Meghan McCain: On Message

You didn’t really expect Meghan McCain, daughter of Senator John “yes, I may have lost, but I’m still a cranky, idea-free asshole” McCain, to break news during Wednesday’s appearance on MSNBC with Rachel Maddow, did you?

OK, yes yes yes, she has “taken on” Ann Coulter, saying writing out loud in The Daily Beast all the things that, well, 89% of the sentient population already knows. But hey, props where props is due: it’s not like everyone is blogging about how noxious Coultergeist is, now, is it?

So, it wasn’t “breaking” news that we got in a head-scratchingly super-sized double segment, but there was some refreshing honesty—or, if not honesty, at least a sort of self-awareness. You think that I’m going to mention hearing a McCain admit to zero understanding of “economic things”—nah, too easy. Truly old news. But, check this out:

I really think we’re on the precipice of possibly becoming a party that’s irrelevant to young people. It’s truly possible in the next election unless the right politician, the right message, and it starts with message, which I think people are missing, too. . . .

Well, Meghan, they very well might be missing the right message—there was that November election, after all—but that your Republicans are missing that “it starts with message?” We beg to differ:

[House Minority leader John] Boehner reminded Republicans that they are no longer in the business of legislating and should focus almost solely on communicating their message with voters.

Read more »

Maddow, Herbert, Website Urge US to Get Afghanistan Right

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. I can’t believe I just had to type that, but when it comes to US policymakers vis-à-vis America’s war footing, the Obama Administration is looking all too ready to embrace the melodic cynicism of Pete Townsend.

Rachel Maddow began a Tuesday segment on Afghanistan by reporting with a degree of disbelief that Bush appointee Lt. General Douglas E. Lute would stay on as Barack Obama’s War Czar (officially the Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan). Add Lute to a team that already includes Bush warriors Robert Gates and David Petraeus, along with a new Secretary of State that has a few authorization for military force votes under her belt, and one might be inclined to start checking one's pockets for missing change.

Take, for example, a front-page article from yesterday’s Washington Post reporting that the incoming president plans to sign off on a Pentagon plan to send an additional 30,000 US troops into Afghanistan. This “plan,” says WaPo, is designed to “help buy enough time for the new administration to reappraise the entire Afghanistan war effort and develop a comprehensive new strategy for what Obama has called the ‘central front on terror.’”

Escalate the conflict while you think about what to do. . . isn’t that the kind of “shoot first, ask questions later” approach voters rejected just ten august weeks ago?

Some folks have a different idea: How about we ask those questions first? One group of such people have put together Get Afghanistan Right, a campaign and affiliated website that opposes the escalation and calls for an informed discussion of alternative, non-military strategies to end the conflict and stabilize the region. (Full disclosure: I know many of the people working on GAR, and was an early supporter of their efforts.) Maddow gave getafghanistanright.com a nice plug in her Tuesday broadcast.

Another prominent voice asking the Obama Administration not to deepen the quagmire is New York Times columnist Bob Herbert. “Get out of it as quickly as you can,” says Herbert.

Read more »

Brennan and Gates: a Big Win, a Continued Loss

Sunday before last, Glenn Greenwald provided substantial pushback on the possibility of one-time George Tenet deputy John Brennan heading the CIA for the Obama Administration. Ten days later, Brennan withdrew his name from consideration, specifically citing a “firestorm” in the “liberal blogs” for blocking his ascent. Well, here’s what I think of that:

It's not so much a victory for the blogosphere as it is a victory for transparency, openness, and the media—be it establishment or new—paying attention to the things that matter to America.

The Obama transition team might be vetting the heck out of prospective administration hires to make sure that they haven't done anything embarrassing on a personal or financial level, but it is up to blogs and other media professionals to vet our next government for things that embarrass us as a nation. That means torture, that means rendition, that means completely mishandling and exploiting the threat of terrorism.

Only with a full airing and open discussion of the viewpoints of potential Obama teammates can we really get the change we voted for, the change we deserve.

. . .

Only hours later, word got out that President Elect Obama would retain the services of Bush Defense Secretary Robert Gates, at least for the foreseeable future.

On Tuesday evening, Jane Hamsher appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show to raise doubts about the pick because it hinted at a continuation (an escalation?) of failed tactics in the Afghan theater—which it most certainly does.

However, that is only one part of the problem with this non-pick pick.

