EVEN LATER EVENING POST:  JULY 13,  2008

Posted at 11:51 p.m. ET

WILL THE REAL...?

Michael Goodwin of The New York Daily News asks, "Will the real Obama please stand?"  The question of where Obama actually stands on the issues is getting more intense by the day, as some of his supporters grow disillusioned with his, uh, flexibility.

Just who is Barack Obama?

Is he the inspirational juggernaut of the early primaries, the man who promised "change we can believe in" and a new era in American politics? Or is he one more politician whose actions often contradict his words?

Put another way, what does he believe in?

Damned if I know.

How encouraging for Barack, after all those months of campaigning. 

Make that years of campaigning. 

Make that decades.

He seemed so promising at first, says Goodwin.

But there were hints Obama was not what he claimed.

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright was a big one. By the end of the primaries, Obama was stumbling and on the defensive. And now he has become yet another candidate altogether in the post-primary period.

On defining issues - security wiretapping, gun control, campaign finance, Iran and Iraq - he has done partial or full about-faces. Hardly a day goes by that he doesn't attack John McCain in typical partisan fashion.

And when he denies with a straight face that he's changing anything, Obama gives new meaning to chutzpah.

And...

Someone who can shift positions so quickly on so many important issues that will face the next President comes off as a man who doesn't have fixed convictions. Pragmatism has to be guided by principles. A man who believes in everything believes in nothing, and that's a formula for chaos in the White House.

Yes, I know, McCain has gone back and forth on tax cuts, immigration and some other issues. But McCain is a known quality. His POW heroics and his long career in Washington are universal fixed points of reference.

Like him or not, we think we know who John McCain is. It's a belief that doesn't depend exclusively on specific positions. As long as his policy shifts are few and explainable, the sense of who he is remains intact. It's something to trust.

Ah, that word "trust."  It's one of the central words in politics, and, more important, in government.

A campaign, Goodwin points out, is a candidate's narrative, the story of who he is and what he wants to do.

In his rush to appeal to moderate voters, Obama has demolished his narrative. Political expediency is ordinary, and by embracing it, he has proven himself an eloquent but ordinary politician.

That's who Barack Obama is.

I'd imagine that Goodwin won't appear on the Obamas' Christmas card list.  This is a powerful statement from a columnist who describes himself as a centrist Democrat, and I think it's accurate.  Obama appears to be declining a bit in the polls, and, while I can't prove that his bizarre political posturing is the cause, or even a cause, it certainly isn't helping him.

(By the way, a point of history:  Goodwin uses the question, "Will the real (insert name) stand up?"  It's a construction that is now part of the American vocabulary.  It had its origins in a television quiz show, "To Tell The Truth," which began on CBS in 1956, some 52 years ago.  A group of contestants would come out, each would identify himself using the same name, like "Joe Jones."  Panelists would then question the contestants and try to guess who the real "Joe Jones" was.  At the end, the host would say, "Would the real Joe Jones please stand up."  And that's how the expression was born.) 

July 13, 2008.      Permalink          

LATE EVENING POST:  JULY 13,  2008

Posted at 11:08 p.m. ET

YIKES!

The July 21st issue of The New Yorker has a cover showing Barak Obama, with turban and African getup, fist-bumping wife Michelle, who wears an Afro and has a rifle slung over her shoulder, while an American flag burns in the fireplace.  They both appear to be standing in the Oval Office.  You can see it here, courtesy of The Politico.

The New Yorker explains that the cover satirizes the "scare tactics" used against Obama.  The Obama campaign is not amused.

July 13, 2008.       Permalink          

LATER MORNING POST:  JULY 13,  2008

Posted at 9:38 a.m. ET

TRACKER

Just in.  Rasmussen has the presidential race as a dead heat:

For the second straight day, the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll shows that the race for the White House is tied. Sunday’s numbers show Barack Obama and John McCain each attracting 43% of the vote. When "leaners" are included, the two candidates are tied at 46%. For most of the past month-and-a-half, Obama has led McCain by approximately five percentage points. It will take a few more days to determine whether this recent tightening of the race reflects real change or is merely statistical noise.

Actually, Rasmussen had Obama up one yesterday.  Today is the first time in a long time that the numbers for each candidate are the same.  When he says that "for the second straight day" the race is tied, he means that, considering the margin of error, yesterday's numbers were essentially the same as today's.  Rasmussen pegs his margin of error as two percent.

UPDATE AT 2:45 p.m.:  Gallup's tracker, just posted, shows Obama up three.  Averaging Rasmussen and Gallup, we get a lead of 1.5 points, within the margin of error.

July 13, 2008.        Permalink          

SUNDAY:  JULY 13,  2008

Posted at 8:36 a.m.

BARONE'S HISTORY

There's not much hard news around on weekends in mid-July, but Michael Barone reminds us of a moment in history that could serve as an example of how great men act in a crisis.  It's 1948, and the place is Berlin:

Sixty years ago this month, the top story in campaign year 1948 was not the big poll lead of Republican nominee Thomas Dewey or the plight of President Harry Truman. It was the Berlin airlift.

On June 23, the Soviets cut off land access to West Berlin. Gen. Lucius Clay, the military governor in Germany, called for sending convoys up the autobahns, but Allied troops were vastly outnumbered by the Red Army, and everyone feared they would overrun Western Europe unless the United States retaliated with the atomic bomb.

