PERRspectives: July 2008 Archives

July 2008 Archives

	"High Horse, Low Road": Bush Was Right About McCain As the events of the past few days demonstrate, George W. Bush was right all along about John McCain. McCain, the so-called maverick who promised to run a "respectful" campaign, has turned to the gutter politics of sleazy ads, baseless attacks and outright lies in his desperate effort to beat Barack Obama. And as Bush said of McCain in 2000, "he can't take the high horse and then claim the low road." Which is exactly the road John McCain is... more Posted on July 31, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	Obama Shouldn't Raise Kaine Rule #1 of the vice presidential selection process is akin to the Hippocratic Oath: first, do no harm. And with rumors swirling that Barack Obama is seriously considering first-term Virginia Governor Tim Kaine as his #2, the Democratic nominee risks breaking rule #1. Which isn't to say that Kaine doesn't score well on some of the half-dozen metrics (such as geography, chemistry, theme, balance, experience and party solidarity) often used to assess vice presidential aspirants. Kaine, after all, is part... more Posted on July 30, 2008 \| Comments (2)

	Katie Couric's Clumsy Caricatures There are many reasons to dislike CBS News with Katie Couric. Now you can add ham-handed racial stereotyping to the list. Just days after editing out John McCain's calamitous gaffe about the Sunni Awakening following the surge of U.S. troops in Iraq, Couric offered a pablum profile of the McCain campaign team. In her behind-the-scenes segment Tuesday (video here), Couric seemed shocked - shocked - to learn that McCain's director of outreach to African-Americans was himself an African-American: The campaign... more Posted on July 29, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	Exploding Deficit Blows Up Bush's Budget Promises On Monday, the White House announced that President Bush will leave his successor an estimated $482 billion budget deficit for the next fiscal year. But that sea of red ink isn't only an indelible mark on Bush's legacy going forward. It's a reminder of one of George W. Bush most cynical ploys - and broken promises. That, of course, is his bogus 2004 pledge to halve the federal budget deficit by 2009. As he faced reelection in 2004, George W.... more Posted on July 29, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	McCain Fails McCain's Commander-in-Chief Test This weekend, John McCain launched an all-out war against Barack Obama's fitness to be commander-in-chief. In Denver on Friday, McCain claimed that in supporting the January 2007 surge in Iraq, he passed "a real-time test for a future commander-in-chief" his Democratic rival supposedly failed. That same day, McCain insisted to CNN's Wolf Blitzer, "I know how to win wars." And on ABC This Week on Sunday, McCain ridiculed over and over Barack Obama's "total lack of understanding" of the realities... more Posted on July 28, 2008 \| Comments (2)

	DOJ Rejects Goodling's "Criminalization of Politics" Defense In a report released this morning, the Justice Department concluded that Monica Goodling, the former White House liaison for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, violated federal law and DOJ policy by discriminating against job applicants who weren't faithful Republicans or conservative activists. As it turns out, 14 months after Goodling admitted to Congress "I believe I crossed the line, but I didn't mean to," the Bush DOJ determined that she did. More important, the report demolished the knee-jerk "criminalization of politics"... more Posted on July 28, 2008 \| Comments (1)

	McCain: I Know How to Capture Bin Laden As developments on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan continue to undermine his campaign, Republican John McCain tried to play the Bin Laden card on Friday. Repeating his claim "I know how to win wars," McCain told CNN's Wolf Blitzer that "I know how" to capture Osama Bin Laden. Apparently, the McCain strategy, as he never tires of telling voters, is to follow Bin Laden to "the gates of hell." Appearing on the Situation Room, John McCain suggested that his... more Posted on July 28, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	McCain Doesn't Speak for McCain In the wake of Phil Gramm's disastrous "whiners" remarks three weeks ago, John McCain claimed his close friend and key economic adviser "does not speak for me - I speak for me." Sadly for Mr. Straight Talk, Gramm that very day was in New York meeting with the Wall Street Journal editorial board to explain McCain's economic policies. Now, as it turns out, on issues from the economy and foreign policy to a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, John McCain... more Posted on July 27, 2008 \| Comments (3)

	McCain Complains About Obama's Visit to "Aging Actress" France Continuing to play the victim at the hands of the American media that love him, on Friday John McCain bashed both Barack Obama and the press. Appropriating Lance Armstrong's cancer awareness event in Columbus, McCain slammed the "throng of adoring fans" who greeted Obama in Paris. Sadly for McCain, French President Nicolas Sarkozy's glowing reception of Obama probably has less to do with media bias than with the insults McCain hurled at France in the run-up to the Iraq war.... more Posted on July 26, 2008 \| Comments (1)

