The Fight of the Featherweights: Obama and McCain bore me to tears

The headline in Tuesday's New York Post said it all: Tired out.

What had been billed as the biggest thing to happen in Mississippi since the siege of Vicksburg went off with a resounding thud.

The first presidential debate between Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Barack Obama (D-IL) last Friday night was one yawn short of a zero-hour study hall.

Want proof?

This debate drew nearly 8 million fewer viewers than the first debate between President Bush and Sen. John Kerry in 2004.

As you might imagine, I have a few theories to explain this lack of interest.

First, our candidates are predictable at best and predictably boring at worst.

Did you hear any new information come out of either candidate? Perhaps something of substance for those of us who aren't inclined to throw support behind either without knowing a little more?

Of course you didn't.

What you heard, if indeed you tuned in, was more empty rhetoric about the economy, and how what happens on Wall Street affects Main Street – a trite catchphrase adopted by members of both parties during the recent credit crisis.

We weren't even eight minutes into the proceedings and both candidates had already borrowed the line from each other.

And from there, they bored us with talk of taxation.

Ok, we get it.

Obama wants to "Robin Hood" (that's a verb now) the rich while McCain prefers to "Ronald Reagan" the poor.

Honestly, how many more times do we have to hear about taxes? We get it already.
I'd rather go back a year and listen to Obama and Sen. Clinton argue about their virtually identical healthcare plans.

Second, could this debate have been any more sterile? I realize that the event organizers didn't want the debate to look like a pep rally for either candidate, but did the auditorium at Ole Miss have to be as quiet as a mime's funeral?

In so doing, they created a situation in which our two candidates looked like fish out of water. Without the instant affirmation of partisan cheers and pity snickers, these two were walking over their already well-worn jokes.

When McCain returned to the well and pulled up his standby line about earmarks (you know, the one about paternity tests for bears in Montana), no one laughed.

No one laughed when he called "earmarking" a "gateway drug", either.

But in the interest of full disclosure, McCain did get a couple guffaws after he said that it would be hard for Obama to "reach across the aisle from that far to the left." The only problem, of course, was that the only people who actually thought it amusing were McCain and Obama.

We're not laughing, Senator, because we're either crying or, in the case of those who were actually in Oxford Friday night, sleeping.

And Obama didn't fair any better, mind you.

Like, for instance, when moderator Jim Lehrer of PBS suggested that neither candidate seemed interested in putting forth any major changes to their presidential agendas in the aftermath of the forthcoming bailout bill in Congress.

Obama commenced spinning his wheels, claiming that some things would have to be delayed.

By some things, Senator, I think you mean most things.

Decreases in revenue accompanied by increases in spending tend to have a noxious affect on the economy. New government entitlement programs during a recession is bad business, and both candidates know that.

Things are different now, gentlemen.

To take the stage in front of millions of Americans fearful of an even more acute economic downturn and sing the same old song would be sad if it weren't so typical.

Americans like me are tired of the fight of the featherweights.

Be real. Tell the truth.

This is not a game to us.

The Day the Dow Died: Pelosi speech credited with bombed bailout bill

Today was the day the Dow died.

The single most influential economic index in world, the New York Stock Exchange, lost nearly 800 points on a near black Monday on Wall Street.

News of the failed $700 billion bailout earned for the Big Board the singlest greatest one-day loss, as measured in points, in American history.

Now, we know who is responsible for our faltering credit markets (lenders, consumers, and bureaucrats), but who gets the blame for taking the bill out at the knees on Monday?

Answer: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who, responding to the drama of the moment, opted to rub the Republicans' noses in the economic downturn that they are only partially responsible.

Many Republicans simply returned the favor, and thumbed their noses at Pelosi by against the bailout plan.

I won't poison the water on this issue any further than I already have. Watch the video for yourself.

It Is Well With My Soul

I cannot hear this old hymn of the church enough, especially in light of the life of Horatio Spafford.

The words to this hymn were written in the aftermath of a pair of major traumas in Spafford's life. He lived through the Great Chicago Fire in 1871, which took a tremendous toll on him, financially . Shortly after, while crossing the Atlantic Ocean, Spafford's four daughters died in a collision with another ship. Only his wife survived. Several weeks later, his own ship passed near the spot where his daughters drowned and he wrote these words:

- Words by Horatio G. Spafford, 1873
- Music by Philip P. Bliss, 1876

It Is Well With My Soul

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

It is well, with my soul,
It is well, with my soul,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,
Let this blessed assurance control,
That Christ has regarded my helpless estate,
And hath shed His own blood for my soul.

It is well, with my soul,
It is well, with my soul,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part but the whole,
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!

