The Media's Short Memory

If you weren't paying attention closely, you'd probably think that Barack Obama was trailing John McCain in the polls. That's because the question leaping from every reporter's lips is some variation of "why isn't Obama doing much better?" The conventional wisdom at the moment is clearly that Obama's lead (5-7 points in most national polls) isn't big enough, that in the current political climate he should be crushing McCain by huge margins.

Putting aside for a moment the merits of that particular view, it's amusing to see how far expectations have shifted in just a few short months.

Back when the primary contest was still raging, in April and May, the convention wisdom seemed to be that Obama would have a very tough time winning the general election, that he had serious flaws that would keep him from being competitive in places like Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. For instance, in a much-discussed April 13 article in The Politico entitled What Clinton Wishes She Could Say, John Harris and Jim Vandehei echoed what many political journalists and pundits were saying at the time, that "Obama has serious problems with Jewish voters (goodbye Florida), working-class whites (goodbye Ohio) and Hispanics (goodbye, New Mexico)." They noted that the Clintons themselves were convinced that "if Obama is the nominee, a likely Democratic victory would turn to a near-certain defeat." They wrote that many "Democratic lawmakers, veteran lobbyists, and campaign operatives" who weren't backing Clinton nevertheless shared her assessment of Obama's general election prospects.

And if you watched any cable news show during that time, you were treated to endless questions about how Obama could possibly win the general election in light of his poor showing among certain demographic groups and in certain key swing states.

Now, just a couple months later, there have been countless polls showing Obama ahead of McCain nationally and ahead in all of the key swing states (as well as some traditionally red states like Colorado, Virginia, and Iowa), and the question has suddenly morphed into "why isn't Obama crushing McCain?" It's weird. The goalposts have moved dramatically.

For what it's worth, I think the answer to that question is pretty simple: It's totally unrealistic to expect Obama to be crushing McCain in the polls at this stage in the contest.

For starters, no Democrat has pulled down more than 50.1% of the vote in a general election since Lyndon Johnson, so it's bizarre to expect Obama to be polling much higher than he is. Second, it's August--prior to the convention and the debates--and Obama is much less of a known commodity than his opponent. Is it really so strange that many voters remain undecided? Third, actual Democrats always do worse than the generic Republican/Democrat numbers, especially in presidential contests. This is a function both of the Republican party's superiority at character-based politics and the relatively greater emphasis placed on military issues in presidential elections.

Moreover, as Nate Silver pointed out the other day, Obama does much better in polls when matched up against other Republicans (like Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, or even George Bush). That indicates that it is really McCain who is over-performing, not Obama who is under-performing.

Which brings me to my last point. There's an assumption--a correct one I believe--that the current political climate is very favorable to Democrats. That said, I don't think it's quite as favorable as it was two years ago, when dissatisfaction with the Iraq war was at a crescendo. And in that historically lopsided election, the Democrats won the national popular vote by roughly 6 or 7 points. Most polls now show Obama leading McCain by 6 or 7 points.

So, again, I'm not sure why it is that most journalists and pundits have it in their heads that he should be leading by gigantic margins, particularly at this stage in the game.

A Perfect Storm of GOP Lunacy is Brewing

Yesterday I read that Newt Gingrich had been summonsed to the Capitol to participate in the House GOP's oil-drilling protest and that he had publicly threatened to shut down the government if the GOP doesn't get its way. I nearly spit out my coffee. Had I entered some sort of time-warp? Was it 1995 again? Holding fake sessions of Congress is one thing, but would the GOP really be crazy enough to try to shut down the government again, especially this close to a presidential election?

Sadly, the answer is probably yes. If you think about the issue of off-shore drilling, it really does have the potential to generate a perfect storm of GOP lunacy. All of the ingredients are there in abundance. First, there's the polling. Regardless of the policy merits of allowing further drilling off shore (and since when do Republicans care about policy anyway?), just about every recent poll has shown overwhelming public support for off-shore drilling. Not only that, but the public clearly connects drilling with the issue of high gas prices, which is consistently at or near the top of their list of concerns. So Republicans see this issue as a huge political winner. But that's not all. It just so happens that this is the rare issue where public sentiment aligns perfectly with the desires of a power Republican interest group, the energy lobby. Big Oil wants more areas opened to off-shore drilling, and they're willing to contribute generously to politicians who push for that policy (just ask John McCain). Moreover, to the extent Republicans have a governing philosophy, this policy fits it perfectly. It's jingoistic (more American oil for Americans!), it involves removing a regulation on industry (regulations = bad), and it promises a solution that doesn't involve listening to environmentalists or conservationists (take that, Al Gore and Jimmy Carter!). And finally, there's the fact that we're now entering the home stretch of a election season in which the presidency is up for grabs and Republicans in Congress are facing the prospect of losing a large number seats.

