Live-blogging the second Obama vs. McCain presidential debate

Get ready! I'll be live-blogging tonight's debate in this post, so keep reloading for live updates.

UPDATE: The debate:

The New York Times not only has the full video, but also lets you search for any phrase, see a graph of when the phrase was said (and by whom), and jump right to that phrase in the video.

UPDATE: The debate in 10 minutes:

My pre-debate analysis.

Other live-bloggers (greyed-out links are obsolete):

• Althouse
  
• The Stump (The New Republic)
  
• The Corner (National Review)
  
• ThinkProgress (by Matthew Yglesias and others)
  
• Talking Points Memo
  
• Ambinder
  

9:02 - Starting!

9:06 - McCain walks over to the man who asked the first question and gets surprisingly close to him. He's pacing and self-consciously shifting his body position as mediocre actors often do.

9:10 - I can't remember seeing another debate with such an awkward note-taking set-up. I feel sorry for McCain having to reach over to that tiny table next to him.

9:11 - Yikes, McCain walks over to Obama and stands right in front of him while giving his answer.

9:15 - Obama gives a much more thorough answer to the man who asks how the bailout is going to help him.

9:16 - Strong moment from Obama: Brokaw asks, "Are you saying the economy is going to have to get worse before it gets better?" Obama: "No. I am confident about the economy."

(Disclaimer: since I'm doing this on the fly, the quotations in this post aren't necessarily verbatim, but I'm trying.)

9:19 - Obama grants an audience member's premise that both parties share the responsibility for the financial crisis.

9:20 - Obama: "I'm proposing more spending cuts than spending."

9:22 - McCain, showing his nervousness: "I have voted against excessive spending and outrageous." Outrageous what?

9:24 - McCain name-drops my old Senator (from when I lived in Wisconsin), Russ Feingold -- the actual "most liberal Senator" (besides Bernie Sanders).

9:25 - Josh Marshall asks: "Can't we have the angry McCain?"

9:27 - Obama will eliminate everything that doesn't work and make sure that everything that does work works even better. Sounds great!!

9:29 - McCain is really going after the anti-overhead-projector vote.

9:30 - I'll give McCain credit: he's probably giving the most impassioned, empathetic performance he has in him.

9:30 - Cringe-inducing word choice from Obama: "A lot of you remember the tragedy of 9/11..." He can safely assume we all remember.

9:34 - I think the town-hall format is flattering to both of them. Obama can be underwhelming in the conventional debates because he's soft-spoken (completely different from his speeches), so the more intimate, informal setting puts him in a better light. And everyone knows McCain loves town halls. Since the race is a zero-sum game, anything that "helps" both of them actually helps Obama and hurts McCain.

9:37 - Brokaw inappropriately refuses to let Obama rebut McCain's allegation about Obama's tax policy.

9:39 - Jon Cohn (not to be confused with me) says that CNN's instant graph of voter reactions to the debates seems to show that McCain's attack on Obama for excessive spending -- McCain's signature domestic issue -- got no response.

9:44 - We already heard from both candidates on nuclear power at the first debate, but McCain apparently thinks we need to hear more. At the first debate, Obama clearly said he's never been against nuclear power. (And he just said it again in this one.) So McCain knows he can't get away with outright saying Obama's against it. But he takes a more nuanced and sarcastic approach: "Senator Obama says he's for nuclear power but it has to be 'safe' ... or something like that..."

9:55 - Tom Brokaw asks: "Is health care in America a privilege, a right, or a responsibility?" Are single-word multiple-choice answers in a presidential debate simplistic, patronizing, or ridiculous?

10:01 - Obama reprises McCain's attack on him from the first presidential debate: "There are some things I don't understand..." [UPDATE: A theory.]

10:06 - Mickey Kaus says:

McCain rails against Obama's "$860 billion" in proposed "new spending," yet he just said he wants the government to buy up all the bad mortgages in the country, give all homeowners new purchase prices and protect them from their ill-advised decisions? Sounds expensive.

[UPDATE: McCain changed that proposal within 48 hours after the debate.] 

10:10 - A woman in the audience essentially asks both of them whether they agree with Obama's famous comment that he would order unilateral strikes against al Qaeda in Pakistan if necessary, which would seem to put McCain in an awkward position: either he doesn't answer her question, or he contradicts himself. He doesn't answer the question. Predictably, he takes the opportunity to falsely claim that Obama is in favor of "attacking Pakistan," which prompts a huge grin from Obama.

10:14 - Obama: "McCain wants you to think I'm green behind the ears ... he's somber and responsible ..." McCain: "Thank you very much!"

10:15 - McCain's defense of singing about bombing Iran: "I was joking with a veteran." That's why it helps to understand how the internet works -- if you're a presidential candidate, you are never just talking to someone; you're talking to America. And if you say things like that, you'll be talking to the world, because people around the world are going to see it. And they're going to draw their own conclusions without getting the benefit of McCain explaining it away with "context."

10:21 - Good point over at TNR:

McCain vows that he'll get bin Laden because "I know how to get him." If that's really the case, maybe he could just tell Bush when he gets home tonight? That would save some time.

10:24 - Brokaw: "Is Russia today an evil empire?" McCain: "Maybe!"

10:26 - All of the first 3 debates have included the phrase "stinking corpse."

10:27 - Obama needs to be coached to stop beginning so many of his answers with dead air while he thinks of what to say: "Uhhh ... ehhh ..."

10:29 - The last question "has a certain Zen-like quality, I'll give you fair warning. 'What don't you know, and how will you learn it?'" Obama: "Here is what I do know..." He's pulling Sarah Palin's trick from the VP debate: "What's your greatest weakness?" "Well, let me tell you about how experienced I am!"

10:34: Worst breaking-the-fourth-wall moment: Brokaw to Obama and McCain: Hey, you're blocking my teleprompter!

10:35 - It's over. In my pre-debate blogging earlier tonight, I wrote:

I assume McCain is going to flail away, trying to throw a bunch of guilt-by-association slime over Obama in a desperate attempt to avert electoral disaster.

I'm glad to know I was wrong.

Getting ready for the second Obama vs. McCain presidential debate

As I've done with the previous two debates, I'm planning on live-blogging tonight. Keep reloading this page for more updates.

---> UPDATE: Go to this post for the live-blogging.

I assume McCain is going to flail away, trying to throw a bunch of guilt-by-association slime over Obama in a desperate attempt to avert electoral disaster.

And I assume Obama is going to make sure to pointedly say: "He wants to slash Medicare."

