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.

Lincoln's lesson for McCain

A perpetual problem in politics is the dispute between statesmen and party strategists. The former wish to lead public opinion in the direction of wise policies and the latter support policies which win elections. There is a tension between these two positions but it is surmountable only on terms of statesmanship. Supporters of John McCain, such as Jonah Goldberg, editor of National Review Online, have counseled him against emphasizing his stand on the war on Iraq, not because the Arizona Senator was wrong but because he was right. That is, McCain favored the strategy that President Bush called the "surge," which has brought greater peace and stability to the keystone nation of the Middle East than at any time since the war began. McCain is proud of this.

He should be. But it is also wise for him to emphasize that peace comes through strength in Iraq, not only for the sake of Iraq, but for the sake of our national interests elsewhere. The lessons of Iraq are the lessons of world leadership in the 21st century.

So how could it be wrong to stress the importance of victory in Iraq? Because, Goldberg argues, the public is tired of the war and is therefore willing to give Sen. Barack Obama a shot at the presidency, the same man who has long advocated a precipitous withdrawal. After all, if we’re pulling out anyway, what can be the danger in electing a man who merely wants to finish the job?

More than this, Goldberg contends, the number one issue is not the Iraq war but the economy and energy development, left in a sad state by years of Democratic denial of our national oil drilling rights. (I predict that energy issues will eclipse concern over the housing market.)

But these main issues are not only fleeting in their resonance with the voters, they are less than overwhelming. Rarely do they secure anything more than a plurality of public assent. The same folks who grumble because politicians can be elected with less than a majority profess to be deeply concerned about narrow pluralities measuring what are the "big issues."

McCain has to make the case for the surge, not only because it illustrates that he has the judgment necessary to bring American policy in Iraq to full fruition, but because our enemies will bring us more Iraqs in the future. The way to avoid this specter is to put both state and nonstate terrorists on notice that their aggressive tactics will not be tolerated.

I commend the example of Abraham Lincoln when he ran for the U.S. Senate from Illinois in 1858 against the powerful Democratic incumbent, Stephen Douglas. Douglas, chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories, had staked his campaign for the presidency on his authorship of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 and its doctrine of "popular sovereignty."

From the beginning of the Republic, and especially since our victory in the Mexican war, there had been pressure to expand the territory open to chattel slavery. The Missouri Compromise (1819) kept slavery out of most of the Louisiana Territory, but the Kansas-Nebraska Act explicitly repealed the ban and threw open all of the territory to slavery.

Douglas insisted that the issue had to be decided by the will of the settlers in the territory, prior to statehood, in a free and fair election. But slaveholders and their allies from neighboring Missouri brought violence and intimidation into "bleeding Kansas" and attempted to win congressional acceptance of a slave constitution produced by a corrupt constitutional convention and a rigged popular vote in 1857.

The newly formed anti-slavery Republican Party was outraged, and found a powerful ally in Sen. Douglas, who actually broke with the pro-slavery Buchanan Administration over the issue. Douglas lost all his federal patronage but felt confident of reelection in 1858 because he expected Republicans to appreciate his opposition to the corrupt Kansas constitution.

But Lincoln took Sen. Douglas on, warning Republicans that, despite Douglas’s opposition to the admission of Kansas, his legislation had opened the territory to slavery. Lincoln reminded them that he had opposed Douglas when he unleashed this monster. "Better a living dog than a dead lion," he said, comparing his humble standing to his opponent’s mighty stature.

Lincoln lost that election, but two years later, in 1860, he bested Douglas and two other candidates for the Presidency. Thus was the nation benefitted by having a chief executive and commander-in-chief who made the right decisions when eleven states launched a rebellion to perpetuate slavery.

Sen. McCain is a living lion with more than an even chance of defeating the Democratic Party’s champion of appeasement. Reminding the voters of what steely judgment it takes to dispatch our enemies is the way to win elections, not lose them. McCain is on the right track.

Campos & CU vs. McCain & TR

Clearly, the price of war is horrendous. The Civil War cost 600,000 lives. Worth the cost to emancipate a few slaves? Editor: So says Fran Miller in reply to "McCain's Dangerous Belief," a Paul Campos column in the Rocky on 4/24. Dave Crater tags on his impressions of Campos as a law school professor. Here are both pieces.