When you put all those ingredients together, you've got a recipe for Republican zealotry on an unparalleled scale. To put it simply, to a Republican party lost in the wilderness, this issue is manna sent directly from Heaven. It's pure nourishment. It has no downside. No trade off. They can, at once, be zealous populists, do the bidding of their corporate sponsors, and be true to their core beliefs (again, to the extent they have core beliefs).

In light of that, it would be wise for the Democrats not to underestimate the lengths to which their Republican counterparts are willing to go on this issue. That doesn't mean that they should just give in, but it does mean they should consider ways of taking the wind out of their sails. Personally, I think the best approach would be to allow a vote on a compromise measure, something that includes limited off-shore drilling but also lots of good energy policy (such as support for alternative energy and increased CAFE standards). The compromise bill should also include provisions that most Republicans (and particularly their oil industry donors) don't like, such as the repeal of tax credits and subsidies to the oil industry. Such a compromise would likely pass, and if Bush signs it, then the issue would be off the table and a lot of good policy would become law. And if Bush vetoes it, well then he--and not Nancy Pelosi--becomes the person preventing further off-shore drilling. The Republicans will no doubt scream and yell that they're being denied an up-or-down vote on drilling, but that's a much tougher complaint to sell.

If Pelosi continues to deny them any sort of vote on the drilling issue, however, their antics will continue to escalate and we'll soon be faced with a Class 5 storm of GOP idiocy. If that outcome can be headed off, and I think it can, it's probably worth doing.

Reconsidering Clinton

I've long been opposed to the so-called "Dream Ticket."  As I've written here before, I think Hillary Clinton's supposed general election strengths have been greatly exaggerated by her supporters (and her liabilities not sufficiently acknowledged).  I also questioned those who argued that Obama needed to choose her as his running mate in order to "unite the party."  I think time has shown that contention to be mistaken.

All that said, I find myself warming ever so slightly to the idea of picking Hillary as VP.  It's not that my opinion of her relative strengths and weaknesses has changed; it's that I'm not all that enthused about the people on Obama's apparent short-list, and I think that, relative to them, Hillary stacks up pretty well.

If media reports are to be believed, the top names on Obama's list are Tim Kaine, Evan Bayh, Joe Biden, and Kathleen Sebelius.  Let's start with Kaine.  He's an intriguing choice in some ways, someone who would compliment Obama in many respects.  But I think his relative lack of experience might prove to be a liability.  He's not going to reassure any voters who are concerned by Obama's own lack of experience.  The same is likely true of Sebelius.

Joe Biden has plenty of experience and he'd probably be the best surrogate of the bunch, but he's also a bit of a loose cannon.  He's the kind of guy who I can see making an ill-timed gaffe that hurts the campaign.  And as stupid as it sounds, I can see the Republicans reviving the whole plagiarism thing in a big way and trying to paint both Obama and Biden as plagiarizing phonies (remember the Deval Patrick plagiarism charge from the primaries?).  

Bayh also brings a decent amount of experience to the ticket, but he strikes me as a rather bland Clinton stand-in.  I'm not sure what he brings to the ticket that Clinton herself wouldn't, other than perhaps a marginally better chance of winning Indiana.  

Which brings me back to the idea of picking Clinton herself.  I honestly don't think Clinton would help Obama win over very many swing voters and she may actually alienate some of them.  That said, she does have something to offer that none of the four short-listers do, namely, a lot of very engaged and very enthusiastic supporters throughout the country.  If those supporters could be re-engaged in the process, they could significantly improve Obama's fundraising and ground operation, which are already impressive.  Her presence on the ticket might also improve the enthusiasm gap, which already strongly favors the Democrats, and thereby improve voter turnout on election day.

And I don't think there's any question that Clinton would bring experience to the ticket and serve as an effective surrogate and campaigner (at least as good as Bayh, and better than Sebelius and Kaine).

To be clear, I'm not at all sold on the idea of Clinton as VP; I'm just not convinced that any of the other names currently being discussed are obviously better choices.  Like Clinton, they all have some obvious strengths and weaknesses.  I'm just glad I'm not the one who has to make the call.  It's a really tough one this time around.