Pre-debate analysis from others:

McCain's two narrow options tonight.

McCain's two challenges tonight:

[1.] Town halls invite civility. That's one of the reasons McCain proposed doing a series of town halls with Obama over the summer and fall. It was, his advisers know, his hope of conducting a different kind of campaign, one in which the two nominees might even share a meal after their joint performances. ... The irony now is that, when McCain finally gets Obama on the stage for a town hall style debate, the pressure on him is to discard his traditional instincts and go after his opponent. ...

[2.] The other challenge for McCain is finding ways to raise the questions he wants to raise about Obama during a debate in which the all-enveloping economic crisis demands serious attention and discussion by the candidates. Obama mocked McCain's campaign advisers on Monday for suggesting they wanted to turn the page on the economic crisis and move to character issues.

And watch out for that ponytail guy!

Here's a very useful device if you want to know which buzzwords the candidates use most often in the debates, and jump into the middle of the debate right when one of those buzzwords is being uttered: MSNBC's video player lets you do just that. You can do this with the two debates that have already happened (that link goes to the most recent debate -- there are links at the top to switch to a different debate). I assume they'll have tonight's debate posted later on, though presumably not live.

National Review's Andrew McCarthy is nervous about tonight:

This is McCain's shot — maybe his last one — to make his case to the country, not just look good to the immediate audience. He's got to speak above that audience to everyone who may be listening. If he doesn't get it done, the next debate might not matter. He's gotta understand: this could be it.

See the world: maps distorted to show information about countries

Worldmapper.org has hundreds of cartograms -- that is, maps with the countries' sizes distorted to illustrate information. (Via Metafilter.)

Below are a few of the more striking examples. (These are based on 2002 data unless stated otherwise.)

If there's a cartogram that particularly interests you, I recommend clicking on the graphic to go to the worldmapper.org page where I got it from -- each of those pages includes extremely accessible and informative blocks of text to clarify the information, plus links to the raw data.

First, the conventional map based on actual land area:

Now, distorted based on population:

(Note that many of the maps are basically about population, so you should compare those relative to the population map, not the conventional map. For instance, since India, with over a billion people, is huge in the population map, India tends to stick out in most of these maps.)

Projected population in the year 2300:

Population in the year 1500 (total world population: 438 million):

Scientific research (based on the percentage of scientific papers worldwide that were published in that country in 2001):

Patents (based on the percentage of all 312,000 patents granted annually in the world that were granted in that country):

Christians (based on the percentage of Christians living in that country) (click here for cartograms for individual denominations):

Muslims (based on percentage in that country):

Jews (based on percentage in that country):

Buddhists, Hindus, Jains, and Sikhs combined (based on percentage in that country) (click here for individual cartograms for each religion):

Atheists and agnostics combined (based on percentage in that country) (click here for individual cartograms for each group):

Alcohol and cigarette exports:

Alcohol and cigarette imports (click here and here for more imports and exports):

Carbon emissions in 2000:

1-to-4-year-old mortality (based on the the proportion of worldwide deaths of children aged 1-4 that occurred in that country):

Reductions in 1-to-4-year-old mortality over 32 years ("The map shows children aged 1 to 4 who did not die in 2002, where their counterparts in 1970 did."):

Landmine casualties (based on the percentage of all 7,000 landmine casualties in the world from 2003 to 2005 that occurred in that country):

Post-WWII deaths in war (1945 to 2000):

Murders ("sized in proportion to the absolute number of people who died from violence in one year"):

HIV/AIDS deaths (based on the percentage of the world's 2.9 million HIV/AIDS deaths occurring in that country in one year):

Malaria deaths (based on the percentage of the world's million-or-so malaria deaths occurring in that country in one year):

Poverty (based on the percentage of poor people worldwide who live in that country) (see the links near the bottom of this page if you want to know how they calculate poverty):

Government contribution to international food aid (based on the percentage each country's government contributed to worldwide aid in 2005):

Again, there are hundreds more at this worldmapper.org webpage.

Older albums I've been listening to, part 2 -- weird music edition

Continuing from last Music Friday, here are some more oldie-but-goodie albums I've acquired recently:

John McLaughlin -- My Goal's Beyond -- He's a hugely revered jazz guitarist whose music I haven't paid much attention to because it's always seemed like outdated, pompous "fusion" to me. But I just got this 1970 album, and it's fantastic. Unusual combination of acoustic jazz guitar and Indian music.

Stereolab -- Emperor Tomato Ketchup -- They were always one of those bands that I sort of wanted to like but never really got into. So I recently broke down and got this album. If you don't have any of their stuff, consider picking this up -- it seems like the only Stereolab album you'd ever need. You've gotta respect a band that's a whole genre unto itself:



Sonic Youth -- Dirty (deluxe edition) -- This is a reissue of what may be the greatest album from one of the most important bands of the last 20 years. You get the original album + B-sides + instrumental rehearsal tracks (this is more than double the length of the original release). I mostly got it for the instrumental tracks, since I've always been more interested in what Sonic Youth does with their instruments than the actual songs. It's hard for me to imagine a more primal expression of what-made-alternative-rock-great than Dirty Sonic Youth jams.

Television -- Marquee Moon -- It took me a long time to get around to giving these guys a fair hearing, but they're mandatory listening for anyone who has any interest in anything that could remotely be described as "indie" or "alternative" or anything like that. It's hard to imagine Of Montreal without this band. I give them a lot of credit for planting the seeds of rock music as we know it today, back in that seminal year of 1977.

Talking Heads -- The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads -- Absolutely essential live album by what must have been a great live band. Rock bands today are still making music in the spirit of Talking Heads: Of Montreal, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Architecture in Helsinki, Yeasayer, Hot Chip, and so many more. But they don't do it quite like this anymore:

Live-blogging the vice-presidential debate - Sarah Palin vs. Joe Biden

Click here to jump down to the live-blogging.

UPDATE: The debate:



UPDATE: The debate in 10 minutes (thanks to TalkingPointsMemo):




Other live-bloggers

• Althouse
  
  
• Talking Points Memo + cont'd
  
  
• The Corner (National Review)
  
  
• The Plank + The Stump (The New Republic)
  
  
• Wilkinson

Pre-debate points

1. I'm expecting a comeback. The expectations are so abysmally low for Palin that it's hard to imagine she won't impress.


2. What should you eat during the debate? Here are some suggestions.

My favorites (I usually go out of my way not to promote meat on the blog, but these are too good not to use):

• Lipstick (Ketchup) on a Pig in a Blanket
  
  
• Sloppy Joe
  
  
• Put some white Russians on the other side of a window. Close enough to see but not close enough to know anything about how they actually taste.
  

