Once again, the hard truths

These things keep getting pointed out--and pointed out--by people who believe in global warming, no less--and they keep getting ignored in favor of lurid fantasies of Nuremberg trials for "deniers."

The latest to speak the truths that really are inconvenient is Samuel Thernstrom:

Here is a simple truth that everyone who actually cares about climate change should understand: Reducing greenhouse gas emissions costs money. Reducing them a lot will cost a lot of money. Drastically reducing them very quickly will cost vast amounts of money. And, no matter what we do, cutting them enough to stop warming without the cooperation of major developing economies such as China and India will be impossible. These facts do not mean that we should do nothing to cut emissions, by any means--but understanding these inconvenient truths must be the first step towards crafting a realistic climate policy.

...

It is relatively easy to make very modest reductions in emissions; in the short term, it is virtually impossible to cut them deeply enough and quickly enough to actually stop warming. We can save money and cut emissions by picking the low-hanging fruit--taking advantage of opportunities to eliminate waste and conserve energy. That is happening, and it will continue. But when that's done, we will still need to climb the biggest tree imaginable and pick it clean if we want to curtail warming--and that is not going to be an economical proposition in the immediate future, no matter what Gore tells you. No government policy could make it so.

...

Gore promises that switching to renewable energy sources will save us from high energy prices--conveniently ignoring that renewables cost more than the high-carbon content fuels that Gore wants to eliminate. You don't make energy cheaper by eliminating the most abundant and affordable sources of it. It is not possible to cut the cost of energy by shutting down every power plant in the country that runs on the cheapest, most abundant, domestically available fuel--coal (which generates 49 percent of our electric power)--as well as the second largest source of the same, natural gas (20 percent). Prematurely retiring more than $500 billion worth of energy infrastructure is not the key to renewed economic growth, to say the least. It couldn't be done, but if it were attempted, it would cause economic ruin. If America thinks that this is really what climate policy demands--and what it promises--it may well decide it prefers the Bush approach after all. Which, come to think of it, is exactly what happened the last time that Gore controlled climate policy.

...

If we are to have any hope at all of crafting sensible climate policy in the coming years, we must at least learn from our worst mistakes, and have a healthy respect for the risks that poor policy may entail. An important new book from one of the nation's foremost environmental economists, William Nordhaus, makes this abundantly clear. If we do nothing to halt it, global warming is likely to cause $23 trillion in damages by the end of the century. Sound policies to address it would be highly beneficial--generating as much as $3 trillion in net benefits--but poorly designed climate policies could be nearly as damaging as warming itself. Gore's proposal to cut U.S. emissions by 90 percent by 2050, Nordhaus calculates, would have a net social cost of $21 trillion--the equivalent of taking $63,000 from every person in America. The danger that climate change poses is twofold, therefore: the risk of environmental damage, and the risk of economic disaster arising from poorly designed climate policies.

Pay particular attention to those highlighted lines in the last paragraph. Gore's proposal would do nearly as much economic damage as doing nothing, in half the time (and those are damages just in the US--one can assume comparable, albeit lesser, costs elsewhere--whereas the costs of global warming above are presumably spread worldwide).

I am largely agnostic on the global warming issue (though leaning more towards the deniers in recent weeks, based on new evidence). However, I have always been of the position that anything we do about global warming must be informed by whether and how effective it would be, relative to its costs.

Token penances like carbon credits are worse than useless; they're not even being offered to someone who could really do something about the problem--instead, they merely divert attention and resources from actual solutions.

If we're going to do this, it must be done right. Doing it wrong would be just as bad as doing nothing at all...if not worse.

--Shack

Oh, brother.

I'm usually not one for the Dr. Sanity style of blogging, which examines the positions of the left and then diagnoses them as manifestations of various psychological disorders.

However, in looking at Stuart Carlson's editorial cartoon in today's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the thought is pretty much unavoidable:

Projection much?

