The Election [Michael Ledeen]
THE CORNER
I'm pretty bad at predicting elections, but then again, so is most everyone else. I'm old enough to remember a whole series of sure-fire-winners-who-weren't, from Dewey to Carter (vs Reagan) to Mondale (vs Reagan again) to Gore and Kerry. Frankly, I find most of the chatter about "the meaning of the polls" to be pretty silly. And it distracts us from the very serious problems we face, to which we should be devoting the bulk of our energies. Iran seems to be very very close to having enough enriched uranium to make some new bombs (here are the data), and unless I'm sadly mistaken, the Russians are setting up some kind of action against Ukraine.
The global crisis — keep saying 'global' — is as murky and its consequences as unpredictable as any I've ever seen. I don't remember reading much here about the closure of the Russian stock market (which seems to me to mean that your shares are worthless), but it may prefigure similar sorts of desperate measures in Venezuela and Iran (which is probably good news). Then again, it may spur irrational leaders to act outside their own borders in order to shore up their support at home. Yes, it's an old story, but it's very important, so how come so much energy is wasted on debating whether or not McCain should be talking about Ayers?
I doubt McCain or Obama reads the Corner, so I think all the smart advice offered to them here are wasted efforts at best. I have no idea who is going to win on November 4th, but one of the smartest poll watchers around, Lorie Byrd, reminds us that it's still very close:
McCain is narrowing the gap in the polls. They are still going back and forth and are extremely volatile and as DJ constantly reminds us, many of them are not worth a hoot anyway, but there is evidence that they are beginning to close. There is now a 3 point lead for Obama in the Gallup traditional poll of likely voters. If McCain does well tonight they will continue to tighten and the state polls will eventually follow. The last thing Republicans should be doing now is giving up or wallowing in despair. That is what those on the left want and that is what they will attempt to do with polls showing Obama with a large lead. Democrats still hold a big advantage, but this is far from over and things are slowly turning back McCain's way. McCain likes to come from behind. He has done it before and I think he can do it again if he plays things smart. After tonight we will know whether or not that is what he is going to do.
That sounds about right. However, there has been at least one welcome result of the commentariat's belief that Obama is now a cinch for the presidency: we get to see the opportunists signing up for the ride on the bandwagon.
No honorable defeat for them, oh no no no. Instant conversion is more like it.
Maybe we'll remember their names next time?
Debate Thoughts [Victor Davis Hanson]
1) One, no doubt McCain will mention his opposition to earmarks; no doubt Obama will reply that such savings are relatively small given the monstrous size of the budget. But McCain's point is that they are the lubricants for the whole corrupt system of voting billions of dollars for questionable programs for which we don't have the money. Legislators are bribed into voting for enormous outlays by relatively petty bribes —earmarks. Local police who take a bribe undermine the entire system of trust, even though a $100 bill here and there is nothing in a multimillion-dollar police budget.
2) Two, the problem with Obama's tax plan is twofold: if we end up with 50% of the income earners paying no federal income tax, what incentive would they have to worry about how other people's money is spent, or why would they work additional hours and thereby risk losing their tax credit or at least their tax exemption? Second, why would businesspersons making over $250,000 in a high-tax state take on additional risks of hiring more employees, building a new addition, or opening up a new line of products, when they would know that with state (10%), federal (39%) and FICA (15%) obligations, roughly two-thirds of their additional profits would go to the government? The ratio of risk and effort to gain is not worth it.
As in the case of the counterpart who pays no taxes, there would be likewise no incentive for additional productivity. We would be choking the system off at both ends.
3) Freddie/ Fannie: the problem here is that both undermined the spirit of the law by waving traditional requisites for home ownership, a tenet of the American landscape. Once their CEOs cooked the books on both ends — the top for their own bonuses, the bottom for politically-correct agendas — they eroded public confidence. The same is true of voter registration and the ACORN matter. No republic can long exist when citizens are not assured their voting is sacrosanct and their public financial system follows the law. (The same pattern of undermining public confidence in the rule of law extends to illegal immigration, but I doubt that will come up).
The real story of the election...
The real post-election story might be that the voters could well have elected someone who was almost unknown four years ago; who has operated in a protective media cocoon since; who has a meager legislative record, or radical changes in his original positions, or little public history, from which to assess his qualifications; and who has an interesting record of associations (Ayers, Khalidi, Odigna, Pfleger, Wright, etc.) that cannot be discussed without preemptive charges that range from racism to McCarthyism.
I don't think anyone knows what Obama's true agenda is on things like FISA, NAFTA, Iraq, Iran, public financing, guns, abortion, capital punishment, coal, nuclear power, or drilling — or how to assess his claims of a new bipartisanship against the most liberal and partisan, albeit brief, record in the Senate.
The ACORN involvement in voter fraud, the swarming of radio stations, threatened law suits over ads, coupled with the vero possumus, messianic backdrops should give cause for legitimate worry about tolerance for dissent. The default narrative is that Obama had to be a hard identity-politics leftist to start out in Chicago; had to gain street crediblity by suffering through Wright's racist diatribes; then had to be a liberal team-player as a rookie Senator from progressive Illinois, had to run to the left of Hillary in the primaries, and had to zig again in the general, but when elected will revert to his natural ease with bipartisanship and centrist leadership. All that is a bit of a stretch.
And that disingenousness is of more concern than Sarah Palin's failure to define the Bush Doctrine in ten seconds.
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