It is well, with my soul,
It is well, with my soul,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

And Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight,
The clouds be rolled back as a scroll;
The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend,
Even so, it is well with my soul.

It is well, with my soul,
It is well, with my soul,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

Wisdom from the New Republic...

This is excerpted from the latest edition of New Republic. It's great stuff. It makes me wonder if this country's economy is now more Japanese than American in its approach to failure.

Visible Hands
by Irwin Stelzer
The surrender of free-market capitalism.

'Capitalism without failure is like religion without sin," notes Allan Meltzer, one of the nation's most astute economists. Perhaps that was once true. But the New Capitalism has little room for the pain of failure. A host of measures have been introduced to make it easier for families delinquent in their mortgage payments to stay in their homes, an act of compassion (as some would put it), or encouragement of profligate sinners to sin again (as the Old Capitalists would say). The Old Capitalists mourn the lost era of individual responsibility even as they acquiesce to it, for there is no support for a return to the harsher regime they favored, in which government did little to mitigate the pain of poor management, bad judgment, or just plain bad luck.

Far more significant than its new attitude toward individual failure is the New Capitalism's fear of recession. At the very first hint of an economic slowdown, Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board--and ostensibly a conservative--eased monetary policy. He did not wait to determine whether a major downturn was brewing or for growth to turn negative. He was not willing to risk the sort of mild recession that has peppered the post-World War II period. Rather, a risk appeared, and the Fed felt it necessary to lower interest rates--never mind that such a move would drive down the dollar, and therefore drive up oil prices.

Under the Old Capitalism, the authorities in charge of monetary and fiscal policy correctly assumed that the public understood the ups and downs of the business cycle and was willing to endure the moderately bad times that often followed the very good ones. But the tolerable level of pain and risk has shrunk, so the central bankers who are supposed to ensure that our currency holds its value subordinated that goal to avoiding the pain of a bursting bubble. We may not be a nation of whiners, as Phil Gramm believes, but neither are we as tolerant of recession as we were only recently.

My own tropical depression

I had a great time writing this column.

The coverage of disasters on cable news has been particularly disturbing to me lately.

Most disturbing, of course, is the fact that I still watch it.

Here's the column...

Lip'schtick': Pig-headed response to Obama gaffe a cheap political ploy

This is a column I wrote for the Flint Journal Community Newspapers...

The McCain campaign dove headfirst into the controversy surrounding presidential hopeful Barack Obama's gaffe on the campaign trail on Tuesday, in which he invoked the "lipstick on a pig" adage when speaking about John McCain's claims about being an agent of change.

The problem for Obama, of course, has been the suggestion that the use of the adage was in reference to Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's oft-replayed quip during her speech at the Republican National Convention earlier this month.

In it, Palin explained that the only difference between a "hockey mom" and a pitbull was, of course, lipstick.

The McCain campaign has seized upon the opportunity to score political points with undecided voters who have a roundly positive view of his vice presidential candidate.

And while the raucous crowd in Virginia appeared to believe that Obama was alluding to Palin's comment, I'm not convinced.

I cannot envision a scenario in which a major party presidential candidate like Obama, at this point a coin-flip away from the presidency, would make such a bone-jarringly indiotic statement.

It appeared, at least to my eyes, that Obama knew his statement would be misconstrued immediately after making it. And so, he followed it up with another, perhaps more apt, adage: "You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change, but it's still going to stink after eight years."

Did Obama just call John McCain old and scaley? How dare he?

Don't laugh, Congresswoman Mary Fallin, a McCain surrogate from Oklahoma suggested as much in an interview with Chris Matthews on MSNBC Wednesday night.

From here on out, Obama should side with fish-related analogies on the stump.
But seriously, this is what passes for a controversy nowadays?

Obama is not so stupid as to make such a statement with intent to smear Governor Palin. Clearly the McCain campaign is employing this cheap political ploy to demonize Obama, and one need only watch their latest political ad playing up the gaffe to recognize this.

If you believe Barack Obama called Sarah Palin a pig, it's because you want to believe it -- and that doesn't make it true.

Cutting through the Palin hysteria

Here are a few observations regarding Senator McCain's choice for Vice President, Sarah Palin:

--Politically, the choice of Palin for the ticket was brilliant in function. No one saw it coming, which only adds to the theater of it all.

--Does she have the requisite amount of experience to be second-in-command of the executive branch? Normally I would answer in the negative, but this year is different. The decision by Democratic voters put Barack Obama up as their choice for president is, to borrow a phrase from Obama, a "game changer." Experience, at least in the way we've understood it (in this context) for a couple hundred years, is secondary; Democrats made that much clear when they passed over more qualified candidates. And so, what's good for the goose is good for the gander--though probably not good for the United States.

