So John McCain gave a speech this morning wherein he delineated his vision of the United States at the end of his first term in 2013. The good news: Victory in Iraq and Osama bin Laden captured or killed; the bad news: A continued threat from the Taliban in Afghanistan.
CNN called McCain’s speech “unusual—and somewhat risky—in that it laid out benchmarks on which he could be judged.“
“It certainly was an ambitious speech,“ said Bill Schneider, a CNN senior political analyst, noting that many of the things McCain mentioned will be “very tough things for a president to accomplish.“
“But perhaps the key point that he made was the tone and tenor of his presidency when he said near the end of his speech, ‘If I’m elected president, the era of the permanent campaign will end. The era of problem solving will begin,‘ “ Schneider said.
Other milestones McCain mentioned, according to CNN:
Witnessing Russia and China cooperating in “pressuring Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions, and North Korea to discontinue its own;“
Significantly increasing the size of the Army and Marine Corps, which will be “better equipped and trained to defend us;“
The application of “stiff diplomatic and economic pressure” by the United States—acting in concert with a newly formed League of Democracies—to cause Sudan to agree to a multinational peacekeeping force, with NATO countries providing logistical and air support, to stop the genocide in Darfur;
Several years of robust economic growth;
Taxpayers filing under a flat tax;
The world food crisis ending, low inflation and a “much-improved” quality of life “not only in our country but in some of the most impoverished countries around the world;“
More accessible health care for Americans and an easing of pressure on Medicare because of lower health care costs;
A United States well on its way to “independence from foreign sources of oil;“
A Social Security system that is solvent, does not reduce benefits for those nearing retirement and includes individual retirement accounts;
The confirmation of “scores of judges” to the federal district and appellate courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court; and
A secure southern border for the United States after “tremendous improvements to border security infrastructure and increases in the border patrol, and vigorous prosecution of companies that employ illegal aliens.“
Whew. That’s quite a list. But wait! There’s more!
Here’s a look at the ad based on the speech:
I agree that this is an interesting approach for McCain to take. It seems that he is trying to prove that Obama isn’t the only one with vision. But while it’s helpful to understand candidates’ ideas about where they want to take the country, it’s more important to know how they plan to get there—and that’s especially true when the president doesn’t get much help from his (or her) party in Congress. The only question facing the NRCC this year is how many seats it will actually lose in the House, so a President McCain—and his agenda—would pretty much be on his own on the Hill. That’s my problem with this: McCain doesn’t give us any idea how he would deal with a hostile House and an obstinate Senate.
He does a good job of playing up the destination. But even the best destination is useless if you don’t have a road map to get there.
I had a wide-ranging talk with Alabama Democratic Party Chairman Joe Turnham the other night. Because of the sheer number of things we discussed, I’m breaking up our conversation into two parts for you.
Turnham isn’t impressed by the Alabama Republican Party’s “Good Morning, Democrats” feature I told you about here yesterday. “I just think sophomoric castigation of Democrats as being lazy, liberal bums doesn’t work in 2008 when the GOP has run all the deficits up and catered to the big oil industry, and people are fed up and they’ve had it,“ he said. “They’re interested in, ‘What are you going to do to solve my problems?‘ I just think people are ready for a new kind of pragmatic, problem-solving campaign that doesn’t shoot them a lot of political rhetoric but is able to get to the core of it,“ he said. “It’s unfathomable to me that the Republicans in the (Alabama) Senate will not let the 4 percent tax on food go when 80 percent of people in Alabama will get a tax break, yet they won’t vote to let you vote to get the tax cut. I thought Republicans wanted to give power to the people and cut taxes and get government out of your business and put more money in your pocket ... If (the grocery tax repeal) fails, it’s going to sweep Republicans out of office.“
Did you know that Alabama nearly supplanted South Carolina as 2008’s “First-in-the-South” primary? Turnham said a group pushing Alabama, along with Arizona as the site of the first Western caucus, nearly had the change in the bag. “We had the votes about a week out going into the Rules & Bylaws Committee,” Turnham said. But then Senate Majority Leader (and Nevadan) Harry Reid and influential U.S. Rep. James Cliburn got involved and … well, Nevada and South Carolina led the way.