The Commander in Chief Test

This point gets made a lot, but rarely by referencing the candidates' actual words. Here's what John McCain and Barack Obama had to say when the country was debating the biggest foreign policy decision we've made in the last several decades.

John McCain, from a New York Times op-ed entitled The Right War for the Right Reasons:

Many critics suggest that disarming Iraq through regime change would not result in an improved peace. There are risks in this endeavor, to be sure. But no one can plausibly argue that ridding the world of Saddam Hussein will not significantly improve the stability of the region and the security of American interests and values. Saddam Hussein is a risk-taking aggressor who has attacked four countries, used chemical weapons against his own people, professed a desire to harm the United States and its allies and, even faced with the prospect of his regime's imminent destruction, has still refused to abide by Security Council demands that he disarm.

Isn't it more likely that antipathy toward the United States in the Islamic world might diminish amid the demonstrations of jubilant Iraqis celebrating the end of a regime that has few equals in its ruthlessness?

Barack Obama, from a speech delivered at a Chicago anti-war rally:

Now let me be clear: I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power.… The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him. But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors…and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.

I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda.

I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.

And for the record, in the same speech, Obama suggested a few better uses of our time and resources, including, "finish[ing] the fight with Bin Laden and al-Qaeda," securing loose nuclear weapons, and "fight[ing] to wean ourselves off Middle East oil through an energy policy that doesn’t simply serve the interests of Exxon."

Earth to Reporters

Why isn't every major news organization bombarding McCain with questions about this?

I realize that late 2001 was a time period that most journalists would rather forget, but come on; this is potentially a very big deal. Within days of the first anthrax attacks, McCain goes on television and claims that Iraq may be responsible for the attacks and states that Iraq will be the "second phase" of our response to 9/11.

This screams out for follow up questions. What information, if any, did McCain have at the time linking the anthrax attacks to Iraq? Who gave him this information? What did he mean when he said Iraq would be the "second phase" or our response? Did he believe Iraq was somehow responsible for 9/11? Had he already decided that an invasion of Iraq was necessary? Had the Bush administration?

The answers to these questions would not only shed light on McCain's judgment on important issues, but could potentially be relevant to the criminal investigation into the anthrax attacks. As Glenn Greenwald has tirelessly pointed out, there were government officials who were feeding false information to journalists at around this time linking the anthrax attacks to Iraq. And in light of the direction the investigation has taken since then, it's at least possible that one or more of these officials were involved in the attacks themselves. Were these same officials feeding lies to McCain and his staff? Or the White House? How exactly did McCain come to believe that Iraq was responsible?

These are important questions, and I find it utterly incomprehensible that McCain isn't being asked them by every reporter. Are tire gauges and Paris Hilton really more pressing issues?

Reason to be Skeptical of Suskind's Claim

As I highlighted earlier, Ron Suskind claims in his new book that in late 2003, the White House authorized the forgery of a letter--purporting to be from a high level Iraqi intelligence official to Saddam Hussein--in order to validate its pre-war claims about Iraqi WMD and the supposed connection between Iraq and al Qaeda. If true, this would be the foreign policy equivalent of a police officer planting a gun on a suspect after shooting him in order to justify the shooting, and it would be a BIG DEAL.

I think there are reasons to be skeptical of Suskind's claim, though. Consider this. The existence of the letter was first reported by Con Coughlin, a reporter for the Sunday Telegraph in London, on December 14, 2003. Yet despite the potentially highly significant nature of Coughlin's find, most news outlets--other than gullible right wing rags like the National Review--were reluctant to run with the story, most likely because the document seemed too perfect, like something Bill Kristol would have dreamed into existence if he could have.

By December 17, just three days later, Newsweek ran a story reporting that the letter was "probably a fabrication." Citing multiple "intelligence and law enforcement officials," Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball made a convincing case that the document was fake, pointing out that Mohammed Atta's whereabouts in 2001 were well-documented by the FBI and it was incredibly unlikely that he could have been in Iraq as claimed in the letter. The Newsweek story even included the following amusing passage:

Ironically, even the Iraqi National Congress of Ahmed Chalabi, which has been vocal in claiming ties between Al Qaeda and Saddam's regime, was dismissive of the new Telegraph story. "The memo is clearly nonsense," an INC spokesman told NEWSWEEK.

So while the letter is almost surely a forgery, it's not a very convincing one. Hardly anyone bought it, and a major news outlet exposed it as a fake within three days. I realize that the White House and the CIA have not exactly earned a reputation for competency over the last eight years, but for Suskind to be right, they have to have been stunningly incompetent in the execution of this plan.

