EVENING UPDATE,  FEBRUARY 22,  2008

Whoops

Well, I forgot.  I did not mention this morning that this is Washington's birthday.  I mean, this is the actual birthday.  The real date.  No, young ones, he wasn't born on Presidents Day.  All of us who went to elementary school before the great intellectual collapse of the 1960s know that Washington was born February 22nd, and Lincoln on February 12th.  We know these as well as we know our own birthday.  We also know the story of Washington chopping down the cherry tree.  When confronted over the act by his father, we were instructed, he didn't duck.  He didn't spin.  He didn't call his consultants.  He admitted it.  "I cannot tell a lie," he famously said.

Today, of course, there'd be no issue if Washington chose to tell that lie.  It wouldn't be a lie.  It would be "an alternative narrative."  And, after all, who are we to judge?  The culture of Virginia planters might be different from our own.  Are we to condemn?

Besides, chopping down the tree might be a good thing.  Washington could say to daddy, "I learned in Progressive Science class that trees give off gases that could be harmful to the environment.  So, I did my part to save the Earth.  He could then present daddy with a copy of "Ye Inconvenient Truthe," a book by the Very Reverend Albert Gore.  Daddy would be impressed, and would buy young George a hydrogen-powered horse. 

A gripe

Okay, enough of that.  I must gripe.  I've always said that one of the best things you can do for a political movement is to keep it honest and effective.  The failure to police the movement destroyed liberalism in the late sixties and early seventies.   Almost anyone was let in.  You could fly the hammer and sickle and wear your Che shirt, and the door would open.  Contrast that with liberalism's earlier, and admirable, ability to keep out the nut cases.  You may grit your teeth, but credit Hubert Humphrey and Eleanor Roosevelt.

My gripe is about some conservatives who can't seem to see the big picture.  Our opponent is not John McCain.  It's Barack Obama.  It is not Hillary Clinton, who will probably lose the nomination.  It is Barack Obama.  I am simply amazed at the CDS (Clinton Derangement Syndrome) that has overtaken some rightist talk-show hosts and activists.  They are gleeful every time Hillary loses, as if it helps the cause.  Don't they realize that Obama is a far more dangerous opponent, and even further to the left, than Hillary?  Have they lost all interest in national defense, hardly an Obama specialty, or in the Supreme Court?  Obama is a law professor. You can be sure he's got his list of nominees.  It isn't ours. 

Now let's get real.  We all have our differences with Senator McCain.  We all have resisted Senator Clinton.  But this is 2008, and we will elect a president in November.  Will some of the righteous and pure in the conservative movement please remember this?  Will they still be rejoicing in Hillary's loss when Obama takes the oath next January 20th?

I remember how the idiot left in the Democratic Party stayed home on election day in 1968, and handed the election to Richard Nixon.  I see the same thing coming on the other side.  The left never regretted its behavior because its whole reason for being is self-love.  I expect more from the beneficiaries of the Reagan Revolution.

The Obama Watch

Day by day, more and more journalists are asking questions about Obama.  But there are still too few writers involved.  And too few questions.  Today, though, first-rank wordsmith Peggy Noonan does the best dissection I've seen of Obama's speeches and, indeed, his wife's.  Noonan, of course, was a speechwriter for Ronald Reagan, and she knows:

Our country can be greater, it holds unachieved promise, our leaders have not led us well. "We struggle with our doubts, our fears, our cynicism." Fair enough and true enough, but he doesn't dig down to explain how to become a greater nation, what specific path to take--more power to the state, for instance, or more power to the individual. He doesn't unpack his thoughts, as they say. He asserts and keeps on walking.

So his draw is not literal eloquence but a reputation for eloquence that may, in time, become the real thing.

Noonan dissects Michelle Obama's comment that this is the first time she's felt proud of America.:

His problem was, is, his wife's words, not his, the speech in which she said that for the first time in her adult life she is proud of her country, because Obama is winning. She later repeated it, then tried to explain it, saying of course she loves her country. But damage was done. Why? Because her statement focused attention on what I suspect are some basic and elementary questions that were starting to bubble out there anyway.

Noonan gives examples of those questions:

Are the Obamas, at bottom, snobs? Do they understand America? Are they of it? Did anyone at their Ivy League universities school them in why one should love America? Do they confuse patriotism with nationalism, or nativism? Are they more inspired by abstractions like "international justice" than by old visions of America as the city on a hill, which is how John Winthrop saw it, and Ronald Reagan and JFK spoke of it?

Have they been, throughout their adulthood, so pampered and praised--so raised in the liberal cocoon--that they are essentially unaware of what and how normal Americans think? And are they, in this, like those cosseted yuppies, the Clintons?

