One and Done for Palin in Debate?

Now that we have the first presidential debate in the books, it’s time for the vice-presidential nominees to square off. This will be the nation’s only opportunity to evaluate the two people said to be a heartbeat away from the presidency. This debate assumes even more significance in that this is the only time the candidates will face each other. More importantly given the McCain camps inclination to keep Gov. Palin away from the press, it might be the only time we see her in an unscripted format.
Like many Americans, I was somewhat impressed with the selection of the Alaskan governor and her initial foray onto the national stage. After a year of the entitled then reinvented Hillary Clinton, Palin appeared to be a welcome breath of fresh air. The whole package seemed to work. Her back story was a campaign manager’s dream. PTA Mom, wife, mother of five, including a Down Syndrome child she refused to abort, as well as a meteoric political rise. Toss in “The First Dude” husband and field dressing a moose and you had John Wayne in a cute dress.
The reaction on the left was ferocious and immediate. The essence of the criticism was she’s a moron with no foreign policy expertise. It came across as shrill, sexist and partisan. Notice I haven’t said wrong! In my enthusiasm for the un-Hillary female candidate, I was willing to cut her a little slack. After all, all a vice-president does is go to state funerals and occasionally preside over the Senate. She’ll pick it up as she goes along. Then I listened to her unscripted conversation with Katie Couric the other day.
If that interview was any indication of her depth of knowledge or ability to think on her feet, John McCain can book a tee time for November 5th. In response to a question regarding her linkage of Alaska’s proximity to Russia and her foreign policy proficiency, Gov. Palin said this.
“Well it certainly does, because our next door neighbors are foreign countries, there in the state that I am executive of….As Putin rears his head and comes into the airspace of the United States of America, where do they go? It’s Alaska. They are right next door to our state.” It was horrifying and left no room for interpretation or spin. My cocker spaniel could have given me a more cogent answer.
Sarah Palin is living proof of ‘The Peter Principle” which states that most people eventually rise to their level of incompetence. Sarah Palin may be a popular and proficient Governor of Alaska but she’s not ready to be vice-president to a 72 year-old cancer survivor.
Which brings me to tonight’s debate. Off her performance with Katie Couric, there is no way she will convince anyone she’s ready for prime time. Her handlers are going to have to restrict her responses to canned answers and McCain talking points. The challenge for Sen. Joe Biden will be not appearing condescending or overbearing. She may be the female equivalent of Dan Quayle but Biden can’t lay her out like Lloyd Benson did in 1988 with a “Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine and you’re no Jack Kennedy” line.
So it might be Miller time for Sarah Palin after tonight. That would be the late William E. Miller of Lockport, NY. You see Rep. Miller, an obscure upstate Congressman was the vice-presidential running mate of another Arizona Senator, Republican Barry Goldwater.

Obama Wins Debate Big

The important thing to remember here is the debate doesn't take place for more than two hours. I'm just pretending to be a New York Times reporter and going with my institutional bias. Unless Obama farts or takes a swing at McCain, the liberal media will swoon over his performance tonight. I'll be back after the debate for a real assessment. Enjoy.

Racing Against Public Opinion

If you watched the Senate hearings today on the proposed financial bailout legislation, one thing was very obvious. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed chief Ben Bernanke want this thing done yesterday. That's because every day the public has to evaluate this thing, the more likely it is they will reject it. It's not the complexity of the proposal that has people balking. It's the growing realization this mess was created by the grand poobahs of Wall Street who couldn't have cared less about the little guy and now they want him to save their bacon. The backlash is only going to grow as these lawmakers head home for the elections and hear it from the folks. Look for this legislation to be modified dramatically.

A Thank You Note From Wall Street

Dear President Bush and Secretary Paulson et all:
On behalf of all of us here on Wall Street and corporate boardrooms around this great nation, we would like to express our profound appreciation for bailing out our sorry behinds. Only in today’s America can a republican president and his flunkies at Treasury and the Fed elect to reward years of fiscal mismanagement, greed and poor decision making with a financial mulligan. In one fell swoop you have made obsolete the notion the function of the capital markets is to set the price for success and failure.
What makes this federal bailout so fabulous and brilliant is who gets to pick up the tab for our malfeasance…the taxpayer. Think about it for a moment. We encourage people to take out mortgages on houses they can’t afford and home equity loans they can’t pay back. We then toss in a few wrinkles like adjustable rate mortgages just to get everybody at the craps table and then sit back and wait for the bomb to go off.
The only thing we hadn’t really planned on was the sheer amount of bad paper we’d put out there. But even there we thought we had it covered by packaging this junk up and selling it to the public. Sure, we figured somebody would end up with the black Queen, we just didn’t know everyone would. But then those years of generously donating our hard earned money to you, my president, paid off. Just as we were tied to the railroad tracks along came Hank and Ben Bernanke to save us. The fact we’d tied ourselves to the tracks was of little concern to you. Making the world safe for Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs shareholders won the day and we thank you for it.
But your prescient plan didn’t end there. You sent Secretary Paulson and Fed Chief Ben Bernanke up to see Nancy Pelosi and Christopher Dodd because you knew you needed them to get this proposal through Congress. Pointing out democrats couldn’t be seen as complicit in putting the great unwashed out on the street during an election year guaranteed they’d get on board. Even Chuck Schumer was dancing to your tune.
The beloved taxpayer is now on the hook for a cool trillion or two and the stock market is smoking. Speaking of the beloved taxpayer, a few of us here at Metropolitan Club are actually raising our glasses to that great American sage, Leona Helmsley, who once said” Only the little people pay taxes.” Pay indeed my friends. The little people will be paying for this debacle until we melt that stupid polar ice cap.
We’d be remiss if we didn’t also compliment you on the short term ban on shorting financial stocks. It’s the financial equivalent of the wage and prices controls Nixon imposed in the early 70’s to curb inflation. Hey, we know it was a long term disaster but who’s thinking long term here? You’ve just given us enough breathing room to unload these dogs at higher prices. Let Obama and his financial geniuses worry about it next year.
We know you’re too modest to talk about the political implications of all this but we all know what you were thinking. Bailing out Wall Street to save Main Street (wink, wink) keeps republicans in the game and forces Obama to get behind your plan. We’re so proud we gave so much money to your campaign, Mr. President. It sure paid off.

