Epistolary Politics

Sept. 28, 2008, 3:12 p.m.

John,

It was McCain’s bad luck that the Bush Administration chose the week of the foreign policy debate for its final (maybe?) stroke of incompetence—blowing up the financial industry. I mean what was Bush thinking? You can send poor people to die in an ill-conceived war, or fuel the economy by luring people who can’t afford food or shelter to take on massive debt, but Wall Street is their people, man. And it doesn’t help McCain when Henry Paulson goes totally Blofeld on Congress: “Give me $700 Billion and complete unchecked power in three days or the US economy will experience a total collapse! Broo-hahahahahah!”

The greatest magazine in the world is one you won’t find on many newsstands outside Manhattan. It’s called Trader Monthly, and it’s a lifestyle magazine targeted toward young, up-and-coming Wall Street turks. It might be the most aspirational publication ever produced. They test drive Bentleys and recommend $1,000 bottles of scotch, and $1,200 ear buds for your iPod. The writing in it is actually very funny, if sometimes sexist. Imagine Maxim, if Maxim readers expected seven-figure bonuses each spring, and if, instead of b-list movie starlets in bikinis, the porn was mostly of $60,000 wristwatches, each the size of baby’s head.

The September issue, which was probably produced months ago before everything went to hell, is this wonderful artifact, completely oblivious to Wall Street’s troubles. There’s a travel review of a 1.5 million acre dude ranch in Australia where you have to take a helicopter to dinner. There’s a column by professional poker great Johnny Chan. Gossip about bonuses. A list of the top 30 traders under 30, with the cream of the cream posing smugly for glamour shots.

The only inkling that anything is amiss in the financial world—and honestly this should have been a clue for the folks in the Trader Monthly sales department, if not the folks at Treasury—is two full pages of classifieds advertising pre-owned luxury aircraft for sale.

It’s a good thing Sarah Palin already unloaded hers.

There seems to be some disconnect between the way pundits viewed Friday’s debate and the public, at least as reflected in the polls. Professionally opinionated people generally thought McCain did better than people who give their opinions for free or, if not for free, in exchange for donuts.

I watched the debate on CNNHD and the screen was filled with more indecipherable clutter than the heads up display in a MIG fighter. The left and right sides of the screen were taken up by six constantly updated pundit scorecards. The bottom of the screen showed the dial results of some focus group watching the polls (for those who have never participated in a focus group, they will sometimes give you these hand-held dials which you are supposed to ratchet to the right when you see something you like and twist to the left when you see something you don’t.) Somewhere in the middle of it all was the debate, which was difficult to make out, although I could tell who was talking by watching which way the self-described Democrats and Republicans in the focus group were cranking their dials.

People who are paid for their opinion tend to look for nuance—something they can see that other people can’t—but that’s pretty much useless for telling us how the debate is going over with voters, who look for about as much nuance in their candidates as they do in their Tommy Boy DVD extras.

You used to be in the business of trading donuts for opinions, by which I mean you were a focus group facilitator. When you watch the debates can you resist putting that old hat back on and start wondering what other people are wondering as you watch?

—Kevin

Sept. 28, 2008, 7:17 p.m.

Kevin,

Prior to the last week I began working on a speech for Barack Obama:

My fellow Americans, I stand before you today humbled and grateful for the opportunity to be the democratic standard bearer for President of the United States. I have traveled across this great country of ours and spoken to farmers and teachers, businessmen and laborers, people from every walk of life, every creed and color, all of them with a story to tell, all of them seeking a seat at the table, all of them clamoring to be heard and I’ve tried my best to listen and to explain how together we could change our politics, how our divisions could be rent asunder and that people who love their country can change it.

Turns out I was wrong. Shit’s broke. Can’t fix it.

Therefore it is only with deep sadness that I’m announcing my withdrawal from the race. If John McCain wants to be president so badly as to disgrace himself and our country on a daily basis, he can have it.

Fortunately for Obama, he’s a cooler customer than me because the McCain Daily Freakout Express coupled with the Palin Gibberish Train have managed to drag McCain’s candidacy lower than Michael Moore’s scrotum in a 160 degree sauna all in the span of ten days.

When I watch the debates I am indeed tied to that CNN focus group dial tracking like it’s my EKG reading, and in looking at the audience reactions to each candidate I was pretty sure the Obama was putting a very quiet and understated beat down on his republican rival. To an undecided voter Obama would have looked reasonable, concerned and measured. McCain was a crank. Every time McCain went into one of his “great moments in the history of John McCain” spiels, the dials looked like the Dow whenever news of a bailout deal looked unlikely.

A perfect example of how the debate plays to an undecided voter came with my own personal favorite moment, when both candidates sparred over custody of a many times discredited war criminal.

Now, you know and I know and the tie-dye wearing radicals of Berkeley know that Kissinger has his very own suite in Hell waiting for him, but the undecided voter only remembers that he’s the guy who talks funny and maybe knows something.

I’m sure that this drove the Obama’s liberal supporters crazy, but the pragmatists among us should take it as a sign that he means to win.

McCain’s central argument seems to be that he should be president because he should be president, but that’s not an argument at all. It’s like a parent telling his kid they can’t have something because they’re the parent and they said so. His emphasis on cutting earmarks as the lynchpin to federal fiscal sanity is like an NFL head coaching candidate saying that he’s going to make sure all the players have tied their shoes before they hit the field, a perfectly good idea that means absolutely nothing.

So, at the moment, things are looking good for Obama, but with the economic meltdown, President of the United States is looking like the booby prize.

Quick quiz, and death is not an option: Which job would you rather have, President of the United States or general manager of the Detroit Lions?

—John

Sept. 29, 2008, 12:14 p.m.

Kevin,

In advance of Thursday night’s debate a chorus of “Free Palin” has sprung up amongst the conservative cognoscenti.

Kathryn Jean Lopez of the National Review is perhaps the genesis of the movement, giving voice to the idea that it’s the former Bush advisors hired by McCain who have shrink wrapped Palin, lest the stink of her lack of knowledge waft over the press corps.

The theory is that if Palin is just let free to cast her charms on the American public, we’ll see her as a kind of Mary Tyler Moore, can-do girl tossing her beret into the collective American skyline, as opposed to Anna Nicole Smith with an up-do, (but without the drug problem) she’s been playing thus far.

That this is originating from Lopez, a literal cheerleader for conservatives, someone is who is willing to say, “remain calm, all is well!,” even after the Delta house has crashed their parade float into the bleachers and sent Dean Wormer sprawling, is very telling, given that the subtext of the movement is essentially, “it can’t get any worse.”

(I’m willing to bet the same words were uttered by Mets fans from all over at the end of last season, so conservatives should be careful with this stuff.)

Bill Kristol picked up the mantel in his column this morning, also placing the blame on former Bush aides, and now Mitt Romney himself has jumped on the bandwagon, telling Joe Scarborough’s clan that “I think they’d be a lot wiser to let Sarah Palin be Sarah Palin. Let her talk to the media, let her talk to people.”

Of course, Romney could be simply wishing for Palin to implode completely, dragging the McCain campaign into the grave to open the field for Romney 2012, so I’m not sure we can trust his sincerity like we can trust Bill Kristol’s.

(Sorry, I just threw up in my mouth a little.)

If it’s all part of the inevitable expectations-lowering that precedes the date, the question is, can they be dragged too low? What are we expecting from Palin on Thursday? More policy gobbledygook? A well-prepared, credible vice-presidential candidate? A faked seizure to get out of the whole thing?

—John

Sept. 30, 2008, 10:31 a.m.

John,

Somebody missed a real leadership moment yesterday.

After the bailout bill failed, John Boehner and Roy Blunt, the top two Republican lawmakers in the House, held a press conference in which they blamed the defeat on a mean speech Nancy Pelosi gave right before the vote. There were about a dozen other congressmen standing behind them for the photo op and if any one of them had taken a rolled up Newsweek and smacked Boehner or Blunt in the back of the head, this morning we would all be calling that guy the next Abe Lincoln.

I’m not smart enough to know if this is the best bill we could get, but I know the case-by-case approach wasn’t working. I also know that the forces aligned against it are some unlikely, unholy coalition of Ayn Rand ideologues, class warriors, political hacks, and Lou Dobbs. Something comprehensive needs to be done to restore confidence and the really bad news is that Europe’s banking crisis is worse than ours and they don’t have any plan to fix it at all (funny, but an economic coalition of 27 sovereign governments isn’t such a good idea on a rainy day). So despite all the gleeful rhetoric about the diminished standing of the US, the world is looking for us to lead them out of this and our leaders are acting like babies. Actually they’re worse than babies. They’re acting like 13-year-olds. But Americans are feeling helpless right now and we need them all to forget there’s a junior prom in 40 days and start being grown-ups.

The bill failed by 12 votes. Two yeas were changed to nays after it was clear the bill wasn’t going to pass, so clearly the House leadership knows where the pressure points are on those two guys. Which leaves ten people. Ten individuals who need to be convinced by some combination of choice committee assignments and/or pictures in envelopes addressed to their wives. This isn’t a full-blown economic crisis yet, but it is certainly a leadership crisis.

They need to get it done before zombie Tip O’Neill and zombie LBJ have to knock down the door and start eating brains. Like the old days.

—Kevin

Sept. 30, 2008, 3:53 p.m.

Kevin,

Leadership crisis is right, I’m thinking we need someone like Bill Parcells or Bobby Knight to take over. Can you imagine Coach Parcells if he heard the “Speaker Pelosi hurt my feelings with her awful partisanship” excuse? I can:

Oh, what you’re trying to say is that your feelings were hurt? Your feelings! You are not paid to have goddamn feelings, you are paid to help govern your country! Boo-hoo, the girl was mean and my constituents say they’re not going to vote for me, I have to let the entire economy burn to the ground or I lose my pissant job. You’re a bunch of worthless pussies. Now get in there and vote like men.

You’ve also hit on the magic formula for determining the best course of action when the actual issues are too complicated to figure out, find out which side the dummies are on and go the other way. I always figured that if I ever by some stroke of good fortune became head coach of the Chicago Bears I would simply do the opposite of whatever the callers to sports talk radio want me to do. If someone has the time to wait on hold for an hour in the middle of the day just to say, “Kyle Orton sucks,” I’m thinking they’re not spending a lot of time on the nuances of the game. In fact, I think I heard this on a recent call to Chicago station, The Score.

“Uh, yeah, hey. Look, the Bears running game is really crappy, so what I’m thinking is that we reanimate the corpse of Walter Payton and bring him in on some third downs, or maybe even some quarterback. I just wanted to know what you guys think about that and so I’ll hang up and take my answer off the air.”

The trouble in Congress is that the asylum has only inmates and there isn’t a grown-up or a head coach in view. You kind of get the feeling that Bush is just ready to quit early, and unlike being Vice-President, there are no real qualifications for the job of a United States representative and some of them appear to be serious dummies.

Barack Obama seems to be edging toward a more central leadership role on passing the bill, which may carry some reward, but also significant risk, kind of like ordering the steak fresco chalupa at Taco Bell. You may be biting into a zesty taste of crunchy goodness. Or, you might be looking at a case of the loosy poos.

All credit to Obama if he takes this on, but if there’s anything at this point that can reverse his recent gains, this might be it.

—John

Oct. 1, 2008, 3:14 p.m.

Kevin,

In advance of tomorrow night’s debate both Senator Biden and Governor Palin have been receiving advice from all corners, but you know what they say about opinions, they’re like assholes, everyone’s got one and they usually stink.

For Palin, the worry on the right is mounting faster than the Federal deficit. I spoke about the Free Palin crowd in a recent post who think an unleashed candidate will drench us in a tsunami of regularness. We should note that there’s an almost equally large contingent of “Already Thrown in the Towlers,” including George Will, David Frum and even syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker who never met a conservative cause she didn’t want to cuddle like a new puppy. (By way of reference, Parker has already posted a positive review of “conservative” comedy An American Carol, which even sight unseen I’m pretty sure sucks harder than the latest Dyson vacuum.)

For her trouble, Parker was told to eat shit and die by her apparently former fans. Parker says this is a sign of our declining discourse. At the risk of sounding impolitic I’d like to say it’s closer to “payback’s a bitch.”

She appears to now be an active drain on McCain’s chances. Palin’s impact has been kind of like the effect Ted McGinley has on a television show, an initial spike in interest followed by the realization that the whole thing is actually a rotting corpse that deserved a decent burial instead of an attempt at reanimation. There was a thought that if McCain “played it safe” he’d lose with a Dole-like honor, but clearly, McCain is playing to win. Unfortunately, his campaign is so disorganized and chaotic it makes the plot of Lost look like something by Hitchcock. I have this image of Obama and McCain in a boxing match. Obama is up on his toes, bouncing around the ring, throwing jabs, while McCain fights like an overmatched fifth grader utilizing a windmill style, arms flailing uncontrollably. Sure, sometimes a punch lands, but he always looks kind of dumb doing it.

So, the thought is that if it hasn’t happened already, on Thursday, Palin could sink the ticket completely. This strikes me as unlikely, not only because thanks to her previous attempts at semi-coherence, expectations couldn’t be lower, but reporting suggests that she more than held her own in her gubernatorial debates in Alaska.

Like the Free Paliners say, it really couldn’t get worse, could it?

—John

Oct. 1, 2008, 5:37 p.m.

John,

Before I tell you how it could get worse for Sarah Palin, I have to confess, just for the record, that I have a little pastor problem of my own.

My freshman year of college, I signed up for a class because it fit into my schedule. I don’t remember the name of it or the subject, but it was a theology class of some sort and it was the only class I had in four years at Notre Dame that was taught by a priest. He was about 107 years old.