--Shack

There goes the greenhouse effect.

Writing in The Australian, David Evans lays out a particularly devastating piece of evidence against the very core of the theory of man-made global warming:

The greenhouse signature is missing. We have been looking and measuring for years, and cannot find it.

Each possible cause of global warming has a different pattern of where in the planet the warming occurs first and the most. The signature of an increased greenhouse effect is a hot spot about 10km up in the atmosphere over the tropics. We have been measuring the atmosphere for decades using radiosondes: weather balloons with thermometers that radio back the temperature as the balloon ascends through the atmosphere. They show no hot spot. Whatsoever.

If there is no hot spot then an increased greenhouse effect is not the cause of global warming. So we know for sure that carbon emissions are not a significant cause of the global warming.

Which, in turn, suggests that recent global warming originated in nature, rather than in our activities...and that any reductions in carbon emissions we make--no matter how drastic--will not have a significant effect on global temperatures.

--Shack

Well, that settles that.

Over at the Politico, Bruce Bartlett, in attempting to argue that there isn't much difference for conservatives between a McCain presidency and an Obama presidency, delivers possibly the single most unwittingly counterproductive statement of this entire election season thus far:

As far as Obama is concerned, he will undoubtedly nominate justices who are more liberal than those McCain would nominate. But he will be constrained by the same filibuster threat in the Senate that stymied Reagan and Bush 43. Although Republicans controlled the Senate during much of those presidencies, Democrats had great success in defeating their nominees to the court when they were viewed as too conservative. Republicans can do the same thing, arguing that Obama’s nominees are too liberal, forcing him to appoint moderates in the mold of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.

I think we can all agree that pretty well sums up the case for John McCain on judges.

--Shack

An opening for McCain

The Emperor has made a critical error, and the time for our attack has come. Our Bothan spies have...

...er, sorry, wrong script. Right sentiment, though.

Dick Morris and Eileen McGann report that Barack Obama's first national ad of the campaign includes a whopper of Burger King proportions:

The Obama ad, which introduces him as someone who worked his way through college, fights for American jobs, and battles for health care also seeks to move him to the center by taking credit for welfare reform in Illinois which, the ad proclaims, reduced the rolls by 80%.

But there's one problem - Obama opposed the 1996 welfare reform act at the time. The Illinois law for which he takes credit, was merely the local implementing law the state was required to pass, and it did, almost unanimously. Obama's implication -- that he backed "moving people from welfare to work" -- is just not true.

With Obama running the ad in all the swing states (Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Virginia), this gross usurpation of credit affords the McCain campaign an incredible opportunity for rebuttal.

...

[I]f McCain calls him on his distortion, he can do grave damage to Obama on three fronts: credibility, centrism, and experience. By catching Obama in a lie, he can undermine the effectiveness of any subsequent ads the Democrat runs. By showing that he opposed welfare reform, McCain can do much to force Obama back to the left and cast doubt on his efforts to move to the middle. And by emphasizing Obama's limited experience, he can strike at a soft spot --- made softer by Hillary's attacks in the primary.

Pay particular attention to the bolded line. Obama's massive fund-raising advantage stands second only to McCain's affiliation with the Republican Party as trump cards for the Democrats this election.

If McCain can blunt that advantage, even a little, so early into the campaign, it can only be of help to him.

--Shack

McCain to hammer Obama on Born Alive

It's about time.

In coming weeks, John McCain is planning to confront Barack Obama on three issues dear to conservatives’ hearts.

...

Third is Obama’s vote in 2002 as an Illinois state senator against a bill to define as a “person” a fully born baby who survived an abortion. The bill was intended to make it clear that if an abortion were botched, an infant born alive would not be killed and would receive medical care. Twice, Obama voted against various versions of the bill and twice voted “present.” The Illinois bill did not pass.

The legislation was similar to the federal Born-Alive Infants Act, which even Hillary Clinton supported in 2001. Leading abortion rights groups, including NARAL Pro-Choice America and Planned Parenthood, said they would not oppose the federal legislation.

