Biden's dubious 'expertise'

For a supposed foreign policy guru with 35 years of senatorial experience, Joe Biden embarrassed himself in the Vice Presidential debate with a startling number of gaffes, misstatements, errors, and out-and-out falsehoods. Or maybe Joe’s just a proponent of the school of “you can fool all of the people some of the time…”

Biden’s statement that “Pakistani missiles threaten Israel and the Mediterranean basin” was just plain ludicrous. Given that Pakistan IS a nuclear power, and does have missile technology – the potential threat is pretty much limited to their immediate neighbors, India and China. Pakistan does NOT have the reach to threaten the entire wider region – Biden displays a startling ignorance on a critical issue. But don’t take my word for it – look it up yourself.

Likewise, his contention that the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan has stated that the “surge philosophy” would not work in Afghanistan is just flat wrong. General McKiernan (yeah, Palin goofed on the name; but so did Biden) has in fact called for both more troops, and expanded non-military activity (construction, infrastructure expansion, and various economic development and educational programs). Sounds kinda like a surge, eh?

Biden is trying to parse words here, rather than focus on the issue (sound familiar?). Palin got the basic thrust here correct – “The counterinsurgency strategy going into Afghanistan, clearing, holding, rebuilding, the civil society and the infrastructure can work in Afghanistan.”

Here’s McKiernan according to the New York Times:

The top American military commander in Afghanistan said Wednesday that he needs more troops and other aid ''as quickly as possible'' in a counter-insurgency battle that could get worse before it gets better.

Gen. David McKiernan said it's not just a question of troops — but more economic aid and more political aid as well.

''The additional military capabilities that have been asked for are needed as quickly as possible,'' he said.

Continuing on the area of Afghanistan: Joe Biden further characterized the strategy in Afghanistan over the last six years as a strictly military approach, that was doomed to fail. This displays either shocking ignorance or willful mischaracterization of what has actually been happening in Afghanistan.

Having served over there, I can speak from personal experience on this one: the U.S. military has had a broad-based approach in Afghanistan, including constructing infrastructure (roads, mine-clearing), building schools and training teachers, and training the Afghan military from a VERY early date. ( My experience covers the period Sep 02 – Apr 03, during which time ALL of these initiatives and activities were in effect). The first multi-disciplinary Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) were formed and deployed in early 2003; I saw this firsthand.

Joe Biden is either ignorant or lying on this point; neither bodes well for his foreign policy "expertise".

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.

The Howard Beal election

It's hard to turn on the TV these days. The news and images from Washington are like a train wreck. The height of hypocrisy: the crooks who made this mess posturing for a bailout on the backs of the taxpayer... looking stern and serious while they sit in gilded offices paid for by the investment banks and mortgage firms -- those that provided them with cheap loans to their poor constituents, while profiting handsomely from complex, opaque financial instruments that no one understands. While Washington slept the market ran wild, fueled by impossibly cheap money and overabundant credit. The Wall Street Journal ran a picture of J.P. Morgan the other day. He looks like a banker: stern, serious, practical. I wonder if he'd have given people $400,000 stated income loans; not a piece of paper to prove their earning or their ability to pay it back. That's what we did in the hyper-fueled lending world of Freddie and Fannie. You need to buy a house. Can't afford it? No problem, we'll cover you. Can you imagine J.P. Morgan doing anything so stupid?

And now comes the final indignity: the "bail out". The House yesterday decided not to pass a $700 billion bailout bill. They did so to prove that we are still a free market. They did so to save their reelection chances. They did so to protest the Bush Administration and their total mishandling of this crisis from start to finish. Whatever the reason: it failed. And rightly so.Does anyone really think that the Bush, Paulson or Bernanke have any idea what is really going on here? Fortune Magazine reported last week that the $700 billion number that Paulson chose has no analysis behind it:

"It's not based on any particular data point," a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. "We just wanted to choose a really large number."

Wow. How comforting is that? We know that markets operate on psychology, and that the large number is designed to provide confidence in the market that the government has a big enough solution to take care of the problem. I understand that.

But I also understand something that George W. Bush and his team have never understood: this is also a political issue during a presidential election. The Bush Administration remains totally tone deaf to the concerns of the American people. While the $700 billion number may calm financial markets, it has shocked, dismayed and infuriated the American taxpayer.

Hello? Is anyone out there? Does George Bush really want Barack Obama to become president? It sure looks that way.

In fact, Bush's handling of this issue looks a lot like the war in Iraq before General Petraeus went to Baghdad. It looks incompetent, poorly planned and poorly executed. It looks just like the mess that Gens. Casey and Abizaid got us into, with American soldiers dying daily amid violence and chaos on the television. Total mis-management. The American people lost confidence in Donald Rumsfeld in 2004. And what did the President do? He held his course, kept Rummy on and took a beating in the 2006 midterm elections. Bush was shocked to take such a shellacking. He didn't understand the level of discontent among the voters then -- and he doesn't understand it now. Americans in vast numbers are angry at Washington. Mad as hell, as Howard Beale famously yelled out the window in the movie Network. And they aren't going to take it anymore.

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Who will pay the ultimate price for this debacle? John McCain. He's been swallowed whole by this mess and his campaign will never recover. Yes, he miscalculated -- the whole "suspending his campaign" gambit backfired. Frankly, his instincts on the bailout were wrong; his behavior showed him as a legislator. A compromiser. Not as an executive who had to make a tough call in a crisis. He temporized and vacillated.

In fact, McCain missed a golden opportunity: He could have taken the momentum and initiative away from Obama and come out forcefully against the bailout from the beginning. He could have stood up in the debate and said:

I'm against this because I don't believe in taxpayers footing the bill for what is essentially a $700 billion entitlement program. Yes, I know the situation is serious and that we need to provide relief to the credit markets. But there is a better, less-intrusive way to do this: change the "market-based" accounting rules so that firms can revalue their portfolios to something that reflects their true intrinsic value. Provide loans and guarantees that the firms will pay interest on, etc. etc. etc.