One day, to the horror of everyone, he wrote on the blackboard 25 sexual sins in order of their deviance. I’ll keep you in suspense about what was number one, but I will tell you that “bestiality” was number three.

Another time he told us a story about how, back in the 1950’s, a student came to his door in the middle of the night complaining about abdominal pain. So this priest says, “What is it, Phil? The devil?” and then proceeds to improvise an exorcism in the dorm hallway. When I suggested that, I don’t know, appendix might have been my first diagnosis, the priest sneered at me and insisted the kid got better with a little Latin and holy water. If he says so.

Anyway, after a few classes I went and found another priest that I knew wasn’t completely crazy and I asked if he’d ever heard of this guy. “Oh Christ,” my priest friend said. “We are all waiting for him to die.”

I mention this because it seems to me that Sarah Palin’s witch doctor situation is coming in a little under the bailout anxiety radar. Here’s a good summary from Olberman’s show and then if you really want to go to the source, here is what appears to be video of Sarah Palin receiving protection from witches.

Now if that doesn’t freak you out, there’s this excerpt from the latest train wreck interview Palin did with Katie Couric in which, when asked what newspapers and magazines she reads, or which publications have shaped her worldview, Palin replied, seriously, “all of them.”

You and I have said before that George Bush’s most debilitating trait is a lack of curiosity about the world, but Sarah Palin makes George Bush look like Louis Pasteur.

Also, she apparently believes in witches.

We got a letter today from a fellow named Michael Brett. He had plenty of nice things to say about the new blog but he wanted to know why we were supporting the bailout.

Why give money to people who have already overwhelmingly proved their fiduciary irresponsibility? Today I head [sic] that employment might, MIGHT, hit seven percent next week? Seven per cent? In the GD (Great Depression), it was a QUARTER of the population! We are not entering a new GD, people.

Michael has a good point, and part of the problem here is lawmakers are trying to strike a balance between explaining the seriousness of the problem and not freaking everybody’s shit out. As a result there’s a lot of confusion at the moment about what’s going on (and a lot of it is mine). But one critical reason we had a depression in the thirties was that the government failed to act to halt the failures of banks. It let banks and other companies fail, there was widespread panic and fear of borrowing, and people lost jobs and industries collapsed and it took a decade and a world war to pull us out of it.

Michael and I aren’t affected by the credit crisis yet (almost 10,000 banks failed in the thirties, and there are only about 100 on the government’s watch list at the moment). Nevertheless we will be. Lending institutions are afraid to lend money because they’re afraid they’ll need the cash just to stay in business. Banks are going to start tightening lines of credit that companies use to function every day, which means that some of them will miss payroll. Just yesterday I heard about a large and longstanding arts operation in the midwest that might have to fold this week because its bank won’t renew its bond under current conditions and the monthly interest they will have to pay is going to nearly quadruple. People are having trouble getting car loans which means they aren’t buying new cars which eventually will mean thousands of layoffs. People won’t be able to get home loans so they won’t be able to buy houses. People who own houses will continue to see their property values drop as interest rates rise, and when the value of their property is no longer worth the mortgage they are paying they will have to walk away and let the banks take their houses. Which the banks will lose more money on. And so on.

In his letter, Michael says he doesn’t want to help “rich, white, greedy people.” The truth is that many of the executives who made these poor decisions have already been shown the door (albeit with gilded parachutes, but the point is their humiliations and their undeserved rewards are already in the past). Most of the people who will lose their jobs when banks and brokerages fail are neither rich nor greedy (although a lot of them will probably be white, if that’s really a concern). Millions of people will be affected if nothing is done.

Look, this sucks. Ideally the private sector would take on this risk instead of the federal government, but there aren’t any companies in the private sector big enough to carry a debit of this size for what might be several years. And as the stats site Five Thirty Eight points out, part of the problem with getting this bill passed is that voters understand neither the bill nor the implications of doing nothing, which makes politicians (especially in an election year) conflicted: “(E)veryone wants the package to pass but nobody wants to vote for it.”

I don’t know if any plan capable of passing will be the best way to handle the crisis. We might never know. But it’s almost certain that doing nothing will be very bad, because the last time we did nothing we had, in Michael’s vernacular, the “old GD.” When banks fail people panic, even if there’s no rational reason for it. The government has performed similar rescues in the past. After the savings and loan bailout in the 80s not only did the economy recover quickly, but taxpayers eventually made a profit. The government looks like it will make a profit from the rescue of AIG just a few weeks ago.

What we need is leaders who understand that they shouldn’t be afraid of angry constituents a month from now as much as they should be afraid of angry and desperate constituents one and two years from now. We need to act today, and not when you and Michael and me have already loaded up the truck looking for migrant farm work in California.

Some economists and libertarians believe we should just let the market take care of itself. Companies that made bad decisions will be punished and everything will eventually shake out for the better. They might be right. But economists and libertarians generally live in a theoretical world where everyone is a rational actor. The rest of us live in a world where the Republican nominee for Vice President might have believed that actual witches were standing in the way of her becoming governor of Alaska until an African witch hunter laid hands on her and “made a way” for it to happen.

Oh, by the way: The worst sexual sin in that old priest’s top 25 was masturbation, apparently because with beastiality there’s at least some chance of cross-breed procreation taking place. And then, well, as long as you get married…

—Kevin

Oct. 2, 2008, 12:39 p.m.

Kevin,

As an addendum to your cogent and well-reasoned response to Michael questioning our support of the bailout, I’d just like to add that we’re currently experiencing the negative corollary to Ronald Reagan’s trickle-down economics, namely, shit rolls downhill. And not only does it roll downhill, it picks up speed as it goes.

Speaking of shit, as the father of young children, you would know more about this than me, but it strikes me that the debate over the media training that Sarah Palin is currently undergoing is reminiscent of another kind of training, namely, learning how to go potty.

With potty training, as you well know, there are different schools of thought. On the one hand, some experts declare that learning to use the toilet is part of a child’s natural progression and they’ll signal when they’re ready by dropping their diapers on their own and taking a dump on the ficus in the corner. At that point, you break out the training toilet, and as long as you put it where the ficus used to be, you’re probably good to go.

The parallel with Palin is the “let Sarah be Sarah” crowd. Rather than bottling her up and only letting her out in public with an empty bladder and bowels, or a super-absorbent spin operation, just let her be herself. If she accidentally shits the rug or endorses Hamas, so be it.

Then there’s the crowd that embraces “infant toilet training.” The theory, apparently, is that you need to condition the child through a rigorous process that you poop and pee during scheduled seat time and only during that seat time. The children are effectively trained to ignore their natural instinct to shit and piss whenever the mood strikes, and exercise some bowel/bladder discipline.

Thus far, the McCain campaign has been utilizing this second method, sitting their VP candidate on the can for an extended cram session as she tries to force a lifetime’s worth of geo-political knowledge under that up-do. The strain appears to be showing since every time she opens her mouth something worse than crap seems to come out. It’s just like forcing potty training on a child too soon can cause them to actively fear the toilet and drive them to use that bucket you keep in the garage for used motor oil instead (Surprise!), Palin is possibly chaffing at being overhandled, and when it comes time to perform, she just lets out a couple of half-hearted grunts without any following splashdown.

The new new strategy is apparently a combination of the two. We’re going to let Palin loose, but only in places like Hugh Hewitt’s program where the governor could drop a massive stink bomb and Hewitt would coo over it like it was precious treasure.

This strikes me as probably the soundest strategy going forward. They can’t hide her away completely, Cheney-style, but neither should they let her loose entirely. It’s kind of like knowing the kids aren’t ready to eat in public for fear of what they might do in that Olive Garden bottomless salad bowl, but you’re more than willing to take them to grandma and grandpa’s.

—John

Oct. 3, 2008, 9:57 a.m.

John,

Well, the Republicans finally got their pit bull back on a leash last night and this morning I suspect she’ll be shoved back into her travel cage.

After a week in which Sarah Palin was allowed to run rabid across CBS News, brutally savaging McCain’s credibility with her ignorance, Palin seemed to get out of last night’s debate without opening any new wounds. Like Michael Vick’s dogs, she was a horror in our living rooms every night for about a week and now she’ll be packed up and we won’t hear from her again, at least not in any unscripted sense, until the election.

The pundits are talking about how she just barely met expectations, but I think that’s backwards. After her disastrous performances with Katie Couric, I think most Americans wanted more. Sarah Palin had become America’s own David Brent, a television spectacle so cringeworthy we were tuning in to see what impossibly embarrassing thing she might say next.

And doggone it, she didn’t really deliver.

There were minor gaffes, like not knowing the name of the U.S. Commander in Afghanistan and clearly not understanding what Gwen Ifill was talking about when she referred to Dick Cheney’s bizarre assertion that the office of the Vice President is not part of the executive branch. She probably did just enough to make most of America shrug with indifference, which was just enough to make all those who are ideologically bound to Sarah Palin sigh with relief.

Imagine for a moment that you and I are monkeys and Sarah Palin is running for Vice President of Monkeys and the debate moderator asked, “Governor, can you explain your previous support for cosmetic testing on animals?” and Palin answered, “Bananas.”

That was what the whole debate sounded like to me.

Of course, we knew going in that Palin wasn’t going to answer any questions because it’s become clear that she doesn’t know the answers to any questions, and I suppose that is what the media means when they say she “met expectations.” The only astonishing thing that occurred all night was when she actually said, “I’m not going to answer any of your questions.” I guess I have to give her a little bit of credit for that. That’s moxie.

—Kevin

Oct. 3, 2008, 1:59 p.m.

Kevin,

In the immortal words of Alec Baldwin’s character in the David Mamet movie, State and Main, “Well, that happened.”

Baldwin was describing a spectacular car crash which his character, a Hollywood star with a taste for young girls, managed to walk away from, which is a pretty good analogy for the Palin vice presidential candidacy. Last night, the vehicle came to rest, miraculously upright with the occupant a little bruised and battered, but without any life-threatening injuries.

She reminded me of me going into my final on the history of the Russian Revolution junior year of college. Having basically ignored the reading all semester, I came in armed with a rough timeline of events and a handful of catchwords—Bolshevik, Menshevik, Duma—and managed to weave together a reasonable facsimile of an essay that was devoid of actual content, but demonstrated at least a glancing familiarity with the course material.

Substitute Maverick for Menshevik and you get the idea.

I got a B, which is probably what I’d give Palin, though I’d grade her down if she really did come in with the equivalent of the answers written on her shoe as her frequent checking of her “notes” seems to indicate. It’s hard for me to judge, though. I find her alleged “folksiness” phonier than Tofurkey, but maybe there’s parts of the country where winking at the viewing public and giving a shout out to a grade school class plays as adorable, rather than annoying. Where I live, those are things the local morning weather guy does before throwing it back to Al Roker.

The idea that Palin somehow proved her fitness for the position of potential president based on that debate, as David Brooks and Peggy Noonan contend, is frankly absurd, but I could see her comfortably sitting in as a co-host on The View when Elizabeth Hasselbeck is out. (Maybe in our new, more frequent forum here someday soon we can do an analysis of how and why intelligent people like Peggy Noonan and David Brooks commit words and ideas to print that they clearly don’t believe.)

With the VP debate out of the way and the House passing the bailout resolution, there’s a feeling that the election is taking a turn toward home, and the ground looks to remain favorable for Obama as the economy as the dominant concern of voters will only ratchet up in significance with today’s news that we’ve lost another 159,000 jobs. The chances of McCain developing a coherent vision for the economy look about as good as the Cubs making the World Series right now.

Apparently, Arnold Schwarzenegger also needs a $7 billion loan to pay off California’s credit cards or something, yet another indication that the economy is Issue 1. My advice to the governor is to sign on for Terminator 4: Terminator v. Batman, Superman, Iron Man, Hulk, and Napoleon Dynamite, and donate the profits to the cause.

—John

Oct. 4, 2008, 7:44 p.m.

John,

I think Sarah Palin might have a point with this Bill Ayers business.

I’m not talking about her desperate attempt to frame Barack Obama as being “pals” with “terrorists who would target their own country.” Even McCain’s own advisors have confessed this is merely a ploy to distract voters from the economy, and the notion that Obama and former Weather Underground member Bill Ayers are in any way close is thoroughly debunked in today’s New York Times. CNN also points out that the rumor has been dismissed by The Washington Post, Time, The Chicago Sun-Times, The New Yorker, and even The National Review. Obama himself has condemned the man’s former actions, calling Ayers “somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8.”

But Palin’s comments hint at a conspiracy far more nefarious. Obama and Ayers first became associated when Ayers, who is now an education professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago, helped win a $50 million grant from philanthropist Walter H. Annenberg, and Obama was asked by a third party to help determine how the money should be distributed. If, as Sarah Palin says, Bill Ayers is still a terrorist bent on destroying America then the Annenberg Foundation is guilty of funneling tens of millions of dollars to known terrorists.

Now that Palin’s running mate is aware of these facts, John McCain cannot be satisfied with merely using them to attack Barack Obama’s character. As a United States senator, it is his duty to call for an immediate investigation of the Annenberg Foundation. Their assets should be frozen, their trustees tried for treason, and all other organizations funded with Annenberg money should be considered potential terrorist organizations. A partial list of these include:

• The Archdiocese of Philadelphia
• The University of Notre Dame
• The Betty Ford Center
• Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Los Angeles
• Boy Scouts of America
• The Boys and Girls Club
• Chess In the Schools, Inc.
• Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy
• Home of the Merciful Savior for Crippled Children
• Jazz at Lincoln Center
• Little League Baseball
• Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust
• Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation
• Naval War College Foundation
• Oregon School for the Deaf
• Painted Turtle Gang Camp Foundation
• Reading Is Fundamental
• Sesame Workshop
• The Carter Center
• United Negro College Fund
• McSweeney’s

John McCain and Sarah Palin should demand federal raids on all of these groups before they can move their assets offshore and reorganize in Yemen. In a world as black and white as the one in which Sarah Palin lives, it would be unpatriotic to do anything less.