Then again, maybe they put someone like Doug Feith in charge of the operation. That might explain it.

Hop on the Pander Express

Here's what McCain yelled out to the crowd at a biker rally today:

When I'm president . . . we're not going to pay $4 a gallon. We're going to drill off-shore and we're going to drill now. We're going to drill here and drill now.

He then attacked Obama again for suggesting that properly inflating your tires can reduce fuel consumption.

This is what John McCain has allowed himself to become. The central rallying cry of his campaign is a pledge to do something that he has opposed (for good reason) virtually his entire political career and that he knows will not accomplish what he's promising it will. He's become the ultimate panderer, telling people what they want to hear even though he knows its wrong and counterproductive. And to top it all off, he takes a childish swipe at his opponent, repeating a charge that is so dumb that it insults everyone's intelligence.

It's truly a sad spectacle and it's amazing to me that there aren't more people on the Right who are embarrassed by it all.

The Other Half of the Letter

(updated below)

Everyone is buzzing this morning about Ron Suskind's claim--in his new book--that a letter purportedly written to Saddam Hussien by one of his intelligence officers in 2001 was in fact a forgery authorized by the White House. The letter was provided to a reporter for The Sunday Telegraph (of London) by a member of the Iraqi interim government and was first written about in December of 2003, at around the time Saddam was captured.

All the commentary I've seen so far--from the Politico article that broke the story and blogs that have linked to it--has focused on the first part of the letter that describes Atta's training, but no one seems to be mentioning the more intriguing part of the letter. According to Con Coughlin, the reporter who obtained the document:

The second item [in the letter] explains how Iraqi intelligence, helped by "a small team from the al-Qaeda organisation", arranged for an (unspecified) shipment from Niger to reach Baghdad by way of Libya and Syria.

Iraqi officials believe this is a reference to the controversial shipments of uranium ore that Iraq acquired from Niger to aid Saddam in his efforts to develop an atom bomb.

Now, as everyone knows, Bush famously trumpeted the uranium from Niger claim in his State of the Union speech just prior to the invasion of Iraq, and the White House later came under fire when Joe Wilson went public and disputed that claim in July 2003.

So this letter, which appears to support two highly dubious pre-war claims by the Bush administration--the link between Saddam and al Qaeda and the Niger uranium claim--is "discovered" in December of 2003. I'm not sure what proof, if any, Suskind has that the White House was responsible for this letter, but if that claim is true, it's a HUGE deal.

UPDATE: Ron Suskind himself now has a post up at the Huffington Post. He writes:

The Iraq Intelligence Chief, Tahir Jalil Habbush -- a man still carrying with $1 million reward for capture, the Jack of Diamonds in Bush's famous deck of wanted men -- has been America's secret source on Iraq. Starting in January of 2003, with Blair and Bush watching, his secret reports began to flow to officials on both sides of the Atlantic, saying that there were no WMD and that Hussein was acting so odd because of fear that the Iranians would find out he was a toothless tiger). The U.S. deep-sixed the intelligence report in February, "resettled" Habbush to a safe house in Jordan during the invasion and then paid him $5 million in what could only be considered hush money.

In the fall of 2003, after the world learned there were no WMD -- as Habbush had foretold -- the White House ordered the CIA to carry out a deception. The mission: create a handwritten letter, dated July, 2001, from Habbush to Saddam saying that Atta trained in Iraq before the attacks and the Saddam was buying yellow cake for Niger with help from a "small team from the al Qaeda organization."

The mission was carried out, the letter was created, popped up in Baghdad, and roiled the global newcycles in December, 2003 (conning even venerable journalists with Tom Brokaw). The mission is a statutory violation of the charter of CIA, and amendments added in 1991, prohibiting CIA from conduction disinformation campaigns on U.S. soil.

So that's Suskind's version of events. I'll be curious to see what evidence he has to back it up. If this allegation is true (and that's a big "if" at this point), then the letter was intended solely for political purposes. By the fall of 2003, we had already invaded Iraq and declared "Mission Accomplished." The issue at that point was the looming political fallout as the original case for war crumbled.

The House GOP in Full Glory

Watching GOP House members in action is truly an educational experience. You may think you understand the depths of cynicism and hypocrisy to which some politicians will plunge, but until you've seen Republican members of the House do their thing, you really don't know the half of it.