Only 15 members of the U.S. House opposed the bill, and it passed the Senate unanimously on a voice vote. President Bush signed that bill into law in August 2002.

...

The coming major attacks on Obama over substantive issues will be by McCain himself. He will paint Obama as having extremist positions or as being out of touch with the fact that we live in a dangerous world. The attack on Obama’s born-alive abortion position could come later in the summer, a McCain aide said.

You've heard of "more Catholic than the Pope." Barack Obama is more pro-choice than NARAL--which is, if anything, even harder to fathom, let alone accomplish.

Obama is likely to respond to this attack in the same manner as he has pretty much every other criticism thus far--by dismissing it as an example of the "old" and "divisive" politics we are all called upon to transcend as we follow the Promised One into Nirvana.

It remains to be seen whether he'll get away with that, or whether Born Alive will turn into another Reverend Wright.

--Shack

(H/T: Jill Stanek, via Death Roe)

Stones and Glass Houses

The Bounce hasn't happened.

Barack Obama, after finally putting Hillary Clinton away, leads John McCain in the polls by a surprisingly small amount--only six percentage points.

But, as ABC News explains, Obama knows full well what went wrong:

The poll indicates that Obama did not get the traditional "bounce" in the public's opinion by finally defeating Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and getting her endorsement as the Democratic presidential candidate.

While leading among young voters and other key demographics, ABC News chief Washington correspondent George Stephanopoulos saw what he called "danger signs" for Obama.

In an exclusive network interview with ABC News, Obama said that his long Democratic primary battle with Clinton, which wasn't settled until early June, spared McCain critical scrutiny.

"While we were doing that, John McCain basically was getting a pass, both from the media . . . as well as from other opponents. And so I think that explains it," said Obama of the close race.

It is an ironic accusation from Obama.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have an early front-runner for Understatement of the Year.

--Shack

Bipartisan consensus, of a sort

Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, I'll leave to the reader to decide.

Charles Krauthammer, in January of '07:

First, tax gas. The president ostentatiously rolled out his 20-in-10 plan: reducing gasoline consumption by 20 percent in 10 years. This with Rube Goldberg regulation — fuel-efficiency standards, artificially mandated levels of "renewable and alternative fuels in 2017'' and various bribes (er, incentives) for government-favored technologies — of the kind we have been trying for three decades.

Good grief. I can give you a 20-in-2: tax gas to $4 a gallon. With oil prices having fallen to $55 a barrel, now is the time. The effect of a gas-tax hike will be seen in less than two years, and you don't even have to go back to the 1970s and the subsequent radical reduction in consumption to see how. Just look at last summer. Gas prices spike to $3 — with the premium going to Vladimir Putin, Hugo Chavez and assorted sheiks, rather than the U.S. treasury — and, presto, SUV sales plunge, the Prius is cool and car ads once again begin featuring miles per gallon ratings.

Thomas Friedman, today:

No, our mythical candidate would say the long-term answer is to go exactly the other way: guarantee people a high price of gasoline — forever.

This candidate would note that $4-a-gallon gasoline is really starting to impact driving behavior and buying behavior in way that $3-a-gallon gas did not. The first time we got such a strong price signal, after the 1973 oil shock, we responded as a country by demanding and producing more fuel-efficient cars. But as soon as oil prices started falling in the late 1980s and early 1990s, we let Detroit get us readdicted to gas guzzlers, and the price steadily crept back up to where it is today.

We must not make that mistake again. Therefore, what our mythical candidate would be proposing, argues the energy economist Philip Verleger Jr., is a “price floor” for gasoline: $4 a gallon for regular unleaded, which is still half the going rate in Europe today. Washington would declare that it would never let the price fall below that level. If it does, it would increase the federal gasoline tax on a monthly basis to make up the difference between the pump price and the market price.

Again, no comment from me.

