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

And thus begins George Will’s near endorsement of Obama repudiation of McCain.  (And the implications of this essay were not lost on the National Review denziens.)  He later makes the necessary anti-Obama curmudgeonly caveats, and a pox on both them houses.  But this area of “leval-headedness” and temperament tends to the basis for the argument of disgruntled Conservative supporters of Obama.  Witness the former publisher of the National Review, Wick Allison (which came to most by way of dailykos, but there’s a decent chance it was found by way of Drudge), who actually has some — frankly disarming– positive reaction to Barack Obama.:

Barack Obama is not my ideal candidate for president. (In fact, I made the maximum donation to John McCain during the primaries, when there was still hope he might come to his senses.) But I now see that Obama is almost the ideal candidate for this moment in American history. I disagree with him on many issues. But those don’t matter as much as what Obama offers, which is a deeply conservative view of the world. Nobody can read Obama’s books (which, it is worth noting, he wrote himself) or listen to him speak without realizing that this is a thoughtful, pragmatic, and prudent man. It gives me comfort just to think that after eight years of George W. Bush we will have a president who has actually read the Federalist Papers.

The other National Review connected Obama supporter, William Buckley Jr’s son Christopher Buckley, has much the same to say on the issue of the election, though one notable item here.:

My hope being that once he inherits this mess—and it’s going to be a mess: he inherits a country at war and in its worst financial crisis since 1929; are you really sure, Mr. Obama, you want this job?—that his instincts and his thoughtfulness will lead him toward creative, non-ideological solutions.

— an implication that anyone who actually wants the job at this juncture in American history might as well be granted to be saddled down with it.  This is largely anecdotal — toss in Douglas Kmiec where at least there I can spot the Obama campaign has been actively campaiging for Evangelical and conservative Catholic voters.  It’s also weary of being the quadranial rite of passage of one party unleashing a “Other Party for My Guy” campaign — the “Democrats for Bush” headlined by Zell Miller and Ed Koch, and the “Republicans for Obama” roster was disappointing in its absence of any noted Senators from Nebraska.  Anyway, this “brain class” Conservative siphon probably does not much infiltrate the great Drudge / am talk radio / Fox News arena of Republican formatted talking points and thus not much into the broad popularly understood “Conservative Movement”.  But it is worth noting the notations of a “Conservative Temperament”.

Good news!  Joseph Biden made a wacky comment worthy of derisive laughter.  (Lifted from the libertarian magazine Reason’s blog, which plucked it from somewhere else, where it came from an interview with Katie Couric.)

When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the princes of greed. He said, “look, here’s what happened.”

I am circumspect about such gaffes, tending to view the whole lot of them as generally not disqualifying — though they do tend to be illustrative of something.  So, Governor Roosevelt’s statements on the Stock Market Crash must have really taken a bite out of the audience share then currently held by the number one television show of the era — the Felix the Cat Ticking Clock Show.  Meanwhile, for all his faults, President Hoover was busy using the mass medium of the day — radio — to communicate his policies and views to the American people.  In this case Biden is shuffling about for an example to slam George Bush against for delinquency and putting in a good word for Franklin Roosevelt, and he misfired.

The bigger issue is that this would be a bad analogy even if were not a historical anachronism.  Joseph Biden seems to be suggesting that anyone anywhere wants to hear George Bush address the problem, that somehow that is going to soothe the nation.  In these days of Great Peril, an address from George Bush is the last thing that the nation needs; it could only exasperate our nation’s Crisis of Confidence.  Frankly, I think this shows a lapse of judgement on Joseph Biden’s part which is not befitting of (potential) Presidency.

A new poll from American Research Group shows that zero percent of Americans believe the economy is improving.  The poll also measured President Bush’s approval rating at 19 percent.

Hm.  Over the weekend, an editorial was published from one of those Victor Hanson Davis or Max Boot orCharles Krauthammer or one of those Intelligent Idiots, some looming in the advisor ranks of a McCain presidency, stating that age old premise en vouge since Bush’s presidency skidded firmly out of public favor — “History will vindicate Bush.  Look, over there!  TRUMAN!!”.

Still, looking down the ranks of these economic confidence indicators, it is worth noting that the “Zero” percentage is only marginally worse than the previous low, February’s 1 percent and July’s 3 percent, which shows we are right on the cusp of a rebound.  These things are cyclical, and the problem may have been that inflated sense of confidence before the bubble burst, last month when nearly one out of five people had confidence America’s economy was going anywhere. 