	Brooks Blasts Obama But Praised Bush for "Remaking the World" That the Republican water carrier and New York Times columnist David Brooks would blast Barack Obama's Berlin speech was utterly predictable. (Kevin Drum even predicted the title of the piece, "Playing Innocent Abroad.") To be sure, by slandering Obama's call to "remake the world" with epithets including "saccharine," "treacle," and "Disney," Brooks did not disappoint. Of course, even less surprising is that back in 2005, David Brooks had only glowing praise for President Bush's democratization agenda and its audacious vision... more Posted on July 25, 2008 \| Comments (1)

	Minimum Wage Jumps to $6.55, No Thanks to John McCain On Thursday, Americans saw the minimum wage jump to $6.55 an hour. Boosted by the second of three 70 cent increases passed by the new Democratic majority in Congress after the 2006 mid-term elections, the minimum wage will move to $7.25 next year. But to be sure, the two million Americans who got a raise today won't have John McCain to thank for it. McCain's record on the minimum wage isn't a pretty one. In March 2005, McCain opposed Ted... more Posted on July 24, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	"Respectful" McCain Campaign Calls Obama a Traitor, Genocide Enabler On Tuesday, Time columnist Joe Klein labeled as "shockingly unpresidential" John McCain's accusation that Barack Obama "would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign." But in announcing "I can't remember a more scurrilous statement by a major party candidate," Klein spoke a day too soon. As it turns out, McCain would top himself within 24 hours, charging that Obama would not stand up to genocide - an outrage leveled as the Democrat visited the Yad Vashem... more Posted on July 23, 2008 \| Comments (1)

	Iraqi Ambassador, Petraeus Report Al Qaeda Moving to Afghanistan To John McCain's dismay, the chorus of voices bolstering Barack Obama's call for a strategic refocus from Iraq to Afganistan just keeps growing. Just one day before Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki indisputably endorsed Obama's time frame for a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, General David Petraeus reported that the diminished Al Qaeda threat there was being weakened still further by the group's movement of foreign fighters to Afghanistan. Now, Samir Sumaida'ie, the Iraqi ambassador to Washington, has joined Petraeus in his... more Posted on July 23, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	This Week in War Crimes It's been a very busy week for war crimes and war criminals. In some good news for the cause of justice and the upholding of international law, Bosnian Serb mass murder Radavan Karadzic was finally captured in Belgrade, just days after the International Criminal Court charged Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir with crimes against humanity in Darfur. But for Americans, those positive developments were offset by news that the Bush administration's own war crimes trials - and potential pre-emptive pardons -... more Posted on July 23, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	McCain Ads Attack Media That Love Him As Barack Obama's global travels - and good fortune - dominate the headlines in the U.S., the McCain campaign has launched two new ads in a petulant campaign against the media itself. The spots, which prominently feature MSNBC's Chris Matthews (among others), blast a fawning media's seeming love affair with Barack Obama. Whether or not contempt works as a campaign strategy for McCain, it could be a case of biting the hand that feeds him. After all, as Chris Matthews... more Posted on July 22, 2008 \| Comments (6)

	"All Roads Lead to Rove" - A Conversation with Don Siegelman Dominating the discussion at this weekend's Netroots Nation conference in Austin was the urgent need to restore the rule of law now under withering assault by the Bush administration. From the suspension of habeas corpus and detainee torture to warrantless wiretapping and the politicization of the Justice Department, session after session detailed the unaccountable lawlessness of the Bush White House. And to be sure, no speaker made that case more personally than former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman. Siegelman, sentenced to... more Posted on July 22, 2008 \| Comments (1)

	Where in the World is John McCain? Back in the 1980's and 1990's, millions of American children learned the basics of global geography with the software and later TV show, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? As his latest geographic blunder suggests - this time regarding the "Iraq/Pakistan border" - John McCain would have done well to tune in to the program. McCain's map reading woes couldn't have come at a worse time. Barack Obama's tour of Afghanistan and Iraq is drawing rave reviews, including from... more Posted on July 21, 2008 \| Comments (3)