3. This debate is taking place in the shadow of seriously bad news for the McCain campaign today.

In addition to the McCain campaign's general doldrums and the various Palin embarrassments, the state of the race changed today -- Politico reports:

John McCain is pulling out of Michigan, according to two Republicans, a stunning move a month away from Election Day that indicates the difficulty Republicans are having in finding blue states to put in play.

McCain will go off TV in Michigan, stop dropping mail there and send most of his staff to more competitive states...

A McCain aide confirmed the move and chalked it up to the state's Democratic tilt and the resources Obama had put in place there.

Now, you might say: "He's just moving his resources from one state to other states, so couldn't that be a wash?"

Well, no. Michigan is special. According to fivethirtyeight.com, which specializes in crunching the poll data and predicting elections, there's almost no chance (less than 10%) that either candidate could lose Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan but win the election.

And where is he increasing his resources? The above-linked article mentions a few states, but this seems especially significant:

[T]he McCain campaign also announced yesterday that he's adding a dozen new offices in Virginia, where Obama has gained in recent days. If nothing else, Obama is forcing McCain to spend more money in a state that hasn't voted for a Dem for president for 44 years -- LBJ in 1964.

Big things happening.

I emailed A____, who lives in Michigan, about this development, and he emailed back this dispatch:

it's actually pretty shocking now that i think about it. we've been absolutely bombarded with McCain stuff even before Hillary conceded. my sense is that the poll numbers probably paired poorly with what have been absolutely MASSIVE voter registration drives in A2 [Ann Arbor] and Detroit...you literally cannot walk more than two blocks here without running into someone with a clipboard.

4. As far as the speculation about whether Joe Biden will be sufficiently "respectful" in how he interacts with Sarah Palin, I don't have much to add to what Tena Hollingsworth, had to say in the Talking Points Memo comments section today (in response to this report about how they're prepping Biden):

This coaching of Biden cause she's woman?

Sexist.

Just treat her like anyone else- that was the point that we women fought for.

This is so stupid.

Schrodingers Cat responds:

Couldn't agree more. Any woman who would stand back and say "Biden is picking on Palin" is an idiot. Did you hear anyone say "Biden was picking on Giuliani" after his famous quip?

If women expect to be treated equally in this society then we need to get over the victim-thing. Women shouldn't demand to play this game and then be expected to be treated differently. If you're a woman and you ... attack your opponent, you should expect the same in return.

Tena responds:

I'm so glad you agree. Frankly this ticks me off because I see it as a full on set back for women. Thank you Sarah for making us look different and stupid and in need of help from men.

I'm thrilled about it.

9:02 - Starting!

9:03 - They both tell each other, "Nice to meet you." I guess they'd never met.

9:05 - Biden is kind of hanging his head, and he's not making good eye contact. And like Obama in the first debate, he's talking a bit too fast. Nervous. 

9:06 - One of the first words out of Palin's mouth is "barometer," and she uses it a couple times in her first answer. Probably a poor choice of words, not based on meaning but just sound -- Barack Obameter!

9:09 - If this is about eye contact, Palin is winning.

9:09 - Both of them have sent the message loud and clear in the first 10 minutes: they really respect each other.

9:10 - Palinism: Darn right it was the predator lenders!

9:10 - Palin could hardly be coming across as more poised and confident so far.

9:13 - Again: Darn right we need tax relief!

9:13 - Even as an Obama supporter and no fan of Palin, I'm finding it hard not to root for her after everything she's been through in the last few weeks.

9:14 - Biden accuses Palin of using "a bogus standard" for gauging tax cuts, and says quite firmly that she was wrong in her previous answer. Glad to see that he's not afraid to debate her the way he would any other candidate. [As another example, a few minutes later he begins a rebuttal to Palin, "I don't know where to start!"]

9:15 - Palin: "I may not answer the questions the way you or the moderator want to hear..." Take that, Gwen Ifill!

(Note that I'm just writing down quotes as I go along, so the quotes in this post aren't necessarily accurate.)

9:20 - Biden clearly noticed that even though McCain doesn't usually give policy specifics, you can find them out on his website!

9:21 - Ifill notes that neither Obama nor McCain "quite answered" Jim Lehrer's question last week about what they'll have to change about their proposed policies in light of the financial crisis.

9:23 - Palin: One nice thing about running with McCain is that he doesn't tell one thing to one group and then another thing to another group. Oh, really?

9:27 - Palin is against corruption and greed on Wall Street.

9:33 - Apparently, each debate has one incongruous sexual word to jolt you to attention. In the first presidential debate: "orgy." In this debate: "raping."

9:34 - Needless to say, Palin is happy to be talking about energy.

9:35 - "Senator O'Biden!"

9:37 - Biden says -- correctly -- that the Constitution requires treating opposite-sex couples the same as same-sex couples.

9:38 - Palin is conspicuously brief in noting that she doesn't want to overly expand the definition of marriage, not even specifying what would be going too far. But she says no one would even propose limiting hospital visitation or any other such rights. Huh? I'm not sure how this isn't a bald-faced lie.

9:40 - Biden responding to Palin's answer on Iraq: "With all due respect, I didn't hear a plan."

9:42 - Unfortunate phrasing from Biden: "The only odd man out on Iraq is John McCain." (Are there any odd women out? Like, maybe...the one who's standing...right across from you...)

9:44 - Biden laughs warmly at Palin's remark that Biden once said he'd be happy to run against or with McCain.

9:44 - "John McCain voted to cut off funding for the troops. Let me say that again..." And you know he will.

9:47 - Palin says "nucular." If that's her worst gaffe tonight, it's a small miracle.

9:50 - Biden: "That's just simply not true about Barack Obama. He did not say he'd sit down and meet with Ahmadinejad..." Again, Biden is giving his normal debate performance and not holding back from criticizing Palin. Good for him.

9:52 - Palin is against a second Holocaust.

9:52 - Palin gives an extra ounce of pizzazz: "Build that embassy in Jerusalem!"

9:55 - Palin is glad to agree with Biden on Israel. Should Obama run an attack ad based on this admission?

9:55 - Biden, stop the sighin'!

9:58 - My mom was probably right when she said, about half an hour ago:

I'll bet a lot of people are tuning out about now, satisfied that Palin is competent and smart, but pretty bored.