But as long as guilt by association is fair play, shouldn’t we look closely at Sarah Palin’s very intimate association with one of the key figures of the savings and loan scandal of the 1980s? As we confront perhaps the greatest financial crisis of our generation, can we really trust the judgment of someone who freely chooses to associate herself so closely with John McCain?

Maybe she needs to hold a press conference in which she distances herself by dismissing McCain as “somebody who engaged in detestable acts when I was 23.”

—Kevin

Oct. 6, 2008, 8:30 a.m.

Kevin,

If we’re going to play the guilt by association game, let’s not forget that Palin has birthed five children from the seeds of a secessionist. A few more kids and we’re looking at a full-blown militia.

The benefit of having a vice presidential candidate that doesn’t really know anything is that you can stick any words you’d like in her mouth and she’ll deliver them without complaint. I’m willing to bet that Sarah Palin doesn’t know the difference between The Weather Underground and Weather Report, unless she’s got a secret jones for Jaco Pastorius, but that won’t stop her from dropping her terminal-g-less bombs in red state parking lots around the country.

Back in April, you and I were both openly squeamish about what the protracted democratic primary might do to Obama’s chances in the general. In the non-tradition of political punditry everywhere, I’d like to just say that I was terribly wrong, and that the best thing to happen to Obama might be that he had to withstand every last bit of the Clinton arsenal. As we’ve seen with the demise of my beloved Chicago Cubs, it’s important to keep your edge, and Obama’s has only grown sharper over time. I’m not saying he’s completely inoculated against the inevitable return of the Ayers, Wright, and Rezko smears, but at this point, he might get a case of the sniffles, as opposed to a full-blown campaign flu.

So, McCain is going to need some kind of “game changer” to really turn the electoral tide, and it’s hard to see one on the horizon, but here’s a thought:

Let’s say we’re invaded by aliens with ships capable of vaporizing entire cities with a single energy burst. Our military will be wiped out by the aliens’ superior technology necessitating a ragtag force made up of long-mothballed pilots including McCain, George W., and Will Smith to make the final assault on the alien mother ship once we’ve infected their communication and defense systems with a computer virus hidden in an illegal download of a Jonas Brothers’ song.

McCain will get to fulfill one of his lifelong ambitions of unleashing a nuclear weapon while saving all of mankind. Obviously the invasion will delay the election, but finally, on July 4th, 2009, McCain will be sworn in as the next president of the United States in front of the rubble that was the Capitol Building, viewed by the 300 remaining living inhabitants of Washington D.C.

They’ll serve barbecued vermin at the inaugural ball.

I guess it could be something else that turns the electoral tide, but this seems most likely in terms of something that could carry McCain to victory.

—John

Oct. 6, 2008, 11:04 p.m.

John,

According to a new CNN poll, 60% of us think an economic depression is “likely.” This is one of those classic news polls where they ask a bunch of random people a question they couldn’t possibly know the answer to so they can breathlessly announce the results on the air. It’s a marketing tool that demonstrates how upside-down the news business is. Most companies want to use optimism to promote their products. For instance you’d never see the tag line, Pontiac: A car for the prolonged economic downturn. But news ratings go up when people are anxious, so news organizations love to poll people about how anxious they are, which makes the rest of us more anxious and causes us to watch more television news. Never mind that 6 out of 10 people couldn’t even give you a decent definition of an economic depression beyond “It’s the reason my grandparents can’t throw out any of their crap.” A far more meaningful question would have been, “Aren’t you totally losing your shit every time you turn on the radio?” Whatever the question the answers are more bad news for McCain, who is going to become increasingly desperate over the next month. All of us should expect the economy to get worse before it gets better, but those of us praying for an Obama win can expect this campaign to get nastier before it gets over. The good news, at least according to the analysis over at 538, is that the polls show more middle-class voters are identifying with Obama which means, in theory, that they will perceive attacks on Obama as attacks on them, creating a kind of Obama’s rubber and McCain’s glue phenomenon. Not to get my hopes up, but it worked for Reagan. It worked for Clinton. If I can end on an up note, some polls have shown that as many as 40% of Americans (and 100% of Republican running mates) believe the world will end in our lifetimes. Maybe the 60% only expecting a depression are optimists after all.

—Kevin

Oct. 8, 2008, 9:05 a.m.

Kevin,

God bless technology! Number of times that Sarah Palin used the word “maverick” in her debate with Joe Biden: 15. Number of times John McCain used the word in last night’s debate: 0. Person we can most likely thank for putting the word to rest: Tina Fey. In her debate, Palin had utilized “maverick” as a sort of Smurf language, dropping M-bombs as just about every part of speech. Fey managed to latch on to the tic and beat her over the head with it, effectively taking what McCain had seen as his chief calling card and turning it into a punchline. I wonder if he can even say it with a straight face at this point. Call this illustration number 1,347.595 of the way technology has changed the way elections run. Sure, in past years Saturday Night Live would do their obligatory candidate skewering, but the damage was contained to the audience that watched the show in real time. Thanks to online videos, those of us who are well into R.E.M. sleep by that time can watch (and disseminate) the debate sketch at our leisure. There’s a reason why it’s called “show and tell,” rather than just “tell,” the showing works. (If anyone doesn’t believe me, read this statement: Joe Theismann suffered a career ending injury when he was sacked by Lawrence Taylor.) And now, check out the video. (Be sure to wait for the reverse angle.) But perhaps more important than the reach of video in the Internet Age is the speed it can be disseminated. McCain’s strange “that one” gaffe was up on YouTube before the debate ended: Another upside of the new technology is the post-debate “snap polls,” which Obama won handily. Knowing these polls are lurking mere minutes away effectively shames the David Gergen’s of the world from spewing out of their assholes because they know that some actual data could make liars of them. Before, they had a couple of days of open field to disseminate their wisdom. Now we’ve got a representative sample of Americans coming at them like Lawrence Taylor on a blitz. Last night I was watching Anderson Cooper’s gang post-debate and even the republicans, Bill Bennett and Alex Castellanos called the debate (correctly) for Obama because for egomaniacs like these guys, not wanting to look foolish trumps their desire to carry water for McCain. (In order to avoid this sort of cognitive dissonance, Fox embraced a “non-scientific” text poll which had McCain as the debate winner by a margin of 86-12.”) However, there’s one area where we could be using technology to our advantage and we don’t, and that’s in assisting the debate monitors. As we all know, during a debate a candidate can pretty much lie with impunity without penalty because most of us in the viewing audience aren’t well-enough informed to sort the gold from the bullshit. For one small example last night, let’s examine this quote from McCain when asked about the potential threat of Russia: “Now, long ago, I warned about Vladimir Putin. I said I looked into his eyes and saw three letters, a K, a G, and a B.” Never mind that it’s a lame joke that he used in the last debate, as our friends at Think Progress point out, it’s a demonstrable lie, since in 2001 when asked about President Bush’s first trip to Europe and Russia as Commander-in-Chief, McCain graded Bush’s soul-gaze into Putin’s eyes, an “A.” A small point for sure, but one that punctures the core of McCain’s message, his experience and alleged prescience when it comes to world affairs. I can just imagine a Brokaw following up with, “Actually, Senator, in 2001 you declared President Bush’s meeting with Vladimir Putin a success.” If something like this were to happen I can just see McCain—worn out body and all—trying to recreate Lawrence Taylor’s takedown of Theismann on Brokaw in response.

—John

Oct. 9, 2008, 11:44 a.m.

John,

I think John McCain’s biggest problem at this point is that he doesn’t like Barack Obama enough. Last week you and I talked about polls showing that middle-class and independent voters were identifying with Barack Obama. That they liked him. Analysis of those numbers over at 538 suggested that this was going to make McCain/Palin’s last-ditch attack strategy difficult. If you attack somebody I like that makes me defensive, which means I probably won’t like you. During Tuesday night’s debate we saw concrete evidence that the theory might be true. Like you, I watched on CNN, and the immediate reaction from pundits was that the debate was basically a draw, but that McCain needed a dramatic move and a draw was in Obama’s favor. Then the instant polling numbers from debate watchers started coming in and CNN’s political team was amazed. Viewers thought Obama creamed McCain. Obama won the debate by 24 points. Viewers thought Obama was a better leader (an area in which McCain has always held an advantage) by 11 points. And by a margin of 2-1, debate watchers thought Obama was more likable. You and I have been following Obama for years, since he was a state senator running in the Illinois primary for US Senate. A year ago, I spent hours on the phone with Democratic friends in other states who were nervous about Obama’s electability. Be patient, I kept telling them. The more people get to know this guy, the more they like him. Maybe it has something to do with his sincerity. His eloquence. The genuine relationship he has with his family. Maybe it’s just charisma. But it’s true even for people who wouldn’t be inclined to vote for him. Even conservatives who worked with him in the Illinois senate like Barack Obama. Tuesday night, as McCain demonstrated a palpable dislike for “That One,” viewers took note and they turned on McCain. Obama and McCain traded attacks on each other, but viewers thought McCain spent more time attacking Obama by a margin of 63-17 percent. Because when McCain attacked, voters felt the sting.

—Kevin

Oct. 10, 2008, 12:16 a.m.

John,

Am I worried? I’m a novelist, which is the opposite of a “secure, steady job.” My wife works in the financial industry. The last few weeks I’ve pretty much walked around with my face twisted into a silent, Munchian scream. I look like Cameron when he got lockjaw in the final reel of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Or I would if I didn’t have a five-year-old and a two-year-old who couldn’t care less about the financial crisis or dirty politics. They don’t know anything about crazy Sarah Palin or GDP or the Dow Jones Average or the credit crunch. You know what makes them happy? Stickers. If Charlie Gibson tells them there’s a sticker crunch you’ll see some depression, let me tell you. As for crazy McCain/Palin voters, compare your video to this one. I think those are the same people. I’m confident that Judas Priest fans have yet to swing an election one way or the other. The odds that any of those assholes will remember to vote seem remote to me. That’s not to say I’m not worried. The anxiety we all feel right now is the anxiety of the unknown. We don’t know who will win this election. We don’t know how bad the economic crisis might be. We don’t know who will be next to go down with a knee injury on either the Bears defense or Dancing With the Stars. The other day I was driving home after dropping my son off at school and I spotted this Kerry/Edwards sign in a yard right next door to an Obama sign:

Since that day I’ve been obsessed with what it means. Is this a person who wants to vote Democratic but can’t bring themselves to vote for a black man? Is it a smartass trying to tell America, after four more years of disaster, “I told you so.” Or is it just an Obama voter who can’t afford a new sign? I don’t have any idea. It’s the uncertainty that’s giving me ulcers.

—Kevin

Oct. 12, 2008, 9:29 a.m.

Kevin,

John McCain is starting to look like one of those sitcom dads (or maybe grandpas), who may be the titular head of the family, but is, in reality, a gruff (but lovable) figurehead that’s generally befuddled by all of the household shenanigans going on around him. He’s got one particularly troublesome daughter, Sarah:

“Hey pops, I’m going to go tell the world that our next door neighbor is palling around with terrorists. Okay? See ya!”

or

“I’m going to head out the store and violate the public trust by having someone fired for trying to sneak eleven items into the ten items or fewer lane. Okay? Later tater!”

or

“You know what I thought I’d do? Make a public appearance at a sporting event in the city that’s the core of support for our opponent in a state that we’re in all likelihood going to lose. I’m sure I won’t get booed like I just promised to give everyone herpes. Don’t forget to pick up the kids from hockey practice! Love ya!”

Every time Sarah gets herself into trouble, Pops McCain has to rouse himself out of the Barcalounger and do his best to clean up the mess by say…undoing the potential (white) race riots Sarah “accidentally” stoked.

Flailing may be too kind a word for the McCain campaign. The Politico reports that McCain is now considering “more than 30 ideas” as potential winning electoral responses to the economic downturn. The rationale, according to The Politico:

“McCain advisers want him to throw more out there, hoping it’ll stick.”

His new campaign slogan: McCain/Palin: Throwing Shit.

President Bush and Secretary Paulson also seem to be looking for a bailout do-over by embracing their inner Hugo Chavez and “partially” nationalizing the banking industry.

If Bush is doing something that even Paul Krugman thinks is a good idea (though a day late and a few billion short), you’ve got to wonder if you’ve been transported into Bizarro World.

I’m going to admit that I don’t know a lot about economics. Everything I do know comes from a book called, Naked Economics by Charles Wheelan, a book that should be subtitled, “Economics for semi-intelligent people who slept through Econ 101 in college because it was at 8am and met in an auditorium with a 1500 person capacity and was taught by some fossil who read from his own textbook, and who could be expected to actually learn anything under those circumstances?”

(Full disclosure, Charles Wheelan went to my high school, though four years ahead of me. He was known as Charlie, and was widely believed to be marked with greatness, which has generally been born out, at least judging from his home page.)

Anyway, in his chapter from Naked Economics on “Keeping Score,” he discusses economic recessions and notes that there’s two main tools the government has for kicking the economy in the ass, fiscal and monetary policy. Monetary policy is what the Federal Reserve handles, and the only real weapon is juking interest rates. Clearly, they’re out of bullets and have even hurled the gun at the head of the downturn, which gave a sinister laugh and kept advancing while cracking its knuckles in response. Whatever help they could have been at this point involves inventing a time machine and going back to 2002 to kick Alan Greenspan in the teeth.