	Obama Seeks to Rebuild European Alliances McCain Mocked On Thursday, Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama will cap his European tour with an address in Berlin to an audience whose numbers may approach one million. But while the media will focus on Obama's call to strengthen America's trans-Atlantic alliance with France and Germany, lost no doubt will be John McCain's essential role in undermining it. As it turns out, back in 2003 John McCain stood shoulder to shoulder with the Berlin-bashers and Paris-hating purveyors of "freedom fries" and "old... more Posted on July 21, 2008 \| Comments (2)

	McCain Between Iraq and a Hard Place on Afghanistan Neocon godfather Irving Kristol once famously said that "a neoconservative is a liberal who's been mugged by reality." By that standard, the political right will need to coin an altogether new term to describe John McCain in the wake of the beating he has taken over the past several days. In the span of just two weeks, McCain has seen Barack Obama's call for a strategic refocus from Iraq to Afghanistan validated by the Pentagon and in Baghdad. And now,... more Posted on July 19, 2008 \| Comments (4)

	They Said It at Netroots Nation The first two days of the Netroots Nation conference have already produced a bumper crop of highlights and sound bite moments. As was widely reported, the DLC's Harold Ford was showered with cries of "Why?" and "Who?" when he told the lunchtime audience, "I have great, great respect and admiration for my former colleagues" at Fox News. And former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman challenged John McCain to "call on Rove to go and obey the law and to show up... more Posted on July 18, 2008 \| Comments (1)

	Issa Adds to Hall of Shame with Torture Defense Just one month after he took to the floor of the House to appropriate the memory of the late Tim Russert to push for offshore drilling, California Rep. Darrell Issa is at again. Rushing to defend former Attorney General John Ashcroft over charges that the Bush administration's practice of waterboarding detainees was tantamount to torture, Issa told the House Judiciary Committee that "we treated our hospital patients at times worse than al Qaeda." Coming from the man who reduced the... more Posted on July 18, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	Nasty, Brutish and Short: New Study on Life in America In 2007, Americans learned that they had relinquished their 200-year hold on the title of world's tallest people. Now a devastating new report shows that across a growing range of indicators of health, wealth and education, Americans simply aren't measuring up. The "Measure of America" study by the American Human Development Project (funded by Oxfam America, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Conrad Hilton Foundation) documents a laggard United States trailing other leading advanced economies. Reflecting growing income inequality and the... more Posted on July 17, 2008 \| Comments (1)

	Perrspectives' Netroots Nation Preview For the next few days, I'll be blogging intermittently from the Netroots Nation (formerly YearlyKos) conference in Austin, Texas. While most eyes will be on the headliners like Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi, Lawrence Lessig, Wesley Clarke and Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, there are a number of intriguing sessions I'll be checking out. On Friday morning, Cass Sunstein, John Dean, Adam Bonin and Michael Waldman will be discussing "The Next President and the Law." Coming just days after the release of... more Posted on July 17, 2008 \| Comments (1)

	McCain AWOL as Senate Overrides Bush Medicare Veto President Bush this week played a game of chicken on Medicare - and lost. Congress easily overrode Bush's veto of legislation designed to prevent an 11% cut in physicians' compensation under the health care program for elderly Americans. And speaking of chicken, John McCain was nowhere to be found. On June 26, Congressional Republicans led by Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell blocked action by Democrats to avert the looming July cut in fees to doctors serving Medicare patients. While Barack... more Posted on July 17, 2008 \| Comments (3)

	"How to Win Wars for Dummies" by John McCain In response to Barack Obama's address today on Iraq and Afghanistan, Republican presidential nominee John McCain declared, "I know how to win wars." Now for the first time, the man who brought you Ahmad Chalabi and 100 years in Iraq offers all his war-winning secrets in How to Win Wars for Dummies. Insightful chapters like "How to Be Greeted as a Liberator," "Victory Will Be Rapid," "Declaring Mission Accomplished" and "Telling Shiite from Sunni" will get you up and running... more Posted on July 15, 2008 \| Comments (1)

	Bush Agrees with McCain High Gas Prices "Psychological" Two days ago South Carolina Republican Governor Mark Sanford admitted "I'm drawing a blank" when asked if there are "significant economic differences" between his man John McCain and President Bush. In a White House press conference today, Bush himself offered yet another compelling argument why John McCain is his natural successor. As it turns out, both Bush and McCain now support offshore oil drilling, have a shared believe it will have not an impact for years, and are convinced... more Posted on July 15, 2008 \| Comments (1)

