The Stealth Superstar of Mile High

Barack Obama, in his acceptance speech tonight at Invesco Field in Denver, demonstrated more powerfully than ever why he's the country's greatest public orator since Martin Luther King, Jr.

Obama delivered his address to a crowd of roughly 85,000 people, and there's no gainsaying the Illinois Senator's decision to accept the nomination outdoors, turning what should normally be a insider's partisan rally into a town hall meeting for the masses. Barack Obama is America's incomparable political superstar.

Obama's speech was less uplifting than combative, but he did what he had to do: He took aim at the Bush administration, and he tied John McCain to the last eight years of GOP rule with more than one pithy turn of phrase.

Speaking of the Republican National Convention next week in Minneapolis, Obama put McCain in the partisan crosshairs, warning against four more years of the same:

This moment, this moment, this election is our chance to keep, in the 21st century, the American promise alive.

Because next week, in Minnesota, the same party that brought you two terms of George Bush and Dick Cheney will ask this country for a third.

Aside from all of his testy thrust and parry, tomorrow is another day in a campaign that will likely be neck and neck throughout the remainder of the election.

For all of his tough talk on national security - seen in his reminder that presidents like FDR and Kennedy kept the nation's security during the most dangerous of crises - Obama is in fact unlike earlier Democratic chief executives. He's less a Kennedy-esque Cold War fighter than he is a Carter-esque captive to the anti-Americanism of Iran (hostages) or the expansionism of Moscow (Afghanistan). Obama's toughness on national security amounts to nothing more than some blustery speech-making falsely claiming better judgment in America's ongoing wars, topped off with a few pictures of his grandfather in his army uniform during World War II. Of course, Obama's big-talk hits the pavement next week when McCain - the campaign's only war hero - reminds the country what it's really like to be tough in warfare

Obama, moreover, like Carter, is a malaise-mongerer. The Democratic nominee spent time tonight telling stories of personal hardship and economic pain, of rising unemployment and collapsing home values, and of veterans sleeping on grates - but he did not mention today's new statistics on 2nd quarter GDP growth, which found the American economy expanding 3.3 percent from April through June. The United States is not suffering a recession, much less a 1930s-style depression. The Census Bureau reported statistics on growth in median household income for the third year in a row.

Most importantly, Obama's opening video, and speech vignettes of his family's values, paint a biographical picture deeply at odds with the totality of his upbringing. Frankly, at this point Obama appears more about propaganda than patriotism. The National Review today compared Obama to a Soviet commissar in his efforts to silence researcher Stanley Kurtz by smearing him as a "slimy character assassin." Obama's got a lot to hide, and one Mile High makeover can't bury his past.

Further, in trying to sound substantive tonight (and avoid "changiness"), Barack Obama revealed that the 2008 Democratic Party seeks a return to the kind of big government liberalism not seen since the Great Society. As Kimberley Strassel argues:

Substantively, Barack Obama's agenda would indeed result in the biggest expansion of government and income redistribution since LBJ. Not that voters would have picked that up in his acceptance speech last night. Democrats are instead pitching this program to Americans in terms that would make the Gipper proud.

Mr. Obama proposes one of the steepest tax increases in modern history, raising rates on personal income, capital gains, dividends and even death. The money Mr. Obama takes from taxpaying Americans he would hand to nontaxpaying Americans in the form of "refundable" tax credits. This is called a "tax hike" and "income redistribution" -- even in the Harvard economics department. And given Mr. Obama's concern with "inequality," you'd assume he'd be proud of it.

Instead, Mr. Obama is careful to declare these new government handouts a "tax cut for the middle class." Joe Biden, in his own nomination speech, stole a favorite Republican talking point, claiming Mr. Obama's dizzying array of tax credits would in fact "reform our tax code." And the Obama team likes to reassure voters his higher capital-gains and dividend tax rates would still be less than those under (can you guess?) Ronald Reagan.

The Illinois senator would create a new "universal" health-insurance plan, which in its size and scope would be the largest government entitlement since Johnson's Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. The ultimate goal (as Mr. Obama has hinted) is to pull ever more Americans under the government-health umbrella, until such time as Democrats can kill off private insurance altogether. To hurry us toward "Medicare for All," the Obama plan imposes tough new regulations on insurance companies and big new taxes on business.

This is the message from the 2008 Democratic National Convention, concluded with a flourishing finale from Mile High, delivered by Barack Obama, the superstar of stealth liberalism.

Congratulations Senator Obama!

John McCain's running a congratulatory ad buy tonight during Barack Obama's acceptance speech at INVESCO Field in Denver:

Here's the text:

“Senator Obama, this is truly a good day for America. Too often the achievements of our opponents go unnoticed. So I wanted to stop and say, congratulations. How perfect that your nomination would come on this historic day. Tomorrow, we’ll be back at it. But tonight Senator, job well done.”

This is a great day in history, and Obama's breakthrough is in some respects a culmination of his own search for identity, and America's as well:

Four years ago, Barack Obama introduced himself to America by painting a picture of a country that was united, somehow, in spite of itself.

