September 4, 2008
Throughout John McCain’s Presidential campaign, he had been unable to enlist the support of the coveted Republican “base”. His choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate, appears to have been a big hit with those people. At the Republican Convention, she received an adoring response from the audience. Perhaps Jay Leno had it best when he said: “As an Alaskan, she must have felt right at home there. She could look out from the podium, over an endless sea of white.”
Sarah Palin has indeed won the hearts of the “hard right” Republican voters and politicians. At this point, the only obstacle to the acceptance of her as the candidate, seems to be: getting everyone familiar with her name (literally). Geriatric Jo Ann Davidson, Co-Chair of the Republican National Committee, referred to the Vice-Presidential candidate as “Sarah Pawlenty” before the Convention audience. This provided Jon Stewart with yet another “Moment of Zen”.
As reported by Juliet Eilperin and Robert Barnes in the September 3 Washington Post, Palin’s acceptance speech was written by Matt Scully:
An initial version of the address, which speechwriter Matthew Scully started crafting a week ago for an unnamed male vice presidential pick, included plenty of attacks aimed at Democratic nominee Barack Obama along with ample praise for McCain, aides said.
It is ironic to observe that Matt Scully (a former speechwriter for George W. Bush) is an outspoken defender of the rights of those animals considered prey by human hunters. The “Annie Oakley” image of Sarah Palin as a moose hunter, seems to make her the kind of person Scully wouldn’t @font-face { font-family: “Calisto MT”; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: “Times New Roman”; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }necessarily like. She’s lucky Scully wrote that speech before he knew she would be the one delivering it. Worse yet, Palin’s pleasant persona will likely result in the targeting of Scully for the factual misrepresentations contained in the speech (i.e. that Obama will raise taxes for all Americans). Rather than “shoot” the charismatic messenger, critics may choose to level their attacks at Scully himself, as the author of the speech. It would serve him right for not going along on the moose hunt!
It remains to be seen whether McCain’s secondary strategy in choosing Palin (to win the support of the disgruntled supporters of Hillary Clinton) will work. Susan Page and Martha Moore of USA Today have been following this subject and how it is playing out in the polls. Page and Moore reported:
In USA TODAY polls, McCain’s standing among women didn’t budge with the pick of Palin. He was backed by 42% of women in a poll taken before the convention, another on the day of her announcement and a third taken Saturday and Sunday.
Whether these numbers hold as the campaign progresses, will be another matter. In the mean time, the Democrats cannot afford to be pulling their punches as Palin establishes her own style of pugilism on the stump. Time will tell whether she can live up to the expectations and the enthusiasm of the Convention crowd, the Republican base and the McCain team itself. Her most likely problems (aside from the “abuse of power” scandal) will result from the video clips of her saying things inconsistent with the message du jour. There will be plenty of opportunities ahead for negative campaign ads, especially as Republican luminaries continue to get caught, on the record, disclosing their low regard for McCain’s selection of Palin. Over an open microphone during a commercial break on MSNBC, Peggy Noonan expressed dismay that the McCain camp “… went for this – excuse me – political bullshit about narratives.” Noonan later defined the term “narrative” as: “The story the campaign wishes to tell about itself and communicate to others.” Is that really it? Or, is the “narrative” in this case, Palin’s life story, which is supposed to endear her to us. Noonan is promoting that bullshit herself, so it’s hard to imagine her objecting to it. Peggy Noonan also complained about how Republican leaders believe that “whatever the base of the Republican Party thinks is what America thinks”. At this point, Sarah Palin is doing fine with the Republican base. Meanwhile, the rest of America will be reading about Palin’s track record on “earmarks”, the unfolding “abuse of power” saga, as well as whatever important information the McCain camp never read in the local Alaska newspapers. Whether we admit it or not, we will all be anxious to see if the National Enquirer can outdo its John Edwards exclusive with its juicy tale involving this new darling of “the base”.