	Meet Wrong-Way McCain This week, Americans were introduced to Wrong-Way McCain. To be sure, it's the same John McCain ("McSame") who would continue the policies of George W. Bush that 80% of Americans believe have put the country on the wrong track. It's also the same "Jukebox John" who has changed his tune 61 times on issues foreign and domestic, including a dizzying 10 times in two weeks back in June. But as he showed repeatedly over the past several days, Wrong-Way McCain... more Posted on July 15, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	McCain to Hispanics: Trust Me on Immigration U-Turns In San Diego today, John McCain will make a most unusual pitch to Hispanic voters at the annual convention of the National Council of La Raza. Having performed a complete 360 degree turn on the immigration reform package he once championed, McCain now insists that he's "earned" the trust of Latino voters. In his remarks, McCain will ask the attendees to join him in a bout of selective amnesia by forgetting his just-in-time abandonment of his own comprehensive immigration bill... more Posted on July 14, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	Obama's Winning Hand on Iraq The news that President Bush will begin drawing down U.S. troops in Iraq below pre-surge levels this fall is being greeted as an October surprise for John McCain. But even with the successes of the surge, events on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan are validating Barack Obama's call for a strategic refocus on Afghanistan. The Pentagon's admission of the urgent need to shift troops to counter the rising Al Qaeda threat along the Pakistan frontier, combined with the Iraqi... more Posted on July 13, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	New Poll Reveals McCain's Dole-drums The temptation to compare to John McCain's 2008 campaign and Bob Dole's failed 1996 White House bid is natural, if not always illuminating. After all, both Dole and McCain are septuagenarian war heroes whose great sacrifices for their country are rightly honored and respected across the political spectrum. But despite the clear differences in the political landscape then and now, a new poll from the Pew Research Center suggests that John McCain '08 is in important ways following in the... more Posted on July 13, 2008 \| Comments (2)

	McCain's Pittsburgh Pander vs Hillary's Tuzla Tall Tale Back in March when Hillary Clinton claimed she braved sniper fire in Tuzla in 1996, she wasn't pandering to voters in the swing state of Bosnia. But in swapping the Pittsburgh Steelers for the Green Bay Packers in his famous tale of duping his Vietnamese captors, John McCain Friday made a cynical play to win over the people of Pennsylvania. To be sure, John McCain wasn't padding his resume with a dubious example of his courage and sacrifice. His personal... more Posted on July 12, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	New McCain Ad Angers GOP Base, Recalls Reversals on Immigration Just days after stepping on the third rail of American politics with his proclamation that Social Security is "an absolute disgrace," John McCain may once again have stepped in it on the immigration issue. His new ad praising the contributions of Hispanic-Americans, titled "God's Children," has much of the conservative blogosphere frothing at the mouth. Meanwhile, the imbroglio will only serve to once again highlight McCain's just-in-time reversals on the comprehensive immigration reform he once advocated. McCain's new spot is... more Posted on July 11, 2008 \| Comments (1)

	McCain and Gramm on Recession: It's All Mental Just two weeks after John McCain's latest declaration that the American economic slowdown is "psychological," his top adviser Phil Gramm also insisted the recession is all in our heads. The American people are not merely experiencing a "mental recession," Gramm announced, but are "a nation of whiners" for complaining about it. In an interview Wednesday with the Washington Times, the UBS vice chairman followed McCain's lead in decrying Americans' imaginary financial woes: "You've heard of mental depression; this is a... more Posted on July 10, 2008 \| Comments (2)

	John McCain's Terrible Tuesday If John McCain has many more days like Tuesday, his only chance to get to the White House will be as a tourist. On the same day he dropped jaws with his joke about killing Iranians with cigarettes, McCain amazingly slammed Social Security as "an absolute disgrace." Then even as McCain's first-term balanced budget pledge was being pilloried in the press, Americans learned that 300 economists signed a statement supporting McCain which made no mention of it. And topping it... more Posted on July 9, 2008 \| Comments (3)

	McCain Mimics Bush with Iran Jokes, Bin Laden Boasts Just one month after airing an ad declaring "only a fool or a fraud talks tough or romantically about war," John McCain once again joked about creating carnage in Iran. On the stump Tuesday, McCain added killing Iranians with cigarette addiction to last year's musing about "bomb bomb Iran." Whether he's yukking it up over conflict with Tehran, following Osama Bin Laden to the "gates of hell" or just being the "worst nightmare" of Al Qaeda and Hamas, John McCain... more Posted on July 9, 2008 \| Comments (2)

