Set Sarah free!

I mostly listened to the Vice Presidential debate on radio, though I did get to see some of it on TV. Palin held her own and well exceeded the low expectations that the media had set for her. She was confident, poised and articulate -- even as she faced off against the verbosity machine that is Joe Biden. Biden was...Biden. He spoke quickly with an authority that is designed to make his statements seem like fact -- even when they aren't. Palin took him on effectively, and wasn't afraid to confront Biden's frequent exaggerations. I thought that had John McCain done that well last week against Obama the Republicans would be in better shape today.

Palin missed some chances tonight, specifically to refute the Obama-Biden claim that McCain was responsible for deregulation which got us into this mess. That's clearly only part of the story; Congress has been a big part of the problem by forcing too much regulation on Fannie and Freddie. If Fannie and Freddie had been forced to react to market risks on loans, they would never have made the vast number of sub-prime loans that they did.

Palin also missed a big chance to wack Biden on the War in Iraq -- specifically on his claim that Obama supports the same withdrawal plan that Maliki and Bush are negotiating about. Hello? The only reason anyone is talking about a withdrawal now is because of the surge that John McCain supported and Biden and Obama opposed. I wish that Palin had hit him over the head with that.

One thing that I didn't like about Palin's performance tonight: her consistent use of "corruption" and "greed" to describe Wall Street.  Certainly, some corruption always exists at the nexus of money and public policy -- but to make blanket statements that tar and feather an entire sector of our economy is populism worthy of John Edwards, not the Republican Veep candidate.  The mess we are in is more about the corruption of Capitol Hill and the lax interest rate policies of the Fed than it is any systemic disease on Wall Street.  Banks took advantage of the rules and pushed the limits to make money.  With risk comes reward -- and often failure. 

Also, I would have liked to hear Palin say also that the behavior of  borrowers played a role in this mess, too -- and that it wasn't just the responsibility of "predatory lenders".  People have to take personal responsibility for their decisions, and if this is not a theme promoted by McCain-Palin then they become nothing more than the victim-baiters that Obama-Biden are. 

In any event, my suggestion to John McCain is this: Set Sarah Free!

Let her go. Let her be spontaneous. Let her be the maverick, fun woman that she is. She's the only candidate who can relate to the American people as a real person. It is something that helps to differentiate the McCain-Palin ticket from Obama (effete, Chicago intellectual) and Biden (career Senator). It's what turned on the Republican base and got independents excited about McCain after the Convention. He needs to let her work her magic.

McCain's campaign -- and thus his chances to be president -- are in bad shape at this point. All polls in the battleground states are now leaning for Obama. He needs to do something dramatic to turn this around.

Themeless, alas

"Senator Obama, that kind of thinking is dangerous. With views like that, you are not ready to lead. You've come a long way in a short time, and that's commendable. But you need to take a little more time and get to know the world better. America can't afford that kind of naivete' in its Commander in Chief." There were moments in Friday's debate when John McCain could and should have said something just this blunt. Obama gave him several perfect openings. If McCain had delivered such a body blow to his opponent, it would have rocked the political world for days to come, giving the Republican candidate a real chance to take the lead and hold it till election day. What a missed opportunity.

It's true that McCain hammered repeatedly on the point that Obama is naive, doesn't understand, doesn't get it. I still say he gave a themeless performance because there was no decisive, sizzling sound bite like the one I've suggested that would give the debate resonance in this campaign and earn it a place in history. There was no memorable tag that our guy hung on their guy to put him on defense for the next week and drive his supporters nuts trying to peel the tag off. What a pity.

"Themeless, alas" was one of my headlines as I live-blogged the Ole Miss debate for PoliticsWest.com. Read my whole thread from their 90-minute encounter right here.