Here We Go Again
September 22, 2008
Exactly one year ago, we saw the release of Naomi Klein’s book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Klein’s book explained how unpopular laws were enacted in a number of countries around the world, as a result of shock from disasters or upheavals. She went on to suggest that some of these events were deliberately orchestrated with the intent of passing repugnant laws in the wake of crisis. She made an analogy to shock therapy, wherein the patient’s mind is electrically reformatted to become a “blank slate”. Klein described how advocates of “the shock doctrine” seek a cataclysmic destruction of economic order to create their own “blank slate” upon which to create their vision of a “free market economy”. She described the 2003 Iraq war as the most thorough utilization of the shock doctrine in history. Remember that this book was released a year before the crisis we are going through now.
You may recall former Senator Phil Gramm’s recent appearance in the news for calling the United States a “nation of whiners” and positing that the only recession going on in the United States these days is a “mental recession”. Gramm is a longtime buddy and mentor to a certain individual named John McCain. Gramm is the architect of the so called “Enron Loophole” allowing speculators to drive the price of oil to absurd heights. (Gramm’s wife, Wendy, was a former member of Enron’s Board of Directors.) Gramm was most notorious for his successes in the deregulation of Wall Street (with the help of McCain) that facilitated the “mortgage crisis” as well as the current economic meltdown. He sponsored the 1999 bill that repealed the Glass-Steagall Act. The repeal of that law allowed “commercial” and “investment” banks to consolidate. Gramm’s face appears in many campaign videos with McCain, taken earlier this year. As a result of the outrage generated by Gramm’s remarks, McCain formally dismissed Gramm as his campaign’s economic advisor. Despite the fact that Gramm no longer has a formal role in the McCain campaign, many believe that he would be McCain’s choice for Secretary of the Treasury in the event that McCain should win the Presidential election. On September 21, MSNBC’s David Shuster grilled McCain campaign spokesman, Tucker Bounds, about the possibility that McCain is planning to appoint Phil Gramm as his Secretary of the Treasury, should McCain win. Tucker Bounds squirmed all over the place, employing his usual tactic of deflecting the subject of the current economic crisis back to the Obama campaign. Most noticeably, Mr. Bounds never made any attempt to deny that McCain plans to put Gramm in charge of the Treasury.
Our current Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson, is on the covers of this week’s newsmagazines, pushing for uncritical acceptance of his (and hence, the Bush Administration’s) solution to the current economic crisis. This basically amounts to a three-page “bailout” plan for banks and other financial intuitions holding mortgages of questionable value, at a price to the taxpayers of anywhere from $700 billion to One Trillion Dollars. The Democrats are providing some “pushback” to this plan. Barack Obama was quoted by Carrie Brown of Politico.com as saying that the Bush Administration has “offered a concept with a staggering price tag, not a plan”. Obama went on to insist that the “American people must be assured that the deal reflects the basic principles of transparency, fairness and reform”.
As reported by Stephen Labaton in the September 21 New York Times, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi complained that:
Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut was quoted in that article as saying: “We need to offer some assurance to the American taxpayer that Congress is watching.” Dodd went on to explain:
The Times article then focused on the point emphasized by Republican Senator Arlen Specter:
Nevertheless, Treasury Secretary Paulson made the rounds of the Sunday talk shows to advocate pushing this bailout through quickly, without the safeguards and deliberation suggested by the Democrats and Senator Specter. As Zachary Goldfarb reported in the September 21 Washington Post:
“Clean and quick” . . . Is that anything like “Shock and Awe”? As usual, there is concern about whether Congressional Democrats will have the spine to resist the “full court press” by the Bush Administration to get this plan approved by Congress and on the President’s desk for signature. As Robert Kuttner reported in The Huffington Post:
Here we go again. Will the Democrats “grow a pair” in time to prevent “the shock doctrine” from being implemented once again? If not, will we eventually see the day when Treasury Secretary Phil Gramm basks in glory, while presiding over his own manifestation of economic utopia?