	Chickenhawk Goldberg Brands Obama's National Service Plan "Slavery" Just one month after he tried to rewrite John McCain's record on Iraq, Jonah Goldberg is trying to whitewash his own past when it comes to serving his country. Today, Goldberg compared Barack Obama's call for national service with slavery in a bilious Los Angeles Times op-ed that conveniently forgot to mention either Iraq or military service. Convenient, that is, because Jonah Goldberg apparently believes such service is for suckers. His sensitivity on the issue may have something to with... more Posted on July 8, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	McCain's Immaculate Deception on the Economy On Monday, John McCain repackaged his previous economic proposals in a mystifying document simply called "Jobs for America." More notable for what it lacked than what it included, McCain's latest rehash unsurprisingly left out his past admissions of ignorance on matters economic, his vision of eBay as Americans' economic future or his belief that the U.S. recession was merely "psychological." But in returning to a previously abandoned promise to magically balance the budget by the end of his first term,... more Posted on July 7, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	Bush's Future Civics Lesson: "Replenish the Ol' Coffers" Over at the National Review on Saturday, Kathryn Jean Lopez suggested a novel future for George W. Bush after he completes his disastrous tenure in the White House. The most unpopular President in modern times, Lopez insists, would "make an awesome high-school government teacher." But leaving aside for the moment his obvious aversion to academic study and the English language (as well as the U.S. Constitution), Bush has already made up his mind about his "post-service service." Upon leaving office,... more Posted on July 6, 2008 \| Comments (2)

	Jesse Helms and the Partisan Eulogies of George W. Bush Eulogies often tell us more about the living than the deceased. With his glowing words Friday about the late Jesse Helms, George W. Bush offered a case in point. Lauding the legendary North Carolina segregationist just as he did Helms' fellow traveler Strom Thurmond only five years earlier, Bush boosted his Republican allies even in death. But as a quick comparison to his meager 2002 statement about Minnesota Democrat Paul Wellstone shows, President Bush is the master of the partisan... more Posted on July 4, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	This Just In From Afghanistan: Bush Doctrine Still Dead. The steady stream of bad news about Afghanistan this week served to highlight two inescapable truths regarding the conflict against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. First, Barack Obama was right that the ongoing commitment of American forces in Iraq is preventing the United States from successfully pursuing Al Qaeda along the Pakistan frontier. Second, the Bush Doctrine - with its tenet of no safe havens for terrorists - is still dead. In Washington, President Bush acknowledged that June, which saw... more Posted on July 4, 2008 \| Comments (0)

	CBS Shows GOP "Emergency Room" Health Care Plan in Action In a disturbing report on Wednesday, CBS News offered Americans a glimpse of their health care future under President Bush, John McCain and their Republican allies. Detailing two cases of patients dying untreated and unnoticed in New York and Los Angeles emergency rooms, the story shows the exceptions that may increasingly become the rule. Call it the Republicans' "Emergency Room" health care plan. During a July 2007 visit to Cleveland, President Bush unveiled his emergency room cure for the ills... more Posted on July 3, 2008 \| Comments (1)

	McCain in Central America as His 1987 Assault on Nicaraguan Revealed Earlier this year, Mississippi Republican Senator Thad Cochran said the prospect of his "erratic" and "hotheaded" GOP colleague John McCain becoming President "sends a cold chill down my spine." Now we know why. As the Biloxi Sun Herald reported today, Cochran witnessed an out-of-control McCain disrupt a tense 1987 diplomatic mission in Nicaragua by grabbing an associate of Sandanista leader Daniel Ortega by the shirt collar. As Cochran told the Sun Herald, then freshman Senator McCain was part of the... more Posted on July 2, 2008 \| Comments (2)

	Broder, Cohen Provide Human Shields for McCain's "Trust" Campaign Every presidential campaign has its pivotal moments as defined or, in some cases, abetted by the media. 2008 is shaping up as no exception. At the very time when Barack Obama is said to be inoculating himself against the far left liberal label with his positions on FISA, gun rights, the death penalty and federal faith-based programs, two of the leading lights of the Washington Post opinion page are inoculating serial reversal artist John McCain against charges of flip-flopping. On... more Posted on July 1, 2008 \| Comments (1)