The pundits, he said in the keynote address to the Democratic convention, like to "slice and dice" the country: red states for Republicans, blue states for Democrats.

"But I've got news for them too: We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states. We coach Little League in the blue states, and yes, we've got some gay friends in the red states."

His task that night was to ready the crowd for the presidential nominee, John F. Kerry, but in the end his words were most memorable for an argument that challenged the partisan divide and was built on the foundation of his own unique story. Since then, it's become a familiar element of his speeches. His father was from Kenya and his mother from Kansas.

But it's more complicated than that.

Abandoned by his father, separated for long periods from his mother, Obama searched for many years to find his identity. He was caught between love and loyalty to his white family and respect and an inchoate sense of belonging to the African American community.

He eventually learned to navigate between black and white worlds, a skill that would play well in the political arena. He earned a reputation as a pragmatist and a consensus builder, and along the way raised the bridges that would sustain his ambition.

On the campaign trail this year, he is both a political and cultural phenomenon. For some, he represents a new beginning for the nation. For others, he is inexperienced, merely lucky, even a fairy tale. Underlining it all is a historic prospect: He would be the first black president of the United States.

Race has been the steady undertow of his candidacy -- and of his life.

As he paraphrased William Faulker this March in a landmark speech on race: "The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past."

For all of my criticism of Barack Obama, readers should never forget that I deeply respect him, and in him I see some of the challenges of my own experiences.

I've been teaching all day today, four classes of American government. I've extolled the magic significance of Obama's address coming 45 years after Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech.

I have suggested to my students, however, that Obama cannot dwell on racial recrimination. He can't refuse to acknowledge the phenomenal progress in civil rights that permits him to take the stage tonight in accceptance of his epochal achievement. He cannot sound aggreived. He needs to assure people not only that he shares their values, but that he respects their judgment. Obama, most of all, needs to make the case that he's up to the grave leadership responsibility that comes with occupancy of the White House.

If he can't do all of that, if he instead continues with the ethereal speechmaking and uplift that has been both a hallmark and source of criticism of his campaign, he may fail to rejuvenate the momentum that brought him and our nation to this moment in history. He needs, simply, to recover the magic that Americans witnessed July 27, 2004, during Obama's keynote address the Democratic Convention in Boston.

Rekindling that feeling of confidence and refreshment must be the product of this year's Democratic gathering in Denver.

Obama Remains Weak on Leadership, Poll Finds

While the new Gallup tracking numbers find Barack Obama benefitting from media coverage of the Democratic National Convention, Obama still lags behind presumptive GOP nominee John McCain on leadership credibility:

McCain has an edge over Barack Obama in the public's eyes as a strong and decisive leader, and McCain is also significantly more likely to be viewed as able to handle the job of commander in chief. These facts underscore an area of weakness for Obama that McCain has attempted to exploit in recent campaign ads, and that Obama could in theory fruitfully address in his high-visibility acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention Thursday night.

The latest USA Today/Gallup poll, conducted Aug. 21-23, asked Americans to indicate whether a list of characteristics and qualities best fit Obama or McCain....

McCain is significantly ahead on a single, but important, dimension: "is a strong and decisive leader." Not coincidentally, this has been a key focus in recent McCain attack ads against Obama. (Despite the ads, there has been almost no change since mid-June in perceptions of who is the better leader.)

A separate set of questions included in the recent poll asked respondents to indicate whether they believe Obama and McCain could "handle the responsibilities of commander in chief of the military."

Obama clearly operates at a decided perceptual deficit compared to McCain on this dimension. Eighty percent of Americans say McCain can handle the responsibilities of being commander in chief, compared to 53% for Obama. These views have not changed throughout the summer.

McCain's edge almost certainly reflects in part that he was a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and an officer in the U.S. Navy for decades, while Obama did not serve in the military. It may also reflect the fact that McCain is older, has more experience in the U.S. Senate and federal government, and has taken a leading role in the Senate in many foreign policy issues, most notably the Iraq war. If these are the major underlying facts informing Americans' opinions about the candidates, then it is unclear to what extent Obama's rhetoric or McCain's campaign ads could change the existing perceptions.

Gallup suggests that if Obama does not attempt or succeed at changing Americans' views of his leadership qualities, he'll continue to suffer liabilities on a key dimension of voter preferences on November 4.

Note, too, an additional complication: Pew Research indicates that the public knows little about Obama's substantive policy positions, so if in tonight's address Obama focuses on values and leadership at the expense of policy, his campaign will remain the netherland of uplifting "hope and change"( instead of the harder certainty of solutions to the country's problem). Conversely, belting out a policy-driven speech runs the risk of technocratic overload and of diluting the message of GOP incompetence that's driving the need for political transformation.

In other words, Obama's got a tall order in front of him at Mile High Stadium.