10:03 - Someone should have coached Biden that when he mentions his work with Dick Lugar, it's not too effective to just say he "worked with Dick Lugar!" Many Americans are not a walking "Who's Who" of Republican members of Congress.

10:04 - Palin: "Oh, man, it's so obvious that I'm a Washington outsider and just not used to the way you guys operate!" And then, Biden pats down his brow. On sheer theatrics, Palin definitely won that moment.

10:07 - Palin tells us that tomorrow we'll find out which of them was right about Biden's position on Iraq because the "pundits" will tell us! So I guess she trusts the media elites on some things.

10:08 - Responding to Ifill's question about the possibility of Obama dying in office, Biden avoids becoming the next Michael Dukakis.

10:10 - Palin on her differences with McCain: "Whatdaya expect -- we're a team of mavericks! ... I'm gonna keep pushing him on ANWR." This is after she repeatedly raked Biden over the coals for arguable differences Biden has had with Obama. So I guess it's OK if the running mate and nominee disagree, as long as they ... what? Do it with a certain "can-do" attitude?

10:12 - "Oh, there you go, Joe ... now doggone it! ... I know your wife is a schoolteacher -- now God bless her, her reward is in Heaven!" Palin is going into Palin-overdrive!

10:18 - Palin apparently missed the fact that Ifill was asking her not whether her experience is valuable, but what her "real Achilles' heel" is.

10:19 - Palin used to not have health insurance, so she knows what that's like. Well, that's the problem with the excessive focus in this race on empathy. Anyone can have it. It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with your policies.

10:21 - Biden starts to choke up talking about how even though he's a man, he knows what it's like to raise kids on his own (which he did after his first wife died). [Added: Video -- near the end of this short clip.]

10:23 - Biden on McCain: "I love him!" The McCain attack ad practically writes itself!

10:24 - Biden on McCain: "Maverick he is not." Syntax Biden has.

10:30 - Palin gently alludes to the enormous disparity between her performance in interviews and in this very debate: "I like being able to talk directly to the American people, without the filter of the media telling people what they're about to hear."

10:33 - Biden ends on a chilling note, referring to the fact that both he and Palin have sons who are being deployed to Iraq: "For both of us, selfishly, may God protect our troops."

10:34 - Palin to Ifill right after the debate: "'Preciate that! That was very helpful!"

10:34 - OK, so she's not that bad...

Sarah Palin — engaged in world affairs, just doesn't want to leave anybody out

A new snippet from Katie Couric's interview with Sarah Palin just came out, and it should resolve any question about whether Palin has had a long-standing interest in the issues facing our country and our world (scroll down for the transcript):



Transcript:

Katie Couric: And when it comes to establishing your worldview, I was curious: what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this to stay informed and to understand the world?

Sarah Palin: I've read most of them, again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media.

KC: But, like, what ones specifically? I'm curious.

SP: All of 'em, any of 'em that have been in front of me over all these years.

KC: Can you name a few?

SP: I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news too. Alaska isn't a foreign country, where, it's kind of suggested and it seems like, "Wow, how could you keep in touch with what the rest of Washington, D.C. may be thinking and doing when you live up there in Alaska?" Believe me, Alaska is like a microcosm of America.

Michael Crowley reacts:

"All of them"? Not just Commentary but Dissent, too? Impressive!

(And have you heard that they've merged to form Dysentery?)

Well, I don't know if she's been reading those, but I have a feeling she's a fan of Seinfeld -- particularly the episode called "The Red Dot," where George is sucking up to Elaine's boss, Mr. Lippman, to try to get a job:

MR. LIPPMAN: So, have you ever done this kind of work before?

GEORGE: Well, you know, book reports — that kind of stuff.

MR. LIPPMAN: Who do you read?

GEORGE: I like Mike Lupica.

MR. LIPPMAN: Mike Lupica?

GEORGE: He's a sports writer for the Daily News. I find him very insightful...

MR. LIPPMAN: No, no, no — I mean authors.

GEORGE: Oh! Lot of good ones ... lot of ... good ones. I don't even want to mention anyone because I'm afraid I'm going to leave somebody out.

MR. LIPPMAN: Name a couple.

GEORGE: Who do I like? ... I like ... uh ... Art ... Vandelay.

MR. LIPPMAN: Art Vandelay?

GEORGE: He's an obscure writer. Beatnik, from the Village.

MR. LIPPMAN: What has he written?

GEORGE: Venetian Blinds.

UPDATE: Palin was asked the same question in an interview today (Oct. 3). Now that she's had weeks to think about it, she has some specifics. See the last minute of this YouTube clip.

Anti-vegetarian argument #1: "Aren't you morally condemning most people?"

Megan McArdle says she's morally compelled to be a vegan, but she's uncomfortable with the implication that she's morally condemning people who aren't vegans.

How do vegans or vegetarians resolve this dilemma (if it is a dilemma)?

On the one hand, she says:

Like most vegetarians, I suspect that my angriest critics are those who, like me, feel that eating meat is wrong--and therefore want me to do it too, so that they don't have to think about their own choices. Well, apologies, but I think that I have a moral obligation to be a vegan.

But on the other hand:

Obviously, having decided that it's morally wrong to eat animal products, I can't exactly say that I think it's perfectly okay for other people to do so. On the other hand, I recognize that the universe is a complicated place, and my moral judgements are imperfect.

Or maybe a better way to say it is that there are moral judgements, and then there are moral judgements. I wish more people would stop eating meat, but I also think it is possible to be a perfectly good, moral human being and still eat meat, in a way that I don't think it is possible to be a good moral human being and still rape twelve-year olds. I have judged the behavior and found it wanting, but I do not judge, in any way, the people who indulge in it. I think there's something wrong with eating meat, but I don't think there's anything wrong with meat-eaters.

(By the way, she says she wouldn't raise her kids vegan, because she doesn't think that's healthy. But she would consider raising them vegetarian. And she obviously thinks it's healthy for an adult to be a vegan.)

I admire her attempt to resolve this issue through some kind of middle way. And she seems close to the right answer with her distinction between "the behavior" and "the people who indulge in it." But that still strikes me as too facile, because it begs the question: "Well ... why not judge the people who indulge in it?"

I think McArdle is making two key mistakes:

1. Even though she's trying to point out a grey area, it's just not enough of a grey area! I can't imagine that meat-eaters will be thrilled to learn that they aren't as bad as child rapists. She's still implying that she draws a big dividing line of moral judgment, with herself on the good side of the line, and meat-eaters on the other side. Now, she does explicitly contradict this. But I don't see her resolving the contradiction -- it just hangs there.