--Palin's speech at the Republican Convention was tremendous, but Republicans have to be careful not to become their own parody. Palin, at least up to this point, is every bit as much a media creation as Obama.

--Speaking of the media, am I at all offended by the way Palin has been covered? In the strict sense, certainly not. That being said, I do not think it is fair in light of the kid-glove treatment Obama has received from the mainstream media. In other words, many journalists are only doing their job half of the time.

--Is Palin more qualified to be president than Obama? Perhaps, but this is a moot point as she is not running for president. And Palin and her meager experience are an election victory and a heartbeat away from the presidency; Obama and his equally meager experience are only an election day away. Which seems more imminent?

--Have media been sexist in their coverage of Palin? Of course. One has to consider, however, that we live in a country that struggles with sexism every bit as much as all the other noxious "'isms." I don't have to be a woman to recognize that.

Presidential politics in America: is experience 'overrated'?

This is a column I wrote for the Flint Community Newspapers on Tuesday...

Elections, especially presidential ones, have a way of marking subtle changes in the attitudes of Americans with respect to politics.
Take, for instance, the issue that appears to be manifesting itself as the 500-pound gorilla in the polling station: experience.

(The relevance of experience in presidential politics was even explored in a cover story in Time Magazine this year.)

It's as if we've turned back the clock to 1960, when Richard Nixon, vice president and Republican nominee for president, made it a habit of accusing his opponent, John F. Kennedy, of being too inexperienced for the job.

The only difference, of course, is that Kennedy's relative lack of experience according to his rival would have compared him favorably to Franklin Roosevelt by today's standards.

Kennedy, who was only 43 years old when he narrowly defeated Nixon in the general election, had been a decorated sailor in the Navy during World War II before serving for nearly 14 years in the United States Congress--eight of those years in the United States Senate.

In the past, when American voters were charged with the responsibility of choosing the most qualified person to hold this highest office, experience trumped nearly all considerations.

These days, a presidential candidate boasting but a poor reflection of Kennedy's resume would be overqualified.

Andrew Cohen, a professor of journalism and international affairs at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, wrote a fascinating op-ed in the Ottawa Citizen about the experience issue in the upcoming presidential election.

Cohen wrote:

In the past, when Americans expected presidents to have a record of political service, Mr. Obama would have been called a poseur or imposter and sent home. Not anymore. This is the day of the dilettante.

Experience is overrated. It is unnecessary. As someone recently put it, anyone can grow up to be president in America, but now you don't even have to grow up anymore.

This is a somewhat worrisome critique of the political climate in this country, and one that should not be dismissed because of its northern origin.

So, is experience truly "overrated"?

With only the present election cycle to guide me, the answer is surely in the affirmative.

Consider that since the aforementioned election of John F. Kennedy, American voters have not elected a sitting senator as president. (Nixon, for his part, was also a senator but gained experience as a vice president before being elected president in 1968.)

A coincidence? I doubt it.

This year, the two major political parties give voters no choice.

More troubling is the fact that the person dubbed by many in the mainstream media as least qualified to be on a presidential ticket, John McCain's recently-named running mate, Sarah Palin, is the only candidate on either ticket with executive experience--Palin has been governor of Alaska for less than two years.

Compare that to McCain and Joe Biden, Obama's pick for vice president, who have spent a combined 60 years in Washington as legislators and not in a corner office.

These men seek to lead the executive branch without any notable executive experience.

With respect to McCain's counterpart, Obama, experience, at least as an overarching qualification for president, has ostensibly been replaced by less tangible traits like "hope" and "vision."

Experience, for Obama, clearly isn't a winning issue.

The junior senator from Illinois served nearly eight years in the state senate before a sex scandal forced his Republican opponent in the 2004 race for U.S. senate, Jack Ryan, to withdrawal just months before the election. Obama then defeated Alan Keyes, a throw-in candidate with absolutely zero chance of winning, in a landslide.

And after less than one term's worth of experience in the U.S. senate, Obama won the nomination of the Democratic Party for president by the smallest of margins over the more experienced candidate, New York Senator Hillary Clinton.

All that being said, perhaps we will all come to find that these who aspire to lead this nation are as rich in other facets of their character as they are lean on experience.

"As I say, experience isn't enough," wrote Cohen, responding to an e-mail regarding his sentiments on experience. "Experience without judgment does not get you very far. I would say you have to have both, in equal measure, to be a good leader."

And so, in the final analysis, perhaps this election must boil down to judgment--who has it, and where did it come from?