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pandering just doesn't describe it

I'm sure this is linked all over the place today, but the lede of Friedman's column in the Times on the "gas tax vacation" is worth quoting at length.

It is great to see that we finally have some national unity on energy policy. Unfortunately, the unifying idea is so ridiculous, so unworthy of the people aspiring to lead our nation, it takes your breath away. Hillary Clinton has decided to line up with John McCain in pushing to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for this summer’s travel season. This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks. What a way to build our country.

Dear lexipeople -- I think we need a stronger word than "pandering" to describe what politicians do with absurd and ridiculously shortsighted proposals like this. I'm imagining something that combines themes of prostitution, crack addiction and, say, pant suits.

"A sizable proportion of Democrats would vote for John McCain next November if he is matched against the candidate they do not support for the Democratic nomination."
Gallup's press release re. their new poll results succinctly encapsulates the Slow Motion Democratic Disaster happening before your very eyes.

now that's a quote

Regardless of your feelings for either Ronald Reagan or William F. Buckley, you have to appreciate what the great communicator had to say about the "polysyllabic" champion of conservatism.  This Reagan quote is pulled from the Times obit of Buckley...

"You didn't just part the Red Sea -- you rolled it back, dried it up and left exposed, for all the world to see, the naked desert that is statism.  And then, as if that weren't enough, you gave the world something different, something in its weariness it desperately needed, the sound of laughter and the sight of the rich, green uplands of freedom."

But somehow I doubt that Reagan wrote that himself... Sounds a lot like Peggy Noonan, no?

insert obvious gmail joke here

There must be some German or French word for that oh-so-frequent combination of feeling "not surprised in the slightest" and "jaw-droppingly amazed" at the same time.  From the AP:

There were no archived e-mails from the office of Vice President Dick Cheney from Sept. 30, 2003, to Oct. 6, 2003, just as the Justice Department was launching its investigation into whether anyone at the White House leaked Valerie Plame's CIA identity, according to documents provided to the House panel. The only e-mails that could be recovered for prosecutors were from the personal e-mail accounts of officials in Cheney's office, according to the report by Waxman's staff.

chabon on obama

Despite the valiant attempts of many of my neighbors, I'm usually not one to fall for impassioned appeals for liberal causes. But I couldn't ignore the internal "hell yeah" that rose up after reading today's bit on Barack Obama from fellow Berkeleyan Michael Chabon...

To support Obama, we must permit ourselves to feel hope, to acknowledge the possibility that we can aspire as a nation to be more than merely secure or predominant. We must allow ourselves to believe in Obama, not blindly or unquestioningly as we might believe in some demagogue or figurehead but as we believe in the comfort we take in our families, in the pleasure of good company, in the blessings of peace and liberty, in any thing that requires us to put our trust in the best part of ourselves and others. That kind of belief is a revolutionary act. It holds the power, in time, to overturn and repair all the damage that our fear has driven us to inflict on ourselves and the world.

i'm starting to hate this primary race

Bill Clinton on Saturday in North Carolina:

"Jesse Jackson won in South Carolina twice, in '84 and '88, and he ran a good campaign. And Senator Obama is running a good campaign."

Jesse Jackson, reached by phone in India by the New York Times:

"I don't read anything negative into Mr. Clinton's observation."

Riiiiiight.

and now it's about smart media buying

More Wednesday coverage of what New Hampshire Tuesday means: Ad Age looks at the shift coming in the campaign from on-the-ground flesh pressing organizations to a necessarily more media-driven campaign. After all, there's no way in hell the candidates will be able to shake hands with every single likely voter in all of the Super Duper Tuesday states.

"They'll be looking at tactical media strikes in select markets vs. a national effort," [Democratic Media Consultant Steve McMahon] said, predicting that national cable and some network TV news and public-affairs programming could be the beneficiary of any national buys.

It's even more interesting for the Republicans than the Democrats, according to Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute, especially if there's no clear front-runner.