--Shack

19.5%

In the 1950s, the top individual tax bracket was a whopping 91%.

America's tax revenues were roughly 19.5% of the country's gross domestic product (GDP).

Around 1965, the top individual tax bracket dropped to around 70%.

America's tax revenues were roughly 19.5% of the GDP.

1985--the top bracket was 50%.

America's tax revenues were roughly 19.5% of the GDP.

In the '90s, the top bracket was 40%.

America's tax revenues were roughly 19.5% of the GDP.

To summarize:

In (insert time period here), the top bracket was (insert percentage here).

America's tax revenues were roughly 19.5% of the GDP.

David Ranson, writing in the Wall Street Journal, calls it Hauser's Law, after the economist who first noted the post-WW II pattern 15 years ago. It's jarring, counterintuitive--and the last thing the likes of Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton want to hear:

The data show that the tax yield has been independent of marginal tax rates over this period, but tax revenue is directly proportional to GDP. So if we want to increase tax revenue, we need to increase GDP.

What happens if we instead raise tax rates? Economists of all persuasions accept that a tax rate hike will reduce GDP, in which case Hauser's Law says it will also lower tax revenue.

Gee...imagine that.

--Shack

The bottom line on Obama

On July 17, 2007, Barack Obama gave a speech before the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, in which he promised the following:

"[T]he first thing I’d do as president is ... sign the Freedom of Choice Act."

(HT: Christian Newswire)

This is the endgame for the pro-choice movement. FOCA is the abortion equivalent of Dred Scott v. Sandford; it would nullify any and all restrictions on abortion at any level--be it federal, state, or local--thus permanently banishing the pro-life movement from the legislative arena.

And with Obama-selected Justices packing the Supreme Court, there isn't be a snowball's chance in hell of FOCA being overturned.

An Obama victory is the final pro-abortion victory--government-sanctioned homicide, unhindered and irrevocable, on into perpetuity.

--Shack

McCain-Ryan?

Over at Human Events, John Gizzi has been looking at potential running mates for John McCain in a series of columns. To my surprise, one of the candidates thus examined is our own Paul Ryan:

Earlier this year, when I asked Rep. Phil English (R-Penn.) his favorite choice for a runningmate with John McCain. “Paul Ryan,” he replied, naming his Republican colleague from Wisconsin and fellow House Ways and Means Committee Member and, in the process, giving me a jolt.

Paul Ryan? At 38 and after a decade in Congress from Wisconisn’s 1st District (Janesville-Konosha), Ryan is not exactly a “household word.” A graduate of Miami Univeristy (Ohio), Ryan worked as speechwriter for Jack Kemp and William Bennett at their “Empower America” organization, and was then legislative director for Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KA). Anticipating that incumbent Rep. Mark Neumann would run for the Senate in 1998, Ryan moved back to his hometown, mobilized a campaign in which he wouild easily win nomination and electon (57% of the vote) to Congress. As a Member of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, he has been a force behind tax cuts and trimming discretionary spending. Ryan (lifetime American Conservative Union rating: 93%) has also been a strong booster of gunowners’ right, pro-life legislation, and tougher measures on illegal immigration.

Impressive, all right, but the first impression is not ready for presidential politics. English disagrees. As he put it, “Paul is Catholic, from the Rustbelt, and has the economic credentials Sen. McCain needs.” Other Republican backbenchers agree, and talk of Ryan-for-Veep mushrooms in the House GOP Conference.

I, for one, agree with the first impression. (I also think Gizzi should have run this column through a spell-checker.) Ryan just doesn't enjoy the national prominence that one might expect out of a VP candidate; moreover, he lacks the executive experience that McCain is going to need in a running mate--given his age, President McCain's VP would have to be someone the country trusts to take over in the White House.

It should also be pointed out that, given the prevailing anti-Republican sentiment in the country, Ryan as McCain's running mate would almost certainly mean forfeiting his House seat to a Democrat, as happened to Mark Green's seat when Green ran for governor in 2006.