2. She's focusing on the negative. The whole theme of her post is moral condemnation: should we judge such-and-such people as immoral, or not?

Here's what I propose instead:

1. Don't compare one group of people vs. another group; compare how someone stands if they take one path vs. how that same person stands if they take another path.

And this is key: remember that there are millions of moral decisions any given person faces.

Whether to eat meat is a moral decision. You don't get to just walk away from it -- unless it's truly impossible for you to live a healthy vegetarian lifestyle, which is doubtful. But it's just one of many. There are lots of personal decisions that might matter more. There are social or political movements you might be involved with. And on and on and on. The world is complicated, and there are too many moral issues out there to divide people into good vs. bad based on one issue.

All I know is that I'm a better person than I would have been if I'd been eating meat for the past 17 years. But this in no way implies that I'm a better person than any particular other person who eats meat. After all, they might have their own cause that's dear to their heart that I haven't been active in doing much about.

I mean, if you have a friend who contributes a lot of time and money to fighting malaria, would you even think of saying, "Hey, you can't think it's a good thing for you to be doing that, because I've barely lifted a finger to do anything about malaria, and it would be highly presumptuous of you to think that you're better than me!"?

Of course not. You would just say, "Well, that's great. Good for you." In other words, you would stay POSITIVE! And that would be the end of it. No one's condemning anyone. And that leads to my second point...

2. Being a vegetarian/vegan is contributing to a good cause.

We need to put aside any notions of "Meat is murder!" (Whether such extreme views are nearly as common among vegetarians as they're often portrayed is another question.) The fact is, in our society, eating meat is the default, the baseline, the path of least resistance.

If you're utterly unconvinced by the arguments for being a vegetarian, then fine -- there's nothing more to the analysis. For you, that "baseline" is all there is.

If, on the other hand, you're (at least somewhat) convinced, then it's up to you to judge for yourself what's worth doing to go above that default baseline.

Maybe you'll be a vegetarian (like me) or a vegan (like McArdle). Or you might be a "flexitarian" instead. (Michael Pollan, the author of the popular book In Defense of Food, has endorsed this idea. See item "6" under page 11 in this article.)

Given how strong the message is in American society that eating inordinate quantities of meat is the norm, I consider any effort at cutting down on meat consumption -- even if it's not totally eliminated from your diet -- to be a contribution to a good cause.

It just so happens that I've "cut down" by 100% (just for meat -- there are plenty of other areas where I'm far from pure). If I could (somehow) convince two people each to cut down by 50%, I'd consider that to be exactly equivalent to convincing one person to do what I've done. I don't care about any given person's moral purity; I care only about the actual consequences for the world as a whole.

But now here's the meta point: who cares what I think? Who cares what Megan McArdle thinks? We're just random bloggers. We don't have any authority over how you live your life. So even if we're judging you, why does this matter?

Maybe you're thinking, "Well, you two specifically don't matter a whole lot, but you represent what most vegetarians do, and that certainly matters, doesn't it?" Well, no, I don't think it does. If I don't have any authority over you, then neither does the aggregate of all vegetarians in the world.

You might also be surprised by how little they're even thinking about you at all. Meat-eaters sometimes seem to forget that vegetarians live in the real world, where 90-something % of people eat meat on a regular basis. It's just not remarkable in the slightest to see someone eating meat. Based on everything I've ever experienced in real life, the image of vegetarians who are easily shocked or offended at meat, or who go around condemning people they see eating meat, is a myth.

But let's suppose, just for the sake of argument, that they are condemning you.

Well, they haven't really perceived you. I don't have the information I would need to judge you even if I wanted to. You're the only one who's seen how you've lived throughout your whole life. So the only person who can fairly judge your moral character is you.

The problem with incentives under capitalism

First of all: 100th post!

OK . . . I don't know much about economics, but it's important to me to have some strong opinions about it anyway. If I have a strong opinion about something, that gives me a good feeling that I have some minimal understanding of it (which is open to question when it comes to me and economics).

[UPDATE: That paragraph elicited an unexpectedly strong reaction from LemmusLemmus over at Church of Rationality:

I say hats off for writing that. I'm pretty sure that 99% of humans, including myself, are like that, but no one ever admits it.]

So hearing this brief comment by Mickey Kaus in the latest "Bob & Mickey" Bloggingheads diavlog was a minor revelation for me. It could certainly provide the impetus for one to shift significantly leftward in one's economic views. The point seems so obvious that he couldn't have been the first to come up with it, but it hadn't occurred to me before.



I'm going to try to notice more instances of this, not just about bankruptcy. It obviously has huge implications for the controversy over the United States government's bailout of Wall Street in the current financial crisis, which is the context in which Kaus brought it up.

Someone should write a whole article based on this insight. Not me! To steal an old running feature that a blogger used to have, I should start "Jalcoh's assignment desk." I assign this to . . . Mickey Kaus! (By the way, the first paragraph in the blog post I just linked to was pretty prescient about terrorism.)

"Why is he waving a stuffed moose?"
No, it has nothing to do with Sarah Palin.

Live-blogging the first Obama vs. McCain presidential debate

Other live-bloggers: 

• Althouse
• Think Progress (including Matthew Yglesias)
• Instapundit
• Talking Points Memo (continued here)
• Tigerhawk

9:01 - Starting . . .

9:18 - The first interesting thing I've heard: McCain responds to the argument that earmarks are a tiny percentage of the budget, so why does he make it the center of his economic plan? He gives two reasons: it's grown at a very fast rate (of course, it's grown from really tiny to somewhat less tiny), and it's "corrupt." Typically, McCain substitutes moralism for facts.

9:27 - Obama says we won't get done everything that "needs" to be done, but we'll get done everything that "has" to be done. That's a pretty fine distinction!

9:29 - I agree with National Review's Rich Lowry: "Obama is talking too fast."

9:31 - Lehrer asks a key question: are you changing anything about your previous plans based on the financial crisis? Clearly they should both have prepared a strong answer to this, right? Yet neither one seems to have anything to say.

9:34 - Obama gives it another shot. He clearly acknowledges he might have to put some of his proposals on hold, but he won't give specifics. Neither of them seems to have rethought any of their ideas on a qualitative level, as opposed to just accepting that there might be fewer funds available to do what they already wanted to do. McCain's whole answer is that he would be against "wasteful spending" -- which, of course, is no change at all to his earlier economic "plan."

9:44 - Key line from Obama: "You act like the war began in 2007."

9:46 - Good catch from TNR: Obama used the word "orgy."