Avoiding an Invesco Fiasco for Barack Obama

Barack Obama's acceptance speech tonight at Denver's Invesco Field at Mile High Stadium represents the challenge of a lifetime.

The nominee's acceptance speech is the year's most anticipated campaign event before the post-Labor Day general election battle begins. For Obama, the stakes are the highest: He's not simply "the candidate of change" because of his biracial background. He's genuinely different in ideology and outlook than any presidential candidate before him. Doubts about his affinity to nation haven't gone away, because the more we learn of him, the more it seems he has something to hide..

Just last night, the Obama camp attacked National Review's Stanley Kurtz as a "slimy character assassin," putting pressure on Chicago's WGN radio station to cancel a planned appearance by Kurtz. Ben Smith has the report:

The campaign e-mailed Chicago supporters who had signed up for the Obama Action Wire with detailed instructions including the station's telephone number and the show's extension, as well as a research file on Kurtz, which seems to prove that he's a conservative, which isn't in dispute. The file cites a couple of his more controversial pieces, notably his much-maligned claim that same-sex unions have undermined marriage in Scandinavia.

"Tell WGN that by providing Kurtz with airtime, they are legitimizing baseless attacks from a smear-merchant and lowering the standards of political discourse," says the email, which picks up a form of pressure on the press pioneered by conservative talk radio hosts and activists in the 1990s, and since adopted by Media Matters and other liberal groups.

"It is absolutely unacceptable that WGN would give a slimy character assassin like Kurtz time for his divisive, destructive ranting on our public airwaves. At the very least, they should offer sane, honest rebuttal to every one of Kurtz's lies," it continues.

Sean Wilentz, at Newsweek, criticizes Obama from the left, saying that the Illinois Sentor's not made the case for an acceptable liberalism, in the mold of the great Democratic presidents of the 20th century:

Much of Obama's appeal to the left stems from what might be called the romance of the community organizer. Although his organizing career on Chicago's South Side was brief and, by his own admission, unremarkable, it distinguishes him as another first of his kind in presidential politics, a candidate who looks at politics from the bottom up. For the left, community organizing trumps party politics and experience in government. Some even imagine that Obama is a secret radical, and they see his emergence as an unparalleled opportunity for advancing their frustrated agendas about issues ranging from the redistribution of wealth to curtailing U.S. power abroad.

Obama still has a long way to go to describe the kind of liberalism he stands for, how it meets the enormous challenges of the present—and how it will meet as-yet-unanticipated challenges after the election. Nowhere is this more crucial than in the harsh and volatile realm of foreign policy. Last winter, when his candidacy gained traction, Obama's foreign-policy credentials consisted almost entirely of a speech he gave before a left-wing rally in Chicago in 2002, denouncing the impending invasion of Iraq as "a dumb war." That speech, made by a state senator representing a liberal district that included the University of Chicago, and that went unreported in the Chicago Tribune's lengthy article on the rally, was enough to convince many of his supporters that he is blessed with superior acumen and good instincts about foreign affairs. Later comments, such as his promise, later softened, to meet directly and "without preconditions" with the leaders of Iran and other supporters of terrorism, pleased left-wing Democrats and young antiwar voters as a sign of boldness—even as they left experienced diplomats in wonder at such half-baked formulations.

Then, suddenly this summer, Russia attacked Georgia—and Obama's immediate reaction was to call for reasonableness and good intentions and urge both sides to show restraint and enter into direct talks. Unfortunately his appeal sounded almost like a caricature of liberal wishful thinking. It was left to his opponent, John McCain—whose own past judgments on foreign policy demand scrutiny—to declare right away the sort of thing that might have come naturally to previous generations of liberal Democrats (let alone to a conservative Republican): that "Russia should immediately and unconditionally cease its military operations and withdraw all forces from sovereign Georgian territory." Beyond the matter of experience, beyond how thoroughly the two candidates had thought through the situation, the difference highlighted how Obama still lacks a comprehensive vision of international politics.

That Obama's record and statements have created any other impression cannot be ascribed only to his campaign's political skills and the news media's favor. Liberal intellectuals have largely abdicated their responsibility to provide unblinking and rigorous analysis instead of paeans to Obama's image. Hardly any prominent liberal thinkers stepped forward to question Obama's rationalizations about his relationship with his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. Instead, they hailed his ever-changing self-justifications and sometimes tawdry logic—equating his own white grandmother's discomfort in the presence of a menacing stranger with Wright's hateful sermons—as worthy of the monumental addresses of Lincoln. Liberal intellectuals actually could have aided their candidate, while also doing their professional duty, by pressing him on his patently evasive accounts about various matters, such as his connections with the convicted wheeler-dealer Tony Rezko, or his more-than-informal ties to the unrepentant terrorist William Ayers, including their years of association overseeing an expensive, high-profile, but fruitless public-school reform effort in Chicago. Instead, the intellectuals have failed Obama as well as their readers by branding such questioning as irrelevant, malicious or heretical.