When it comes to fiscal policy, the government can either cut taxes, which McCain and Obama are both promising to do—though Obama’s is more oriented to the middle-class—or, the government can start spending on things like roads and bridges and construction and novelists and college teachers. (Those last two may be wishful thinking.)

People are too afraid to spend their own money, so the government has to do it for them. Instead, McCain wants to enact a “spending freeze” which just about every economist would call “dangerously naive.”

Or at least that’s what he was saying last week. Who knows what will happen this week?

—John

Oct. 14, 2008, 9:47 a.m.

John,

Virtually everything I know about the subject I learned from my high school economics teacher Ron Head. Mr. Head also taught social studies and, as illustrated quirkily in this New York Times article he was also Justice of the Peace, which means that, although he wasn’t a lawyer, he presided over criminal trials and also officiated a lot of quickie weddings when one of my friends got another of my friends pregnant.

Mr. Head was a very good teacher. Nevertheless, I’m not on the cable news shortlist to comment on the current crisis, and that’s probably just as well. Based on the comments we make here, however, you and I probably should be considered for a Nobel Prize, since the main qualification for the thing these days seems to be a dislike for George W. Bush. Nothing against Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, and Paul Krugman. I’m not saying they didn’t deserve it. But Europeans can’t keep declaring that America is no longer a superpower on one hand and then repeatedly use their most prestigious award to comment impotently on American politics. Europe should just get a blog already, is all I’m saying.

As the polls keep breaking Obama’s way Democrats are becoming increasingly anxious. The current cause of intestinal discomfort is something called the Bradley Effect, which is named after this racist guy named Brad who keeps telling pollsters he’s going to vote for the black guy and then votes for the white guy instead. There wasn’t much evidence of it in the Democratic primaries, where the polls were pretty much reflected in the vote tallies (I think New Hampshire might have been an exception), but in the primaries secret racists could assuage their guilt over not being able to vote for a black man by voting for a woman (and vice versa). The non self-actualized voter didn’t have much reason to lie to pollsters.

I live in a suburb that no doubt leans conservative, although probably not as much as the towns further away from Chicago. In my informal accounting of yard signs, Obama signs outnumber McCain signs in these parts by better than six to one. On the well-groomed yards of conservatives, you are far more likely to see signs for state senator Christine Radogno or state’s attorney candidate Tony Peraica than you are a sign for McCain. Maybe Sarah Palin has energized the Republican base in other parts of the country, but the people in my town aren’t buying it.

McCain’s support is soft. The economy is breaking against him. He’s been unimpressive in debates. His running mate is a punch line. His campaign is incompetent (seriously, whose idea was it to have Sarah Palin drop the puck in an arena named for a troubled bank?).

Still you’re a Cubs and a Bears fan. No lead is safe, right?

—Kevin

Oct. 15, 2008, 9:00 a.m.

Kevin,

Your link discussing your former high school econ teacher, Mr. Head, buried the lead that you are a seasoned politician yourself. Someday, between now and our temporary epistolary blog’s expiration date, you must share your story of winning the student body presidency.

As it happens, I too was a chief executive, president of Theta Xi fraternity, Alpha Beta chapter, Spring ‘92. I don’t remember my platform—something to do with promising to pursue diplomatic relations without preconditions with Kappa Kappa Gamma—but I do remember that I was the McCain-like figure, having been bested in a previous semester’s race by a younger, Obama-like upstart, who probably had more to offer than “I’ve been around a while and kind of know what’s going on.” It’s possible that I was running unopposed. The victory would make sense that way.

The good news is that when I took control, unlike our current government, we were financially solvent, able to fund both our yearly Aztec party (featuring an above ground pool and ethnically insensitive garb), and our Hurricane bash (featuring projectile vomiting of the eponymous punch and rum drink).

Plus, the president got a suite with his own bathroom and parking spot. That said, the house we lived in, built in the 1920s and an architectural landmark of sorts, was torn down this past summer since it became impossible to maintain. Let’s hope it isn’t a symbol for the ultimate demise of our market economy.

As you note, no lead is safe, something the Bears proved once again this past Sunday against the Atlanta Falcons. The question is if in the final weeks Obama will try a squib kick in the final debate, followed by a bend so far it actually breaks defense, allowing McCain to squeak by on a last second electoral field goal. Given the quality of Obama’s campaign thus far and his apparent ability to learn from previous mistakes, I remain confident in the campaign’s ability to absorb whatever punches McCain has left to throw.

Conservatives of a stripe seem to be losing confidence in McCain and jumping onto the Obama bandwagon (including Christopher Buckley who was defenestrated from The National Review for his trouble), increasingly leaving McCain with, if not the fringe, those who live at least closer to the edge.

In endorsing Obama, Buckley cited the quality of Obama’s first book, Dreams of My Father, as a testament to both the intellect and spirit of the man. I’ve read the book, and I concur. If Obama wins it’ll be hands down the best book written by a president, unless we find out that Saul Bellow was a nom de plume for Ronald Reagan.

In a desperation move, some at the National Review site are not only disputing that Obama authored Dreams of My Father, but that William Ayers wrote it for him.

I shit you not. I used to think that leftists had the market cornered on conspiracy theory nuttery, but it looks like an Obama presidency might shift the locus of the whack-job industry rightward. Ann Coulter’s got some fresh company.

Today we get the last debate and the punditry is saying that McCain needs nothing short of a “knock-out.” I’m not sure if they’re advocating that McCain physically strike Obama or not, but judging from loons that continue to blow hard into the open mics at Palin rallies that’s something the core of McCain’s support might be looking for.

I’m not ready to do the Ickey shuffle, but following the debate it might be time to start putting the champagne on ice.

Oh, who am I kidding? When Kyle Orton threw the tying touchdown (followed by the leading extra point) with 11 seconds left against the Falcons last Sunday, I turned to the dog and said, “that’s just enough time to lose if everything goes wrong.”

I’ll be biting my fingers down to the second knuckle until Election Day.

—John

Oct. 16, 2008, 7:45 a.m.

John,

To answer your question, I ran a very McCainsian campaign for student council president. I was the sitting student council vice president and yet somehow ran on a platform of change. The responsibilities of student council at my school were pretty much limited to putting on dances so the three possible positions were basically “more dances,” “fewer dances,” and “the same amount of dances.” I think my opponent was also in favor of more dances but in my speech to the student body I somehow convinced them that she advocated a dangerous number of dances while I represented the right kind of change. In fact, my campaign poster consisted of a picture of me standing behind the cash register at the Farm and Home Bargain Center where I worked after school with the slogan “Kevin: He will give us the correct change.”

Last week we talked about the disparity between the way CNN’s election experts viewed the debate and how voters in their instant poll saw it. Last night the exact same thing happened. The pundits called it McCain’s best debate yet saying that McCain was “on the attack” and that Obama looked “professorial.” They suggested McCain had finally appealed to independents and his performance might “put him back in the race.” Then the polling data came in from all the networks with another Obama wallopping. Obama’s likabilty went up. McCain’s went down. In CNN’s separate focus group of Ohio voters, three people said this debate had made up their minds. All three were going to vote for Obama.

Much of the coverage this morning is focusing on Joe Wurzelbacher. “Joe the Plumber” was mentioned more than a dozen times in the debate as McCain tried to use a real life example of middle class struggle to show why the Obama tax plan would be bad for the economy and bad for small businesses. Of course by the end of the week Wurzelbacher will be juggling reality show television offers from a half-dozen cable networks and by the election Joe the Plumber will be one of the media elites John McCain despises so much.

Change is the natural state of the universe. I guess that’s why it’s hard out there for a conservative. Even a maverick one.

—Kevin

Oct. 16, 2008, 6:10 p.m.

Kevin,

Wow, the last 24 hours have been quite the whirlwind for Joe the Plumber. Turns out his name isn’t Joe, he’s not a plumber, he’s a registered republican, (though republican challenges to Ohio voter rolls may make him ineligible to pull the lever) and there’s a conspiracy theory suggesting that Joe is related to a key figure from the Keating 5.

I guess “Sam the guy who does plumbing-related activities and would get a tax break from a President Obama and, by the way, might be a republican plant,” doesn’t have the same ring to it.

After watching the final debate, I now know why McCain has, as of yet, failed to break through: The man thinks his shit doesn’t stink and that we should stick our faces in the bowl and take a big whiff and agree with him.

I bring this up because of one of McCain’s most frequent debate moves is where he says, “I know how to (insert issue).”

In the first debate he used this formulation better than a dozen times, including the following:

“And spending, I know, can be brought under control because I have fought against excessive spending my entire career.”

“And Pakistan is a very important element in this. And I know how to work with him (sic).”

“But the important thing is—the important thing is I visited Afghanistan and I traveled to Waziristan and I traveled to these places and I know what our security requirements are. I know what our needs are.”

“We have to make sure that our technological and intelligence capabilities are better. We have to work more closely with our allies. I know our allies, and I can work much more closely with them.”

“I know the veterans. I know them well. And I know that they know that I’ll take care of them.”

And from his final statement, a flurry of “knows”:

“I guarantee you, as president of the United States, I know how to heal the wounds of war, I know how to deal with our adversaries, and I know how to deal with our friends.”

Second debate:

“I know how to get America working again, restore our economy and take care of working Americans.”

“I know how to fix this economy, and eliminate our dependence on foreign oil, and stop sending $700 billion a year overseas.”

“I know how to do that. I have a clear record of reaching across the aisle, whether it be Joe Lieberman or Russ Feingold or Ted Kennedy or others.”

“I know that we can reprocess the spent nuclear fuel.”

“I’ll get Osama bin Laden, my friends. I’ll get him. I know how to get him. I’ll get him no matter what and I know how to do it.”

And once again, in his final statement:

“I know what it’s like in dark times. I know what it’s like to have to fight to keep one’s hope going through difficult times. I know what it’s like to rely on others for support and courage and love in tough times.

I know what it’s like to have your comrades reach out to you and your neighbors and your fellow citizens and pick you up and put you back in the fight.”

Last night:

“I know how to save billions of dollars in defense spending. I know how to eliminate programs.”

And that’s it, probably because—thanks to the format of last night’s debate—Bob Schieffer quickly asked, “Which ones?” and McCain brought up, wait for it… something called the “marketing assistance program,” which recent surveys show to be the 1,457,833-ranked issue this campaign in terms of priorities.

Darwin once said, “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge,” by which I think he’s saying, beware the guy who says he knows everything because he probably doesn’t know much of anything.

I’m not saying McCain is fully ignorant, since unlike the rest of us he’s aware of something known as the “marketing assistance program,” but I am suggesting that McCain’s biggest flaw is that he’s convinced of his own awesomeness.

The obvious irony is that going in to the general election, the knock against Obama was that he was a mere cult of personality, an empty hope vessel while McCain was the experienced man of substance. It turns out that the only substance McCain has is a towering self-regard.

I think this explains the seething and facial gymnastics on display during the debate. It explains his habit of snickering at his own dingers nanoseconds after they escape his lips. It explains his campaign “suspension” stunt.

He’s got a bad case of hero worship, the biggest problem being, he’s his own hero.

—John

Oct. 17, 2008, 3:45 p.m.

John,

Joe the Plumber turned out to be the James Frey of this election, in that he’s not named Joe, he’s not a licensed plumber, he probably couldn’t afford to buy the business he said he wants to buy, even if he did buy it, the business doesn’t generate anything like the income he claimed and wouldn’t remotely qualify for a tax increase under Obama’s plan, and even if, thanks to his new-found notoriety, the newly branded “Joe the Plumber, Inc.” did actually generate $280,000 of taxable income, Joe would pay a whopping $773 in extra taxes under Obama’s plan as compared to McCain’s, hardly enough to discourage a rational man from buying his own business.

Joe, if you’re reading, I’m sorry.

Also, if you have a few moments over the weekend, read Josh Marshall’s thorough dissection of the ACORN story, which is never going to be widely explained in any rational way. Simply put, the fraud is being perpetrated ON ACORN, not BY ACORN. ACORN is paying people to register legitimate voters and some of those independent contractors are lazily filling in bogus names. But that’s not voter fraud. If I register Scooby-Doo to vote, a talking dog still has to show up with an ID on election day. Phony registrations aren’t phony votes.

The public impression of this tale is going to be that ACORN is engaging in alleged voter fraud and Barack Obama has some tangential relationship to ACORN. That might not be enough to make a difference in the election, but if the votes are actually close, the Republicans are clearly planning to use the sham investigation into voter fraud as part of the basis of a challenge. As Marshall says (and I think he’s right):

The essence of McCain’s campaign now appears to amount to prepping McCain’s base to believe they didn’t really lose the election. The election was stolen from them by Barack and his army of gangsters and black street hustlers.

Memo to Republican operatives with property or business interests or loved ones in Chicago: If Obama goes into this thing with a six-point lead and you steal it from him, Chicagoans will have moved in position to burn the city down. Again.

And memo to the Department of Justice: If you’re looking for the side attempting to fix an election it’s usually not the side that is winning it.

Finally, some breaking news.

By the way, do you know the last time the Chicago Tribune endorsed a Democrat for president?

That would be never.

—Kevin

Oct. 19, 2008, 6:35 p.m.

Kevin,

Two big pieces of news over the weekend, Obama’s $150 million fundraising haul for September and Colin Powell’s endorsement. Naturally, those of us worried about Obama’s ultimate fortunes can figure out how to read this as bad news, but there’s worse problems to have, like say a vice presidential candidate that’s a national joke.

