Obama: Protectionist or Free-Trader?

I disagree with the following summary by Dan Drezner:

My favorite part of the speech was McCain’s take on coping with the global economy. It contained his only concrete proposal (reforming unemployment insurance) while also emphasizing their different takes on the global economy (Obama: protect old industries; McCain: prepare citizens for new industries). If my vote was based only on foreign economic policy, I’d be voting for McCain and it wouldn’t be a close call.

A lot of people on the right (like Drezner) seem to think Obama is a protectionist. A lot of people on the left think he's a free-trader. Likely, he's somewhere in between - he will try to "protect old industries," but not through subsidies, but through somewhat slightly stronger labor and environmental protections in free trade agreements. Also, I feel like Obama emphasizes creating new jobs in new industries as much as McCain does.

Andrew Sullivan

For all his professed devotion to the issues, he seems to be awfully obsessed with certain scandals. He posted way too much about both the Palin pregnancy/nonpregnancy/daughter's pregnancy and the cross in the sand story McCain told during the Rick Warren forum. I think this is partially a function of the fact that Andrew posts all the freaking time, but it still seems weird coming from him.

Discredited experts

A guess at what David Brooks means when he says this (via Matt):

There simply aren’t enough Republican experts left to staff an administration, so he will have to throw together a hodgepodge with independents and Democrats.

I'm guessing he's saying that a lot of the Republican experts have the taint of Bush on them. McCain can't hire Wolfowitz, Feith, Andy Card, etc., etc. because they are too closely tied to an incredibly unpopular president. Or, like Jack Goldsmith, they've written tell-alls and are now persona non grata to the Republican party.

100% True Statements

Michael Kinsley:

The whole "experience" debate is silly. Under our system of government, there is only one job that gives you both executive and foreign-policy experience, and that's the one McCain and Obama are running for. Nevertheless, it's a hardy perennial: If your opponent is a governor, you accuse him or her of lacking foreign-policy experience. If he or she is a member of Congress, you say this person has never run anything. And if, by any chance, your opponent has done both, you say that he or she is a "professional politician."

McCain's Agenda

Andrew Sullivan:

The agenda is war and the threat of war - including what would be an end to cooperation with Russia on securing loose nuclear materials and sharing terror intelligence, in favor of a new cold war in defense of ... Moldova and Azerbaijan. I'm sure McCain would like to have his Russian cooperation, while demonizing and attacking them on the world stage, but in the actual world, he cannot. Putin and Medvedev are not agreeable figures, and I do not mean in any way to excuse their bullying. But this is global politics, guys, and these are the cold, hard choices facing American policy makers.

And in this telling op-ed Lieberman and Graham simply do not even confront them. It's all about a moral posture, with no practical grappling with the consequences. It's the mindset that gave you the Iraq war - but multiplied.

John McCain is making it quite clear what his foreign policy will be like: tilting sharply away from the greater realism of Bush's second term toward the abstract moralism, fear-mongering and aggression of the first. Not just four more years - but four more years like Bush's first term. If the Democrats cannot adequately warn Americans of the dangers of a hotheaded temperament and uber-neo-con mindset in the White House for another four years, they deserve to lose. If Americans decide they want a president who will be more aggressive and less diplomatic than the current one, then they should at least brace for the consequences - for their economy and their security.

Wow

When people talk about how YouTube is changing politics, they're talking about videos like this one:

Now, I don't necessarily agree with everything said in the video - but it's certainly compelling and was made well.

The Real McCain and Reluctant Muslinging

Reading this New York magazine piece on the campaign made me think two things:

1. It's fully possible McCain did want to keep the campaign as civil as possible - right up until the point he realized that if that happened, Obama was going to kick his ass. I'm guessing most politicians don't really want to call their opponents traitorous child molesters, but are willing to do so when strategists tell them it's the only way they can win the campaign.
2. Lately, some journalists, perhaps egged on by John Weaver and Mike Murphy, two McCain advisers from 2000, have been claiming the McCain that is sliming Obama isn't the "real" McCain. I'm sure this is true. What's equally true is that the 2000 version of McCain - "The Maverick" - wasn't real either. Both are just creations of the strategists running the campaign. There's elements of truth and elements of fiction in both, and there are elements of truth and elements of fiction in how Obama is presented by his campaign.
   

Racist? No. Stupid? Yes.

Considering the Wall Street Journal already posed the question, I might as well provide an answer. John McCain is stupid. Ok, he's not, but his campaign's "Celeb" ad is. But it's not racist. As a reader wrote to The Daily Dish:

All of those other individuals are famous for something - there is substance behind their celebrity. Britney and Paris are paper-thin and without any substance whatsoever. That's the comparison McCain was going for - trying to allege that Barack Obama is without substance, a celebrity for celebrity's sake.

The McCain campaign was saying Obama is like Paris and Britney, not that he was fucking them. Nonetheless, the concept of the ad is stupid for numerous reasons: Obama transparently has some substance, McCain is also a celebrity, it reeks of just a stupid, desperate attack.

Right now, the McCain campaign is just flailing about in the dark, it seems.