9:48 - A pithy reality check on McCain and health care.

9:55 - McCain says, "I would not publicly state that I'm going to attack [Pakistan]." But doesn't that very statement imply that he would privately plan to attack Pakistan? (Or, rather, strike inside Pakistan, since that's all they're really talking about.) Now that he's publicly made that implication, hasn't he sort of . . . publicly stated that he might strike inside Pakistan?

9:57 - McCain: "I don't think Obama understands that there was a failed state in Pakistan when Musharraf came into power." I don't think McCain understands what Obama understands.

10:00 - "I've got a bracelet." "I've got a bracelet too!" Are these serious adults running for president, or is this summer camp?

10:04 - Subtly insightful advice for Obama:

Obama would do well not to say things like "al Qaeda are attacking our troops in a brazen fashion, they feel emboldened." It's academic language to describe something he should be passionate and visceral about. It reminds me of John Kerry.

10:08 - One of the things you want to watch for in these debates is if a candidate has a tell-tale facial expression or gesture. McCain trying to pronounce "Ahmadinejad" might have been one such moment. For a split-second, he seemed crazed. [UPDATE: Here's the clip.]

10:13 - A creepy statistic from McCain: "The average South Korean is three inches taller than the average North Korean." And this comes shortly after McCain quotes Ahmadinejad calling Israel a "stinking corpse." He's apparently working on a strategy of revolting bodily imagery. I can't quite explain it, but there's something fundamentally McCain-esque about this.

10:19 - McCain's staff clearly told him in the prep sessions, "Keep repeating, 'Obama doesn't understand . . . doesn't understand . . . doesn't understand...'"

10:23 - Obama: "We have only 3% of the world's oil reserves, but we consume 25% of the world's oil," so we can't just drill our way out of the problem. Maybe Obama was reading my "How Obama lost me" list, particularly point (6)(a).

10:34 - McCain says Obama's refusal to admit he was wrong on the surge is a problem because "we need more flexibility in a president." Hmmm...

10:36 - Good for Obama for getting explicit about his exotic family background and name, and connecting it to patriotism.

10:37 - It's over. They casually shake hands — "Good job, John!" "Good job!" It's impossible to know, of course, but I'll bet they basically like and respect each other. They have to grasp at straws for attacks they can use against each other because it's their job, but it's hard to take any of it very seriously. For all Hillary Clinton's warnings about how she was just giving us a taste of what the Republicans would use against the Democratic nominee, her attacks had real bite to them in a way that's lacking here. There was plenty of negativity tonight, but doesn't it feel kind of rehashed and watered down? Does anyone really believe that either of these two guys still feels passionately about how to parse Obama's comments from last year about meeting with dictators?

Afterthought — It's hard to imagine this debate swaying a significant number of voters based on people thinking that one candidate did better than the other, though I can imagine it swaying people toward Obama if they simply weren't familiar with him before and had to get more comfortable with him. Earlier today I was listening to the Beatles song "Wait" (from Rubber Soul), which made me remember a critic's very apt comment (paraphrasing): "It has a hypothetical, unfinished quality that makes it hard to feel strongly about." That's how I feel about this debate. It's sort of like: "here are some things they might say if they had a debate." More like a rehearsal than the real thing. They both did as well as they had to and didn't say much that's likely to be remembered for very long.

One more thought — The media consensus seems to be that it was close to a draw, with maybe a slight edge for McCain. But two focus groups and two polls all show that undecided voters were much more likely to think Obama won. I have a theory to explain this discrepancy. If you're a professional journalist, you're so used to all McCain's and Obama's rhetorical and personality quirks that you look past them and focus on who scored the most points. Most normal people don't sit there with a notepad keeping score. It's not: "Oh, he was just oversimplifying about taxes, but oooh, then he made a good point about energy . . ." No — you take it all in and get an overall impression. Obama's presentation is simply more appealing than McCain's, and — obviously this is subjective, but I do believe this — Obama comes off seeming like the more reasonable and intelligent of the two.

Music Friday: Older albums I've been listening to

So far all the Music Friday posts have been about here's-what's-going-on-right-now music. To mix things up, here are some older albums I've recently acquired and have been delving into.

The Art of Noise -- Who's Afraid of the Art of Noise? -- Prototypical noisy art.

The Sugarcubes (photo to the right) -- The Great Crossover Potential -- Pretty good new-wave music by the pre-Bjork Bjork. (I don't do accents.)

Pavement -- Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain -- The indie-est of indie-dom.

Charles Mingus -- Cornell 1964 -- 2 CDs, released last year. My favorite jazz musician playing with the great Eric Dolphy at my alma mater, with an emphasis on half-hour-long jams. Apparently this recording was recently unearthed, having been lost for decades.

ELO -- Greatest Hits -- I got this mostly because I think "Livin' Thing" (video below) is one of the all-time greatest rock songs by someone who's not one of the greats ... which could be a pretty good blog post unto itself some other time. This would be a good companion album to the most recent album by Camera Obscura (from an earlier Music Friday).



(Photo of the Sugarcubes from this post on Grapejuice Plus.)

How Obama lost me, part 3

Click here for the premise of this list and #1-5.

Click here for #6-8.

At the risk of making this Obama supporter even more mad at me, here's the rest of my list of "How Obama lost me":


9. Rigidly opposing the surge

Obama's two main responses to being asked whether he was wrong on the surge (which you can see starting around 4:00 of this clip) are, to paraphrase:

• It didn't do what it was supposed to do.
  
• No one, not even Bush or McCain, expected it to achieve the positive results that it did.
  

So his position is: the surge wasn't successful enough ... and by the way, it was successful beyond our wildest dreams?!

If he wants to present himself as such a nuanced observer of the surge now, he should have taken a nuanced position back then. Instead, he seems to have opposed it without considering the possibility that it would work out.

I have very little understanding of the situation in Iraq, but I can understand this: if he got the surge right, he should explain why. He hasn't done so. If he got it wrong, he should be as blunt as John Edwards was in admitting he was wrong about whether to invade Iraq. 


10. "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided." (#87 in my campaign moments list)

This line -- from a speech Obama gave to the pro-Israel AIPAC in June -- was a worse foreign-policy gaffe than anything I've heard Sarah Palin say.

Robert Wright and Mickey Kaus -- both of whom, like me, are still supporting Obama despite lots of reservations about him -- give a very thorough explanation of why it was so awful:




11. Rev. Jeremiah Wright

I don't agree with all the attention and criticism Obama's pastor got, but that's water under the bridge. It was reckless of Obama to run for president, knowing he had something as explosive as this with the potential to tilt the election to the Republicans, and apparently do nothing to prepare for it. 