Powell joins Christopher Buckley as the latest erstwhile republican to join the Obama bandwagon. Buckley has a new satirical novel out called Supreme Courtship, which is centered around one Pepper Cartwright, a Judge Judy-style television judge nominated by a President Vanderdamp in an effort to frustrate a senate that had dinged his previous nominees.

Pepper, the Texas spitfire, charms the media and the public with her one-liners and colloquialisms and is quickly confirmed to the high court. Hijinks (and lots of latin jokes) ensue. In the end, Pepper finds both true love and her judicial voice and like all of Buckley’s novels, you’re grateful for the time spent amongst the pages.

I was reminded of Pepper Cartwright while watching Sarah Palin on last night’s Saturday Night Live.

Rich Lowry, engaging in some unintentional self-parody, said that during the VP debate that Palin was giving off “little starbursts” right through the screen, by which I think he meant he got a chubby. The thought of her actually being president is enough to give me erection interuptus when it comes to Sarah Palin, but it’s hard to deny that she is a telegenic presence. I wouldn’t say the camera necessarily loves her, but based on her willingness to face up to the humiliation on Saturday Night Live, she clearly loves it.

Depending on your view, the Palin VP candidacy has been more saga than satire, but a couple of things are clear: She loves the idea of being famous and she’s absolutely convinced of her own self-righteousness. After McCain/Palin goes down to its likely defeat, I see a Supreme Courtship-like life-imitating-art scenario, only in reverse.

In Buckley’s novel, Pepper Cartwright is a television personality who becomes a major figure in government. Sarah Palin is a major figure in government who should become a television personality.

Say it with me: Conservative White Oprah.

For me, the move is a no brainer, given, you know … she’s got almost 100% name recognition, a compelling personal story and a passionate fan base that will squeal like hyenas in a nitrous oxide factory when she drops Ski-Doo GSX Limited snowmobiles on them. She’s got the folksiness of Dr. Phil and the gams of a young Cloris Leachman and she doesn’t pal around with terrorists. For those of you who worry about her accent wearing thin, I have two words: Rachael Ray.

The upside is that once she realizes that being a beloved talk show host is not only more lucrative, but also more influential than being president, we won’t have to worry about her showing up back on the scene in 2012.

—John

Oct. 21, 2008, 1:25 a.m.

John,

I’ve received a lot of email about last Friday’s letter in which I noted that Obama was planning an outdoor rally in downtown Chicago on election night and warned Republican operatives that, if it looked like there were polling shenanigans on election night, Obama supporters would be in position to burn the city down. This one, from Stephen in New York, was typical:

Do you think a man who’s economic plan is designed to make the rich richer will care if the Second City would burn? The rich will be fine, and the people who mistakenly believe they’re included when McCain says “my friends” will be collateral damage, cleared out, and McCain’s real friends, the wealthy, will buy it all up. McCain’s election—God forbid; and, I believe, not going to happen, but who knows?—will be a declaration of class warfare. Despite Republicans’ protestations to the contrary.

For the record, I wasn’t (to use a favorite word of Joe Biden’s) literally threatening the Republican party with the incineration of the nation’s third-largest city. I was actually trying to use irony to suggest that maybe election night Obamapalooza in Grant Park is not such a good idea. For one, it reeks of the kind of overconfidence Obama has been warning against. For another, this is going to be an incredibly emotional night, no matter the outcome. I’m not sure that any good can come from cramming tens of thousands of Obama supporters (as well as cranks) into Grant Park unless the event is a secret bailout for the local t-shirt and falafel industries.

I don’t even want two people in my living room when the results come in, which is why my wife and I will be watching on separate televisions after we’ve sent our children and the keys to the gun cabinet over to my mom’s.

You and I have been friends for ten years, and by my count we have had the most conversations about the following topics: Politics, Baseball, Britney Spears, Literature, Irony. I don’t know if that’s normal or not, but we’ve spent (yes, literally) hundreds of hours talking about irony (frequently in the context of literature, baseball, politics, and Britney Spears).

Irony served us well when we were generally a population of critical thinkers and problem solvers. But as our critical thinking skills have been apparently left behind by our schools, we’re left with irony alone, and that has been very bad for us. As a culture we have spent so much time not meaning what we say that we don’t believe in anything anymore. It’s not just cynicism, which has been around forever. It is a chronic avoidance of truth pervading our media and our culture and it enabled the last eight years of George W. Bush. It has allowed Karl Rove to mock Joe Biden for actually knowing the names of foreign leaders.

As Colin Powell repeated on Sunday the only qualification for Vice President is that the person be prepared at any time to be president. Yet John McCain chose a running mate who is not only unprepared, but grossly unprepared and he was called a genius in many quarters for doing it. Part of America responded to Sarah Palin because we love solutions that are counterintuitive. That which is the opposite of obvious must be the real truth. But seriously, ask any parent: 99.99% of life is actually intuitive. We don’t always need to burn trees to save the forest, or shoot antelope to save the herd. It’s a good thing that your candidate for vice president knows a lot about foreign policy and if you want to save an antelope don’t shoot it, in general.

It’s too late for me. Irony is the only language this old body understands. When I see you in a few months when you come back to Chicago for the holidays I will call you “My Bitch” just like I always do, even though you are the opposite of bitch-like. But I’m hopeful that at least part of the support Obama is feeling these days is a response to his sincerity, as contrasted with the right’s obvious sense of entitlement. That would make me feel good. Secretly, on the inside. On the outside, I’ll still call it all sentimental hogwash.

—Kevin

Oct. 22, 2008, 9:38 a.m.

Kevin,

Speaking of irony, did you know that Johnny Ramone was a republican?

Also, while still speaking of irony, did you know that people who love the “real America” spend better than 150K in a month at places like Saks Fifth Avenue and Nieman Marcus, all on the taxpayers’ dimes? (In a real-world application of trickle-down economics, the McCain/Palin campaign now says they always planned to donate the clothes to charity after the convention.)

Now that Governor Palin has outed herself as a lover of the finer things in life, let me suggest she peruse a new ultra-luxury catalog from Serfitt & Cloye.

While we’re on the subject of irony, the list of conservative celebrities cited above also includes Shannen Doherty, the irony being that she’s still considered a celebrity.

At least, unlike Johnny Ramone and Charlton Heston (also listed), she’s still alive.

I think.

Bah-dum-bah!

That last gag was more like the cynicism you speak of, irony codified into snark. Irony, effectively employed, has the ability to illuminate the hidden truth, but snark dismisses the idea of truth as something kind of silly, impossible to figure out, and therefore not worth knowing. Since the idea that there is no such thing as truth gets pretty scary right down to our existential cores, we fall back on a joke that codifies the previously shared impression, an impression as shallow as Sarah Palin’s intellect.

Rim shot!

Like you said, you and I can’t help ourselves, it’s like being trapped in an eternal Leno monologue. Bush=dumb. Obama=airy fairy, McCain=old, Biden=windbag with hair plugs. Palin=sexy moose hunter. Since we can’t figure out anything beyond the surface truth, let’s just settle on something simple and easy to understand and drive that fucker into the ground.

Here I was going to launch into a long-winded discourse about how this attitude has taken over our news media with Borg-like efficiency and thoroughness, but because I’m too cynical to give an earnest argument, let me just point out that when actual journalism breaks out, like the Katie Couric interviews, or Campbell Brown challenging republican talking points, it becomes news in and of itself, the mighty fourth estate stirring from its slumber.

MSNBC has decided the way out of the woods is Keith Olberman and Rachel Maddow, which is nothing if not a full embrace of cynicism. I like watching those shows as much as the next liberal, but it’s for the same reason I used to fire up the Mike Ditka Show before every Bears game. That’s my team, those are my players, and I want a period of time to feel good about things.

Don’t get me wrong, I agree with what Keith Olberman and Rachel Maddow have to say. In fact, I don’t just agree with them, but I think they’re right, that they’re identifying and explaining truths, but let’s not kid ourselves, the ultimate effect of discussing the news in this way is simply the inverse of Fox News. I’m glad to have my own team at last, but I don’t see us winning any new fans.

When you and I have talked about irony in the past we’ve also wondered if there isn’t a new irony, a kind of super irony where irony is the new sincerity, or more accurately, the old irony. It’s become an awful cliche to praise The Daily Show for their ability to illuminate certain truths about our political process, but one of their recent field reports from Wasilla, Alaska does more in just under five minutes to shed light on Palin’s background than a week’s worth of Wolf Blitzer’s greatest political team on television.

Like you, I’ve always been a little embarrassed about my support for Obama, not because I don’t support his policies and message, but because of the intensity and emotion I bring to that support. It’s actually uncomfortable to hope like this. I remember feeling the first stirrings of it when viewing Obama’s address at the 2004 Democratic Convention, and then quickly dismissing it figuring even this charismatic young guy would get chewed up by the process. But it’s easy to see how corrosive that attitude is. Maureen Dowd, the high priestess of snark, still refers to him as “Obambi” in her column, something that demonstrates neither wit nor insight, but carries the Pulitzer seal of approval.

Professional douchebag Tucker Carlson (that’s not snark, but truth) said yesterday, ” … do you believe the Obama campaign could still somehow, in the final moments, find a way to blow it and lose this election? If you answered yes, you’re a Democrat.”

Carlson may be a tool, but he isn’t wrong. Last night while we were in bed, I told my wife that I was 95% sure Obama was going to win. She made me leap up, and spin around three times while crossing my heart and knocking on wood in response.

I really believe that we’re on the cusp of a really amazing event in American history. I’d even admit it publicly if I didn’t think it’d make me look like a sentimental wussy.

—John

Oct. 23, 2008, 11:21 a.m.

John,

That list of celebrities who “lean right” is hilarious in its pointlessness. The premise, of course, is that Hollywood is notoriously liberal and so any actor who would buck the trend as a vocal conservative must be a maverick of some sort. So why is it loaded with country singers and NASCAR drivers? If we threw a party and invited all the NASCAR drivers and country singers who voted Democrat, I wouldn’t even have to get the folding chairs out of the garage. It would be me, you, Steve Earle, and the Dixie Chicks.

It goes without saying that would be a better party than Dr. Phil, Kelsey Grammer, Shannen Doherty, and Rick Schroder.

The list is also loaded with athletes, which shouldn’t be a surprise either. As you know, I spent parts of three seasons working for major league baseball clubs, and baseball players spend as much time obsessing about taxes as they do about women. They could have easily made a version of Bull Durham in which the Susan Sarandon character was a supply-side-worshipping tax attorney instead of a sex-starved groupie. No matter where you live, pull up the roster for the local pro baseball franchise and count how many of the American players make their permanent residence in Texas or Florida, where residents do not pay state income tax. It’s not just because of the winter golf.

This morning’s news cycle is obsessed with the wardrobe of Sarah Palin, who talks like Joe Six Pack but shops like Jackie Collins. Almost buried by that news is word that taxpayers are shelling out almost $50,000 for a portrait of Donald Rumsfeld. I fully understand why we pay for traditional portraits of US presidents, but $50,000 for a Defense Secretary? And not even a good Defense Secretary. I mean for $50,000, we could get Damien Hirst to saw Don Rumsfeld in half, lengthwise.

I’m sure it showed up on a Halliburton invoice under “oil.”

Also in the bad timing department: Just as McCain/Palin switch their campaign strategy to one that paints Obama’s mainstream Keynesian economic theories as socialist, Alan Greenspan, not just a follower but a personal friend of Ayn Rand and America’s greatest champion of the free market, admitted to Congress today that his radical laissez faire ideology might have been just a teensy bit “flawed.”

So when McCain tries to mock Obama for wanting to withdraw troops from Iraq, George Bush announces he wants to withdraw troops from Iraq. Then when McCain tries to paint Obama as an elitist, McCain’s own running mate goes on a six-figure Fifth-Avenue shopping spree for her whole family on the dime of a campaign that’s already bleeding money. And now, just as he has Obama cornered as an anti-capitalist, government interventionist, Alan Greenspan himself says he wishes he had called for regulating derivatives, and former Bush Treasury Secretary John Snow is recommending “one strong national regulator” to oversee firms and fix “a fragmented approach” to regulation.

You almost feel sorry for McCain at this point. I mean if Republicans hate him this much, he can’t be all that bad.

—Kevin

Oct. 24, 2008, 11:08 a.m.

Kevin,

I have a quiz for you. Who said the following?

[O]ur entire agricultural system is built on cheap oil. As a consequence, our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector. And in the mean time, it’s creating monocultures that are vulnerable to national security threats, are now vulnerable to sky-high food prices or crashes in food prices, huge swings in commodity prices, and are partly responsible for the explosion in our healthcare costs because they’re contributing to type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion in healthcare costs.

Choices:
A. John McCain
B. Sarah Palin
C. Bill Clinton
D. Josiah (Jed) Bartlett (as played by Martin Sheen speaking words written by Aaron Sorkin)
E. Barack Obama

Remember The West Wing? Political porn for the center-left with a principled (yet flawed) chief executive seeking to better the lives of all Americans? Currently, Bravo is re-running the final season which features the last year of the Bartlett administration as well as the election battle between his possible successors, Matthew Santos (the democrat played by Jimmy Smits) and Arnold Vinick (republican, Alan Alda). Even though the episodes pre-date the current campaign by a couple of years, Santos and Vinick are fairly obvious stand-ins for Obama and McCain, with the exception that Santos is hispanic rather than black and Vinick is pro-choice.

Oh, also, Vinick doesn’t drag his entire campaign into the sewer, even as the upstart Santos gains momentum in the race. Essentially, the final half of the season seeks to dramatize politics if our leaders were thoughtful, principled, and really did prioritize the good of the country over personal gain.