But McCain didn't do that. He didn't see the opportunity for bold action and decisive decision-making. He could have put Obama in a corner. And with public opinion running 2:1 against the bailout, the polls would have been on his side.

In the end, this is the kind of crisis that either makes or breaks a candidate. The odds were against McCain from the beginning, but his handling of this issue has fallen short. He was dealt a bad hand by Bush and his bumbling lieutenants; in this case, running against Bush would have been smart for McCain. But it was the kind of "game changing" opportunity that comes about only once in a campaign. If you seize it, you win. If you don't, you lose.

So far, McCain hasn't seized it, and unless Palin pulls out a miracle against Biden and McCain can rally in the last two debates, the Republicans will lose on November 4.

'Who are those guys?'

The late Paul Newman's famous refrain with Robert Redford, playing Butch and Sundance just a step ahead of their relentless pursuers, is what the GOP should have been making front-runner Barack Obama mutter for the past month. Opportunity missed, and election hopes greatly dimmed. McCain didn't go for the jugular on economics or national security in his first debate with Obama, despite many chances to do so.

Palin has gone bland and cautious since the convention, instead of blistering the opposition ticket and lynch-mob media with her testerone as we know she can.

House and Senate Republicans haven't trained their fire on Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Bill Clinton, and Jimmy Carter as the guilty authors of the mortgage mess.

It pains me to bracket a class act like Newman with a phony like Obama, however similar their political views may have been. (Redford is another story; he and BHO can have each other.) But the analogy of that wonderful Western and campaign 2008 holds true.

It was going to take hell-bent determination and, yes, a killer instinct for the center-right posse to chase down the charming leftist who already cleaned out Hillary's bank and is now closing in on the White House vault. Barack heard footsteps for a while there in August and early September. He was looking over his shoulder, maybe ready for that desperate cliff dive into the river.

But the cold sweat of "Who are those guys?" wasn't sustained, Obama has regained some breathing room, and in another 35 days of hard riding the biggest prize of all may be his.

"What we have here," to switch Newman movies for a moment, "is a failure to communicate." That monument of understatement from the death scene in "Cool Hand Luke" applies in spades to the McCain-Palin campaign and may become their epitaph.

We can hope not as we remember the great films and say: RIP, Paul.

MSM anoint selves as newsmakers

Watching the debate between Senator McCain and Pharaoh Obama was an interesting and joyful evening for me. After all, we can probably agree that there is no greater pleasure then to watch or participate in a verbal battle of wills and ideas. That is of course, until you're married, but I digress. In any event I was quite happy to watch the debate. Happy, because debate and discussion is one of the fundamental principles behind the greatness of America and her people. While some shy away from public speaking, it is important to note that debate matters not just for the debater but for the audience as well. Debates provide everyone who watches them a unique perspective into both the ideas and qualifications of an idea, a candidate or a proposal. They are an integral part of America and if you don’t like them, move to Iran. But I found that the 9/26 debate gave me insight not so much into the candidates as into the media themselves.

As soon as the debate had finished, and in some cases before it began, the MSM was in high jabber. With preordained conclusions these pundits crashed into the discussion with confusing, factually ignorant and plainly biased commentary. Any ideas of reporting the news seems to have gone out the window as the MSM made a longwinded and really rather pathetic attempt to make the news. No sooner had the debate ended then the MSM attempted to give the debate ‘tie’ to Obama. Strangely this award came with claims that the debate was ‘about what we expected’ from people who for weeks had insinuated the first debate would be the first miracle of Obama. Amidst flurries of self-congratulation, led by CNN, the MSM made a sincere attempt to package the debate in the terms of their world and not that of the American voter. For weeks we have seen signs of this; and from the plainly unfair and simply mean treatment of Gov. Palin to the nearly dictatorial claims about Sen. McCain that now, daily, dot the pages of the NYT.

But the behavior of the MSM in regard to the debate and now the financial crisis has broken new ground. Ground where all facts go out the window and where major MSM providers have no problem altering the facts so as to rattle the cages of everyday Americans.

Now I wish that the media wasn’t the chimera of graft and smear that it is today and I wish that I didn’t even have to talk about them. But unfortunately, for me and for you, I do. I do because the media has interjected itself into the current political debate in an all-consuming manner as judge, jury and executioner. The political media today is not about America, it is not even about the news any more; it is about only itself -- an all-consuming orthodoxy that makes the form of debate a sad panda and me a sadder kitten.

For months now some principal media imps have done nothing but apotheosize Obama and run down McCain. I am sure you have seen it, let it be Rachel Maddow calling the idea of Americans voting for McCain ‘twisted’, or Keith Olbermann essentially blaming the entire financial mess on John McCain.

But, in this long, long, very long election a few media types have stuck out as true servants of Mordor. Acolytes of Morgoth, they go by the names; Maddow, Cafferty, Olbermann, Milbank, Hewitt, Beck, Holmes, Roland S. Martin, Toobin, and the bear himself: Stephen Colbert. These lesser scamps are the grave of facts and the edge of discussion; the true bane of debate. They are puerile and a farce. They demonstrate by action their desire to make the news and not report it. From hill to dale they slant the facts with a desire similar to that of old wicker rotting in the sun. Each has a craft, a parlance of overstatement that ruins even the simplest situation. None seem to have a desire for truth and rarely can they see past themselves.

Now I can’t do much about the sad state of the media but I can write this little piece. This little shot across the bow that lets these forces know that not everyone bows to them. Oh, and also that someone else can use the axe that is literary criticism just as easily as they do.