Marbury

one reason congress finds it hard to get things done

This chart, compiled from vote tallies in Congress by a political scientist, is a dramatic illustration of the polarisation of America's political leaders over the past fifty years. Somewhere in the late 1970s, all the moderates - the people most likely to work across the aisle - started disappearing. Bill Bishop explains why.

bad communications strategery ii

As discussed earlier, this bill fell on its presentation as much as on its merits. Ron Bonjean puts it bluntly:

Welcome to the 700 Club. In recent days the headlines across the country in newspapers, cable channels and the web published headlines, “Bush asking for 700 billion dollar bailout package.” How did anyone think that using a number close to one trillion dollars and use the words “bailout” would be effective marketing?

flailing

From the Washington Post:

McCain found himself in a particularly awkward position after bragging about his role in building a coalition behind the rescue package yesterday morning -- hours before it was defeated.

In a curt statement after the measure was rejected and stocks plummeted,McCain...declared that "now is not the time to fix the blame."

Hours later, a further statement:

"Senator Obama and his allies in Congress infused unnecessary partisanship into the process"

From the same report, a fellow Republican criticizes McCain:

"The herky-jerky insertion and the comments on the side and then taking credit this morning for passage underscores that when it comes to the economy, he just does not have the right rhythm," said the former government official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk freely. "John seems almost tone-deaf on this stuff."

I quote this mainly to introduce the wonderful term "herky-jerky" to readers.

that's all he needed

I said it's too early to see how this will play out for Obama and McCain. Of course, it's not really. It's hard to see how this is anything but further bad news for John McCain.

First of all, last week's gamble looks like a bet he just lost, big time. By dropping everything to go to Washington he (a) gave the impression he'd be able to fix it (indeed he was bragging he'd done so on Sunday) and (b) identified himself even more closely with the Republicans on Capitol Hill ('my Republicans,' as he called them). Well, it ain't fixed, and the Republicans are getting the blame.

Second, the longer the economy dominates the news, the worse things will get for him. This is partly because voters traditionally cleave to Democrats in bad economic times, but also because McCain is so plainly out of his comfort zone on these issues.

I should imagine the chances of an Obama landslide are now quite significant.

Expect more rabbits out of hats. Maybe McCain should send 'Sarah Barracuda' to Washington to sort this out - and cancel Thursday's debate!

healing hands

Via Alex Massie, an inspiring story of America's enduring entrepreneurial zeal:

State attorneys say John LaVoie should be forever barred from the massage business because he ran a house of prostitution camouflaged as a church.

But in his latest court argument, the Tucson man says he hired women at Angel's Heaven Relaxation Spa — near University Medical Center — not to sell sex but to comfort the afflicted through the religious act of "laying on of hands."

...LaVoie is now citing constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion. "This offer of comfort by this means is based on several Biblical passages," wrote attorney Brad Roach, who is representing LaVoie while seeking election as Pima County attorney.

GOP self-loathing

Two conservative columnists from the intelligent wing of the Republican Party project a gloomy future for their side following this week's debacle. Here's David Brooks:

Now they have once again confused talk radio with reality. If this economy slides, they will go down in history as the Smoot-Hawleys of the 21st century. With this vote, they’ve taken responsibility for this economy, and they will be held accountable. The short-term blows will fall on John McCain, the long-term stress on the existence of the G.O.P. as we know it.

Here's Ross Douthat:

The most likely scenario, as of 3 PM this afternoon: The stock market continues to drop. Some version of the bailout passes in the next week. The American economy staggers into a recession, but passes through the storm without 1930s-style suffering; the Republican Party is not so fortunate. Even though most Americans claim to oppose the bailout, the House GOP's obstructionism is widely viewed as having worsened the economic situation; the fact that these are contradictory positions does not faze an electorate that wraps all of the country's current troubles up, ties them with a bow, and lays them at the feet of the Bush-led GOP. John McCain loses by a landslide in November. The Democratic Party regains years or even decades worth of ground among the white working class, consolidates the Hispanic vote, and locks up a large chunk of highly-educated voters who might otherwise lean conservative.

bad communication strategery

Ambinder, in a post worth reading in full, argues that calling it a 'bailout' was the first mistake:

The failure of the bailout is being interpreted in some quarters as a Jacksonian-style triumph of democracy over the know-better decisions of the technocratic elite - Main Street's whims over Wall Street's needs.

And yet, this isn't really true. When described as a "bailout," the public opposes it. When the principles of the bill are described without using the word "bailout," they support it...

This was a failure of presentation and explanation as much as anything else. The blame for that rests squarely on the man described by Paul Begala yesterday as a high-functioning moron.

mutually assured destruction

Wow.

It's too early to say how this will play out for McCain and Obama. Let's take a moment instead to observe the size and shape of this. The failure of this deal represents a full-scale collapse in confidence in politicians and political authority. Here is Time's Michael Scherer:

Nearly every major political leader in America supported the bailout bill. The President of the United States. The Vice President. The Treasury Secretary. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve. The Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Democratic and Republican nominees for president. The Democratic and Republican leadership of the House and the Senate. All of them said the same thing. Vote yes.

But enough voters had no faith in these leaders and the solution they recommended that enough congressmen voted No to bring it down (the naysayers were largely those facing tight reelection races). Now, voters everywhere are staring, aghast, at an almighty mess that the politicians are making worse, not better. Who will lead the way out of it? The president is a virtual irrelevance. The two men who hope to succeed him can only stand on the sidelines. Democrats and Republicans on the Hill are busily engaged in a blame-assigning catfight.

Confidence in the political system was already at an all-time low. It just got a lot lower.

will the fun never stop?