You know, fantasy. I don’t want to ruin the ending for those who are seeing it for the first time, but in the final episode a race of extraterrestrial unicorns descend from the sky and declare a winner.

President Jeb Bartlett was a Nobel Prize-winning economist who would roll out something like the above block quote as an aside while bantering with his staff over rules variations for cribbage. He was a polymath, versed in every subject, the smartest guy in the room surrounded by people almost as smart. That government wasn’t perfect, but at least it had some interest in governing.

That said, the answer is actually “E,” and it came in an interview Obama did with Joe Klein. I cheated a bit for the sake of quizzy suspense by cutting the part where Obama says that he’d been reading about this in a New York Times article by Michael Pollan. If I’d included that, we would’ve known that Palin wasn’t possible because she doesn’t read newspapers. Klein turned the full interview into an article titled “Why Barack Obama Is Winning,” the upshot of which is that Obama is apparently winning because he seeks out the best information possible from the smartest people and then makes his decision based on his weighing and reading of those facts.

What a concept!

The “circular firing squad” has begun to form for the GOP, with the excuses ricocheting around like a five-year-old on a Red Bull bender. McCain had no message. Palin was a base pick that alienated the moderates. The press turned on the republicans. The fundamentals are disadvantageous. They paid more for their make-up artist than their political strategists. The list is literally endless, but I think the Klein interview demonstrates the core reason Obama finds himself in a seemingly commanding position:

He is a better candidate who is able to articulate what are superior stands on the issues that are more closely aligned with the beliefs of the American people.

The Clinton campaign’s argument at the end of the primaries was that the Rove Machine would chew Obama into little pieces, reducing him to a crude, unelectable stereotype, a toxic mix of foreign, leftist, and inexperienced, Hugo Chavez in a diaper clutching a photo of Osama bin Laden. No one can say that the McCain campaign hasn’t given it their best shot, but it just isn’t working.

Neither is Joe the Plumber, or Obama the money-grabbing socialist, or Palin’s “real America,” gambit of earlier in the week. The reason is because in the face of Obama’s approach, all of these things look (and lets face it, are) trivial.

I know you remember this passage from Obama’s 2004 convention speech:

Well, I say to them tonight, there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America; there’s the United States of America.

There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America.

The pundits, the pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue States: red states for Republicans, blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don’t like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states.

We coach little league in the blue states and, yes, we’ve got some gay friends in the red states.

There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq, and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq.

We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

In the end, that’s what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism, or do we participate in a politics of hope?

I remember thinking at the time, “that’s all well and good, but let’s just work on getting the war criminal out of the office and worry about that hope shit some other time. There’s too much at stake to hope.”

In our 2004 dialogs we discussed the limits of this kind of approach noting that without some kind of positive message, Kerry was going to lose, and he did. The republicans are learning that lesson this time around the hard way.

Is it so terrible that I’m loving it?

—John

Oct. 26, 2008, 8:40 p.m.

John,

Friday morning I ran to the store with my boys. It was just before noon when I rolled up to the checkout, my cart loaded with groceries and toddlers. A man with a blue jumpsuit and gold chain got in line behind me with a chilled six pack of High Life in his fist. I offered to let him go ahead of me. He shouldered past us without a thank you, but the clerk stopped him, explaining that she had already scanned my frequent shopper card and would have to follow through with my purchase.

This stranger for whom I’d tried to do a small kindness then unleashed a stream of Lee Elia expletives in front of my kids. And as I tried desperately to cover four tiny ears with two big hands, I thought to myself, This is him! Joe Six Pack! Complete with six pack! And with all his f-bombs and a-bombs he’s trying to tell me something!

He was trying to tell me that he is stressed out. But McCain’s problem is that Joe isn’t stressed about the things John McCain wants him to be stressed about. He doesn’t care about Bill Ayers or the effects of Obama’s tax plan. Joe’s far more worried that he might end up losing that sweet, poorly supervised county job where he can run out for beer on his lunch hour.

And that’s why John McCain’s campaign is stressed out.

All that stress is spilling out into the media, where sources within McCain’s camp are calling Sarah Palin a “rogue candidate” and a “diva.” I guess tension between presidential candidates and their running mates is nothing new (Otter was always undermining Jed Bartlet, after all) , but the “diva” comment, especially on the damaged high heels of the $150,000 makeover, and the per diems for staying in her own house, and the lavish travel expenses for her family, surely seems dipped in personal venom. The picture now being painted of Sarah Palin, even from inside the McCain campaign, resembles Material Girl far more than Barracuda.

And the closest Madonna ever came to “Joe Six Pack” was while licking white chocolate and tequila off Jose Canseco’s abs.

Today’s New York Times runs a post-mortem on the eight-year cottage industry of Bush-bashing books. Our own My First Presidentiary isn’t mentioned, even though I still like to immodestly think it was a pioneering effort in the genre of hastily written political cartoon books. We might not have been the first Bush book after the inauguration (I think we missed that by a week) but I believe we were the first to top the bestseller lists. (In fact, if you’re ever over at the house of the guys who wrote The Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook, don’t bring us up. No doubt it’s still a sore point.)

Anyway, for the historical record and following the Times style, here is my own post-mortem on My First Presidentiary:

Sales: That’s an excellent question. The truth is, no writer ever knows exactly how many copies of his books have actually sold. That’s why, even with their biggest bestsellers, publishers always say “Over 5 Million Copies in Print!” Because they know how many they printed. They just aren’t always sure what happens to them after that.

They claimed they printed 75,000 copies of MFP, but they really printed about 45,000 or something because everyone in publishing assumes that everyone else in publishing is lying, and so you have to inflate your numbers to account for the downward correction that everyone else is making in their head. It did pretty well, apparently, but it never went into a second printing so I think we can safely boast, “Fewer than 45,000 copies sold!”

Someone might ask why we don’t check our royalty statements. Yeah, even though you and I wrote and illustrated the entire thing, we also pretty much waived our rights to any royalties on that project. I don’t know about you, but I walked away (seriously) with a dining room set.

Impact: Yeah, none. Obvious.

Original reporting: We were the first to blow the whistle on the Bush administration’s plan to build a Moon-Based Death Ray.

Inevitable Reader Reaction: “Hilarious, but I agree with the reviewer who said it is a waste of paper…” —Amazon review

References that were funny then, but require Wikipedia to understand now: (1.) George writes a letter refusing clemency to Mumia Abu-Jamal, but confuses him with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar; (2.) Waterworld; (3.) Hillary Clinton’s cattle futures; (4.) “Who has put pubic hair on my Coke”; (5.) Gale Norton; (6.) James Watt; (7.) Robert Coles; (8.) Spenser For Hire; (9.) Parliament Funkadelic; (10) Tubbs; (11.) Elian Gonzalez; (12.) Star Trek TNG (13.) Tabitha Soren; (14.) Chico and the Man; (15.) Funky Phantom; (16.) Simon Bar Sinister; (17.) Paul Sorvino; (18.) Linda Chavez; (19.) Ann Veneman; (20.) Leeza Gibbons; (21.) El Duque; (22.) Todd Bridges (23.) Coal.

What about you? Any last words for our old friend?

—Kevin

Oct. 28, 2008, 8:45 a.m.

Kevin,

I don’t remember what I used my cut of the My First Presidentiary payment on, but I do know it wasn’t my summer home on Cape Cod because I don’t have one of those.

That said, the Bush administration has indeed been the comedy gift that keeps on giving. My entire writing career (if you can use such a word to describe it) has been predicated on his election to the highest office in the land.

In fact, here’s an Onion-style, Bush-related joke I’d been saving for an update when I had nothing else to say.

Tuesday, Sen. John McCain’s presidential candidacy got a much-needed shot in the arm when frontrunner Sen. Barack Obama received an unexpected endorsement from an unlikely figure, President George W. Bush.

In his statement, released to the press, President Bush said, “According to Sen. McCain, Barack Obama represents unchecked spending and reckless foreign policy and I began thinking, “That sounds like me, I better vote for that guy.”

I took one final whack at the political pinata with my latest book So You Want to Be President?, highlighting a series of Bush failures in the opening chapter that was adapted into this as-yet-to-go-viral video:

As the six people who just clicked on that can see, it seems clear that a certain amount of exhaustion has set in and Bush as target of satire seems as exhausted and empty as the neoconservative foreign policy. Those who watched last Thursday’s Saturday Night Live special election edition probably noticed this as Will Ferrell reprised his role as impressionist-in-chief. The skit was beyond lame, relying on the old Bushism trope, and the Bush is clueless and stupid meme.

Now that Bush is riding lower than Alan Iverson’s jeans, he’s not a particularly juicy target. He has literally faded into the background. He’s not only been knocked off his pedestal, but the whole thing has tipped over on top of him. Kicking failure around just isn’t funny and as the full, disastrous reality of his presidency sets in, there’s nothing left to tear down.

Our leading satirists will be just fine in an Obama administration, however. Currently, there’s better than even odds that one of them will even join Obama in Washington as part of a supersized democratic senate majority.

If anything, Stephen Colbert will be in a more advantageous spot, in “opposition” to an Obama presidency. Check out this hilarious excerpt from a recent show:

There is a cult-like atmosphere around Barack Obama, which his campaign has carefully and successfully fabricated, which concerns me. The messiah complex. Fainting audience members at rallies. Special Obama flags and an Obama presidential seal. A graphic with the portrayal of the globe and Obama’s name on it, which adorns everything from Obama’s plane to his street literature. Young school children singing songs praising Obama. Teenagers wearing camouflage outfits and marching in military order chanting Obama’s name and the professions he is going to open to them. An Obama world tour, culminating in a speech in Berlin where Obama proclaims we are all citizens of the world. I dare say, this is ominous stuff.

Actually, that’s an excerpt from a post by Mark R. Levin of the National Review Online titled “The Obama Temptation.”

To paraphrase Sarah Palin’s commentary on what turns out to be vital scientific research, I shit you not.

The hardest battle Colbert is going to have is finding any space to parody the Mark R. Levins of the world. Liberals who saw ill motives behind President Bush’s every move were said to have “Bush Derangement Syndrome” or BDS. Let me be the first to coin the inverse Obama-related condition as HCYNSTBOIATSMSBODAD, or “How Can You Not See That Barack Obama Is A Terrorist Sympathizer Marxist Socialist Bent On Destroying America Disorder.”

(Note: The acronym is pronounced just as it’s spelled.)

Mark R. Levin appears to be an early sufferer, as is someone who goes by the handle, “Velociman,” who said recently about Obama:

Did I mention this man hates me? You and me? Yes he does. Why? Because he can. Yes He Can. Beneath that cool persona is a megalomaniac. Cool? Like Stalin after a purge, emotionally and sexually spent. Like Saddam after a torture session, dozing in his chair with someone’s genitals curled in his fist. Like Pol Pot after a petit mal seizure, mumbling a litany of the dead. Cool that way.

Stalin and Pol Pot are like the gateway drug to Hitler for these people. Just give them time.

Yesterday’s news featured the most recent outbreak of HCYNSTBOIATSMSBODAD, as sufferers have taken an Obama quote from a 2001 radio interview out of context and claiming that it proves he’s a socialist, bent on “redistributing” wealth. McCain has even taken to calling Obama “The Redistributor,” which I think most people are going to think is a reference to Obama’s pass first, shoot second tendencies on the basketball court.

The polls are holding and Obama doesn’t look like he’s going to sit back in a four corner’s offense, not even in tribute to legendary University of North Carolina coach and Obama endorser Dean Smith.

I wish that election day was today, not next week, but for now, I’m willing to wait.

—John

Oct. 29, 2008, 12:51 p.m.

John,

I voted yesterday.

On the surface early voting seemed very Eastern Bloc. There were forms to fill out followed by a long wait in an uncomfortable chair. Most of the other people in the room were elderly and female and frequently babushka’d. It just felt like I was waiting to trade a government voucher for a used humidifier in 1978 Poland.

But the wait was only about half an hour and they have these touch screens here now, which are way better than those old chadmakers we used to vote with in Chicago.

A lot of people are calling John McCain a socialist this morning for accepting government financing for his campaign, and they’re calling Barack Obama a “maverick” for turning it down and trusting millions of mostly small donors—the free market—to decide which candidate to support. Anyway I assume that’s what they must be saying. I was only half-listening. Also something about a dinner Obama attended years ago at the University of Chicago where he made some rather rational comments about finding common ground between Israelis and Palestinians but then added that he didn’t totally hate another professor who happens to be Palestinian. The McCain diaper is getting ripe with desperation, man. The LA Times reported this story six months ago and McCain did nothing with it because it was weak. Now the bullets are all out of his gun and they’re trying to play it like an October surprise.

The only surprise here is how the right continues to allow America to be defined by our enemies. To them a patriot is someone who refuses to even acknowledge the humanity of people who disagree with us. With these guys it’s always, “Speak rudely and wave the stick around like a lunatic.”

We’re sending Barack Obama in to vanquish the bully on Tuesday. And that’s not just John McCain, that’s the whole arrogant lot of them who’ve been running the executive the last eight years. They’ve been the smug, snarling face of a country that’s really neither smug nor snarling for as long as I can stand it.

The thing that still has me nervous, though: bullies never fight fair.

—Kevin

Oct. 30, 2008, 2:02 p.m.

Kevin,

The penultimate paragraph of your last missive reminded me of something I’ve been wanting to talk about ever since I read this post by the dean of liberal blogdom, Markos Moulitsas, titled “Crush their their spirits.”