McCain deserves better surrogates

Really, he does. I don't think he's actually insane, but his surrogates might be.

I mean, computer illiteracy can't really be a good thing, can it?

Jon Voight? Really, that's the best you can do? Hollywood really must be as liberal as everyone says. But seriously, not even like the guy who created 24?

I can't even explain this.

McCain and Russia

From Joe Klein's column in Time:

But that's the point: McCain would place a higher priority on finding new enemies than on cultivating new friends.

The entire thing is very good. Klein does his usual good job of blending policy and politics into a coherent analysis - something a lot of journalists struggle with.

The most baffling part of McCain's foreign policy is his extreme dislike of Vladmir Putin and Russia, which Klein calls "rather exotic." I would call it retarded.

From what I know, his plan to kick Russia out of the G8 has no supporters outside of his campaign and certainly none outside the United States. The G8 is an informal body with no real power - kicking Russia out would have no positive effects. But it would force them closer to China and perhaps restart the Cold War, generating a whole new set of enemies for the United States.

McCain's view of the world seems to be like The Dark Knight in reverse. Where in The Dark Knight, the presence of Batman creates the Joker, in McCain's world, the presence of Batman requires a Joker. He seems to think that because the United States is good, there must be evil.

Wishes come true, Judis on McCain, and Samantha Power

As I previously hoped, the United States is making a shift in policy in Iran, adopting a position similar to the one we took against North Korea.

From The Guardian:

That dreaded spectre appears to be receding for now. A "second North Korea" remains the preferred model for the US state department and the European allies – meaning talks leading to voluntary disarmament in return for security, aid and normalisation. This is just the sort of multilateral "soft power" horsetrading Cheney & Co cannot abide.

I also liked this quote:

But former Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry spoke for many people around the world when he described the US decision to talk as "the most welcome flip-flop in recent diplomatic history".

The US is also looking at opening up a mini-Embassy in Iran.

The big question is whether or not a President McCain would continue to talk to Iran. His rhetoric indicates otherwise, but his rhetoric also indicates that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is in charge of Iran's foreign policy when he isn't, so McCain's rhetoric really can't be trusted. But at the same time, John Judis thinks McCain has thrown off the yolk of realism and is now a pure neocon.

The Judis article includes this gem:

Like Bush, McCain looked into Putin's soul, but, where Bush saw a man "deeply committed to his country," McCain saw only devilry: "I looked into Putin's eyes and saw three things: a K and a G and a B." McCain has repeatedly displayed his contempt for the Russian. He has called Putin a "spoiled child" who exhibits "aberrational" behavior and a "totalitarian dictator who ... is trying to revert [to] the old Russian Empire." And he continues to see Russia entirely through the prism of Putin, dismissing his successor, Dmitry Medvedev, as "Putin's puppet."

He does realize he's going to have to talk to Medvedev once's he in office, right? Right?

Another IR note - Obama basically has a mini-State Dept. working for him. I'm glad to see that Samantha Power is still in contact with the campaign - A Problem From Hell is one of my favorite IR books. Also, it leaves open the possibility of having both an Undersecretary of State Power and an Undersecretary of State Slaughter simultaneously - a dream first expressed by Matt Yglesias, I believe.

The "I invented the internet" of 2008

The following comments, I believe, could officially cost John McCain the election:

Q: What websites if any do you look at regularly?

Mr. McCain: Brooke and Mark show me Drudge, obviously, everybody watches, for better or for worse, Drudge. Sometimes I look at Politico. Sometimes RealPolitics, sometimes.

(Mrs. McCain and Ms. Buchanan both interject: “Meagan’s blog!”)

Mr. McCain: Excuse me, Meagan’s blog. And we also look at the blogs from Michael and from you that may not be in the newspaper, that are just part of your blog.

Q: But do you go on line for yourself?

Mr. McCain: They go on for me. I am learning to get online myself, and I will have that down fairly soon, getting on myself. I don’t expect to be a great communicator, I don’t expect to set up my own blog, but I am becoming computer literate to the point where I can get the information that I need – including going to my daughter’s blog first, before anything else.

While most people are simply mocking these comments and pointing out inaccuracies (Politico and The Drudge Report aren't blogs, RealPolitics is RealClearPolitics, etc.), I think these comments represent something more significant.

In 2000, Gore's "I invented the internet" comment (which he never actually said) became viral because it fit into the narrative about Gore - that he was a pseudo-liar who was prone to exaggeration. Today, that phrase and maybe "lockbox" are the two things most people remember about the 2000 Gore campaign.

The question is, will this conversation become equally shortened (To "I'm learning how to use the internet," perhaps?) and become a catchphrase to fit into a large media narrative labeling McCain as too old/off-his-rocker/senile to be president? This narrative hasn't really started to develop yet, but I could easily see it happening. The key part will probably be what the more campaign-oriented New York Times columnists (particularly Maureen Dowd) and the satirists at The Daily Show, Colbert Report, and Saturday Night Live decide to do with it.

In summary, don't be surprised if, come October, voters cite McCain not being able to use the internet as a reason to not vote for him.