Understanding the Financial Panic

By now even the dumbest amongst us are aware the stock market is in sufficient turmoil to impact their clueless existence. Significant financial entities have either gone belly up or require federal assistance to stay afloat. At the root of the problem is a massive collapse of the credit market as a result of defaulting mortages. To keep it simple, this is what happened. Since the mid-90's with the encouragement of politicians and the Federal Reserve, Americans have used their home equity as an ATM. Lenders and customers were equally at fault. People who had no business getting a mortgage, first or second, were given them at rates difficult to refuse. Everyone involved knew it was a sham and a good number of these loans would never be repaid but nobody cared. The assumption was the worst thing that could happen was foreclosure but the value of the property would have gone up and nobody would get hurt. In the interim, the big banks were repackaging this toxic paper and reselling it, theoretically spreading the risk or at least lessening the chance that they would get caught holding the black Queen if housing prices faltered. The game got so out of hand, everyone ended up with the black Queen and the housing and financial markets collapsed. We are now in the Humpty Dumpty period as we try putting the pieces back together. It has already become a political issue but in reality both parties are to blame. Bill Clinton and George Bush were delighted to allow the housing market to drive the economy. Shame on them all.

The Thriller From Wasilla

Given it’s football season, indulge me as I use a pigskin analogy to describe the last few months of the presidential race. Think of the primaries as the conference championships. Envision the flashy tailback Barack Obama having to fight for every yard against a tenacious Hillary Clinton. Obama was clearly the more exciting player but he just couldn’t put any real distance between himself and Clinton. But at some point the thin lead built up by the Team Obama assumed a larger significance as the clock wound down. With time running out, Team Hillary reluctantly conceded defeat and grudgingly walked off the field without shaking hands. They would spend a lot of time in the locker room second guessing their original game plan and play calling.
Having beaten Clinton, Team Obama must then face Team McCain, an older, more established team but one considered a few years past its prime. Team Obama enters the game a prohibitive favorite and media darling. The pundits expect a decent game but think the youth, talent and enthusiasm of Team Obama will be too much for Team McCain team and it’s creaky quarterback.
Then “it” happens. On the eve of the big game, Team McCain announces a change at wide receiver. Instead of trotting out one of the veteran receivers, McCain goes with some unknown kid from Alaska. The word is she runs a 4.3 forty and eats defensive backs for lunch. The football world is electrified and the opposition terrified. All of a sudden, the focus is off the aging quarterback and on “The Thriller from Wasilla.”
This is about where the race stands. Gov. Palin is indeed the wunderkind of the moment and democrats have done a horrible job reacting to her. From the hideous comment about her only qualification for the job is she hasn’t had an abortion to the lipstick bungle, the democrat response has been negative, shrill and hysterical.
As I wrote when Gov. Palin was announced, she represents such a threat to the democrat world order; they will find it necessary to destroy her before her appeal takes root. Their heavy handed approach thus far may be making that impossible. In much the same way democrats demonize black republican achievers like Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell and Condi Rice, they feel compelled to attack women not of their kind.
What democrats are finding is there are a lot of women and men out there for whom abortion and gay rights are just some of the issues they consider when voting not the only ones. There has already been a 20% switch amongst white women to McCain-Palin in the last few weeks. That is nothing short of seismic and will crush Obama if left unchecked.
The question is can Obama get his mojo back. I think he can only because Americans are so fed up with republicans. But Obama’s going to have to give us more than lofty speeches and tales of community organizing after Harvard. BTW, why is it only democrats are community organizers and republicans are volunteers? He’s going to have to get back to issues and specifics.
The reason Sarah Palin may carry the day is the reason Obama has the democrat nomination. People are looking to turn the page but they just might go for McCain to see how the Sarah Palin story ends.

Obama Beginning to Sweat

For the first time in the campaign, Barack Obama is beginning to feel the heat. The media has turned it's attention to the Sarah Palin narrative and suddenly Obama's story is feeling a little old. The Obama camp has to be wondering if they're ever going to get the microphone back. All this underscores what may be the real issue here. Why can't Obama close the deal? Against Hillary Clinton, a deeply flawed candidate with huge negatives, he never really finished her off. With sarah Palin energizing voters, Obama is again stuck in the high 40's spinning his wheels. This is the first real competition he's faced and it shows.