Gates, of course, was already covered with the stink of Iran Contra when he was nominated to head the CIA by President Reagan in 1987. So covered, in fact, he had to withdraw from consideration. Four years later, after a report from the panel investigating Iran Contra found that Gates had lied to investigators about what he knew and when he knew it, but that his lies did not rise to the level that warranted prosecution, Daddy Bush re-nominated Gates for DCI. It was a long, contentious confirmation hearing, but Gates lied his way through it—again contradicting the findings in the Iran Contra report.

All of that is to say that Robert Gates is no straight shooter. He is a self-serving liar who has always put his own image and career ahead of duty, honor, and country. There is no reason for a President Obama to expect anything different from the DoD version of Gates just because he is in a different job, or because he is reportedly building his dream house for a much anticipated retirement.

Further, Gates does not really represent “competence.” As Glenn Greenwald recently observed, you can't really separate competence and ideology:

[I]sn't competence determined, at least in part, by ideology? For instance, isn't someone's support for the Iraq War -- the most consequential political issue of the last decade, at least -- a negative reflection on that person's judgment, competence and expertise, just as someone's opposition to that war is a positive reflection on those attributes? How can selecting only pro-war Cabinet members and advisers be justified on the grounds of "competence" -- as though one's support for the War has nothing to do with competence?

If you want to competently re-focus US foreign policy away from the interventionist model, you have to appoint people at the very top who buy into your new approach. Just because Gates has appeared relatively rational when compared with his predecessor, Don Rumsfeld, does not mean that he represents a shift in strategic thinking. If he did, we would have seen a drawdown of our presence in Iraq, and far less reliance on reckless, immoral, and counterproductive aerial bombing in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Leave it to the careerists to provide the continuity—the folks at the top need a vision. We want something more than technocrats; the moment calls for something more than technocrats.

Additionally, since the Truman Administration, we've only had three Secretaries of Defense that were Democrats. Democratic Presidents need to promote the idea that there is a liberal point of view on military engagement. If we keep promoting Republicans to this post, we are going to keep getting advice shaped by their worldview.

The left—or even the center-left—should do a better job of promoting their military minds. Perhaps this community needs to produce more leading voices, but there are certainly enough liberal thinkers in this field to provide more than enough potential staff for top jobs at the Pentagon.


(cross-posted on firedoglake)

Moose lips sink ships: Palin’s morning “availability” clues us to McCain’s plan to disrupt bailout talks

Earlier today, I took a peek at this tape of Republican veep wannabe Sarah Palin’s “press availability” near the sight of the 9/11/01 attacks in lower Manhattan. . .



After viewing, I wrote to some friends:

She doesn't support the bailout until "the provisions that John McCain has offered" are incorporated into the bill??? What provisions?

It was BHO that offered the four points; McAsshole would only agree to the generic preamble.

Indeed, as noted here yesterday, Barack Obama tried to negotiate a joint statement on the financial crisis with John McCain. McCain left the Obama folks hanging all day while he hobnobbed with a wealthy benefactor and crafted a plan (and talking points) to pretend suspend his campaign. Late in the day, after all of McCain’s histrionics, McCain and Obama jointly released the most generic of statements:

The American people are facing a moment of economic crisis. No matter how this began, we all have a responsibility to work through it and restore confidence in our economy. The jobs, savings, and prosperity of the American people are at stake.

Now is a time to come together – Democrats and Republicans – in a spirit of cooperation for the sake of the American people. The plan that has been submitted to Congress by the Bush Administration is flawed, but the effort to protect the American economy must not fail.

This is a time to rise above politics for the good of the country. We cannot risk an economic catastrophe. Now is our chance to come together to prove that Washington is once again capable of leading this country.

There are no proposals in that statement—not in the “joint” part, anyway. Obama went on to add a five-point amendment to the statement when it was posted on his campaign’s website. McCain, too busy not appearing on David Letterman, issued no additional points, recommendations, guidelines, or proposals.

And it doesn’t seem he privately phoned in any suggestions, either. Senate Banking Committee Chair Chris Dodd, appearing late last night on The Rachel Maddow Show, said that he had “never heard from McCain on the issue” of the economic crisis. Ranking Republicans involved in the negotiations also stated that they had not spoken with McCain.

Cut to today, Thursday. After spending the previous night in New York City and making a speech at the Clinton Global Initiative in the morning, McCain finally got on his plane and flew down to DC, arriving after Congressional negotiators had already announced a deal in principle.

