monday, John McCain and Sarah Palin unveiled what would become the theme of their week: a series of attacks wrapped in one overarching question, “Who is Barack Obama?”
Barack Obama is the man who kept moving up in the polls, in spite of attack ads, of McCain supporters calling him “Barack Hussein Obama”, and of an effort to link him to a “terrorist”.
The debate, Wednesday night, was devoid of any trace of that theme. Six million questions had been submitted. Yet, that second debate mostly reprised the first encounter, albeit in front of a bigger audience. John McCain haphazardly announced a new plan to buy off 300 billion dollars worth of bad mortgage but, essentially, no news was made. Barack Obama “won” the night merely by appearing steady and articulate.
The next day, John McCain gave more details about his mortgage plan; he was greeted with criticism from the left (Obama’s claim that it would mostly help the financial firms responsible for the mess) and the right (another massive bailout that would push the country towards “socialist” policies).
The campaign took off again on two separate tracks: McCain/Palin questioning “who is Barack Obama” and insisting that he is “too risky”; Obama/Biden questioning McCain’s “erratic” performance and his ability to reverse the economy’s down trend.
At the end of the week, it became apparent that McCain’s effort to link Barack Obama to Bill Ayers was not producing any noticeable results in the polls. It was producing plenty of anger, though, and John McCain could not ignore it any longer when it spilled into questions posed directly in his “town hall” meetings. He tried to tone down his supporter’s rage, with variable degrees of success.
Friday, as the week was about to close with some of the worst economic data ever, George Bush addressed the nation. No news, no point, no effect. The other news, on Friday, was the evening release of the report on the “troopergate” affair. Sarah Palin, according to the bipartisan investigation’s conclusions, abused her power and violated Alaska ethics laws. It seems that in this instance she ran the government as a family business (Todd Palin helping) to solve a family issue (the on-going feud with the governor’s sister ex husband).
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READ THIS WEEK (a little extra from the French viewpoints)
In other news, this was the week the Nobel for literature was attributed – not to an American, everyone had been right in predicting that, but to a French writer who is also a resident of New Mexico. An article in “Le Monde” explores how JMG Le Clézion is “misunderstood” in the United States, creating discomfort for the way he’s perceived both as a nomad and an “exotic-ist”. here. I was lamenting, in passing, the lack of translations of contemporary novels on the American market; once again, “Le Monde” gives the sad details – 3% only of all novels published in the United States are foreign literature. Complete article here.
And since there was so much news about “domestic terrorist” this week, I can not resist this little piece in “Libération”, about the visit Carla Bruni-Sarkozy paid to Marina Petrella. Once a member of the Brigade Rosse, a radical violent group in the seventies, Marina Petrella had lived peacefully in France, granted the asylum president Mitterrand offered all those who would lay down their arms. Italy’s current government wanted Marina Petrella extradited so that she could serve a life sentence for murder. She went on a hunger strike. The First Lady of France was bearing a message from her husband: the extradition request has been denied. The story: here.
In other “domestic terrorist news”, Jean-Marc Rouillan (of “Action Directe”, a French revolutionary armed movement) was sent back to jail after he failed to publicly “regret” the 1986 assassination of George Besse, the former CEO of Renault, when talking to the French weekly “L’Express”. The facts, here. That gives Mathieu Lindon an opportunity for a nice little riff on the general hypocrisy of the “regrets” protocole. Full text here.
TheTwitterPicture
“Just” a pretty picture of the words most used by people commenting the Nashville debate on Twitter. It’s “like” we twitter “just like” we chat.
…I was interested to read more information about the man.
It’s on Slate, today – here.
I can only imagine what the apoplectic right will do with the fact that Bill Ayers taught poetry to juvenile offenders. Maybe they’ll notice too that Chicago made him “citizen of the year” in 1997? Betcha they won’t.
I just watched John McCain’s interview on ABC News – here, if you missed it.
“This is a tough campaign”, he says. Tough indeed, when the crowds at his rallies are whipped into shouting “kill him!”, or “terrorist!” as a speaker makes a reference to Barack Obama. Does this make John McCain uncomfortable? Does it give him pause enough that he might ask his surrogates and his running mate to lower the rhetoric? Would he consider warning his supporters publicly that this sort of language and behavior is “unacceptable”, to use this season’s most overused word? Or does he actually think it’s part of what’s fair in the blood sport of politics?
We’ll never know, or at least we will not know tonight. Charles Gibson never asked.
The ABC newsman dutifully asked the questions one expected on a day when the Dow plunged again – on the economy, on McCain’s plan to buy 300 billion dollars worth of bad mortgages. Then the anchorman moved to the other topic of the day: Bill Ayers. Yes, once again, since after signaling they might drop the issue, the republican ticket actually embraced it with a new vengeance. Check the Internet ad – here.
John McCain asserts that Hillary Clinton said the relationship between Ayers and Obama “should be” brought up; she actually said it “would” – and her spokesperson proceeded to tear into McCain for manipulating a choice selection of Hillary’s words. – here.
But this is certainly not the end of the story – nor of the crowds frenzy.
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