Senate Republicans can be obnoxious too, but there are certain structural factors that limit the level of pure lunacy on display. For instance, to become a senator, you have to win a state-wide election, which generally requires beating a relatively well-funded and respectable opponent. Not so in the House. Most of the remaining Republican members of the House represent heavily conservative districts and often run uncontested. For many of them, their only real concern is the threat of someone even more reactionary launching a primary challenge. Furthermore, the House is much more structured and hierarchical than the Senate. And the House GOP delegation was run for the better part of the last decade by Tom Delay, who is probably the most corrupt, dishonest, and generally reprehensible figure to rise to prominence in American politics since the Gilded Age. And he left his stamp all over the House GOP delegation, which is currently run by his proteges.

So it's not at all surprising that the House GOP delegation is now composed largely of shameless hacks and reactionary nutjobs. In the words of Obi-Wan Kenobi: "you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy." Okay, maybe that's overstating things a little bit (but not much).

As if to prove the point, the House GOP members have convened a fake session of Congress for the second day in a row to demonstrate their deep concern over the impact that high gas prices are having on the American consumer, whom they care so much about. Specifically, they're protesting Nancy Pelosi's decision not to allow a vote on off-shore drilling prior to the August recess.

Remember this is the same group of politicians who were in power for over a decade and not only did nothing whatsoever to prepare for this day, but actively fought against efforts to spur research into alternative fuels and reduce consumption of oil (such as raising CAFE standards on automobiles). In fact, they didn't even push to increase off-shore drilling, the policy they now put forth as the answer to all of our problems. And even now, as they wrap themselves in the banner of lowering gas prices, they are fighting against common sense efforts to improve the situation--such as cracking down on commodity speculation and taking long term steps to reduce our dependence on oil altogether--and going out of their way to mock Barack Obama for having the temerity to suggest an easy way to reduce gas consumption.

Furthermore, they know that their proposed solution, off-shore drilling, will do little if anything to lower gas prices and nothing at all to solve the larger problem, which is our national dependence on oil. Indeed, what they're doing is, once again, following the bidding of the oil companies, which is how we got where we are in the first place.

It's okay, though, I don't expect anything but soul-crushing hypocrisy from the House GOP. That's what they do. To expect anything different would be like expecting lions not to hunt or fish not to swim.

Obama Needs to Play Offense in the Character Game

(updated below) (updated again)

As anyone who's paid attention to presidential politics over the last two decades knows, the Republican electoral strategy is largely character-based. In presidential elections, more than any other type of election, a large number of voters base their decisions on their perceptions of the candidates' characters, rather than any specific issue or set of issues.

Knowing this, Republican strategists focus most of their effort on creating and/or feeding negative media narratives about the Democratic candidate. They know that journalists (as well as late night comedians) like to operate within pre-existing frames or narratives. It makes their jobs easier, their analysis and humor easier to "get." Republican strategists know that if a candidate says something or does something that fits an existing narrative, it will get much more attention and will serve to reinforce that narrative.

As Bob Somerby astutely put it the other day:

There are three basic lines in American politics. “Happy days are here again” is one. Another basic: “It’s time for a change.” And then, there’s what Candidate Reagan said:

REAGAN (10/28/80): There you go again.

“There you go again,” he told Carter. It only worked because people had heard his narrative about “liberals” before. They’d heard it again and again—and again. Whether he was right or not in the present instance, they felt they knew what he meant.

That's the essence of Republican presidential politics. They settle on a narrative about their opponent and they repeat it over and over again until it has thoroughly saturated the public consciousness. Then when something new happens, they all chant "there he goes again." And if they've done a good job laying the groundwork, journalists, reporters, and late night comedians all join the chorus.

That's why, in 2000, whenever Al Gore said anything that sounded even the slightest bit embellished, everyone pounced and pointed to it as further evidence of Gore's mendacity. But when George W. Bush blatantly lied about his tax cut proposal in every debate, no one even bothered to point it out. The same was true, of course, of John Kerry in 2004. Anything he did that could possibly be characterized as a "flip-flop" provided an instant "there he goes again" moment, while Bush could easily get away with similar reversals.

This time around, the narrative being fed to (and by) the media is that Obama is somehow unusually "presumptuous" or "arrogant." As a result, when Obama says "we are the change we've been waiting for", that's seen as evidence of his presumptuousness, but John McCain can go around proclaiming himself "the American President Americans have been waiting for" and it barely draws a comment.