(Interestingly, quite a few of the early commenters on the Gizzi column argued for my own first choice for McCain's running mate: JC Watts.)

--Shack

Don't like torture? Blame Carter.

David Rivkin and Lee Casey have a piece in today's Wall Street Journal discussing the ongoing controversy over US interrogation techniques (among other things) and the more recent push to try the Bush administration's legal counsel for "war crimes."

Of particular interest, I thought:

In truth, the critics' fundamental complaint is that the Bush administration's lawyers measured international law against the U.S. Constitution and domestic statutes. They interpreted the Geneva Conventions, the U.N. Convention forbidding torture, and customary international law, in ways that were often at odds with the prevailing view of international law professors and various activist groups. In doing so, however, they did no more than assert the right of this nation – as is the right of any sovereign nation – to interpret its own international obligations.

But that right is exactly what is denied by many international lawyers inside and outside the academy.

To the extent that international law can be made, it is made through actual state practice – whether in the form of custom, or in the manner states implement treaty obligations. In the areas relevant to the war on terror, there is precious little state practice against the U.S. position, but a very great deal of academic orthodoxy.

For more than 40 years, as part of the post World War II decolonization process, a legal orthodoxy has arisen that supports limiting the ability of nations to use robust armed force against irregular or guerilla fighters. It has also attempted to privilege such guerillas with the rights traditionally reserved to sovereign states. The U.S. has always been skeptical of these notions, and at critical points has flatly refused to be bound by these new rules. Most especially, it refused to join the 1977 Protocol I Additional to the Geneva Conventions, involving the treatment of guerillas, from which many of the "norms" the U.S. has supposedly violated, are drawn.

Well, of course it is the Evil Republicans (TM) who are to blame for this as well, right? Certainly, no self-respecting (Secularly) Holy Democrat (TM) could have committed a Crime Against Humanity (TM) like this.

Now, which Evil Republican (TM) was president in 1977? Let's see here...

...Hmm...

...wait, it'll come to me...

--Shack

Here's an economic incentive for you.

Just ran across this, and thought it was interesting, in light of the article that ran in the Journal Sentinel a couple of weeks ago questioning the economic value of Miller Park.

The Sacramento Bee recently pointed out an economic benefit from professional franchises that you don't see much press about--players on VISITING teams have to pay local and state income taxes.

The Bee article explains:

Professional athletes are required to pay income taxes in every state and city that levies them where they earned a salary during away games. That means Kings and River Cats players must file tax returns in dozens of states and several cities. In some jurisdictions, that includes practices, as well.

Each state determines taxable service performed, also known a "duty day." The nonresident income tax, which is dubbed the "jock tax," surfaced in the 1990s as a way for states to tap into the soaring paychecks of visiting professional athletes, said Ryan Losi, the executive vice president of Piascik & Associates, an accounting and financial services firm in Virginia that works with professional athletes.

Losi said many believe "jock tax" enforcement began when California taxed Michael Jordan when the Chicago Bulls beat the Los Angeles Lakers in the 1991 NBA Finals.

Today, taxes generated in California from visiting athletes bring in an estimated $100 million each year, according to the state tax board.

In other words--by having NBA, MLB and NFL franchises, the state of Wisconsin can collect taxes from a significant number of NBA, NFL and MLB players (particularly in the case of the NBA, where every team has at least a home-and-home series with every other team--the state can thus collect taxes from every virtually player in the league).

The taxes collected are probably not anything close to what California (with its multiple baseball, basketball, and hockey teams) generates, but given that we're still arguing over whether Miller Park was worth it--and are almost certainly going to go through the same debate in the near future about renovating/replacing the Bradley Center, lest we lose the Bucks--this is something to keep in mind.

--Shack

Bush the fiscal hawk?!

