Month: September 2008

Talking Points Memo

Let’s state outright a few obvious points. Bringing the presidential candidates and their press entourages back to Capitol Hill won’t speed or improve the process of coming up with a good bailout deal. It will politicize it. That’s so transparently obvious that it barely requires stating. And of course that is the point.

By going public with his ‘suspension’ announcement as a breaking news statement McCain intended to make any agreement between the candidate impossible. Contrast that with Obama’s campaign, which apparently tried to get both campaigns to agree on a common set of principles privately before going public. There’s no logical reason there can’t be a presidential debate while a bailout plan is being negotiated.

FactCheck.org

We’ve seen countless Internet and e-mail claims that Sarah Palin forced women to pay for their own forensic testing when reporting a rape. Unlike some claims about Palin, this one has some merit, though Palin’s precise role is unclear. Here’s the story:

Conservative pundit George Will has a go at McCain.

George F. Will – washingtonpost.com

Under the pressure of the financial crisis, one presidential candidate is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high. It is not Barack Obama.

Channeling his inner Queen of Hearts, John McCain furiously, and apparently without even looking around at facts, said Chris Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, should be decapitated. This childish reflex provoked the Wall Street Journal to editorialize that “McCain untethered” — disconnected from knowledge and principle — had made a “false and deeply unfair” attack on Cox that was “unpresidential” and demonstrated that McCain “doesn’t understand what’s happening on Wall Street any better than Barack Obama does.”

…

Conservatives who insist that electing McCain is crucial usually start, and increasingly end, by saying he would make excellent judicial selections. But the more one sees of his impulsive, intensely personal reactions to people and events, the less confidence one has that he would select judges by calm reflection and clear principles, having neither patience nor aptitude for either.

It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?

The Nation

Senator John McCain was a foot soldier in the deregulation revolution, which triggered the current banking crisis and the wave of foreclosures. In Michigan, his party wants to deny the right to vote to victims of the GOP’s misguided economic policies and the sleazy banking practices they encouraged.

James Carabelli, chairman of the Republican Party of Macomb County outside Detroit, said, “We will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren’t voting from those addresses,” the Michigan Messenger.com reported September 10. Barack Obama’s campaign and the Democratic Party quickly filed a lawsuit in federal court on behalf of three Michigan residents who lost their houses to foreclosure, to stop the Michigan GOP from carrying out what Democrats called an “ugly” and “horrific” plan. Michigan is a key swing state where a few thousands votes could determine who wins its seventeen Electoral College votes.

FactCheck.org

Q: What’s the full story on the Bridge to Nowhere?
What is the truth about the Bridge to Nowhere? Did Palin support it? Did she keep the funds for the bridge and use them elsewhere in Alaska after she changed her position? Or was the money returned to the government? If it was returned, did Congress offer to send the funds to Katrina victims and Obama and Biden both voted against it?

A: Palin supported it even after McCain denounced it, then blamed “inaccurate portrayals” when she canceled it for lack of money. Obama and Biden voted for the big transportation bill that contained it. McCain’s vote was one of four against. Our time line gives full details.

Politico.com

Sen. John McCain’s top campaign aides convened a conference call today to complain of being called “liars.” They pressed the media to scrutinize specific elements of Sen. Barack Obama’s record.

But the call was so rife with simple, often inexplicable misstatements of fact that it may have had the opposite effect: to deepen the perception, dangerous to McCain, that he and his aides have little regard for factual accuracy.