He said:

[W]e have an imperative to take advantage of a historic opportunity to break the conservative movement’s backs and crush their spirits. In the White House, that means getting Obama a broad popular and geographic mandate for change. In the House, that means annihilating the Republican caucus and working toward a 100-seat Democratic majority. In the Senate it means getting to a 60-seat filibuster proof majority.

For the last six years the efforts at Daily Kos have been an extended exercise in standing up to the bullies in the Republican Party by trying to punch back, rather than pleading for the referee to come in and punish the other guy for fighting dirty. They’re willing to go toe to toe and even throw the occasional low blow themselves. (Though I don’t want to suggest a mainstream media-style false equivalence between the worst of the right-wing blogosphere and sites like Daily Kos or Media Matters. There’s a difference between fighting hard and sometimes committing a foul and shredding the rule book entirely.)

(Bonus NBA fan/nerd analogy. Right wing blogs=Bill Laimbeer, Daily Kos=Andres Nocioni.)

That said, the tone and tenor of engagement is a mirror image of the opposing side, in the same way that Keith Olbermann really has become the liberal Bill O’Reilly. Olbermann may have facts on his side, but the subtext of the two broadcasts is essentially the same, “nothing the opposition has to say is worth anything because they’re lying, un-American shitheads.”

In an earlier post, I already explained how that particular approach makes me a little squeamish, deep in my pusillanimous liberal soul, that I felt like there’s a limited utility to fully embracing this attitude and that surely the future seeds of destruction are found there. Following that post I received an email from a former professor of mine who offered a mild dissent and said, “I’m happy to be pissed.” Dare I say it, I detect just a smidge of this in your last letter, though it’s obviously tempered by your gentle midwestern soul.

It’s hard not to let a little glee leak out at the thought of the complete devastation of the Republican Party and their trailing caravan of morally bankrupt sleazemeisters. They’re getting what they have coming, at a minimum four years too late, and I think those of us who have suffered in opposition deserve at least some time to stand over the bloodied carcass and gloat.

But what’s amazing is that throughout this entire campaign, a winning campaign, Barack Obama hasn’t really succumbed to this temptation to fight fire with fire. Even now, as the final desperate smears are being hurled Obama’s way, he laughs them off, rather than feeling the need to volley back.

It’s not like there aren’t plenty of targets, but what seems clear is that with his campaign, Obama wants to set the tone for governing, not just winning elections, something Karl Rove never understood or more likely cared about since he was interested in creating a “permanent republican majority.”

Instead of tit for tat, Obama’s method of combat is to step out of the way while McCain swings wildly and hits the canvas. I’d hate to start another Obama is a closet Muslim rumor, but it’s like Muhammad Ali’s rope-a-dope. Check out what is, I think, the most devastating political ad of the election:

The execution is brilliant, hoisting McCain on the petard of his own ignorance with his own words, and then finishing with the infamous Palin wink. Rich Lowry of the National Review might’ve seen little starbursts in that moment, but judging from her dropping approval ratings, more people get douche chills.

It’s a hit, but it isn’t nasty, it’s your buddy turning to you and saying, “can you believe that?” before the two of you share a rueful head shake. It may be a negative ad, but the tone is positive, not hectoring. It trusts the audience to make their own conclusions.

The phrase “permanent republican majority” scares me shitless, but to be honest, the phrase, “permanent democratic majority” causes a little quaking in the bowels as well, particularly if we’re talking about achieving it in the same way that the republicans have clung to power. Don’t get me wrong, I’m hoping for a nice long exile, one that leaves the James Dobsons behind, but I don’t really want to see anyone crushed.

I want Obama to win approval through the force of his correct ideas. I think he’s shown that it’s possible to leave the negativity and fear behind and win a campaign. It seems equally possible to govern this way. If we’re going to have a permanent democratic majority, I’d rather see it come about that way.

—John

Nov. 1, 2008, 3:02 p.m.

John,

When I said we were sending Obama to “vanquish the bully” I meant that I hoped we can replace a thuggish and bullying administration with something far more intelligent and pragmatic, leadership that is more inclusive and that has a much better sense of history. As you say, I don’t want to just replace their bullies with ours. The hardest thing about obtaining power is resisting the temptation to do absolutely anything in order to hold onto it. The Bush administration demonstrated it would go to any lengths at all to stay in power, even destroying the freedoms and security that define us as a nation, the very things that set us apart. For all their claims to the label “conservative,” the only thing the Bush administration was ever interested in conserving was its own grip on the reins of power, which they did at an enormous cost to this country and to the world.

There ought to be a word for people who continue to repeat a word they clearly don’t know the meaning of. I’m thinking of Wallace Shawn’s character in Princess Bride, who kept saying “inconceivable” when he meant “unbelievable,” as well as McCain supporters who keep calling the Obama tax plan “socialist” when they mean “totally nothing like socialism.” Maybe we should call them “Palinguists.”

I’m pretty sure McCain has some kind of class at Annapolis where they covered the differences between capitalism and socialism and communism, so I don’t think we can call him a Palinguist. I think we pretty much have to call him a liar at this point, and it pains me to do that because I used to admire the guy and I hope that I’ll be able to like him again. But he’s spent too much time in this campaign saying things he knows are not true. And you can tell from the pained look on his face that he knows most of us know they’re not true either. Once again his last, best hope is to pander to people who don’t know any better by pretending he doesn’t know any better either.

One of the pitfalls of exploiting people’s ignorance in order to get them to give you power is that you have to keep pretending you’re stupid, too. After all you’ve been telling them for years to be suspicious of anyone who seems too smart. Smart people are “elites” and “out of touch.” Eventually you get in a position where John McCain, the son of a US Admiral, the grandson of a US Admiral, pretty much an elite among the elites, is forced to say things he knows are ridiculous and choose someone like Sarah Palin as a running mate, a person who isn’t dumb, I don’t think, so much as she is uncurious and and superstitious and willfully ignorant. The whole thing has to come crashing down eventually, although not without a lot of collateral damage.

I hope Tuesday is demolition day.

I also hope Sarah Palin really is trying to position herself as the next leader of the Republican party. (Further evidence would be this bizarre report from a Palin campaign stop in Florida over the weekend where McCain’s name was hardly even mentioned.)

As we semi-professional political humorists pay our respects to the fading Bush administration, a resurgent Sarah Palin would be like restocking the barrel with fish.

—Kevin

Nov. 3, 2008, 7:31 a.m.

Kevin,

As we arrive on the cusp of election day, I find myself with less and less to discuss. There’s nothing left but the doing, which makes me begin to wonder about what’s next after the doing is done.

Monitoring the fortunes of Barack Obama has simply become one of my daily routines, a kind of constant vigilance over news and polling and speculation and opinion from left, right, and center. I’ve been fascinated with politics since I was a kid—my first question after getting off a plane ride to Washington D.C. in 1974 was to ask where the “watergate,” was—but I can’t remember ever caring so much.

Today’s vigilance introduced me to what I believe is the most reassuring news yet, a projection from the Pew people based on polling and demographics and statistical modeling that puts Obama’s victory margin at 52-46. When I read the article, I began to realize for the first time, somewhere deep inside that it really is going to happen.

Come Wednesday I think there’s going to be a real void for a lot of us. It’s going to be like after the Super Bowl and your team has won and it’s awesome, and you jumped up in the air at the final whistle, spilling chili dip all over the rug and your clothes and your dog, but you don’t care because your team won and you spend the next couple of days watching the replays over and over, mouthing the words, “we won, we won,” reveling in the victory, savoring it, but a little less each time until the day you just have to move on. The last act is to pull the trigger on that Sports Illustrated commemorative issue that will arrive in six weeks and barely get looked at.

One of the things we’ll be doing after the election is listing the “winners” and “losers” beyond the obvious choices of the candidates.

One set of losers we should be talking about is the traditional political punditry, including some of our most revered names like Maureen Dowd, who has been consistently shallow and shitty through the entire campaign season. (Dowd’s snark is from a different era, shedding neither light nor heat, and she seems more and more out of touch with each column.) Or, another old hand I’d like to point to, the so-called dean of the White House press corps, David Broder. Broder is known for his sober fairness, but one man’s sober fairness is another’s delusional fool married to false equivalency. Broder lives in some kind of fantasyland completely divorced from reality.

In Broder’s Sunday column he is already busy absolving McCain of his worst campaigning sins.

After lamenting that “a potentially captivating experience” was lost when Obama declined to do joint town halls with McCain, Broder goes on to say:

[T]hanks in large part to McCain’s personal aversion to any suggestion of racial campaigning, the issue never fully emerged in a negative way this fall, sparing the country what could have been a divisive experience.

Apparently, because McCain has refrained from making Jeremiah Wright front and center, he deserves some credit. This is like saying a guy behaved honorably in a fight after a series of eye gouges, hair pulls, and sucker punches, simply because he didn’t also kick him in the ‘nads. With all the usual caveats about politics being bloodsport and bare knuckled and all that, it’s impossible not to view McCain’s campaigning as a disgrace to his own past reputation as well as the nation. He has consistently stoked anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiment in some kind of effort to rally enough bigots to his cause to get him to an electoral majority.

The newest McCain surrogate, Joe the Unlicensed Plumber, is on Fox News even today, telling us not to vote for Obama because he doubts Obama’s loyalty to America.

Memo to Mr. Broder: This is the McCain campaign’s official surrogate less than 48 hours before the election declaring that the major party candidate of the democratic party, the runaway prohibitive favorite to be the next President of the United States, is a potential traitor.

One candidate is bringing the country together, while the other is trying to tear it apart. I know which one comes much closer to deserving the “t-word” label.

Broder disgraces himself by excusing these tactics. He implies that “McCain had to do it,” because it was his only shot at victory as though victory could absolve all sins. What a total crock of shit.

One of the great benefits of the new media landscape on display like never before in this election season is that people like Broder, who are venerated, but are actually a pox on the punditry landscape and a drag on honest discourse have to put up with some spitballs from the likes of me in our little virtual corner telling them so.

—John

Nov. 3, 2008, 9:31 p.m.

John,

It’s down to simple probability now.

John McCain’s last chance at winning this thing relies on a bunch of “and” statements. McCain needs to win Indiana AND Missouri AND Ohio AND Virginia AND Pennsylvania, etc. Obama’s path consists of “or” statements. He needs to win Pennsylvania OR Ohio plus Florida OR Ohio plus Virginia plus Colorado, etc. Over at 538, Nate Silver puts McCain’s chances of winning the election at just under two percent. If you believe the polls are mostly accurate, and you have faith in Silver’s electoral simulations, then the odds of McCain becoming our next president are roughly the same as a poker player being dealt three of a kind, or approximately the same as a pregnant woman in the Netherlands being told by her OB/GYN that she’s carrying twins.

Put that way, it doesn’t sound quite as comforting for an Obama supporter. I’ve been dealt three of a kind hundreds of times in my life, and I’ve probably seen dozens of pairs of blonde twins in wooden shoes gracing the pages of imported Dutch porn. Of course, McCain only gets one hand of stud to pull his three aces.

Obama can still lose this election, but he’s going to have to be very unlucky.

This morning we stand over a broken condom in a wastebasket, anxiously tearing the cellophane off a hastily purchased pregnancy test.

America just has to pee on the stick.

UPDATE: I’m watching Obama vote live on TV right now. He’s spending a really long time hunched over his paper ballot. Whatever the results of the election, know that Barack Obama takes Cook County judicial retention very seriously.

—Kevin

Nov. 4, 2008, 9:50 a.m.

Kevin,

I’m not even sure it’s a matter of probability at this point, since your poker analogy relies on random chance and there doesn’t seem to be that much chance left in the equation, particularly considering almost a third of people have already voted and Obama has a significant lead. It’s like he’s up 21-0, midway through the second quarter and his defensive line has already sacked the quarterback six times.

I have yet to vote, but will be heading out before the lunch rush. There’s already many anecdotal reports of long lines which suggests further good omens for Obama. I’ll be curious to see what’s going on inside of my very red county in a rather red non-swing state (South Carolina). I’ll report back after the experience.

I thought that maybe prior to the results rolling in we could have a little fun with predictions. I’m going to go on a limb and say that Obama will win 371 electoral votes, essentially all the democratic and toss-up states on Pollster’s final map, except Georgia and Indiana, and including one EV from Nebraska, because that’s how I roll.

For even further fun, I thought I’d offer a hastily-arranged ill-thought-out contest/giveaway. I’ve got a bunch of copies of recently released titles from TOW Books, including:

• Forgotten Fashion: An Illustrated Faux History Of Outrageous Trends And Their Untimely Demise by Kate Hahn;
• The Serfitt & Cloye Gift Catalog: Just Enough Of Too Much by Bob Woodiwiss;
• The hot off the presses The Ultimate Game Guide To Your Life: Or, The Video Game As Existential Metaphor by Christopher Monks; and of course, the recently remaindered
• So You Want to Be President? by yours truly.

I’ll send a full package of these books to the person who correctly answers my “Third Party Candidate Quiz/Guessing Game.”

Here’s the challenge.

1. In rank order, list the top five third party vote getters in terms of percentage of the popular vote since 1960. (Including 1960, in case that’s not clear.) Express this in a list with year and candidate.
2. Predict Ralph Nader’s share of the 2008 popular vote. (% of popular vote) Closest, including those who go over, (and answer question 1 correctly) win. Please express within 1/100th of a percent.

All entries must be sent to the email address accessed quite easily from the link to the right there. All entries must be received by 7 p.m. EST. Only those residing in the 50 states are eligible since it gets pricey to ship overseas. I will not be able to acknowledge all entries, unless the only readers of these letters are, as I suspect, my immediate family members, in which case, I’ll give you a call.

—John

Nov. 4, 2008, 1:22 p.m.