"Feb. 5 is potentially going to be a problem for most of the Republican candidates," he said. "Unless Romney wants to take all his [personal wealth], competing in all 20 states is going to be prohibitively expensive. They don't have $40 million to $50 million in the bank, so what you are going to see is a very different process and a different kind of ad strategy where they are going to do national cable and look for other places to target."

after new hampshire

A few random post-New Hampshire thoughts on primary season. First, a hearty [this is good] for Maureen Dowd's column this morning re. Hillary's tears and the impact they had on the New Hampshire primary:

There was a poignancy about the moment, seeing Hillary crack with exhaustion from decades of yearning to be the principal rather than the plus-one. But there was a whiff of Nixonian self-pity about her choking up. What was moving her so deeply was her recognition that the country was failing to grasp how much it needs her. In a weirdly narcissistic way, she was crying for us. But it was grimly typical of her that what finally made her break down was the prospect of losing.

Yes, that -- the tears at the prospect of losing -- is precisely what bothered me so much about that particular media moment. Sure, it was an opportunity for voters to connect with Senator Clinton emotionally, and it fit perfectly in a sub one minute clip. But for emotional punch I'll take Obama's thirteen minute victory speech in Iowa over Clinton's breakfast tears any day.

And as Steven Johnson blogged this morning, what's really exciting is that it looks like Super (Duper) Tuesday is actually going to matter. All the hand-wringing about states jockeying for position in the primary schedule -- which to these untrained ears was indistinguishable from the rest of the early election season noise -- is turning out to have been a really important news story. Back in September the New York Times argued in an editorial that...

An ideal system would start slowly enough that candidates who are not well-known or well-financed can score some early victories or at least show well. At the same time, it would allow larger states to participate early enough in the process that their voters could play a significant role in choosing the nominees.

While it's hard to argue that Obama was not well-known or well-financed, would the Times had predicted back in September that Huckabee would take Iowa? Or even that Obama would have hurt Clinton so badly? I'm obviously not an expert, but it seems that with this year's primary season we have almost what the Times called for -- save the "slowly" adverb.

it's january 2009 that matters, after all

Slate's Mickey Kaus on the cop out of covering candidate "electability."

"Who's electable" is a Neutral Story Line--it seemingly doesn't require reporters and publications to take stands or sides. You can write dozens of "Is Hillary Electable?" stories without letting on what you think about, say, government-guaranteed health care. It's harder to write "Will Hillary be a Good President?" without doing that.

gomes on candidate blogs

Lee Gomes, in his "Portals" column in the WSJ, covers the "sanitized" blogging that's happening on the presidential sites.  Campaign blogs are nothing new, of course, but I think Gomes touches on what could end up being the meta-theme of politics on the web for '08:  effective cross-channel marketing that leverages the web for what it's good for.

These couple of paragraphs caught my attention...

As candidates deal with the Web, they will start to learn that many Web users have an extremely high opinion of themselves and the online lifestyle they are now leading. Last week, Joe Biden responded via a Webcam to a question posed to him via YouTube. The response was called "a milestone in presidential politics" by one blogger, as though it marked the first time a candidate had ever been asked a question by a citizen.

Then again, Sen. Biden's answer was one minute and 47 seconds long, which is the length of the average long report on a nightly newscast. The question involved the sorts of sacrifices Americans should be called on to make. The answer from the senator mentioned energy conservation and the war in Iraq. Being able to watch a candidate talk about an issue for a whole two minutes unfortunately has been a luxury in the U.S., though the Internet is in the process of changing that.

The soundbite goes to TV, the spin goes to print, the "conversation" goes to talk radio, the in-depth stuff goes to the web...but obviously not on the front page.  Front page blogs will almost by definition be sanitized; that's where the message of the day (and the enthusiastic reaction of the crowd) gets delivered. But the web gives candidates the ability to go deeper with voters, even if our expectations have been degraded to such a point where 1 min 47 seconds is considered "deeper."

So if this is really is all about cross-channel marketing and consumer engagement, then here's a thought experiment: abc.com/lost is to hansofoundation.org as barackobama.com is to <blank>.