Can Obama, who lost the large industrial states in the primaries, deal with a troubled economy and become the standard bearer for the working and middle classes—the historic core of the Democratic Party that the last two Democratic candidates lost? Can the inexperienced candidate persuasively outline a new foreign policy that addresses the quagmires left by the Bush administration and faces the challenges of terrorism and a resurgent Russia? Can the less-than-one-term senator become the master of the Congress and enact goals such as universal health care that have eluded Democratic presidents since Truman? On these fundamental questions may hang the fate of Obama's candidacy. In the absence of a compelling record, set speeches, even with the most stirring words, will not resolve these matters. And until he resolves them, Obama will remain the most unformed candidate in the modern history of presidential politics.

I usually take Wilentz's analyses with a tablespoon of salt (he's a leading academic Bush-basher), but I'm pleasantly surprised with his take here.

I can say, though, that there's no gainsaying Obama's historic achievements, which are magnified tonight by the timing of his speech on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech of 1963.

Yet, if Obama fails to recognize that we have achieved much of Dr. King's dream of a Promised Land he risks turning the evening into a shaming festival rather than a call to recognize our nation's accomplishments while simultaneously defining an even higher purpose.

I'm confident Barack Obama is skilled enough to know this, and if he can make the sale for a real politics of unity, if he can return to his powerful message of post-partisan, post-racial transformation, he may well avoid the kind of weak performance that only leaves listeners hungering for more.

Barack Obama and the Right to Life

This video shows a protest against the Democratic Party abortion policies with a massive sign showing the message: "Destroys uNborn Children":

Also, at the Chicago Tribune, Dennis Byrne exposes the culture of death that characerizes the party's position on abortion, best represented by the revelations of Barack Obama's extremist views on the right to life:

Can we just listen to ourselves? We're debating whether some babies born alive have a right to medical attention....

Jill Stanek, a former nurse at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, described in 2001 during congressional testimony how it happens: In a "live-birth abortion," doctors "do not attempt to kill the baby in the uterus. The goal is simply to prematurely deliver a baby who dies during the birth process or soon afterward." Medication stimulates the cervix to open, allowing the baby to emerge, sometimes alive. "It is not uncommon for a live aborted baby to linger for an hour or two or even longer. At Christ Hospital, one . . . lived for almost an entire eight-hour shift." Some actually are born healthy because they are aborted to preserve the "health" of the mother, or because the pregnancy was due to rape or incest. At best, they are left in a "comfort room," complete with a camera (for pictures of the aborted baby) "baptismal supplies, gowns, and certificates, footprinting equipment and baby bracelets for mementos and a rocking chair," where they are rocked to death. "Before the comfort room was established," Stanek said, "babies were taken to the soiled utility room to die."

Yes, there ought to be a law against this, and Congress passed one unanimously. It declares that a person is defined as "every infant member of the species homo sapiens who is born alive at any stage of development." Born alive means any human being that after "expulsion or extraction" from the mother "breathes or has a beating heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord, or definite movement of voluntary muscles, regardless of whether the umbilical cord has been cut, and regardless of whether the expulsion or extraction occurs as a result of natural or induced labor, Caesarean section, or induced abortion."

Pretty simple, right?

Well, not really. Some people fear that this fundamental protection, ensuring to all the first of the rights of "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness," is in reality a sneak attack on a woman's right to choose an abortion. To prevent this "Trojan horse," they insisted, and got, in the federal law a guarantee against construing the law to "affirm, deny or contract any legal status or legal right applicable to any member of the species homo sapiens at any point prior to being 'born alive'. . ." This mumbo jumbo is supposed to mean that abortions can't be restricted.

To mollify pro-choice concerns, including Obama's, this was inserted in several versions of the Illinois legislation. But it didn't matter, because the legislation died anyway, with Obama's help. Whether or not he refused to vote for a version that contained the right-to-an-abortion provision isn't what's important here. What is important is that Obama put the supposed and vague threat to an abortion right ahead of a real and concrete threat to the most innocent of human lives.

Obama's response to all this is to sidestep any discussion about when human personhood begins, the key question in the abortion debate. Some say it begins at the moment of conception; others say it begins at birth. (Still others look for a middle ground, suggesting it begins when brain activity starts.) But by arguing against the born-alive legislation because it might in some distant and ambiguous way obstruct abortion, Obama implies that the right to an abortion trumps an infant's right to life, even after he is born.

Such logic is breathtaking. It says that even after birth, a mother's right to rid herself of the baby supersedes any right that a child, now independent of the mother's body and domain, has a right to live. Where America stands on this issue truly is a measure of its sense of justice and compassion. On this score, Obama fails.

See also, "The Secret Life of Senator Infanticide."

Progressives Paint McCain as Angry American Warmonger

Desperation is building on the far-left at the realization that Barack Obama's nomination is turning out to be an unmitigated disaster for the Democratic Party's chances in November.