John,

Before I weigh in with my predictions for tonight, I want to point to your contest once again, for anyone who hasn’t entered yet. We’ve been getting some informed entries as well as some excellent emails this morning from people excited about the election today. Energy is up, I can feel it.

I’m predicting the first surprise of the night will be Obama winning Indiana, where voting ends early in the evening. The latest polls have McCain pulling away in that state, but my gut says that a large turnout in northwest Indiana (which is practically suburban Chicago), combined with the last-minute heavy rotation of an Obama radio ad featuring John Cougar Mellencamp will put him narrowly over the top. (Note the almost subliminal way in which Mellencamp, with folksy Midwest contempt, pronounces George Bush’s name so that it rhymes with douche.)

That kind of result could portend an Obama landslide, similar to your projection. I’m not going to go quite that far. I think McCain will pull it out in more than half the swing states, and also win Ohio, but North Carolina will fall to Obama. The story throughout the early hours will be Virginia where a close tally combined with polling problems will bring back memories of Ohio in 2004 and Florida in 2000. In the end, it won’t matter. Obama will win comfortably with 344 electoral votes.

I’m also predicting that Obama will outperform his national poll numbers. He will win the popular vote by more than 8%.

Finally I’m setting the over/under on arrests in Grant Park tonight at 11.

—Kevin

Nov. 4, 2008, 2:40 p.m.

Kevin,

I voted. No epic lines at our polling place, but steady business, all eight (touch-screen) machines occupied with a line of 10-12 at the check-in table.

From a purely demographic analysis, my wife and I were the only Obama voters in attendance, but still it felt good.

On our local and state races we had a number of Republicans running unopposed. I wrote in Howard Stern several times. Baba Booey was my pick for County Coroner.

Sarah Palin finally answered press questions after casting her vote, though she refused to say who she voted for, saying “I am also exercising my right to privacy and I don’t have to tell anybody who I vote for. Nobody does, and that’s really cool about America also.”

I don’t know about you, but I’m glad we’re not going to have a Vice President who tells us what’s “really cool,” about our country. One of the reasons I’m going out on the edge of Obama’s electoral vote totals is because I actually think Palin is going to suppress republican turnout. The base don’t want her as VP; they want her at the top of the ticket and are willing to wait for 2012 for the chance. Just like democrats, they don’t want to take a chance on McCain v. the actuarial tables.

First results in just over three hours. I’m going to go watch my TiVo’d West Wing episodes showing the Santos victory over Vinick in anticipation.

Note to readers: don’t forget to enter our contest and win free books.

—John

Nov. 4, 2008, 3:08 p.m.

John,

Did you notice Palin’s blatant dressing down for the cameras when she went to the polls this morning? I know she’s still stinging from the $150,000 wardrobe, but come on. Wear your nice jeans, at least. It’s election day, not a bass tournament.

Much has been made about Palin having been pranked by Canadian radio jocks pretending to be Nicolas Sarkozy (“Hell-OH!”). Frankly of all the embarrassing things she’s said and done in this campaign, it really doesn’t rank (although the staffer who set up the call and handed her the phone should probably be fired). One thing that should have made a bigger stir on Fox News, however, was Palin’s assertion to phony Sarkozy that the French government is “a very good example for us here.”

Where’s the outrage from freedom fry conservatives over that? If Barack Obama ever suggested he was going to take governing tips from the French, Sean Hannity would bust a nut.

(And don’t forget today’s contest.)

—Kevin

Nov. 4, 2008, 5:42 p.m.

Kevin,

First polls close in less than 20 minutes and I’ve started drinking. I blame the Obama campaign because they sent me this:

Friends—

If you aren’t already out canvassing, Barack needs your help right now—our data indicates that the results will be very close in many states. I can’t emphasize enough how urgent this message is. Please go to http://my.barackobama.com/call and start calling as soon as you can.

We are not going to hit our goal of 1,000,000 calls for today without your help.

Can you call now and continue for as long as you can manage?

http://my.barackobama.com/call

Judith
My.BarackObama.com/Call

“Very close in many states.” I notice they don’t say which ones, but honestly, do they have to worry me like this? It’s like when your teenager is out past curfew (do teenagers still have curfews?) and they call home and start with, “Everything is fine, but…”

Maybe this is just a pre-planned strategy, like the Labor Day auto dealers claiming all inventory must go and prices will never be this low again…until the next sale a month later, but man, I just want to see some actual results.

—John

Nov. 4, 2008, 7:20 p.m.

John,

Oh my God, are you watching this awful hologram thing on CNN? I am so waiting for Wolf Blitzer to strike Jessica Yellin down with a light saber.

—Kevin

Nov. 4, 2008, 10:12 p.m.

John,

The way you describe the scene downtown, I’m almost hoping for Mayor Daley to order a reprise police beat down on your brother and that angry Obama mob. If there’s any damage at all to my favorite popcorn stores, I’m holding him responsible.

Do we dare turn our attention to the Minnesota Senate race, where they may be on the verge of electing the first satirist to Congress since Bill Frist?

(Frist was joking, right?)

—Kevin

Nov. 4, 2008, 10:24 p.m.

Kevin,

Latest report form Grant Park is that there is “a shitload of people,” but as of this writing, fewer than were present for Red Hot Chili Peppers at Lollapalooza.

Flea for Secretary of Rocking Your Face!

—John

Nov. 4, 2008, 10:37 p.m.

John,

Oh No, CNN! The virtual capitol!

Second most useless expensive television graphic ever.

Plus, Al Franken’s floating point head!

Forget about Sean Hannity, Edward Tufte just busted a nut.

UPDATE: Speaking of Tufte, here’s an electoral map from two years ago speculating about a possible McCain-Obama matchup in this election.

—Kevin

Nov. 4, 2008, 10:48 p.m.

John,

Noooooo! Will.I.Am hol.o.gram! My eyes!!!

Anderson Cooper watching his journalistic credibility go the way of the Apple Newton.

—Kevin

Nov. 4, 2008, 10:43 p.m.

Kevin,

CNN has not only a virtual capitol, but in Bill Bennett, a virtual human being, something lifelike, yet not quite human.

Bennett just took exception to the implication that the Republican Party is now made up exclusively of “old, white, confederate men,” but thus far, the results pretty much show it to be a truism.

Breaking: Will.I.Am hologram from grant park. He has a purple aura around his entire body.

Do you think they’ll get Obama for a holographic in-studio interview?

—John

Nov. 4, 2008, 10:56 p.m.

John,

Bill Bennett apparently has somewhere more important to be at 11 PM. Is there a new Harry Potter book being released or something?

—Kevin

Nov. 4, 2008, 10:58 p.m.

John,

Yes.

They’ll be dining on bull in Kogelo.

—Kevin

Nov. 4, 2008, 10:59 p.m.

Kevin,

Maybe Bennett has to make a standing reservation at his favorite slot machine.

Virginia goes for Obama, which means two of the four states I’ve lived in (Illinois, Virginia) go blue.

Here comes the final call from Wolff.

And that’s it, the Grant Park crowd goes wild.

President Obama!

—John

Nov. 4, 2008, 11:02 p.m.

Kevin,

What a ride.

All of the sudden, I’m exhausted.

I’m sure tomorrow we’ll talk more about what happened, why, and how we can get our hands on that hologram technology, but for now, I’m signing off so I can enjoy this.

Go Franken.

—John

Nov. 4, 2008, 11:06 p.m.

John,

Good night, buddy.

—Kevin

Nov. 5, 2008, 8:46 a.m.

Kevin,

What’s for breakfast this morning in your house? I’m having schadenfreude over easy with a side order of gloating links.

I know this is supposed to be a time for magnanimity and extending hands across the aisle. John McCain’s speech was classy (though his supporters were classless) and Obama’s speech was sober and serious, rather than joyful, with not a hint of “I told you so,” in the text or the delivery.

Shit, even Karl Rove and Bill Kristol were gracious over Obama’s victory last night, but fuck it, I’ve been spending the morning cruising the conservative blogosphere and enjoying the wailing and gnashing of teeth. My favorite dummy of the right, Kathryn Jean Lopez at National Review’s The Corner did not disappoint:

What Freaks Me Out About This Election is how oblivious to facts people have been. Everything about Obama’s judgment and radicalism — whether Sean Hannity or Stanley Kurtz or Andy McCarthy etc. is telling you about it — was essentially deemed irrelevant (including largely by the McCain campaign, save for Palin eventually talking about Ayers). Abortion? Near no one outside a handful of conservatives were talking about his record on infanticide — beyond abortion.

People are in for a rude awakening. And a mature conservative movement, with both an ear and a solid voice, will be needed.

Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Dummy! If this is the core of a mature conservative movement, I think we’re looking at an easy Obama re-election in 2012.

The margin is both comfortable and close at the same time. Most of the states Obama flipped that padded his EV total—Virginia, Florida, North Carolina—were very tight margins, and in the case of Virginia and North Carolina, Obama ran well behind the democratic senate candidates. If those states had gone the other way, we’d be talking about how Obama won in a relative squeaker.

Which brings to mind the big question I want to ask you and what I’ve been thinking about is whether or not McCain (or another republican) could have won? The concession speech McCain didn’t make me want to throw a brick through me TV. If that guy had shown up with Mike Huckabee or Mitt Romney on his arm would K-Lo be crowing about a future end to infanticide this morning?

—John

Nov. 5, 2008, 12:53 p.m.

John,

McCain could have won last night, but it would have required a very unlikely sequence of events—he needed to flip a coin seven times and have it come up seven heads. Actually it’s more like he had to roll the dice seven times and watch it come up seven sevens. No wait, it’s more like he had to flick the Twister spinner and have it land on “right hand red” seven times in a row.

I really do think the presence of Sarah Palin made it nearly impossible for him to be elected. For as many times as McCain tried to scare voters by quoting Biden’s “make no mistake, Obama will be tested…” line, any sober voter from either party had to, in a quiet moment, imagine the world on the day Sarah Palin was forced into service as president. What would it be like if Russia invaded its neighbors with Sarah Palin as president? How many points would the Dow Jones lose on the day Sarah Palin was being sworn in?

Someone like Mitt Romney, who is perceived as having economic experience based on the fact that he has accumulated a lot of money, probably would have helped McCain’s standing in the current crisis. Would it have been enough to win? I have no idea.

This election (and this economy) has opened up some pretty serious fissures in the Republican party. There are the intellectual elites, and the fiscal conservatives, the libertarians, and the neo-cons, the good old boys, and the Plumber Joes. For a variety of reasons, none of them could really get behind this ticket. I suspect now they are going to finger point and grumble and then pull out the Newt Gingrich playbook for inspiration.

Obama is going to have a honeymoon, of course. He’s lucky to have been elected this year, as the economy is scraping bottom, instead of last year when the Dow was just coming off its all-time high. I’ve said it before, the more people see of Obama, the more they like him. That’s going to feed his numbers for the next year or two, I suspect.

This is all to say that if your name is Nancy Pelosi and you are a congresswoman from California, dress for battle. Under siege, the rag-tag, fractured Republicans need a common enemy and Nancy Pelosi is looking like the most likely cylon. We are about to see an escalation of the culture wars and the Republican’s newest axis of evil is going to run from her office to Harry Reid’s.

Three states had initiatives on the ballot to ban gay marriage, and a fourth, Arkansas, had a remarkable (and I suspect ultimately unconstitutional) initiative barring gay couples from adopting children. Unless they find some uncounted votes in California, all four of those initiatives will pass, even in states where Obama won. Look for 20 states to have similar initiatives in 2010.

Interestingly, the three state initiatives seeking to limit or ban abortion all look like they will fail. I suspect abortion will actually take a back seat as an issue in the next couple years. Despite Kathryn Jean’s hysterics, Obama is hardly a radical. He’s a center-left pragmatist and that’s especially true on abortion. Catholics, who were a reliable Democratic voting bloc before Roe v. Wade, voted more than 53% for Obama. Part of it might have been this from Obama in the last debate:

There surely is some common ground when both those who believe in choice and those who are opposed to abortion can come together and say we should try to prevent unintended pregnancies by providing appropriate education to our youth, communicating that sexuality is sacred and that they should not be engaged in cavalier activity, and providing options for adoption, and helping single mothers if they want to choose to keep the baby.

Those are all things that we put in the Democratic platform for the first time this year, and I think that’s where we can find some common ground, because nobody’s pro-abortion. I think it’s always a tragic situation.

That’s where the country is on abortion—keep it legal, but keep it rare—and that’s where Obama is. He understands that abortions peaked during the Reagan and Bush administrations and decreased under Bill Clinton’s tenure, when social services were more widely available. Couple that with the fact that Obama will likely appoint at least two justices, making the battle at the high court moot, and I think the ranters like Kathryn Jean Lopez, who seem less interested in actually reducing the number of abortions than they are in getting a license to prosecute someone for “infanticide,” are going to be marginalized.

Obama understands the pathological dysfunction that can overcome those with unchecked power. Here in Illinois, Democrats control both houses of the legislature as well as the governor’s mansion and yet the state is mired in gridlock. The house speaker won’t even talk to the unpopular governor while he schemes to have his own daughter replace him in the next election. The next election isn’t soon enough for the lieutenant governor, who tried to organize a constitutional convention largely for the purpose of getting his own boss recalled.

Republicans are going to wait and hope for President Obama and giddy Democrats in Congress to overplay their hand. Clinton did it with health care and the Dems paid dearly in 1994. Obama set the tone well in his speech last night. If the Democrats can remain somber and gracious, Republicans might have to keep fighting themselves for awhile.

Nothing lasts forever, though. That’s the only thing I know for sure.

—Kevin