Air Force generals said that there was no way planes could ferry the 8 million pounds of food and coal Berlin would need every day. Secretary of State George Marshall and Joint Chiefs Chairman Omar Bradley, two of America's most respected generals, felt Berlin was indefensible and we should withdraw. One man disagreed. President Harry Truman, in one crucial meeting after another, said, "We're not leaving Berlin."

And we didn't.  The Berlin airlift saved the city, and won an enormous victory against the Soviet Union.  Along the way, American pilots dropped handkerchiefs full of candy to German children lining the runways at Tempelhof, Berlin's main airport.

This tale of American expertise, ingenuity and generosity is told vividly by Andrei Cherny in his wonderfully readable book "The Candy Bombers." Today, we know how it ended: how the airlift supplied West Berlin all winter until the Soviets opened up land access in May and how Truman was re-elected to almost everyone's surprise in November. But Truman couldn't know those things in those first days in June and July. He only knew that we weren't leaving Berlin.

There are lessons aplenty in this story for us today. One is that the kindness of American soldiers -- the candy bombers -- can be a national asset. There are many similar stories out of Iraq and Afghanistan, even if today's media, unlike the media of 1948, are not disposed to tell them.

Another is that presidential determination to avoid defeat and retreat can prevail against the advice of experts. Just as Truman's Pentagon opposed the airlift, so George W. Bush's Pentagon mostly opposed the surge strategy in Iraq.

And...

But Bush, echoing Truman, said, at least in effect, we're not leaving Iraq. He embraced the proposals for the surge, which had been worked up by retired Gen. Jack Keane and American Enterprise Institute scholar Frederick Kagan. He found a commander, Gen. David Petraeus, who had rewritten the Army's manual on counterinsurgency and who had the character and skill to put the surge into effect.

Finally...

The lessons are clear. Stand fast. Put the right men in charge. And never doubt the capacity of the men and women of the American military, when given the right orders, to perform far better than the experts predict.

Well, there go Barone's chances to be an editorial writer at The New York Times.  But, of course, he's right.  Great leaders do in fact lead, and drag others along.  The "others" also include the "experts."  Harry Truman once said that you couldn't tell an expert anything because then he wouldn't be an expert anymore. 

The Pentagon also opposed Douglas MacArthur's decision to land at Inchon during the Korean War, one of the most brilliant actions in American military history.

And George Marshall, who wanted to cede Berlin, also opposed the recognition of Israel that same year.  Not a good year for Marshall, one of the more overrated men in our annals.  (Even the Marshall Plan was a bit of a distortion.  It was actually the Truman Plan, but Truman, ever the patriot, knew Marshall was more popular and could more easily get it adopted, so it became the Marshall Plan.)

One sad thing, though, is that the Bush determination to see things through has weakened.  He seems now to be under the thumb of his father's crowd, who never met a problem they wanted to solve.  Iran will be left to the new president.  So, apparently, according to this morning's Washington Post, will be the status of our forces in Iraq.  In the final months of his administration, Mr. Bush needs more of the spirit of the surge.

July 13, 2008.      Permalink          

WALKING AROUND MONEY

It's no secret that political machines on occasion hand out "walking around money" to assure the votes of local citizens who could use a little change in their pockets.  It was widely reported in 1960 that, in the runup to the Democratic Party's West Virginia primary, considerable WAM - the political equivalent of WMDs - was distributed by the Kennedy forces, who had the proper financing, and used against Hubert Humphrey.

The lesson has apparently reached Iraq:

BAGHDAD - It is a politician's dream: Handing out cold, hard cash to people on the street as they plead for help. Iraq's prime minister has been doing just that in recent weeks, doling out Iraqi dinars as an aide trails behind, keeping a tally.

The handouts by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and a handful of other top officials are authorized _ as long as each goes no higher than about $8,000, and the same people don't get them twice. Aides say they are meant merely to ease the pain a bit, and are motivated by a belief that better conditions will lead to more security.

The cash handouts are just one small _ if eye-catching _ part of a major investment push this summer by Iraq's government. The aim is to rebuild basic services and jumpstart Iraq's damaged economy by quickly distributing as much of the country's glut of oil revenue as possible.

U.S. officials and a fed-up American public are urging exactly that _ for Iraq to spend its own money, not America's, to rebuild the country now that violence has eased.

And...

Most of the grants the prime minister gives out are only $200 to $400 to help those needing medical care, widows or people without jobs. On one recent visit to the riverside Abu Nawas park in Baghdad, he gave a group of boys each the equivalent of $40 in dinars to buy soccer balls. The biggest grants require documentation like letters from a hospital, his aides say.

On a trip last month to Amarah, an Associated Press reporter saw the prime minister approached by several supplicants during a meeting he was chairing of tribal sheiks. An aide from al-Maliki's office handed out cash at his direction, making each beneficiary sign a receipt.

Asked the reason for such handouts, a senior adviser to the prime minister, Sadiq al-Rikabi, said: "Citizens must realize that security is not just making the law prevail ... Reconstruction and jobs are a big part of it."

Does Obama approve of this?  He'd better.  Otherwise, Chicago will disown him.

If this kind of thing helps our effort, I'm for it.

July 13, 2008.      Permalink