Note first the letdown among "progressives" at the dreadful polling numbers for the Obama-Biden ticket this week. Chris Bowers and Tremayne, at the radical portal Open Left, express their frustration and helplessness at the fading likelihood of a post-convention bounce following this week's events in Denver. As Bowers laments:

I am feeling really frustrated today. I am sensing that something is wrong with this convention, and that there will be no bounce. I don't know exactly what we need to do to get a bounce, but I do know that we haven't done it yet.

Both bloggers search for explanations for declining Democratic fortunes (blaming, for example, an insufficient "populist message" or the inattention of the "traditional media" to the events).

Neither, naturally, engage is the kind of introspective analysis that might lead to the conclusion that Americans are burned out on "Obamania" and they're getting hip to "The One" and his oppositional combination of fringe extremism and mainstream policy superficiality.

Thus, it's no surprise that other "progressives" want to quit pussy-footing around and hit back at "Chimpy" and "McSame" with all they've got. For example, check out Ilan Goldenberg at Democracy Arsenal:

John McCain has an ad up trying to scare the American people about Iran and saying Obama doesn't take the threat seriously enough. I think it's time to take the gloves off and paint McCain as the reckless and dangerous overeager warrior that he is.

Goldenberg continues with some unhinged anti-neocon conspiracy theorizing suggesting that McCain's "paranoia" will elevate every international event to another "Thirteen Days."

And then we have Cernig at Newshoggers to top it all off with a deconstruction of "McCain's inner Ugly American":

It never was true of all Americans, but it certainly was true of some. But more and more, the phrase has come to be associated abroad with the mindset exemplified by the Bush administration these last eight years. Not just loud and pretentious about lands beyong American shores, oblivious to local nuance and complexities of culture - but pugnacious and belligerent about it too. And it doesn’t matter whether these Ugly Americans are home or abroad, their underlying attitude doesn’t change. (I write this as a European living in the U.S. - I’ve seen the Ugly American both at home and abroad.)

Bush, Rumsfield, Bremer, Bolton, the entire Kagan family, Podhoretz - Cheney, of course - and a slew of hard right pundits and bloggers. The right is filled with Ugly Americans right now, who simultaneously want to dictate how non-Americans will behave and to insist that only American interests matter, only what they want matters. It’s a mindset rooted in the ideology of American exceptionalism, with a hefty dose of Divine Mandate (code for “The White Man’s Burden” reset as a uniquely American one), leavened with fear of “the other”, but to perpetuate it requires ignorance, arrogance and a belief that all problems can be solved by using a bigger hammer.

Out of all the Ugly Americans of the modern hard Right, John McCain is rising as the star. His entire worldview is based not just upon American exceptionalism but upon McCain exceptionalism - “Verb, Noun, P.O.W.”

All of this impotence comes when the Democrats are supposed to be strolling to victory in the November election.

But it's not just frustration with the GOP or John McCain. This is the outrage of an anti-establishment radicalism, which evinces a loathing in a search for scapegoats: The "lamestream" media or the evil of "BusHitler," Halliburton, and the neocons!

The problem, of course, is not John McCain or any of the other usual suspects identified throughout these threads. The problem is Barack Obama and the Democrats' abject ideological bankruptcy that's preventing the party from offering anything remotely acceptable to the broad swath of the American electorate.

For example, signs of progress in Iraq have left the progressives boxed-in and confused in a funk of surrender. The failure of the economy to collapse into deep recession removes from the Democrats a powerful economic cudgel with which to hammer GOP "incompetence." And polls show that Americans prefer health care simplification and reduced costs in medical provision, not the program of single-payer nationalization that the left envisions under an Obama administration.

But most of all, Americans tell pollsters that Barack Obama does not share their values, that he's too risky and inexperienced for the office of President of the United States.

All of these facts force a paralysis on the leftists. They can't think outside of the neat boxes of demonization they've concocted for their enemies.

Barack Obama's one of them. He'll negotiate unconditionally with the enemies of the United States, and those of our allies. He'll seek denuclearization to weaken American national security, and he'll promote a postmodern sensibility on the country that will leave innocent babies to die in soiled-linen closets and one that befriends unrepentant domestic terrorists who now "teach" our children.

When that's all you've got, I suppose the desperation of pulling out the stops by painting the GOP candidate as an angry and reckless warmonger actually makes some sense.

University of Illinois at Chicago Releases Annenberg Files

The Chicago Tribune's report on the Daley Library's release of Barack Obama's Annenberg records is intiguingly titled: "Files Linking Obama to '60s Radical a Hot Commodity":

The University of Illinois at Chicago on Tuesday released more than 1,000 files detailing the activities of an education reform group in which both Barack Obama and former 1960s radical William Ayers played key roles.

The release of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge documents turned the sterile special collections room at the university's Daley library into a media frenzy. Television crews hovered at the room's entrance. Librarians scurried to copying machines to fulfill the requests of a roomful of reporters. Two security officers stood guard.

On a typical day, one or two scholars may conduct research there. The library director laughed when asked whether it has had security before.