McCain went to the planned afternoon meeting at the White House that included Congressional leaders, President Bush, and Hank Paulson, and, according to reports, then started pitching a new plan:

During the White House meeting, it appears that Sen. John McCain had an agenda He brought up alternative proposals, surprising and angering Democrats. He did not, according to someone briefed on the meeting, provide specifics.

One the proposals -- favored by House Republicans -- would relax regulation and temporarily get rid of certain taxes in order to lure private industry into the market for these distressed assets.

That approach has been rejected by Senate Democrats, Senate Republicans and, to this point, the White House. During the meeting, according to someone briefed on it, Sec. Henry Paulson told those assembled that the approach was not workable.

Members of the House Republican caucus, never happy with the prospect of large-scale government intervention in the markets, sided with McCain, and the deal unraveled. Negotiations broke down, and the air of bipartisanship that seemed to pervade Washington talk most of the week has dissipated.

Democratic leaders are clearly angered. Chairman Dodd, appearing on CNN, said that if Republicans had an alternative plan, they should have offered it at the beginning of the week, at the beginning of negotiations, not at the White House photo op organized to announce a deal. “Instead of being a rescue plan for the economy,” decried an exasperated Dodd, “it became a rescue plan for John McCain. . . . I didn’t quite understand what was going on down there [at the White House] except political theater.”

Now, we can clearly see that this McCain campaign bailout plan was premeditated. We suspected this before, and now, thanks to Sarah Palin’s loose lips, we have proof. Palin’s mention of not supporting a compromise bailout plan until it included McCain’s proposals—hours before McCain had actually made any proposals—revealed the McCain camp’s politics first, country second strategy.

As Barack Obama stated after talks broke up, “What I found and I think was confirmed today when you inject presidential politics into delicate negotiations it is not necessarily as helpful as it could be.”

That all depends on who you were planning to help, Senator, the American people, or John McCain.


(cross-posted on The Seminal and Daily Kos)

McCain trots out laundry list; America prepares to get taken to the cleaners

I thought it was the worst speech by a nominee that I've heard since Jimmy Carter in 1980. I thought it was disorganized, I thought it was it was theme-less, I thought it was very, very boring. . . I personally cannot remember a single policy proposal that he made because they had nothing connecting them. I found it shockingly bad.

That was Jeffrey Toobin, speaking on CNN, just after John Bush, er, um, John McCain delivered his tedious, uninspired, disjointed, hackneyed laundry list of standard Bush-era Republican talking points in place of the bold acceptance speech we were all told to expect by Team McCain’s spin doctors. Normally, I take vocal aim at the establishment punditocracy—of which Toobin is most definitely a part—but such a sizeable number of them, from across what passes for a spectrum in this arena, saw what I saw, I am reduced to quoting liberally.

Take Michael Gerson, one-time George W. Bush speechwriter, who spoke from the floor of the Xcel Center soon after McCain’s confetti canons were set to “stun”:

The policy was the problem, the policy in the speech was rather typical for a Republican, pretty disappointing. It didn't do a lot of outreach to moderates and independents on the issues that they care about. It talked about issues like drilling and school choice, which was really speaking to the converted. I think that was a missed opportunity. Many Americans needed to hear from this speech something they've never heard from Republicans before, and in reality a lot of the policy they've heard from Republicans before.

Or, how about one-time Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton advisor David Gergen:

I did not think that the substantive part of the speech worked very well. It was mostly a rerun, retread of a lot of old Republican ideas that have brought us to where we are now. I think the country is looking for fresh answers. It's hard to separate yourself out from President Bush when you essentially have the same economic policies as President Bush. I thought that the policy presentation was a little thin.

Stunning, but maybe you are thinking, Wait, if the right is so upset with the speech, maybe there was something good here. Cue left-of-center soon-to-be-host of her own MSNBC show Rachel Maddow:

Honestly it was sort of like a long term paper about Bush Republican economics. . . But people aren't mad at Barack Obama about the economy, people are mad at George Bush about the economy, and [John McCain] just proposed a lot of Bush's economic ideas.

And, Maddow’s more “centrist” colleague, David Gregory:

I am however surprised. . . that there is not more of a blueprint of an appeal to independent and swing voters on policy issues that they will work off of. . . When [McCain] talks about education, he talks about it being a civil right for the new century; that is a George W. Bush line from the year 2000 when he called education the new civil right. It's a carbon copy.