On the impending May 31 meeting of the Rules & Bylaws Committee that will determine the fate of the Michigan and Florida delegations: Turnham said negotiations are ongoing and Democrats are “trying to backchannel on that and get as much consensus from the camps as possible” ahead of May 31. But, he said, “I think it depends on what kind of bump Hillary gets out of West Virginia and Kentucky (Clinton is expected to win big in the Bluegrass State Tuesday), and “if the Obama inevitability were to dampen some.” And it could happen, he said: As Clinton wins big in Kentucky and Puerto Rico and gains delegates from the resolution of the Michigan-Florida issue, “she’ll pick up some delegates, and this thing will get close again. Those remaining 150, 200 superdelegates will have some ability to bargain and negotiate on how we can move forward as a party,” Turnham said. “That’s why I’m staying out (not endorsing a candidate), to effect those changes.”
On Obama’s electoral map: Turnham said he has “some real concerns.” Although Obama does put places like Virginia, Colorado and Nevada in play and “probably does better than (Clinton) in those places,” Clinton “absolutely carries all the major Democratic states he carries,” plus Arkansas, West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania – and does better in Florida against McCain than Obama. “I just think the electoral math is a lot stronger there. I don’t know if that argument’s going to rule the day … it doesn’t look like it will.” But for the sake of party unity – and fundraising – it’s important to “close the circle” in a positive way and try to “hold some of those 33 percent of her supporters who say they won’t support Obama,” he said. “But I think, people like me, if we have anything to say at the end of the day, (electoral math) is the reason a lot of people like me won’t cave in. If people won’t talk about this, we’ll just to have to take it to Denver,” Turnham said. “I’m holding fast.”
On an Obama-Clinton ticket: Turnham said that instead of a floor fight at the convention, “I think more likely what you may see is a fervor and insistence that she be given first right of refusal on the ticket. It’s a growing buzz and chatter among the DNC and a state chair or two I talk with,” he said. But Vice President Clinton would have to take place on “her terms and conditions” that created “some kind of working vice presidency.” Turnham said that could take the form of Clinton serving as a “policy czar on a couple of issues that are dear to her,” like health care and education. In addition, he said, Obama could “carve out a role for former President Clinton to play, such as tackling world poverty or HIV/AIDS or serving as a roving ambassador,” he said. “You might have a Kennedy-Johnson situation without all the acrimony; at the end of the day, Johnson built on some of the legacy of Kennedy with civil rights and poverty in America,” he said. “As much as this thing is a stalemate, I think it goes to heart of that Hillary has earned something here, if not the nomination, the ticket for sure.” Turnham said Obama picking Hillary would go a long way toward uniting the party: “If that were to happen, you’d see the chill get out of the air and everything settle down,” he said. “You could probably see this joint ticket raise about $100 million online in about two weeks.”
On how an Obama-led ticket will affect other Democratic candidates: “Eight years ago, you couldn’t even find a Gore bumper sticker; you had to order one,” and that hurt Democrats running for office in Alabama in 2000, Turnham said. “What will (Obama) spend in states that aren’t targeted for coordinated efforts, and will he do campaigning in places he’ll have a tough time winning in November? That will have an effect on downticket races, and people like me are concerned about that … We’ll have to wait and see what the ticket looks like and what his campaign appeal will be, but I wouldn’t want to be a Republican incumbent judge in Jefferson or Montgomery county in 2008,” he said. “You may have turnout numbers of traditional Democratic voters that we’ve never seen before.”
On the effect the drawn-out race will have on the Democratic Party’s efforts in the fall: “When you think about it, Clinton and Obama have had tens of thousands of staff and volunteers on the ground in every single battleground state, and the voter files that have been built, the volunteers lists, the fundraiser lists, are unprecedented in presidential contests,” Turnham said. “The e-mail lists that have been built are unprecedented. When Huckabee bowed out, the GOP basically gave up.” To that point, Turnham said that more Democrats voted in the Texas primary than in the general elections in 2004. In addition, all the new registrants, new donors and new volunteers the Obama campaign identified will be appended to the Democratic voter file, Turnham said. “We don’t have party ID in Alabama, so if I can tell a registered voter is a Democrat, that’s like gold bullion. If we close it well and it ends well, it will be a tremendous exercise, and the net effect will be positive,” he said.