Bush is no Truman.  He is not Hoover, either, because I tend to think Hoover may just have been the Right Man for the Job — if it were 1920.  I don’t think Bush was the Right Man for the Job at any point in our history, and any conceivable moment in the future.

That Electoral vote calculator sticks the map up as Obama at 273 and McCain at 265.  This differs from this day in 2004 which had Kerry at 269 and Bush at 253, and which glancing at seems to have included some outliers which screwed that particular day up.  I note the significance of this is that if you threw the states that were “tied” to Bush, the electoral vote would have come to 269 to 269.  Likewise, if you edge “New Hampshire” from Obama to McCain, it would 269 to 269.  Neither of this would precipate a Constitutional Crisis, as the vote would go over to the House and be voted on by state delegations, presumably by a more or less party-line vote, but it would lead to some hard feelings, I suspect, for such a convuluted and anarchronistic system.  Which means that a Constitutional Crisis would be ginned up just for the Hell of it… kind of… familiar.

The Borders book store offers a table of books related to the presidential and vice-presidential candidates.  There are several books pro and anti McCain, several books pro and anti Obama.  There is the rushed out reprinting of that small publisher’s Sarah Palin book.  And then there’s the Joseph Biden book — I don’t know what it’s called, but let’s just reference the George W Bush 2000 campaign book title: “A Charge To Keep”.

Almost perfunctory, this Biden book.  I imagine the table really ought to only have three, four, maybe five copies instead of the dozen or so it holds.  And I further imagine that those three, four, maybe five copies should be the only copies the store has in stock, to remain right there — on that table — until the first Wednesday of November — all three or five copies.  It is a necessary book to place at this table, but it’s nothing that is going to be purchased, and in the event that it is purchased there is a three or four book buffer.

When I hear Biden on the radio, as opposed to when I see him speak on television, I feel as though I am hearing John Kerry.  And maybe I am.  The mediocre but you wouldn’t be able to do any better Democratic strategist Bob Shrum states that if he hadn’t been the presidential candidate in 2004, Kerry would almost assuredly have been selected by Obama as his running mate, which sounds about right, and also sounds about why Biden sounds Kerry-ish.  The smart thing for the Democratic Party, of course, is that this time out he’s at the bottom of the ticket.  The Republicans can have their little “gaffe clock” clicker.  And they can believe that the public is going to be watching and playing a “Foot in the Mouth” drinking game at the Vice presidential debate — which I’ve noticed when I’ve looked over as their rejoinder to voices over Sarah Palin on the looming vice presidential debate.  Nope.  It’s all a drinking game dedicated to the words “moose-burger” and “Hockey mom”.  I even suggest Biden may as well lay off the initial obvious line “You are no Hillary Clinton”, as by now Palin’s advisors have worked up something amusing and fireworky, as opposed to Dan Quayle’s biting of the lips.  Biden — a fire-cracker in the innards of Washington and when only the most politically interested are paying attention; boring in the rest of the country and when everyone else is paying attention.  Buy his book!

The problem is shown with that phrase… “Too Big To Fail.”  The problem is our current course propagates The Biggness that Cannot Be Allowed to Fail, including the relief we are all supposed to have when one bank swallows up another struggling bank and thus ensuring that solvency.  The problem is it serves as a permanent Insurance for “The Biggness”, and from what I am gleaning — from my admittedly ignorant position – our new bailout shows that steady erosion from any balance of reformation and insurance for the tax-payers footing the bill as opposed to the deal that came out of the Savings and Loan Debacle, which shows the old George Carlin line, “The Rich Write all the Laws, and” – (Regretably I can’t find the whole part of that particular monolouge, but I immediately do end up with a conspiracy theory charging that George Carlin was Assassinated.) 

In all of this light, what we need at this moment may not be so much a Franklin Roosevelt as a Theodore Roosevelt (John McCain’s muse, although McCain seems to miss the good points and hit the bad points)– willing and able to Bust the Trusts, an eye out on the Monopolies.  It is a bit of a subtle difference in how the Roosevelts regulated the monstrous beast of Capitolism, but not insubstantial.  Eliot Spitzer strikes me as the closest to fitting that bill, but he’s been taken off the political stage… Coincidence?