Howard Kurtz:  "The worst may be yet to come for Palin; sources say CBS has two more responses on tape that will likely prove embarrassing."

Ben Smith confirms "the recorded segments are scheduled to air Wednesday and Thursday before the vice presidential debate."

(Thanks CA).

before the debate

how do you solve a problem like sarah?

Bill Kristol is a fiercely partisan conservative commentator with, reputedly, good connections to the McCain campaign. His NYT column yesterday sounds the alarm for McCain's candidacy. Reader CA draws our attention to this passage on Palin:

McCain picked Sarah Palin in part because she’s a talented politician and communicator. He needs to free her to use her political talents and to communicate in her own voice.

I’m told McCain recently expressed unhappiness with his staff’s handling of Palin. On Sunday he dispatched his top aides Steve Schmidt and Rick Davis to join Palin in Philadelphia. They’re supposed to liberate Palin to go on the offensive as a combative conservative in the vice-presidential debate on Thursday...

In the debate, Palin has to dispatch quickly any queries about herself, and confidently assert that of course she’s qualified to be vice president. She should spend her time making the case for McCain and, more important, the case against Obama. As one shrewd McCain supporter told me, “Every minute she spends not telling the American people something that makes them less well disposed to Obama is a minute wasted."

It's not much of an exaggeration to say that Thursday's VP debate is make-or-break for the McCain campaign. Actually, it's not so much a potential Make (he'll get a boost if she does well, but it won't alter the fundamentals) as a potential Break. If she crashes - or 'Courics' - I think it will be a blow McCain won't recover from.

I think, insofar as anything will work with regard to Palin, the approach outlined by Kristol is the right one. Cram her full of new information and ask her to pretend to be something she's not - a world-class foreign affairs expert - and she will drown in her own gibberish. Let her do what she's best at and she may cause an upset.

Palin needs to find a cute way of deflecting questions she's unsure about, make a few jokes, and go straight on to the attack. It will be crude, and Democrats will cry foul, and everyone will say she lost the arguments on substance. But if she can deliver one or two memorable zingers and provoke Biden into a gaffe, Palin might just turn this into a good night for her team.

UPDATE: good WSJ report on McCain camp's new determination to 'let Sarah be Sarah'.

the masochism strategy

Sarah Palin is taping further interviews with Katie Couric today. Brave!

It's for a "Day In The Life" feature - which suggests softer, more personal stuff. But here's hoping Katie throws in the odd question about North Korea.

not neck and neck anymore

The reliably perspicacious Nate Silver puts it plainly: things ain't looking good for the Senator from Arizona:

Here's the long and short of it for John McCain: Barack Obama has as large a lead in the election as he's held all year. But there is much less time left on the clock than there was during other Obama periods of strength, such as in February, mid-June or immediately following the Democratic convention. This is a very difficult combination of circumstances for him.

Isaac Chotiner makes a similar point.

Two or three weeks ago, panic and pessimism were rife amongst Democrats and Obama supporters. As I put it back then, it just shows what suckers we all are for The Now.

ding dong the bells are going to chime

Post-Palin, post-campaign suspension, the McCain camp will be looking to pull another 'game-changing' surprise out of the bag. So what will it be? The Sunday Times thinks it has the answer. Of course, there's no way the campaign would play this for votes, because families are off-limits, right? Maybe reporters should get their wedding suits dry-cleaned, just in case... 

• posted by Claudia Jean 

obama won

I think it's becoming clearer that the instant consensus amongst commentators - that the debate was a draw or narrow victory for McCain - was wrong.

A new poll confirms the instant polls: voters thought Obama did a better job than McCain. Not only that but Obama's positives shifted considerably whilst McCain's stayed pretty much the same. Obama did particularly well on the economy; over a third said they had less confidence in McCain's ability to fix economic problems after watching the debate.

In other words, Obama got what he wanted out of this debate. He established himself as a serious alternative in the minds of people who are only just paying full attention. McCain's ratings were never going to shift much, because he's already well-known. So his only hope was to knock Obama off balance. He didn't manage it. Not only that, but he made two key mistakes. Firstly, his demeanour, which was churlish. Secondly, not talking about the voters. He never uttered the phrase 'middle-class', a fact that the Obama campaign has turned into a fairly effective ad.

In fact, Friday's debate may turn out to be the most significant turning point of the campaign, even though it might not feel like it right now. James Fallows, veteran journalist and former speechwriter for Jimmy Carter, is probably the world expert on US presidential debates, having written about them at length. He puts Friday night up there with the biggies:

When the details of this encounter fade, as they soon will, I think the debate as a whole will be seen as of a piece with Kennedy-Nixon in 1960, Reagan-Carter in 1980, and Clinton-Bush in 1992.

In each of those cases, a fresh, new candidate (although chronologically older in Reagan's case) had been gathering momentum at a time of general dissatisfaction with the "four more years" option of sticking with the incumbent party. The question was whether the challenger could stand as an equal with the more experienced, tested, and familiar figure. In each of those cases, the challenger passed the test -- not necessarily by "winning" the debate, either on logical points or in immediate audience or polling reactions, but by subtly reassuring doubters on the basic issue of whether he was a plausible occupant of the White House and commander in chief.

I think that's how this debate will be seen.

Just like Kennedy-Nixon, this debate was won on the intangibles of tone rather than on substance (though Obama clearly had more to say about the economy than McCain). I still think, as per my instant reaction, that Obama's tone and delivery weren't quite on point, but even so, he evoked the right emotional reaction from undecided voters: here is a guy who talks and acts like a potential president.