A partial examination of the documents did not reveal anything startling about the link between Obama, the Democratic presidential contender, and Ayers, a founder of the Weather Underground, a Vietnam-era anti-war group that claimed responsibility for several bombings. Ayers, who spent years in hiding, is now a UIC education professor.

The interest in the documents comes as supporters of Republican presidential candidate John McCain have questioned Obama's ties to Ayers. The Obama campaign this week countered by airing television commercials suggesting that McCain is stuck in the '60s.

Perhaps there's nothing "startling" in the files, according the Tribune's initial review, although the report mentions that "Obama and Ayers attended board meetings, retreats and at least one news conference together," a simple fact that puts the lie to Obama's claim that:

This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English in Chicago who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.

But the National Review has a deeper analysis of why Obama's Ayers connection matters:

Have you ever been a friend or business associate of a terrorist? Not someone who, to your shock and horror, turned out secretly to have bombed government buildings. No, the question is whether you’ve ever befriended an unreconstructed radical whose past was well known to you when you entered his orbit and walked through doors he opened for you. Have you been chummy with an unapologetic terrorist who, years after you’d known and worked closely with him, was still telling the New York Times he regretted only failing to carry out more attacks — and that America still “makes me want to puke”?

Barack Obama has.

An organization called the American Issues Project, backed by Dallas investor Harold Simmons, is running a campaign ad which highlights Obama’s troubling relationship with William Ayers. Ayers is a former member of the Weathermen terrorist organization that bombed the Pentagon, the U.S. Capitol, various police headquarters, and other targets in the early 1970s....

Obama’s campaign has acknowledged that the candidate and Ayers are friends. Though Obama has more recently minimized Ayers as “just a guy who lives in my neighborhood,” it is clear that the relationship was much deeper than that. Ayers and his fellow-terrorist wife, Bernadine Dohrn (who has spoken admiringly of the infamous Manson Family murders), are icons in Chicago’s hard-left circles, to which Obama sought entrée as a young “community organizer.” In 1995, they hosted a fundraiser that helped launch his career in Chicago politics.

Ayers has never abandoned his indictment of America as an imperialist hotbed of racism and economic exploitation. He has merely shifted methods from violent extortion to academic indoctrination. Through his perch as a professor of education at the University of Illinois, he has been a ceaseless critic of the criminal-justice system (he is essentially opposed to imprisoning even the most violent criminals) and a proponent of what he calls “education reform” but what is actually the use of the classroom to proselytize for the Left’s political agenda.

Writing in the Chicago Tribune in 1997, Obama called A Kind and Just Parent, Ayers’ polemic on the Chicago court system, “a searing and timely account.” Michelle Obama, then a dean at the University of Illinois, invited Ayers to participate in a panel with her husband, then a state senator who, the program explained, was “working to block proposed legislation that would throw more juvenile offenders into the adult system.”

Obama apologists dismiss all this as “guilt by association” based on a single joint appearance. But it was far from the only one.

In fact, by 1997 Obama and Ayers were collaborators on a far more significant level. They sat together for several years on the board of the Woods Fund, a left-wing Chicago charitable organization. There, they doled out tens of thousands of dollars to such beneficiaries as the Trinity Church (where Obama was a longtime member and where another Obama mentor, Jeremiah Wright, preached a radical, anti-American brand of Black Liberation Theology) and the Arab American Action Network (co-founded by Rashid Khalidi, a Yasser Arafat apologist who has supported attacks against Israel and now directs Columbia University’s notorious Middle East Institute, founded by Edward Said).

Even more intriguing, in 1995 Ayers won a $49.2 million grant from the Annenberg Foundation — matched two-to-one by public and private contributions — to promote “reform” in the Chicago school system. He quickly brought in Obama, then all of 33 and bereft of any executive experience, to chair the board. With Ayers directing the project’s operational arm and Obama overseeing its financial affairs until 1999, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge distributed more than $100 million to ideological allies with no discernible improvement in public education.

Until this week, moreover, the University of Illinois at Chicago, where Ayers works, was blocking access to the project’s files (examination of which was being sought by frequent National Review contributor Stanley Kurtz), until finally relenting under public pressure. Less than three months from Election Day, analysis of the records from Barack Obama’s only significant executive experience is just beginning.

The mainstream media has been derelict on the Obama/Ayers relationship. Perhaps now, finally, it will get the scrutiny it deserves.

Obama's ill-advised relationship to Ayers raises questions of judgment that should be at the center of the national discussion on the Illinois Senator's qualifications to serve as President of the United States.

While the National Review doesn't address the topic in its editorial, the mainstream press has also been derelict in its inattention to Obama's extremist positions on abortions and the right to life.

See also, Sister Toldjah, "FactCheck: It’s the NRLC, not Obama, telling the truth on BAIPA."

See the additional analysis at Memeorandum.