War? Why Bother?

(By Fran Miller) Paul Campos has sparked an important conversation that many will want to pursue. If we dispense with the glorification of past battles won and lost and focus on the merits of war it will inform our actions in the future.

Is the drafting of millions of men and resocializing them to get them to a point psychologically where they can kill or be killed worth doing? What, to liberate people like the French and British who will be ungrateful anyway.

And what about the Jews in those camps? Wasn't that a local problem on its way to being solved locally? Deposing dictators? Retaliating for the World Trade Center bombing? Aren't more people killed on our streets in a couple of months than were killed in New York?

Wouldn't the Russians have eventually won WWII? Couldn't we have sacrificed a few islands in the Pacific, trusting that the Chinese would have eventually taken care of the Japanese?

Clearly, the price of war is horrendous and its scars leave blemishes on the skin and mind of soldiers and civilian collaterals for a lifetime. I really didn't appreciate getting drafted in 1971 and being forced to put on combat boots.

My father and father in law both served in WWII and were never the same afterwards. The Civil War cost 600,000 lives and 2 to 3 million wounded. Worth the cost to emancipate a few slaves?

Discussing the merits of war as against the consequences of not fighting is a valid debate in a free society. But where I draw the line is Paul Campos's outrageous insinuation that the men who step forward when their nation demands are war-mongering sociopaths.

He is not fit to eat the droppings that fall off Teddy Roosevelt's mess kit. What Mr. Campos does really well, though, is act as the symbolic spokesman for the Colorado Bar, the University of Colorado and the Rocky Mountain News. He's your man. I'll keep TR as mine.

Who says 2 + 2 = 4?

(By Dave Crater) Fran, I had Campos for a class on legislation last semester at CU law school. It was not really a class in legislation, but one in literary, linguistic, and legal deconstruction.

We spent one entire class period discussing whether the proposition 2 + 2 = 4 actually describes the universe we live in or is just an arbitrary social and linguistic construct produced by humans.

I raised my hand and said, "With all due respect, the proposition 2 + 2 = 4 accurately describes the universe for all people, at all times, in all places." There was an awkward silence of a few seconds, then Campos said, "And how do you know this?"

He is as cynical and liberal as they come - a real moral and political disaster. As Fran hints, there are many reasons to not be excited about McCain, but his support for the Iraq war is not one of them.

Editor: Here are some key passages of the Campos column...

War is a form of mass psychosis, during which horrifying acts are transformed into heroic deeds, through the magical moral disinfectant of state sanction. .... When historians look back on the Iraq catastrophe, I suspect they'll discover a significant factor in this latest outbreak of mass psychosis was a kind of warrior envy, as reflected in recent popular culture. Books like The Greatest Generation, movies like Saving Private Ryan and television series like Band of Brothers are, despite some gestures toward moral ambiguity, essentially glorifications of war. .... Indeed, some of the support for the Iraq war came from the belief that war builds character by subjecting the pampered citizens of the modern state to a beneficial dose of suffering in the service of a great cause. The most famous American exponent of this view was Teddy Roosevelt, who believed in "muscular Christianity" and manly self-sacrifice, and who advocated militaristic imperialism as a kind of bloody outdoor adventure program, for a nation he feared was becoming soft and decadent. For anyone who considers this view both absurd and dangerous, Republican presidential candidate John McCain's evident affection for it is a cause for great concern.... There can be no better reason to vote against him.

Iraq: Five lies of the Left

Lies are told so frequently in today's media/Internet-driven politics that they take on a reality of their own. In the Iraq war, it is impossible not to hear on a daily basis some variation of either "Bush lied" or "it has become a civil war" or "the surge has failed". These falsehoods are stated so routinely by the Left (and covered so dutifully by the media) that they have taken on a certain credibility. Unfortunately, this has been particularly true in the absence of the Bush Administration actively defending its own record on Iraq. Without a compelling counter-argument, lies can become the truths upon which people think, live and -- importantly -- act. I was reminded of this again yesterday as General David Patraeus again took on the Senate Democrats, including Hillary "willing suspension of disbelief" Clinton. Once again, in the face of facts of an improved situation on the ground in Iraq, the Democrats relied on lies and half-truths to discredit both Patraeus and the progress we have made there. It was yet another shameful performance from the liberals in Congress.