Check back here tomorrow for the rest of our conversation, including Turnham’s assessment of Democratic prospects in congressional and state races across Alabama.
Throughout the course of this campaign, Barack Obama has frequently said that he would engage Iran, Syria, North Korea and other so-called rogue nations without preconditions, in the tradition of Teddy Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, as he has said on the trail. This section, called “Renewing America’s diplomacy,“ is on Obama’s web site:
Talk to our Foes and Friends: Obama is willing to meet with the leaders of all nations, friend and foe. He will do the careful preparation necessary, but will signal that America is ready to come to the table, and that he is willing to lead. And if America is willing to come to the table, the world will be more willing to rally behind American leadership to deal with challenges like terrorism, and Iran and North Korea’s nuclear programs.
President Bush has repeatedly declined to make direct statements about issues that have arisen on the campaign trail, insisting that he will not be made the “pundit-in-chief” by being drawn into the campaign to succeed him.
Well, so much for that.
Speaking to Israeli legislators at the Knesset today, Bush said:
Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along.
We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.‘ We have an obligation to call this what it is—the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.
“Ingenious argument?“ “Foolish delusion?“
Wha-POW!!
So much for going gently into that good night.
Oh, administration officials tried their best to downplay the in-your-face way the comments were played in the media. (White House spokesman Dana Perino had a decent quote: “I understand when you are running for office sometimes you think the world revolves around you. That is not always true and it is not true in this case.“ Ha ha!) But that did absolutely nothing to tamp down the fire.
Obama called the comments a “false political attack” and lamented Bush’s “extraordinary politicization of foreign policy and the politics of fear.“
Democrats were much more aggressive. They fired back, calling Bush’s statement “outrageous comments” that “are an embarrassment to our country” (DNC Chairman Howard Dean), “unworthy of his office” (Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi) , “disgusting,“ “dangerous,“ “insulting,“ “disrespectful” and a slander on Obama (U.S. Sen. John Kerry).
And then there was U.S. Sen. Joe Biden, who called the statements “Bulls—-“, “malarkey” and “long-distance swift-boating.“
But Republicans stood by the president’s remarks.
John McCain had this to say:
“I think Barack Obama needs to sit down and explain why he wants to talk with a man who is the head of a government that is a state sponsor of terror, that is responsible for the killing of brave young Americans, who wants to wipe Israel off the map, denies the Holocaust. That is what I think that Senator Obama ought to explain to the American people,” he said while on a bus to the airport.
“It is a serious error on the part of Senator Obama that shows naiveté and inexperience and lack of judgment to say that he wants to sit down across the table from an individual who leads a country who says that Israel is a stinking corpse, that is dedicated to the extinction of Israel. My question is, what does he want to talk about?”
Mitt Romney said “he is reminded of the saying that the dog that barks on the other side of the fence is the one that was hit by the rock,“ according to FoxNews.com.
Republicans appeared everywhere, singing the same song: Why would everyone automatically assume these comments were directed at Obama if the shoe doesn’t fit?
This is a lot of sound and fury to test out what will likely be the centerpiece of the McCain campaign this fall: Obama can’t be trusted with foreign policy. It’s the area where McCain believes Obama just can’t match up. It’s the general election equivalent of Hillary Clinton’s “working class, white voters” primary argument.
I guess going 0-for-3 in special elections has caused the GOP to retool its message machine. They’re back to the near-unison response that characterized Republicans’ strength—for today, at least.
What do you think? Is it accurate to call Obama’s goal of “renewing America’s diplomacy” tantamount to “appeasement?“ Or are Democrats right to be outraged that Bush drew the comparison? Have your say in comments.
Today is Bloggers Unite for Human Rights Day, sponsored by—yes, Bloggers Unite.