Interesting little bit buried at the end of this Weekly Standard piece by Fred Barnes, which argues that President Bush is far from a lame duck:

At one time or another, every president figures out that executive orders are underrated as a tool of White House power. Certainly Bush has. (The media have yet to realize this.) Of course it's true that presidential orders can be revoked by subsequent presidents. But they usually aren't.

Earlier this year, Bush's budget office sent a letter to every federal department barring them from implementing any congressional earmarks not authorized in specific statutory language. These must get explicit White House approval.

The order covered the majority of the thousands of pork-barrel earmarks passed by Congress. Its aim is to stall the implementation of many earmarks, perhaps forever, and to kill many others. Will the next president lift this order, thus prompting more earmarks? Not likely.

Given that fiscal restraint is going to be a major part, if not the core, of John McCain's pitch on the economy this fall--and that McCain himself has long been conspicuously hostile to earmarks--it'll be interesting to see how much attention this gets...and from whom.

Any progress that President Bush makes on this front now is progress that a President McCain wouldn't be able to make in 2009--and hence, one less reason to vote for the GOP nominee. This has the potential to cut McCain off at the knees.

--Shack

x_X

The subject line of this post is an emoticon.

Using any emoticons--let alone Eastern style emoticons--is not my normal practice on this blog, for reasons that should need no elaboration; still, I think in this column from the Boston Herald's Michael Graham, I have reason to make an exception.

Oh, to be a campus activist now that spring is here.

“Campus activist” is what the Boston Globe-Democrat calls the students pushing for coed dorm rooms at colleges across the country. Not just coed dorms, floors or even suites. One room, two beds, a boy and a girl.

As Dr. Frankenstein said just before he threw the switch, “What could possibly go wrong?”

More than 30 colleges and universities, including Dartmouth, Clark, Brown, and Brandeis have coed dorm room policies.

...

This movement is led by the National Student Genderblind Campaign, which insists that colleges without gender-neutral housing are “heterosexist, oppressive, and anti-affirmative.”

x_X

Just...

x_X

--Shack

...

These days, Dick Morris is generally regarded as being on the right, such as it is.

Every so often, though, he'll come out and say something that reminds you that he was once one of Bill Clinton's inner circle, with all that implies--and that in those regards, he hasn't changed one bit.

The latest example comes from Morris' cynical take on the Barack Obama-Jeremiah Wright scandal:

Wright's rantings are not reflective of Obama's views on anything. Why did he stay in the church? Because he's a black Chicago politician who comes from a mixed marriage and went to Columbia and Harvard. Suspected of not being black enough or sufficiently tied to the minority community, he needed the networking opportunities Wright afforded him in his church to get elected. If he had not risen to the top of Chicago black politics, we would never have heard of him. But obviously, he can't say that. So what should he say?

He needs to get out of this mess with subtlety, the kind Bill Clinton should have used to escape the Monica Lewinsky scandal -- but didn't. As the controversy continues, Americans will gradually realize that Obama stuck by Wright as part of a need to get ahead. They will chalk up to pragmatism why he was so close to such a preacher. As they come to realize that Obama doesn't agree with Wright but used him to get started, they will be more forgiving.

Only someone who has the character to be a part of a Clinton campaign--either one of them--could regard a candidate using a preacher for political gain as something that the American people would understand, condone, or forgive.

Disgusting.

--Shack

#4 done in by fear of #2

Well, it's been a couple of days.

The shock is starting to fade, and I'm getting to the point where I can accept that Brett Favre has retired and think clearly again.

(I'm not quite there yet, but I'm getting there.)

In the immediate coverage following the announcement, one thing really jumped out at me--a very telling comment from the voice mail Favre left for ESPN's Chris Mortensen.

Favre talked about what the expectations for next season would have been, and that anything less than making the Super Bowl would be a disappointment. Then, he paused for a moment, and added: "And if we did that--and lost--that would almost be worse than anything."

Those are the words of experience talking.