While the Republicans have several anti-Obama narratives that are rapidly gaining steam, the Obama campaign--like the Kerry and Gore campaigns before him--has done little if anything to try to plant the seeds of anti-McCain narratives in the media. The Democrats always feel (rightly or wrongly) that if the campaign can just be about the issues, they'll win. So they actively try to steer the conversation away from discussion of character and toward discussion of the issues. Obama is following the same script now, proclaiming his "disappointment" with McCain's character attacks and trying to the steer the conversation back toward more substantive topics.

Given the overall political climate, Obama's strategy may work this year despite having failed in previous election cycles. But it would be much easier if his campaign took some initiative on the character front. They don't need to do anything sleazy or underhanded. They just need to try to associate McCain with a few simple adjectives, something that journalists and late night comedians can then latch onto and use to frame their coverage of the campaign. That's what Democrats have failed to do in the past and it's hurt them.

The only real existing narrative about McCain is that he's old. McCain's age serves as the hook for virtually all jokes about him. But there seem to be several other adjectives that would be fairly easy to pin on him. If Howard Dean had won the Democratic nomination in 2004, it's pretty clear that the Republicans would have tried to paint him as the "angry" and "emotionally volatile" candidate. They were already gearing up for such an effort when Dean's campaign imploded. It seems to me that the same tactic could work well against McCain.

McCain is famous for his temper and has already shown several flashes of genuine anger on the campaign trail. His Republican colleague, Thad Cochran, told reporters earlier this year that "the thought of [McCain] being president sends a cold chill down my spine. He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me." If the Democrats can't turn that into a media narrative, then they just aren't trying.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting that Obama should go negative, at least not in the traditional sense. Given the nature of his candidacy and his prior pronouncements on the subject, any attempt by Obama to run a Republican-style slash and burn campaign would likely backfire (not to mention lower him to their level). But that doesn't mean Obama can't plant the seeds to such a narrative in other ways, such as when he responds to McCain's attacks. For instance, he could point to the attacks themselves as evidence of McCain's anger and emotional volatility. Obama could decry the "politics of anger and resentment" and highlight the absurdity and immaturity of McCain's attacks. His surrogates could be more direct, making sure to use the word "angry" and "temper" every time they're asked about McCain's latest remarks or latest attack ad.

If this is done consistently, it should catch on, and before long the late night comedians will be making jokes about McCain's temper and comparing him to the Incredible Hulk. If McCain was a Democratic candidate this would have already happened months ago.

I wish we lived in a world where campaigns were about issues and voters didn't choose their leaders based on perceptions of character derived from watching Jay Leno. But that's the world we live in, and if the Democrats want to win presidential elections, they need to understand how it works. They need to start defining their opponents in the same way their opponents define them.

UPDATE: There is no more perfect example of the power of media narratives that this web article from CBS News. The piece is entitled "O-Force One" and it describes the supposedly lavish accommodations on Obama's new campaign jet. The author goes out of her way to point out that the word "president" is embroidered on the back of Obama's chair (how presumptuous!), though when you look at the picture, you see it's basically a tiny bumper sticker that reads "Obama '08 -- President." She also includes a snarky quote from The Politico's Mike Allen making fun of Obama. Toward the end of the article, there's a brief mention of McCain's campaign plane which, from the description, would appear to be virtually identical. But that part of the article is clearly an afterthought.

It's clear that the author of the article has either internalized the "Obama is presumptuous" narrative (and is therefore seeing everything through that lens) or--perhaps more likely--she is consciously playing into that narrative, knowing that her web piece is likely to garner a lot more attention if it feeds a narrative that Republicans are trying very hard to advance. If it's the latter, then mission accomplished; the right-wing blogs are all linking to the piece and driving up traffic.

UPDATE II: Nate Silver makes an important point. The conventional wisdom at the moment is that Obama is significantly underperforming the "generic Democrat" in the polls and that this is evidence that many voters have concerns about Obama. But Silver points out that Obama performs much closer to the generic Democrat when matched up against people other than John McCain:

According to polling averages compiled by the website RealClearPolitics, at the time they discontinued their respective presidential bids, Fred Thompson trailed Obama by 12 percentage points, Mitt Romney was behind by 15 and Mike Huckabee by 17. For that matter, a recent poll from Rasmussen Reports showed Obama leading President Bush by 20 percentage points in a hypothetical matchup.

In other words, it's not that Obama underperforms the generic Democrat, it's that John McCain significantly overperforms the generic Republican. And that's all the more reason why the Obama campaign needs to take affirmative steps to try to change the public's perception of McCain's character.

