Palin: The Conservative View

Daniel Larison, "A World of Hurt There"

If there is another thing that we’re learning from her record it is that she doesn’t respond at all well to criticism, and she has made such a habit of shielding herself from it or ignoring that I suspect she has not learned how to deflect or refute it, which compels her to keep repeating whatever tried and true lines she thinks might be remotely relevant to the question. It cannot help when she is put on network television after being shielded from any and all contact with the media and asked about subjects she hasn’t practiced talking about very much, and it cannot help her that she probably was told early on that she knew nothing and she became aware that her handlers believed that she knew nothing. Still, it seems clear to me that her flubbed interviews were not accidental, but were bound to happen when a politician elevated mainly through the “gut-level connection” had to say something coherent about the pressing issues of the day. Palin’s political style is the logical extreme of the Bushian folksiness-trumps-expertise and McCainesque “authenticity”-trumps-policy approaches. She is a natural product of mass democracy’s ongoing pursuit of charismatic mediocrity, in which voters not only seek someone with whom they can identify but also actively discourage politicians’ cultivation of expertise. Expertise grates against their egalitarianism, and so they try to avoid it in their political leaders.

The American Transition

Paul Krugman, "It's a Different Country"

Fervent supporters of Barack Obama like to say that putting him in the White House would transform America. With all due respect to the candidate, that gets it backward. Mr. Obama is an impressive speaker who has run a brilliant campaign — but if he wins in November, it will be because our country has already been transformed.

Mr. Obama’s nomination wouldn’t have been possible 20 years ago. It’s possible today only because racial division, which has driven U.S. politics rightward for more than four decades, has lost much of its sting.

And the de-racialization of U.S. politics has implications that go far beyond the possibility that we’re about to elect an African-American president. Without racial division, the conservative message — which has long dominated the political scene — loses most of its effectiveness.

The Spirit of '76?

Steve Kornacki, "Turning Obama Into Jimmy Carter

Late in the summer of 1976, President Gerald Ford and his inner circle huddled in Vail, Colorado, facing the grimmest general election outlook for a Republican since the L.B.J. landslide of '64.

An unelected president, Ford had barely secured the Republican nomination against a fierce challenge from Ronald Reagan, leaving the party’s conservative base dispirited and even more distrustful of Ford than they already had been. And the stench of Watergate—and Ford’s politically damaging pardon of Richard Nixon—stubbornly hung in the air. After eight years of Republican rule, an amorphous but potent yearning for change had taken hold.

At the Vail strategy session, the Ford team zeroed in on the chief vulnerabilities of their Democratic opponent, Jimmy Carter: His lack of experience, his lack of accomplishments and his lack of specificity on the issues. These had to be exploited mercilessly.

And they were. Ten weeks later, Ford came within an eyelash of a political miracle. After trailing by 33 points around Labor Day, he was edged out by a handful of electoral votes—and just two points in the popular vote. If the campaign had lasted even a week longer, many believe, Ford would have won.

Thirty-two years later, the G.O.P.'s chances of retaining the White House for a third straight term may hinge on recycling that old Ford recipe.

The McCain Story Is, Thankfully, Not So Sexy

Michael D. Shear and Jeffrey H. Birnbaum, "The Anti-Lobbyist, Advised by Lobbyists"

For years, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has railed against lobbyists and the influence of "special interests" in Washington, touting on his campaign Web site his fight against "the 'revolving door' by which lawmakers and other influential officials leave their posts and become lobbyists for the special interests they have aided."


But when McCain huddled with his closest advisers at his rustic Arizona cabin last weekend to map out his presidential campaign, virtually every one was part of the Washington lobbying culture he has long decried. His campaign manager, Rick Davis, co-founded a lobbying firm whose clients have included Verizon and SBC Telecommunications. His chief political adviser, Charles R. Black Jr., is chairman of one of Washington's lobbying powerhouses, BKSH and Associates, which has represented AT&T, Alcoa, JPMorgan and U.S. Airways.

Senior advisers Steve Schmidt and Mark McKinnon work for firms that have lobbied for Land O' Lakes, UST Public Affairs, Dell and Fannie Mae.

McCain's relationship with lobbyists became an issue this week after it was reported that his aides asked Vicki Iseman, a telecom lobbyist, to distance herself from his 2000 presidential campaign because it would threaten McCain's reputation for independence. An angry and defiant McCain denounced the stories yesterday, declaring: "At no time have I ever done anything that would betray the public trust."