Why is all this actually not a distraction but a real issue? Because Americans have common sense and are bottom line. They think like this. If the president and his first lady are not loyal first to America and its interests, who will be? The president of France? But it's his job to love France, and protect its interests. If America's leaders don't love America tenderly, who will?

It gets tougher, and is a must-read.

The key issue

The key issue is always national security.  The Constitution states it clearly:  "The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States..."  It is the first responsibility listed. 

So what does Barack Obama know about that responsibility?  Apparently, not much.  The Weekly Standard's feature, The Blog, examines Obama's claim, made last night in his debate with Hillary Clinton, that an Army captain told him U.S. forces were poorly equipped:

The Obama campaign put ABC reporter Jake Tapper in touch with the army captain Obama referred to in last night's debate. Go read Tapper's report of what the captain says. Unfortunately, his statements don’t justify the charges Obama made last night.

Once again, Obama said half the platoon had been "sent to Iraq,"

And as a consequence, they didn't have enough ammunition, they didn't have enough Humvees. They were actually capturing Taliban weapons, because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief.

Nothing the captain said supports Obama's accusation that soldiers in Afghanistan faced a shortage of ammunition. Nothing the captain said supports the (ridiculous) claim that American soldiers were capturing Taliban weapons "because it was easier to get Taliban weapons" than American ones.

What the captain said was that it was sometimes difficult to get parts in theater, and on occasion his soldiers used captured weapons. If Obama were running to be quartermaster in chief, this story might have some relevance. But Obama hasn't unveiled his plan to streamline the Army's logistics in Afghanistan. And his basic narrative of the commander in chief neglecting equipment needs in Afghanistan isn’t supported by this one account. Moreover, does Obama think (a distortion of) one captain’s anecdote is an appropriate basis for making broad claims about military matters in a campaign to become commander in chief?

The captain's name is withheld in Tapper's piece, but we have submitted a request to the Obama campaign for an interview. More on Tapper's report at Hot Air and Ace.

By the way, an astute journalist pointed out that captains don't command platoons, but companies.  Anyone who's ever read minimal material on the U.S. military knows that.

Guilt by association, or fair questions?

John Podhoretz brings up the delicate matter of Obama's associations.  Here we must tread carefully.  Knowing someone is not the same as accepting that someone's opinions.  But it's fair to examine Obama's regular contacts, as we would the contacts of any political figure.  The quote:

Ben Smith of Politico discusses the relationship between Barack Obama and American terrorist Bill Ayers, who has become a leftist mainstay in Chicago’s Hyde Park, which Obama represented in the Illinois State Senate before becoming a U.S. Senator. Ayers’s home has evidently become an important political waystation for politicians of a certain sort, and it was there, according to Smith, that Obama’s predecessor introduced him to various neighborhood activist types.

Podhoretz proceeds delicately, but asks a pertinent question, especially relevant a day after The New York Times tried to smear John McCain:

Barack Obama is in no way responsible for anything William Ayers might have said or done, and anyone who suggests otherwise is guilty of demagoguery.

But here’s a thought experiment. What if John McCain had visited the Unabomber’s cabin? Or had been photographed with Terry Nichols? Or had stopped off at David Duke’s house at some point because he was gathering support and donors?

How big a story would that be?

Guess, friends, guess.  Front page, above the fold, a day before the election.

The real world won't go away

There's a stunning report out of Europe on Iran's nuclear program.  Gee, I thought it was all gone.  Well, maybe not:

New simulations carried out by European Union experts come to an alarming conclusion: Iran could have enough highly enriched uranium to build an atomic bomb by the end of this year.

Remember, repeat after me:  This is the politics of fear.  This is the politics of fear.  This is...

But, uh, there are some facts.  The report pretty much demolishes the recent National Intelligence Estimate published by the United States, which, in the artful way it was written, tended to downplay the Iranian program.  That report has now been consigned to the paper shredder of history.

Words matter

And the wonderful guys of Hezbollah are saying it again: Prepare for war.  Iran is one of Hezbollah's backers, and, combined with reports of Iran's advanced nuclear program, calls for war by Hezbollah bring a particular chill:

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said Friday that operatives within Lebanon are preparing for a new war with Israel in coming months.

Nasrallah, who made a speech in honor of the "Islamic Resistance Week," maintained that activists from his organization are ready for battle against the Israel Defense Forces and will fight the IDF soldiers "in every wadi" in ways they haven't fought in the past.

Bluster?  I don't know.  There may be some miscalculation.  It's possible Hezbollah feels the United States will be paralyzed this year because of our election, and will not be in a position to resist or stop a new war. 

But remember that threat.  Words matter.  As we concentrate on our election, some real stuff can start somewhere else.  Inevitably, it affects us.

More tomorrow.

Posted on February 22, 2008.