The Grasshopper and The Ant

You remember the fable of the Grasshopper and the Ant? The grasshopper spends the warm months--when food is abundant--singing, dancing, and generally enjoying himself while the ant works hard to store up food for the colder months, which he knows are coming. And sure enough, when winter comes, the ant is prepared and the grasshopper starves.

Well in the world of politics—and particularly when it comes to energy policy--there are a lot of grasshoppers and very few ants.

Almost three decades ago, on July 15, 1979, President Carter (one of the ants) delivered an important speech. Knowing that our nation's energy policy was unsustainable and that we were becoming increasingly dependent on oil from hostile foreign countries, he proposed a bold plan:

In little more than two decades we've gone from a position of energy independence to one in which almost half the oil we use comes from foreign countries, at prices that are going through the roof. Our excessive dependence on OPEC has already taken a tremendous toll on our economy and our people. . . .

This intolerable dependence on foreign oil threatens our economic independence and the very security of our nation. The energy crisis is real. It is worldwide. It is a clear and present danger to our nation. These are facts and we simply must face them. . . .

To give us energy security, I am asking for the most massive peacetime commitment of funds and resources in our nation's history to develop America's own alternative sources of fuel --from coal, from oil shale, from plant products for gasohol, from unconventional gas, from the sun. . .

He also called for a "bold conservation program to involve every state, county, and city and every average American in our energy battle."

This speech was greeted by the grasshoppers—whose ranks included virtually every Republican politician in the country--with nothing but derision and mockery. They laughed and made fun of the cardigan Carter wore when he delivered the speech. And before long, that was all anyone remembered about the speech.

In the nearly thirty years since Carter delivered that speech, any politician that has ventured into similar territory has been similarly mocked and derided by Republicans. Barack Obama was mocked viciously just yesterday--and explicitly compared to Carter--because he pointed out that filling your tires with air reduces fuel consumption. Over the years, leaders of the Republican party—like Dick Cheney--have been openly hostile to the very concept of conservation and have allowed lobbyists for the oil companies to literally write our nation's energy policies. And during that time, almost three decades, we've become far more dependent on foreign oil and our government has made little if any effort to encourage the development of alternative energy sources or even to take simple steps to improve energy efficiency (such as raising CAFE standards for automobile makers).

In short, for the last three decades, the Republican party has been a party of grasshoppers, blissfully encouraging the consumption of ever greater amounts of food while doing absolutely nothing to prepare for the winter ahead. Indeed, they done everything in their power to marginalize those who have warned that the good times can't last and that we need to embrace conservation initiatives and develop alternative energy sources.

And now that the long-awaited winter has finally come and we're all suffering under the weight of sky-high oil prices, what is the Republican response? They seize upon an imaginary quick fix--off-shore oil drilling--and they all rally around it, accusing their opponents of being the obstacle to lower gas prices. They preen and pose, convening fake sessions of Congress to show that they are the ones who really care about gas prices. They ignore what their own government experts have acknowledged, that allowing further off-shore drilling won't produce a drop of new oil for at least a decade and, even then, will do little if anything to reduce gas prices.

Apparently in the Republican version of the fable, rather than admitting that he'd been short-sighted and reckless in not preparing for the winter, the grasshopper pretends that there's actually a winter's worth of food located just beneath his feet and that the only thing keeping him from digging it up is that damn ant.

Lying With Impunity

As the McCain campaign discovered last week, journalists are occasionally willing to point out when one candidate blatantly lies about the other. When McCain accused his opponent of snubbing wounded troops because they wouldn't allow him to bring cameras, many members of the media--who were there and knew better--called him on it.

But that's the exception, not the rule. As Republican campaign managers long ago discovered, there is one area where you can lie with relative impunity, and that's about policy. If you lie about your opponent's policy positions, even egregiously, the media almost never calls you it.

To take an obvious example, in McCain's speech to the Urban League today, he made the following claim:

Sen. Obama and I have fundamental differences on economic policy, and many of them concern tax rates. He supports proposals to raise top marginal rates paid by small business and families, to raise tax rates on those with taxable incomes of more than 32,000 dollars . . ."

McCain makes this claim in virtually all of his speeches and he's run ads making the claim in Virginia and Ohio. And it's, of course, demonstrably false.

It refers to a vote that Obama made on a budget resolution that would have allowed some of Bush's tax cuts to expire. But Obama has made it crystal clear for years now that he only supports raising taxes on those who make more than $250,000 per year. His plan actually includes tax cuts for those in the lower income brackets.

But when you talk policy, particularly when you start using numbers, journalists' eyes just glaze over. You can lie all you want about this stuff and they'll never call you on it.