Chalk up one last casualty from the Packers' historic choke-job to the Broncos in Super Bowl XXXII. Clearly, at some level, Favre never recovered from that debacle; and as the years passed by, and he grew older and older--and Green Bay never made it back to the Super Bowl--the scar from that wound grew more and more painful.

In retrospect, it looks like once Green Bay got to the conference championship, that was it, win or lose. If they had won it all, it would have been the perfect way to go out--on top; when they lost, the pain of falling short when they had been so close reopened that old wound...and that's what pushed Favre over the edge.

Given that, count me among those who do not expect a comeback, either with the Packers or with another team. No one could guarantee a Super Bowl win if he did, and the only team that would be a better bet than the Packers for Favre to make such a run is currently led by the second coming of Joe Montana, and would neither need nor want him.

The future has me worried, certainly. I first followed the NFL, and the Green Bay Packers, in 1989--the season of the Cardiac Kids, the season Don Majkowski became the "Majik Man"--and it likely spoiled me more than a little bit. When the Packers went back to being the Packers in '90 and '91, it hurt. It gave me a keen appreciation for what a fluke that '89 season was--and all the more appreciation for what we had when Favre appeared on the scene and put those days behind us for at least 16 years.

Still, the future looks much brighter than it did two years ago. Favre knew what he was talking about when he called the 2006 Packers the most talented team he'd ever played with; he had his best supporting cast at the very end, and if Ron Wolf had drafted the way Ted Thompson has, there's little doubt in my mind that Favre would have had more than just the one ring.

If Aaron Rodgers can stay healthy--and that's a big If, considering that in the last two seasons, AS A BACKUP, he's suffered two season-ending injuries (one of them in practice, for Pete's sake!)--then the Packers can, I think, compete and win.

Maybe not win it all--not without exceptional seasons on several fronts--but that's the condition of most NFL teams, year in and year out.

And that's one more way Favre spoiled us.

--Shack

Same old, same old?

The Philadelphia Inquirer's Jonathan Last sees something disturbingly familiar in what he's been hearing from the campaign trail these days:

A Democratic line is emerging about Sen. John McCain that is voiced daily by Sen. Obama (and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton) in the presidential campaign.

"Senator McCain said the other day that we might be mired for 100 years in Iraq," Obama says, "which is reason enough not to give him four years in the White House." Or more directly, as Obama told a Houston audience, McCain "says that he is willing to send our troops into another 100 years of war in Iraq."

Obama's claims are, at best, deliberately misleading. At worst, they are the type of politics-as-usual distortion that the Illinois senator usually decries. No one, in politics or the media, who voices the "100 years" canard is being fair-minded. So let's put it to rest now, once and for all:

On Jan. 3 in Derry, N.H., a voter prefaced a question to McCain by saying, "President Bush has talked about our staying in Iraq for 50 years . . ." Here, McCain cut him off, interjecting, "Make it a hundred."

The voter tried to continue his question, but McCain pressed on: "We've been in . . . Japan for 60 years. We've been in South Korea 50 years or so. That would be fine with me, as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed. It's fine with me, I hope it would be fine with you if we maintain a presence in a very volatile part of the world where al-Qaeda is training, equipping and recruiting and motivating people every single day."

McCain's analysis is, objectively speaking, exactly correct. Throughout history, U.S. troops have remained in the field long after the conclusion of successful wars.

Note, of course, the key words there: Successful wars. Obama is by far the candidate most closely wed to the idea that Iraq is an irredeemable disaster (though Hillary Clinton has been doing her best to imitate that pose since the war there went bad) and thus, his vehement disagreement with the effect--100 years of troops in Iraq--should hardly be a surprise, since he also vehemently disagrees with the cause--victory in Iraq.

The real question here is whether Obama is:

• so narrow-minded that he cannot even imagine a reasonable person seeking victory in Iraq, with the ensuing effects

...or....