He could have had a Sister Souljah moment by proactively distancing himself from Rev. Wright early on. He could have even done this out of the blue, before anything hit YouTube. And once the clips started circulating, he should have acted immediately and decisively. By dragging things out for weeks and weeks, he just delayed the inevitable reject-and-denounce, while making it look like a reluctant political calculation.   


And lastly, of course...

12. Inexperience

I hate to say it, but he shouldn't have decided to run for president with just 2 years of qualifying experience.

I think I understand his calculation: he had the growing excitement around the beginning of the primaries, whereas if he'd waited around for years being a boring ol' senator, that might have eroded his luster. But he just should taken that gamble and run in 4, 8, or 12 years -- when he would have been in his 50s or just turning 60. It would have been worth it to be able to run as someone who's more fluent in policy, has more specific accomplishments to point to, and doesn't compel people to doubt whether he's "ready."

--

So, that's my list. To be clear, none of this is reason enough for me not to vote for Obama. Every candidate has a slew of flaws, and I think McCain's are worse. There are the staggering self-reinvention and flip-flops, which dwarf anything I've seen from Obama. There's his refusal to admit that invading Iraq turned out to be a bad idea. There's his painfully shallow understanding of economics. There's his "How dare you question my integrity or righteousness -- I was a POW!" attitude, which makes Bush look humble by comparison. 

And yes, there's his age. Of course I think people in their 70s can handle serious jobs. I have no problem with, say, an 80- or 90-year-old judge, as long as they're able. But being president is a uniquely stressful and demanding job, so I do have a problem with an 80-year-old president (which is what McCain will be if he has a full, successful presidency). The idea that this is somehow offensive or taboo is ludicrous. The stakes are just too high to worry about offending people. 

--

I haven't gotten to read all the comments on this list yet, but I might have an update once I do. Thanks for all the civil discussion. 

And thanks to the many bloggers (and one Twitterer) who linked to this list and made it almost certainly my most-read content yet -- I've gotten about 20,000 visits since I started the list on Monday, compared with about 60,000 total visits to this blog. Thanks especially to Instapundit and my mom.

How Obama lost me, part 2

As I explained in this post, I've become disillusioned with Barack Obama as a candidate (read the intro to that post for the details). Here are some more points in the continuing list of reasons why:


6. Does Obama have a problem with "policy specifics"? Yes and no...

This critique has always bothered me. The fact is, most voters are moved by speeches about broad themes and values, not policy wonkery. And I find it highly suspicious that everyone makes this complaint about Obama, while no one says it about McCain, even though McCain is even more vague than Obama on policy. But...

a) Hearing Bill Clinton's convention speech, where he mentioned actual statistics and explained how they matter to ordinary people's lives, made me think: it is possible to have the best of both worlds. Obama is just not operating at the Bill Clinton level when it comes to communicating policy. Of course, very few people are at Bill Clinton's level -- but Obama has been billed as the next Clinton. And given the Democrats' history with presidential elections over the past few decades, Bill Clinton would be a pretty good person to emulate.

b) While saying "His policies are on his website!" is appropriate as a response to anyone who suggests that he truly hasn't offered specific proposals ... it's not very satisfying. If he really cares about those policies, he should be devoting real effort and political capital to trying to convince people of their merit instead of just passively hosting them on the web.

Also, he obviously didn't sit down and write that stuff from scratch and hit the "post" button; he found some smart, knowledgeable person to do it for him. Nothing wrong with that! That's true of every candidate. But it would be more useful if we could see him actually explain and defend these policies in an extemporaneous setting (or as close as you can get, given the scripted nature of campaigns).

Many Democrats are (rightly) skeptical of whether Bush, McCain, or Palin genuinely understands and believes in their own official economic policies. Voters are entitled to be equally skeptical of Obama.

c) Campaigns aren't fair -- that's life. Even if you don't agree with the narrative that "Obama is inspiring but too vague," as long as that idea is out there, it's Obama's burden to proactively convince voters otherwise.

He actually tried to do that in February while campaigning in Wisconsin ... but the result just wasn't very interesting! I watched one of his "specific policy" speeches, and the only thing I remember from it is that he wants to give college students a few-thousand-dollar tuition credit in exchange for community service. If I'm understanding it correctly, he's basically saying he'll offer a bunch of low-level government jobs specific to college students. That may be a perfectly fine thing to do, but it's not the kind of idea that's likely to sway anyone's vote. Yet it was the climactic moment of his whole policy speech.

d) A couple of his most distinctive policies -- that is, ideas specific to him rather than simply reflecting the consensus of mainstream Washington Democrats -- are notably bad ideas:

• Requiring 50 hours a year of public service from middle and high school students as a condition of federal funding for schools. I think my mom had the right call on this:
  

[C]hildren are already forced to work when they are sent to school. School is work. Respect that work. Let them know that it is work, and it's their job. And when they are done, let them play. Let them have their free time. Don't appropriate any more of their time. How dare you!

• The faith-based initiative. Why put so much emphasis on a reheated leftover from Bush's 2000 campaign? Admittedly, this is an example of actually backing up his bipartisan rhetoric with policy specifics ... but if that's what Obama's bipartisan approach is really like, then I can do without Obama's bipartisan approach! (To be clear: I admire religious organizations for doing good works, but I don't want my tax dollars favoring the religious over the secular.) He claims the program will fund only "secular programs" and not "proselytizing" ... but money is fungible: give a church more money for their charitable works, and you're indirectly giving them more money for everything else they do.
  

7. As much as I hate to admit it, there's a lot of truth to the "He's all about speeches, not ideas" critique.

This is similar to #6, but broader. In other words, even beyond policy, what has he ever said about anything that's so exciting or original?

This is another point I've been resisting for months and months, but I couldn't deny the basic truth that Robert Wright -- another skeptical Obama supporter -- hit on here (transcript of key point followed by video clip):

If you are a great orator ... and you don't use your skills to surprise people or stake out a position that's a little risky and really do the work of convincing people that that's the right position -- if you take your great oratorical skills and just keep repeating "I'm a uniter, not a divider," plus several boilerplate predictions that are totally poll-driven -- you look like an empty suit!