Honor the 9/11 fallen by winning

The further we get from September 11, the harder it is to write about. Of course, we continue to honor the first responders who gave their all - and many their lives - on that day. We honor the heroes on United 93 who took the most effective action that day. We honor the air traffic control staff who may well have prevented additional attacks that day. And we honor those in the military who fight overseas so we don't have to fight at home. But even those risk becoming pro-forma announcements, as the immediacy of the moment fades. At the time, like many others, I compared the attacks to Pearl Harbor. I don't think we experience the same difficulty surrounding Pearl Harbor, Nicholson Baker and Pat Buchanan notwithstanding. Pearl Harbor resulted in a war which, in retrospect, had clearly-defined beginnings and endings, conducted by governments. It resulted in the destruction of those governments, the reduction of their countries to rubble, and their occupation and reconstruction along lines less likely to produce genocidal imperialism.

By any rational accounting, we've done extremely well in the past years in our fight. The Islamists have refrained from further attacks on the US homeland, but have also found themselves stripped of much of their capability to plan and carry out such attacks. Our worldwide presence has allowed us to police against Islamist cells in remote areas, and helped train local governments to defend themselves. The size and effectiveness of their attacks on civilians have steadily shrunk, and they have found themselves routed out and crushed in their self-declared "central front" in Iraq.

Still, there is an unease, and a sense that this isn't over yet by a long shot. September 11 has instead resulted in a new Cold War, in many ways. We engage and decisively defeat the Islamists on many fronts, but sadly have allowed their control of certain countries to last long enough for them to form effective counter-strategies. The Iranian threat is real, and has acquired a major ally in Russia, and this thing could go very badly, very quickly unless we continue to act.

Let's remember that the purpose of this war isn't to buy time, but to win. And anything less than winning will be a betrayal of those that we're honoring today.

Are you flying the flag today?

A large American flag, worn and grimy, now folded into a neat triangle, is displayed in my office. I'm looking at it as I write this. It's the one that was flying over the Colorado State Capitol on September 11, 2001. State troopers gave it to me when it was retired from service some weeks later. I was serving as Senate Minority Leader. Another flag, similarly folded, is in my study at home, presented to our family by the Secretary of Defense at my father's passing a decade ago, as is done for all veterans. He had served at sea in wartime, like his father before him.

We used to fly the flag on our front porch in Centennial only on national holidays. But we have been flying it continously, day and night (appropriately lighted), except in foul weather, for seven years since September 12, the day following the radical Islamist air attacks on New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania.

On 9/11, America was plunged into war against as deadly an enemy as we have faced in our history. We remain at war today not only on the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also on a dozen other shadowy fronts, some of them utterly new to us and all the more potentially dangerous for that reason -- above all, the front that is everywhere and nowhere, the struggle to prevent Al Qaeda from detonating a nuclear device somewhere in our homeland.

The flag will continue to fly at our house as long as this war continues. Not because I'm a conservative and like war -- I abhor it -- or because I'm a Christian and our enemies are jihadist Muslims. I fly the flag because the 9/11 attacks represented the first of what those enemies intend as a series of death blows against America's very existence as a free society, a world leader for liberty and a beacon of hope to mankind.

It's one small gesture of defiance to those who seek our destruction. They will not prevail. We will not falter, as President Bush said, and we will not fail. If some call me a flag-waver, I'll take it as a compliment.

'Toujours de l'audace'

Editor: "Ever more audacity," the French motto for doubling down your bet when losses mount, has a mixed connotation, but it more often suggests the nerve of a burglar than the daring of a hero. Ken Davenport had in mind the former meaning when he put that title on this analyis of Mr. Audacious himself, the Democratic presidential candidate. 'Toujour de l'audace'

It is has always been clear that Barack Obama has a huge ego. After all, how else can a half-term U.S. Senator with little relevant experience convince himself to run for president of the United States? You have to have a very high opinion of yourself, to say the least – an opinion that has no doubt been considerably raised by the cult-like following he has engendered among those who seek a Messiah rather than a president.

Obama clearly believes he is the “one we’ve been waiting for” – and it doesn’t hurt when the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi recently introduces him as a “gift from God”. That’s a strange thing for a liberal to say, I admit – but it has to go to your head when everyone keeps telling you how unique, brilliant, scholarly and intellectual you are (etc. etc. etc.).