• trying to entrap McCain with a campaign equivalent of the infamous courtroom question: "When did you stop beating your wife?"

In either case, Last comes to the proper conclusion:

McCain's "100 years" is not a commitment to "100 years of war," as Obama claims. It is simply another sign of McCain's seriousness and understanding of the realities of foreign affairs in general and Iraq in particular.

Obama's distortion of this remark, however, is the first sign that he may not be a serious-minded candidate.

Taken a step further--this calls into question Obama's lofty claims of running a higher campaign...which in turn calls into question Obama's lofty claims of "bringing the country together."

And said claims, as we all know, are the hallmark, trump card, and primary (sole?) selling point of his campaign.

--Shack

How NOT to beat Barack Obama

Given the distinct contrast in their biographies, there will undoubtedly be a great temptation for John McCain to challenge Barack Obama on the question of character and experience. It would seem to play to McCain's strengths, and to Obama's weaknesses.

Just one problem: that's what Hillary Clinton tried. Michael Medved explains:

With his unexpectedly decisive landslide victory in Wisconsin, Barack Obama has solidified his status as the Democratic frontrunner. His success owes less to his own political strategy than it does to a fatal mistake by Hillary Clinton. At the beginning of her campaign, Clinton made a decision to avoid an ideological battle with her rival and decided to frame the race as a choice between “experience” and “charisma,” between “work” and “words.” In other words she decided to fight Obama on personality, rather than the issues, and in terms of a compelling, appealing personality, Obama obviously wins. Clinton could have won an issues election – mobilizing the broad middle of the Democratic Party and leaving Obama to run to her left. She could have criticized him for preaching surrender on the war, for minimizing the reality of the terrorist threat, for calling unequivocally for big government and higher taxes, for rejecting the free trade heritage of Clintonism. Instead, she insisted that she and her opponent hardly differed on the issues, and it was only a question of who is better “prepared to take over as commander-in-chief from day one.” By emphasizing my “thirty-five years of work fighting for change” Hillary not only made herself sound older, but high-lighted the meaningless, trivial nature of the change she sought and, allegedly, achieved: most Democrats don’t like the results of the last thirty-five years of government policy.

...

John McCain needs to learn the lessons of Hillary Clinton’s failed campaign. If he tries to emphasize his obviously superior experience and preparation for the job, he’ll lose in a landslide. Obama can easily characterize him as “yesterday’s man” (as he did in his victory speech on Tuesday night) and emphasize his opponent’s advanced age by “graciously” saluting his “fifty years of service.” He thereby makes the point that he himself isn’t even fifty years old, confirming his vacuous declaration that “we are the change that we’ve been waiting for.”

Beyond that, as George Will points out, history provides a particularly devastating comparison of Veteran vs. Novice in the presidency:

The president who came to office with the most glittering array of experiences had served 10 years in the House of Representatives, then became minister to Russia, then served 10 years in the Senate, then four years as secretary of state (during a war that enlarged the nation by 33 percent), then was minister to Britain. Then, in 1856, James Buchanan was elected president and in just one term secured a strong claim to the rank as America's worst president. Abraham Lincoln, the inexperienced former one-term congressman, had an easy act to follow.

Ouch.

--Shack

VP wishlist

Over at The American Spectator, Quin Hillyer is pondering what all-but-certain GOP nominee John McCain should be looking for in a running mate. In short:

McCain needs a solidly "full-spectrum" conservative, reformist, youngish, cool, well-rounded, brainy, all-media-respected, articulate, telegenic, border-state/constituency-challenging, non-party-weakening, executive-experienced, running mate who can handle the presidency at a moment's notice.

Hillyer says he can think of several potential running mates who might fit that description; he puts off naming them until later, though (which makes sense, from a productive standpoint--there's at least one full column right there, and probably more).

In the meantime, though, Patrick McIlheran and James T. Harris have stumbled onto someone who fits pretty much all of the above criteria, and then some.

Works for me.

--Shack