(end of quote -- back to me...) It's getting clearer and clearer that what has gotten him so much attention and adoration despite his inexperience is not his ideas or policies or even his life story. It's two things: he's black, and he can give a great speech. If you took those two things away, it'd be inconceivable that he'd be chosen over Biden, Richardson, or Dodd, let alone Hillary Clinton. I'm not complaining about the focus on his race -- I think it's really important to have the first black president. And I'm glad he gives a great speech. But look, fellow Obama supporters: that's not really enough, is it, considering the crisis America is in right now?

Many commenters on my previous post complained that if I'm going to make all these anti-Obama points, I shouldn't turn around and vote for him. Well, there's a difference between whether to vote for him, and whether the excitement surrounding him has been justified. None of the points I'm making in this list convince me to vote for McCain instead of Obama. But at the same time, I think it's worth pointing out that it's really hard to see the justification for the unprecedented level of excitement around the guy -- which I myself participated in.


8. His take on race has been disappointing.

I largely agreed with the praise showered on his race speech. But it was pointlessly overshadowed by the famous passage in which he criticized his own grandmother for fearing black men on the street -- the implication being: even basically decent people have some racism in their hearts.

The problem is: whether or not you think Jesse Jackson and others are racist to feel relieved if the person towards them down a dark street turns out to be white, the fact is that many Americans do feel this way and don't consider themselves racist, anymore than they'd consider it sexist to feel relieved upon seeing that the person walking towards them turns out to be a woman. It's fine with me if Obama privately thinks otherwise, but that doesn't make it a productive thing for him to say when he's running for president.

Of course, the fact that he later tried to clarify that part of the speech by explaining that his grandmother was being a "typical white person" only compounded the problem.

Another example: when he was asked at a debate whether he, as the son of a Kenyan immigrant, has had to deal with the problems facing most black Americans, he jocosely mentioned "trying to catch a cab," then pointedly cut himself off as if to say to the audience: Now, doesn't that just about say it all? Of course, this got enormous applause. First of all, if that's one of the worst problems facing blacks in America, given our racial history, then we should all be overjoyed. Second, this image conjures up an affluent man standing around in NYC, waiting for a driver who -- let's face it -- is quite likely a minority and/or an immigrant trying to make ends meet. That's not exactly a crystal-clear symbol of everyday black people being thwarted by The Man.

UPDATE: Concluded here.

How Obama lost me

In September 2004, my mom (Ann Althouse) posted "How Kerry lost me." She never particularly supported Kerry, and she ended up voting for Bush. She didn't mean "How Kerry lost me" as in "Why I stopped being a supporter" -- she just meant how she went from open-minded about him to turned off from him.

I'm not usually explicit about my political preferences on this blog, so I want to be clear: I've supported Obama since I watched his announcement in early 2007 with excitement, I voted and caucused for him in the Texas primacaucus, and I'm going to vote for him in November.

So in what sense did he "lose me"? As with my mom's "How Kerry lost me," I haven't gone from supporter to non-supporter. What I mean is that I used to hold these beliefs:

• I thought he was clearly, dramatically preferably to Hillary Clinton.
  
• I thought he was virtually the dream candidate for 2008, with the obvious but overlookable exception of his thin resume.

I now believe that I was wrong. Specifically:

• He's probably better than Hillary would have been, but it's at least really close, and I'm even open to the idea that she would have been better.
  
• I still support Obama, but not particularly more strongly than I'd be supporting any other mainstream Democratic candidate who was the nominee.
  
• He's just not a good enough candidate. Democrats are entitled to feel very disappointed about this.

It's taken me a long time to get to this point because there's no single issue or moment that decisively turned me off from him.

Rather, it's a long list of things that add up to the "He's not good enough" conclusion. Here are the ones that most stand out to me:

[UPDATE: The list is now finished, with part 2 here and part 3 here.

1. "It's not surprising that they get bitter. They cling to guns or religion or antipathy towards people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment, as a way to explain their frustrations." (#28 in my list of campaign moments, by the way)

It's not the "bitter" part that bothers me. In hindsight, this was a tactless choice of words, but not worth devoting days of media coverage to.

The "cling" part is what bothers me. There's no context that justifies this; it's simply unacceptable for an American presidential candidate to put on the record any kind of negative comment about people clinging to guns and especially religion. How could he have possibly thought it was a good idea to list "religion" along with "antipathy towards people who aren't like them," as if both of these things were part of some larger problem with middle America? (And if he didn't realize all this was going on the record, in the age of blogs and YouTube, he should have.)

This comment alone has given people grounds to doubt the sincerity of his politically convenient conversion to Christianity as an adult. I don't personally care what his religious views are, but a lot of voters obviously do care and doubt whether he's really a Christian.


2. His answer about "evil" in Rick Warren's Saddleback Forum

I'm sure this kind of analysis -- focusing on moral equivalence and the need for American "humility" -- goes over well at elite liberal cocktail parties, but he's supposed to know to avoid that image. He should have realized that McCain would turn the question into a question about defeating terrorism. There's no benefit to ceding moral clarity to McCain on that issue.


3. Saying he would personally meet with dictators in his first year without preconditions

Everyone knows that Hillary got this right and Obama got it wrong. When he was asked about it after the debate, he should have been humble enough to admit that he wasn't paying enough attention to the details in the question when he gave an unqualified "yes" answer. Instead, he's subjected us to tortured explanations for why he really did have the right answer. He seems to have based a whole foreign-policy plank on standing up to Hillary and McCain's taunts about this gaffe!


4. I think he got a bad rap for supposedly flip-flopping and moving to the center immediately after he clinched the nomination, but his timing and PR could hardly have been worse.

And what did he get out of it? Very little, as far as I can see.

How many voters still remember the nuances of his positions on various Supreme Court decisions? How many voters are truly upset about his utterly innocuous comment about being willing to "refine" his Iraq policy based on talking to military commanders about the changing circumstances? Probably not many anymore, since ... circumstances in Iraq have changed, which would force any rational president to ... refine their Iraq policy!

It's not Obama's fault that the media -- and, let's face it, the voters -- have an unrealistic expectation that a candidate should be able to sum up a clear foreign policy in the form of simple soundbites that don't change for years. Obama is smart enough to know that foreign policy doesn't work like that, and his only gaffe was letting it slip that he understands that things are more complex than the media or the people would like them to be. So I'm basically sympathetic to Obama on this. But he let McCain and the media run away with the narrative instead of taking charge of his own narrative.


5. The Palin pick seemed to catch them utterly by surprise.

My mom was gearing up for the Palin pick well in advance (blog post, Bloggingheads video clip). Lots of other pundits and bloggers were gearing up for the Palin pick. So why wasn't the Obama campaign gearing up for the Palin pick?


Continued here.