In any event, he certainly got the title of his recent memoir right, for there is no better word to describe Barack Obama than “audacious”, which is defined as “recklessly bold in defiance of convention, propriety, law and the like”. He certainly has defied convention with his grass-roots campaign that was able to slay the Clinton dragon, and his comments on the campaign trail have often violated a sense of propriety, at least in the opinion of all those working class voters clinging to “guns and religion”.

His most recent performance in the Saddleback Church debate against McCain, for example, was nothing if not lawyerly; in the great tradition of Bill Clinton (remember his famous “it depends on the meaning of the word ‘is’”?), Obama attempted to split the middle on virtually every answer, hemming and hawing in an effort to be the perfect accommodator. The result was that he appeared to be vague, indecisive and unsure of himself.

In fact, his meteoric rise has made him famous, but when you push him on the issues, his answers are painfully shallow. When compared to John McCain, the difference was quite striking. McCain was concise, concrete and clear. He so obviously knows what he thinks and believes, and isn’t particularly interested in splitting the atom to make sure he covers all his bases.

When Rick Warren, the moderator of the Saddleback event, asked both candidates whether evil exists and if so, what should be done about it, McCain said three words: “yes” and “defeat it”. Obama, on the other had, gave a rambling answer that shows both his shallow understanding of the world, and more importantly, his true feeling about America. He said that evil does exist, citing Darfur and “the evil in American cities”. No mention of Islamic terrorists who fly airplanes into buildings, or suicide bombers who blow up innocents. He then went on to say that we must be careful in confronting evil, because in the name of opposing it, America has often committed evil acts itself – a prototypical response from the left, which is enamored with blaming America first. It was an appalling answer for a man who would be president.

Of course, such an answer fits perfectly with the previous comments of both Barack and Michelle Obama, and with their former pastor Reverend Wright and friend William Ayers – the former Weather Underground terrorist. It’s a familiar narrative, now – even if it is being conveniently ignored by the mainstream media. And it provides a striking contrast to John McCain.

McCain’s personal story is well-known, as was his willingness to go against public opinion and argue in favor of the surge in Iraq. While Obama still can’t bring himself to admit that the surge has worked and America will win in Iraq, McCain rightfully deserves credit for both his courage and judgment, and his willingness to make the tough decisions in order to safeguard our interests. McCain knew then (and knows now) that our defeat in Iraq would be devastating to America, to our military and to the Middle East.

Obama, by contrast, seems strangely invested in our defeat – maintaining his intention to withdraw our combat forces upon taking office, irrespective of events on the ground – a position that he reaffirmed most recently in an August 19th speech before the Veterans of Foreign Wars. It is also a policy that ignores the success of the surge. It’s a denial of reality, and it’s audacious given the very serious American interests involved.

Recent polling seems to suggest that the American public is catching on. The most recent Rasmussen poll shows McCain now with a five point lead over Obama in the wake of the Saddleback debate – reversing what had been a 3-5 point deficit. It is still early, and Obama will get a bump out of both his choice of Veep and his well scripted speech at the Democrat National Convention this next week.

But McCain will get a bump as well the following week, and if he moves to solidify the Republican base with a strong VP choice, he will have a lot of momentum going into the remaining three months of the campaign. My bet is with McCain, because Obama can’t be protected from himself, no matter how well scripted he is 99% of the time. It will only take 1% of the real Obama to come out to turn the election.

One final note: it was particularly telling when Rick Warren asked both Obama and McCain about their personal failings. While McCain copped to infidelity in a failed first marriage, Obama answered (after a long pause) that he is “sometimes focused too much on himself” (I’m paraphrasing here).

How appropriate that answer is given the fact that his campaign is all about him, and not about us. And how interesting a contrast it is to McCain, who has given a lifetime of service to this country and was rewarded with a broken body as a POW in the “Hanoi Hilton”. McCain has his foibles, to be sure. But he’s been tested. And he hasn’t been found wanting.