“First Dude.”

I’m skimming over toward wikipedia for a quick flash on the background of James Westbrook Pegler , where it is noted:

Interest in Pegler was revived when Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Sarah Palin quoted him in her acceptance speech at the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota. “We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity and dignity”, she said, a Pegler quote that also appeared in the book “Right From the Beginning” by Pat Buchanan. Rather than acknowledging Pegler by name, Palin merely cites ‘a writer’.^[4] The speech was written by Matthew Scully, a senior speech writer for George W. Bush.^[5]

Following the Palin acceptance speech New York Times columnist Frank Rich elucidated the political significance of quoting Pegler. Mr. Rich noted that “Pegler was a rabid Joe McCarthyite who loathed F.D.R. and Ike and tirelessly advanced the theory that American Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe (“geese”, he called them) were all likely Communists.”^[6] He pointed out that Palin’s use of a quote from “once powerful right-wing Hearst columnist Westbrook Pegler” was intended to send a subtle but unmistakable signal to far right wing supporters. ^[7]

Also Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. expressed outrage about Palin’s quoting of Pegler in her speech. ^[8] Referring to Pegler as a “Fascist writer” and an “avowed racist”, he reminded readers of the fact that, when Senator Kennedy considered running for president in 1965, Pegler had expressed hope that ‘some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his spoonful of brains in public premises before the snow flies.’^[9][10]

I don’t know about “sending messages”, almost code-like, but this is a little reminiscent of when George W Bush made a reference to IF Stone by way of arguring against the — um — Agnew’s nattering nabobs of negativity regarding progressing with Reconstructing Europe post World War II — or, fighting the Insurgency post Iraq War.  To best encapsulate what a reference to Stone would mean to a certain generation and ilk of Conservative Warrior, and what frame of mind one would be sending in referencing Stone: to this day your Robert Novak believes that IF Stone was a tool of the Soviet government.  Now, considering the plucking up of Pegler from the fading memories of our public discourse, I have to wonder if it was the same speech writer.

Moving on to the talk function, I see this argument was advanced.:

Cleraly posted before the addition of the reference to Scully in the piece.  I do wonder how it is we come to a point where anyone can brush aside statements made by a politician when they come out of their mouths, and this argument does not argure well for Sarah Palin.  Particularly in light of the odd brief against the ghost-writer and the defense you see when you google for it pointing out that every politician has speech writers.

So, Al Qaeda bombed the United States Embassy in Yemen, a nation which I am pretty sure I can find on the map but am even more sure that more than nine out of ten Americans would not be able to find on the map. Al Qaeda was previously last seen with Usama Bin Laden videos blasting the Great Zionist Government of Iran, which should serve as a mental note for us all that they are working on a different frame than us.

This brings to mind the thought I had sometime after 9/11, which is that al Qaeda can get a good strike in America once every eight years — 1993, 2001 — at the dawn of a new Administration. Now, the last two times they hit the World Trade Center. That, of course, is gone with nothing built up as of yet. Which makes me wonder, since the landmark of their fascination is gone, what are they going to strike in 2009?

John McCain chimed in to say that “Our economy, I think still, the fundamentals of our economy are strong.”  Panic setting in as the United States government (past our clueless elected officials, George Bush and Harry “don’t know what to do” Reid included) has started nationalizing the unprofitable and unproductive sectors of the economy like a Bizarro Hugo Chavez, John McCain since had to re-invent his definitions to meet the changed reality, to escape Herbert Hoover-ville, and to greet a rhetorical pandering absurdity.:

“Our workers are the most innovative, the hardest working, the best skilled, most productive, most competitive in the world.  My opponents may disagree, but those fundamentals of America are strong.  No one can match an American worker.”

Yes.  McCain’s opponent may disagree, believing that the American worker sucks tremendous eggs, but not “Country First” John McCain and Sarah Palin.  Seriously, this is a parody of a Politicial Pander, and a Parody of a Political Strawman Argument.  I gather its sheer bull-headedness cannot possibly be met with anything but derision, right?  Right?

There is a manner in which I grudgingly, albeit almost accidentally, defend some items out of the McCain campaign repetoire.  A “mental recession” is never quite accurate, but there tends to be a lagging “psychological” impact which prolongs the troubles, fear of stepping out from the (relatively) long dark shadow we appear to be entering.  Being snake-bitten can do that to us.