Hillary Makes Good Start on 2012 Campaign

I admire Michael Barone, so I'm pleased that my analysis of Hillary Clinton's speech last night dovetails with Barone's analysis today, "Hillary Clinton's Speech Was a Good Start on Her 2012 Run":

Clinton's speech was carefully tailored, like the very attractive orange pants suit she wore. It was tailored to her need to speak directly to those who supported her, especially those unreconciled to Obama's nomination. It was laden with references to feminist advances—the Seneca Falls conference of 1848 got hearty applause, the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment was duly noted, Harriet Tubman was cited as advice to all (keep going). She saluted thereby her own persistence through the primaries and noted that America does not like a quitter. So much for those Obamaites who kept urging her to get out of the race.

My sense is that many of the women—at the convention and out in America—who are heartsick over Clinton's defeat and see it as somehow illegitimate are women of a certain age, like Hillary, women who made choices over and over again to do things they were told growing up they shouldn't do (live with a man before marriage, work outside the home after having children), women who are disappointed that the young women of today don't share their fervor and sense of outrage (because those women were never told not to do those things). An increasing percentage of mothers with children under 5 are choosing not to work outside the home. Michelle Obama, as Danielle Crittenden notes, spoke on Monday night more as a wife and mother than as a career woman (and indeed quit her $321,000 job to campaign for her husband). The Hillary feminists sense that time has passed them by. Time and the Democratic Party. Hillary Clinton addressed their grievances and gave them visibility and legitimacy.

In contrast, the argument for supporting Barack Obama was far more abstract. Clinton voters supported her because she could help those unfortunate souls out there (the requisite lugubrious stories follow). Barack Obama would help those unfortunate souls, and John McCain wouldn't, not at all. He'd just be four more years of George W. Bush. Ergo, logic requires you to support Barack Obama. But Clinton's affect was chilly, or at least seemed so to me; I could see the back of her head as she spoke from my press seats and could watch the Fox News feed on Chris Wallace's TV on the podium two rows in front of me. Yes, she smiled, but not a lot, and at moments when it was she (or her husband) she was spotlighting.

What was missing was much in the way of description of Barack Obama. What kind of man is he? One who supports the same positions she does. Has she looked deep into his heart and found something worthy? No evidence here that she had. Would he be a good commander-in-chief? Not a word on that, as the McCain campaign quickly and gleefully noted. Clinton can tell Obamaites that she made the case for Obama and brought the convention cheering to its feet. She can say that she told her supporters in the most explicit language possible to work hard for his election. She can make this claim whether he wins or (the more tantalizing case) he loses. In the latter case, she's made a good start on her own 2012 campaign. She'll be only 64 that year, the same age as George H. W. Bush when he was elected in 1988.

See also, Victor Davis Hanson, "Hil's Grand Strategy."

Michael Dukakis Emerges From Political Exile in Denver

Former Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis disappeared from the top echelons of the party establishment after his devastating loss to George H.W. Bush in 1988. I recall in 2004, during the Democratic Convention in Boston, where Senator John Kerry was being nominated, commentators still spoke of Dukakis as a disgraced loser who would not be on hand to address the delegates.

So it's interesting to see Dukakis reemerging from obscurity to attend this year's festivities in Denver. Katie Couric, in the video below, interviews Dukakis outside the Pepsi Center arena. The former Massachusetts Governor is apologetic for his loss in 1988, lamenting that he didn't combat the GOP attack-machine effectively. He says this year Obama's got to "fight fire with fire":

Watch CBS Videos Online

See also the background story on Dukakis' return at Scripps News Service, "Even Now, Dukakis Blames Himself for 1988 Blowout":

Twenty years have passed, but Michael Dukakis still kicks himself -- again and again and again.

Seven times in an hour-long chat, he brings up "mistakes" from that 1988 presidential election.

Twice, he flat-out admits that he "screwed it up." He wonders aloud whether he might have been naive. And, lest anybody still wonders who was to blame for his loss to Republican George H.W. Bush, Dukakis keeps repeating that the strategic decisions were "my fault, nobody else's."

Things just didn't work out the way the former Massachusetts governor had hoped. And this after what Dukakis considered a "great," "terrific," "unified," "positive" Democratic National Convention in Atlanta.

Turns out, a great political get-together just isn't enough, particularly if the presidential nominee forgets the most important part of a convention: The morning after.

After the last balloons drop, a presidential nominee has to start the campaign all over again. He has to be ready to fight back against attacks. And, Dukakis says from experience, those attacks are coming.

"What I would change obviously, and what you have to be aware of, is the final campaign is very different from the primary," Dukakis says, sitting in front of a vintage map of Denver at his daughter's stately home in the city's Country Club neighborhood. "You think you've addressed every issue under the sun. You try to do so in your acceptance speech. But it's a whole new ballgame, and you've got to begin, post-convention, as if the campaign has just begun."

After his upbeat convention in 1988, "I just kind of assumed, 'Look, it's just a continuation of what I've been doing: a very positive approach that so far seems to have done what I hoped it would," Dukakis says. "And anyway, that's the kind of guy I am, so we'll just kind of continue . . .' "

But it was a famous miscalculation. Dukakis wanted to stay positive. So he was slow to respond to some brutal attacks on his record, his positions and even his wife's reputation.