In any event, it is time -- once and for all -- to put to rest some of the biggest lies that the Left tells about Iraq:

1) Bush lied us into war. This is the most common lie perpetrated by the opponents of the war. There are reams of evidence -- including a number of bi-partisan reports -- that flatly contradict the assertion that the Bush Administration knowingly fabricated the case on WMD and Iraq in order to justify an invasion. In fact, all of the world's major intelligence agencies -- including those of countries against the war (Germany and France, for example) -- had evidence that showed that Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons and was prepared to use them. This is irrefutable. Even the U.N. inspector, Hans Blix, who argued for more time for inspections, said that there were large stockpiles of WMD that remained unaccounted for. In the absence of evidence that Saddam Hussein had destroyed these weapons, it was logical to conclude that he retained a significant WMD capability. The United States went before the UN to enforce resolutions on Iraqi disarmament that had been passed in the wake of this evidence. It was not a U.S. intelligence fabrication. Bush didn't lie us into war -- we went to war because the U.S. believed that Iraq posed a real and present threat to our national security.

2) There was no Iraq-Al Qaeda connection. According to the federally-funded Institute for Defense Analyses, a review of over 600,000 captured Iraqi documents shows a clear link between the regime of Saddam Hussein and Islamic terror groups, including Al Qaeda. The report cites, for example, that "Saddam supported groups that either associated directly with Al Qaeda (such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, led at one time by Osama Bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri) or that generally shared Al Qaeda's stated goals and objectives." In fact, the report identifies myriad links between Saddam and global terrorism:

"The rise of Islamist fundamentalism in the region gave Saddam the opportunity to make terrorism...not only cost-effective but a formal instrument of state power. Saddam nurtured the capability with an infrastructure supporting (1) his own particular brand of state terrorism against internal and external threats, (2) the state sponsorship of suicide operations, and (3) organizational relationships and "out reach" programs for terrorist groups. Evidence that was uncovered and analyzed attests to the existence of terrorist capability and a willingness to use it until the day Saddam was forced to flee Baghdad by Coalition forces."

3) The Iraq war has not made us safer here at home. This is a lie that defies the obvious fact that we have not been attacked in the United States since 9/11/2001. While the war in Iraq has not been the only reason for this, it has contributed greatly by diverting substantial Al Qaeda resources to the battle against U.S. combat forces in Iraq. Al Qaeda's own leadership has confirmed the vital importance of the battle for Iraq. Iraq (and Afghanistan) is the primary battleground in the war on terror -- and the fact that we have Al Qaeda in our sights there (and on the run) has protected us from further attack here at home.

4) Withdrawing our troops immediately is in our national interest. Nothing could be further from the truth. The premature withdrawal of U.S. forces will leave a failed state in Iraq. It will result both in a humanitarian disaster and will create a vacuum into which Iran and Syria will flow. It will also dramatically embolden our enemies and give Al Qaeda a triumphant victory in their war to destroy the western world. The stakes couldn't be higher -- and our immediate withdrawal will signal that we don't have the stomach to win this very important battle against Islamic extremism.

5) If we leave Iraq, Islamic extremists will leave us alone. This is the kind of idealism that Neville Chamberlain would be proud of. It is also a lie that contradicts the clear statements of both Al Qaeda and related Islamic terrorist groups that are devoted not to a change in American foreign policy, but rather to our total and complete destruction. These groups seek a return to the Dark Ages and the creation of a caliphate that follows strict Islamic law. They've declared war on the United States, Europe and the West -- and our withdrawal from Iraq not only does not change this, but will provide our enemy with an important victory.

If we are going to succeed in this struggle against Islamic fascism it is critical that we not distort either our progress in Iraq or the stakes involved. The lies that are told on the Left are far more pernicious than any supposed lies told before the war began. It is high time that we set the record straight.