In fact, the more inaccurate (and absurd) evaluations of Senator McCain’s ramble came from print reporters that seemed to be nowhere in range of Johnny Mac’s awkwardly mis-modulated voice, and from some of the TV correspondents unfortunate enough to have been on the floor of the convention as the mother of all balloon drops buffeted them about the head.

Take, for example, Adam Nagourney and Michael Cooper of the New York Times. Their story, comically titled “To G.O.P., McCain Issues Call for Change,” was actually published over half an hour before McCain had finished his speech.

Standing in the center of an arena here, surrounded by thousands of cheering Republican delegates, Mr. McCain firmly signaled that he intended to seize the mantle of change Mr. Obama claimed in his own unlikely bid for his party’s nomination.

. . . .

With his speech, Mr. McCain laid out the broad outlines of his general election campaign. He sought to move from a convention marked by an intense effort to reassure the party base to an appeal to a broader general election electorate that polling suggests has turned sharply on Republicans and President Bush.

To that end, Mr. McCain returned to what has been his signature theme as a presidential candidate, including in his unsuccessful 2000 campaign: that he is a politician prepared to defy his own party.

Now, I understand that candidates release texts of their speeches to journalists in advance of delivery—it’s a useful courtesy—but wouldn’t it have been courteous to their readers if AdNags and Cooper had waited to actually hear McCain deliver that text, hear what he emphasized and what he glossed over, hear what got rabid applause and what provoked deathly silence?

And maybe it would have been worth a minute or two of their time to listen closely for something other than McCain’s self-assessment of his “mavrick” status. Were there any actual proposals in the speech? Anything a President McCain might do to change course after eight years of Bush-Cheney misrule? The Times twosome might have read that McCain would state, “Again and again, I’ve worked with members of both parties to fix problems that need to be fixed. That’s how I will govern as president,” but did they look or listen for any specific fixes, any specific plans?

If they had, they would have discovered that there were none.

None.

Beyond his calling for pretty much a total elimination of foreign aid (stupid, counterproductive, and a fiscal drop in the bucket), McCain did not say anything that could be confused with a proposal or even a roadmap for a different course.

Instead, all that the America actually listening got was a recitation from the standard-issue Republican hymnal: lower taxes, smaller government, school vouchers, a judiciary free of “activist” judges. . . and McSame read it with all the zest and zeal one would reserve for a “honey-do” list.

The tedium was contagious, and so, when the television reporters stationed on the convention floor were forced to give their instant “analysis” (read: summary) of the speech, they could only seem to remember the last ten minutes.

Those final passages, to no one’s amazement, were about John McCain’s time in a North Vietnamese prison, about how he was severely injured, brutally tortured, and coerced into betraying his country (no, he didn’t quite put it that way—McCain said that he eventually “broke” under torture). Like practically every other speaker at the RNC, McCain lingered on the gory details of his time as a POW. The fetishization of the torture and violence was squirm-in-your-seat uncomfortable.

But that is not really a surprise. For several months now, many have joked that McCain’s speeches and interviews had become “a noun, a verb, and POW.” The surprise here was that floor reporters (Kelley O’Donnell and Andrea Mitchell come to mind) decided that this was the first time that John McCain had “opened up” about his POW experience.

What??? I really have no way to even analyze that. Were they paying no attention? Was it just the pressures of the TV format, requiring that they make some broad declaration to justify their airtime? Did they just turn to the only memorable narrative from the entire 45-minute speech? (Was it head trauma caused by the balloons?)

And it is the only narrative—memorable or otherwise—that McCain has to tell. “Maverick” has been reduced to a buzzword, a stand-in for an idea that has no substantive underpinning. Senator McCain has spent the last six years cozying up to the Bush agenda (need I remind anyone that he has voted with Bush 95% of the time?), and he has spent this lengthy campaign season pandering to the rightwing Republican base deemed essential for Johnny Mac to realize his burning ambition. He is no more the maverick than any of the other Bush-Cheney apologists that took to the Xcel stage. . . even if most of them scrupulously avoided any mention of their party’s leaders, Republican President George W. Bush and Republican Vice President Dick Cheney.

But, if it is the case that most people tuned out (or never tuned in), and they get their talking points from the New York Times (or from an AP wire story that is even more absurdly off base), and they somehow find themselves voting for this non-non-partisan, hobbyhorse maverick, then they will get exactly what John McCain promised in Thursday’s acceptance speech: Nothing.

Nothing but more of the same, anyway.


(cross-posted on The Seminal and Daily Kos)