Give Rachel Maddow Her Own Show Already

One of the most refreshing developments over the last few years has been the increased willingness of the "liberal media" to actually give real liberals some air time once in while.

Unapologetically conservative pundits and journalists have been making regular appearances in mainstream news programs for as long as I can remember. The roster of such pundits (mainly writers for conservative rags like the National Review and Weekly Standard or conservative columnists at major newspapers) is deep, and every one of them has countless television appearances to their name.

But for years, the standard practice was to "balance" these conservative voices by pairing them with one or more mainstream journalists, people who--whatever their personal political leanings--did not want to be seen as taking sides in political disputes and certainly did consider it their job to give the "liberal" perspective on the issue of the day. Occasionally, you'd see someone like E.J. Dionne or a writer for the New Republic, who felt free to express a political opinion, but their views were often not very liberal and invariably were infected by Beltway conventional wisdom. Indeed, it seemed like the more willing these "liberal" pundits were to disagree with prevailing liberal views, the more likely they were to get booked.

That dynamic has started to change a little lately with the success of Keith Olberman's show. I think the executives at NBC News finally realized that there was a large swath of the political spectrum that was not being represented on television and that if you put actual liberals on the air, left-leaning viewers (which comprise at least half the country) might finally have some reason to tune in.

Which brings me to the subject of Rachel Maddow, who is a ubiquitous presence on MSNBC these days. She is hands down the smartest and most insightful voice in cable news, so much so that it's almost jarring. I'm so used to hearing the talking heads on these shows spout mindless conventional wisdom or conservative misinformation that I'm genuinely shocked when someone says something intelligent.

Apparently MSNBC is planning on giving Maddow her own show at some point, which is excellent news, but I wonder what's taking them so long. Despite Olberman's ratings success (his is easily the highest rated show on the network), Countdown is still the only consistently left-leaning show on television. After watching her fill in for Olberman last month, I have no doubt that if Maddow was given her own show, her ratings would quickly surpass the ratings for Dan Abram's and David Gregory's shows and probably Hardball as well. Indeed, I much prefer Maddow to Olberman, and I doubt I'm alone in that regard. There's no reason she shouldn't already have her own show.

UPDATE: I see both Matt Yglesias and Atrios had similar thoughts today.

Funny You Should Mention Paris Hilton . . .

(please scan down to correction below)

This thought actually occurred to me yesterday when I first saw McCain's Paris-Britney ad, but I wanted to confirm it. Sure enough, though, the members of the Hilton family are big McCain supporters and they're not too pleased about the ad. Martin Eisenstadt reports the following:

I hear whispers from the inner campaign staff that the phone was burning off the hook today with calls from Paris Hilton’s grandfather, William Barron Hilton (co-chair of the Hilton Hotel empire), furious that the McCain ad drew an unflattering comparison between Obama and his own granddaughter.

It seems that the elder Hilton has donated $18,400 to the McCain campaign, and $35,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee in the last couple of years. (Paris’s father, Rick Hilton, has given an additional $6,900 to the McCain campaign. Suffice it to say, he’s none too pleased either.)

He then admonishes the campaign:

This is a reminder to my brethren at the Campaign: don’t bite the hand that feeds us.

Translation: don't mock the idle rich. That's our base.

Seriously, though, the Obama campaign should seize upon this episode to underscore the difference between his economic agenda and that of John McCain's. The soundbites practically write themselves:

-"John McCain wants to talk about Paris Hilton, so let's talk about Paris Hilton. John McCain's answer to our economic troubles is to give massive tax breaks to the Paris Hiltons of the world while doing nothing to help regular people get health insurance or pay for college tuition. No wonder her family has given thousands of dollars to his campaign."

-"John McCain wants to repeal the estate tax--or as I like to call it, the Paris Hilton tax--a tax that only affects people who inherit massive sums of money. And he wants to do this at a time when our country is deeply in debt and spending billions of dollars fighting a war we never should have fought. John McCain clearly shares the priorities of the Hilton family, but does he share yours?"

CORRECTION: As MLS points out in the comments, I'm wrong about McCain's current position on the estate tax. While he recently said that "[t]he estate tax is one of the most unfair tax laws on the books," he does not appear to be in favor of its complete repeal. He claims he wants to "reform" it to "keep it predictable and keep it low."

CORRECTION II: Wow, this post was not one of my finer blogging moments. Via William Wolfrum, it appears there is no such person as Martin Eisenstadt. I probably should have been a little more skeptical about the original post.