Unfortunately, there is no shortage of places where human rights are abused or denied altogether. Some of these are better publicized than others: The crisis in Darfur, the plight of women in some Middle Eastern countries, China’s jailing of dissidents and the journalists who tell their stories. Others have political subcontexts, like movements to expand legal protections for LGBT persons and those to increase the availability of abortion as part of reproductive health care around the world.
But I participate in this day on behalf of the youngest victims of human rights abuses: children, who are enslaved, abused and brutalized in ways too horrible to conceive; children, left to scrounge for scraps in garbage dumps; children, recruited as instruments of war in third-world countries in Africa and Asia; children, orphaned by unwilling or unable parents; children, discarded in too many cultures like trash, left for wild animals, their cries ignored by the rest of the world.
These problems can seem impossible to address, their sheer weight and magnitude overwhelming even the most idealistic and ambitious person. But the old saying is true: You can make a difference, one child at a time.
I have sponsored a child through WorldVision for nearly four years. He lives in South Africa, half a world away. It’s likely that we will never meet. But it is my hope that because our family engaged, because we refused to buy into the lie that we can’t make a difference, that little boy’s life will be changed forever.
It’s true; the help I give my child in South Africa doesn’t help one enslaved by sex abuse in Thailand. But I hope that because I have reached out to that little South African boy, someone else will reach out to a little boy in Thailand, and someone else will reach out for a little girl in Darfur, and someone else will reach out to baby girl in India, and so on until somehow, at last, everyone is holding the hand of a child somewhere in the world.
No one can do it all. But everyone can do something.
Here is a link to WorldVision’s web site, where you can browse through the faces of the children who need your help. Want to gain some perspective on the bad day you’ve had? Read about a typical day for a child in Africa. See for yourself the poverty facing children around the world – and in our own backyards. Then resolve, as Gandhi said, that you will be the change you seek, and reach out your hand for the tiny hand of a little boy or girl whose only hope is to make it through one more day alive.
It’s not often that I agree with Bill O’Reilly. So when I do, it’s notable.
Last night was such an occasion.
Liberal web site Daily Kos has a user known only as Mahler3. On Monday, he posted some pictures from Jenna Bush’s wedding over the weekend and juxtaposed them beside pictures of dead and wounded Iraqis.
Mahler3 says that the pictures are of Iraqis and that the death and destruction seen in the graphic photos were perpetrated by American soliders.
We’ll ignore for now that there is no proof of either claim.
Not surprisingly, O’Reilly, no fan of Daily Kos to begin with (he calls Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas “one of the most despicable people in the United States today”), blasted away on this post and the site in general.
I agree: The post is despicable. But don’t take my word for it: See for yourself here. (But BE WARNED: These images are graphic and are not suitable for young viewers.)
The post itself has been called “tasteless,“ “deplorable,“ “sick,“ “pointless” and “beyond the pale”—no, not by Bill O’Reilly, but by Daily Kos readers themselves.
So here’s the point: When people like Mahler 3 do things like this, they discredit their own arguments, and the arguments of others in agreement with them. Whatever they are saying about the war is lost in the outrage over how they say it. Mahler3 argues with his fellow war opponents and insists that he was making a point in posting the pictures together.
And therein lies my point: Not even those who agree with Mahler3 on the war understood or agreed with what he did. What makes him think that anyone else would read his repulsive post and his convoluted argument and say to themselves, “Oh! Now I get it. If only someone had shown me a picture of a dead child next to Jenna Bush’s wedding photos long ago!“
Most war opponents know this; for proof, you need only read through the comments to see how poorly the post was received. Here are some examples:
“I’m out to persuade Americans that progressives have a better alternative than the sleazy tactics of the GOP. This is the s—- they do; there’s no reason to stoop to their level.“
“You disgrace Markos, yourself, this site, and all of us with this garbage.“
“Great job dips—-! You gave Bill O all he needed to Bash the Kos once again tonight on his show…hope it was worth it!“
Daily Kos readers had plenty to say about Mahler3’s post. I have just two words for it: Predictably disgusting.
By the way, if you feel led to drop Mahler3 an e-mail about his post, you can reach him at
. But if you do, be prepared to receive a seriously vitriolic diatribe in response. Go ahead and e-mail him—but only after you add his address to your blocked senders list.