By the time he fought back, it was too late.

That's a painful lesson Democrats should never forget, Dukakis says. And it's clear that a sometimes "feisty" Sen. Barack Obama already has taken it to heart, he adds.

In Dukakis' view, any and all attacks have to be countered, swiftly and forcefully, he says. Or else, suffer his fate, a party's standard-bearer who ended up as one of those self-deprecating woulda, coulda, shoulda guys.

I think Dukakis is right to argue the best defense is a good offense, but in my mind his deadened, liberal technocratic ideology is what did him in, seen most infamously at the 1988 presidential debate where he told moderator Bernard Shaw that would not support the death penalty in response to the rape and murder of his wife, Kitty:

Dukakis can help the Democrats this year by reminding them that their soft-on-criminals eschatology had as much to do with their party's defeat 20 years ago as the GOP's well-justified attack strategy.

Clinton Backers Reject Party Unity

Hillary Clinton made a powerful case for Barack Obama and Democratic Party unity in her address last night to convention delegates at Denver's Pepsi Center.

Yet supporters of Senator Clinton, arguably the most important Democratic constituency in the country right now, remain uncommited to electing Barack Obama to the White House in November.

Here's the Washington Post's report:

Hillary Rodham Clinton's most loyal delegates came to the Pepsi Center on Tuesday night looking for direction. They listened, rapt, to a 20-minute speech that many proclaimed the best she had ever delivered, hoping her words could somehow unwind a year of tension in the Democratic Party. But when Clinton stepped off the stage and the standing ovation faded into silence, many of her supporters were left with a sobering realization: Even a tremendous speech couldn't erase their frustrations.

Despite Clinton's plea for Democrats to unite, her delegates remained divided as to how they should proceed.

The New York Times confirms the disunity, "Some Clinton Fund-Raisers Are Still Simmering":

A significant number of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s top fund-raisers remain on the sidelines and unwilling to work for Senator Barack Obama, a nettlesome problem that appears to be contributing to the campaign’s failure to keep pace with ambitious fund-raising goals it set for the general election.

The lingering rancor between the sides appears to have intensified at the Democratic convention, with grousing from some Clinton fund-raisers about the way they are being treated by the Obama campaign in terms of hotel rooms, credentials and the like. Tensions were already high, particularly in the wake of revelations that Mr. Obama did not vet Mrs. Clinton or ask her advice on his vice-presidential pick.

Many major Clinton fund-raisers skipped the convention; others are leaving Wednesday, before Mr. Obama’s speech.

More broadly, a consensus appears to have emerged among many major Clinton donors that the Obama campaign did not do enough to enlist their support, according to interviews with more than a half-dozen Clinton fund-raisers.

Gallup explains Democratic Party elusiveness as resulting from the defections of conservatives Democrats:

Barack Obama has been struggling to maintain his Democratic base thus far in August, and according to weekly averages of Gallup Poll Daily tracking, the problem seems to be with conservative Democrats.

Within the Democratic Party, Obama's losses are primarily evident among the relatively small group that describes its political views as conservative. The 63% of conservative Democrats supporting Obama over McCain in Aug. 18-24 polling is the lowest Obama has earned since he clinched the Democratic nomination in June. At the same time, there have been no similar drops in support for Obama in the preferences of liberal or moderate Democrats.

Here's Gallup on the implications of Obama's conservative defection for the general election:

Obama held the slight upper hand in the race from early June through mid-August. His failure to maintain that last week - averaging a tie with McCain at 45% - can be largely explained by some defection from the conservative wing of the Democratic Party, as well as less crossover support from moderate and liberal Republicans....

It will be important to see whether Obama's erstwhile supporters - particularly conservative Democrats - come back to the fold this week as they watch the Democratic National Convention and take a fresh look at their new nominee for president.

There's some "high anxiety" up in Denver, and if these folks don't come in for a landing, the party's hopes for a historic victory in the fall may dissipate in the clouds.

Hillary Clinton’s Unofficial Announcement for 2012

Hillary Clinton's speech tonight to the Democratic National Convention in Denver may well be remembered as one of the most significant speeches in the history of American political party conventions.

Over the last 18 months, Senator Clinton has developed into a masterful politician.

From launching her campaign from the high perches of arrogance and inevitability in early 2007, to returning to the stage tonight on the wings of generous magnanimity, Hillary Clinton delivered a knock out so decisive that it's clear she's fully deserving - in demeanor if not delgates - to be standing herself Thursday night at the rostrum accepting her party's nomination as candidate for President of the United States.

Whether or not she made the sale for Barack Obama among her disgruntled supporters, there can be no doubt that a great many Americans saw what must rightly be considered Hillary Clinton's unofficial announcement for the Democratic nomination in 2012.

The speech had it all: From combative partisanship to compassionate public purpose, from bedrock American individualism and bold gendered hermeneutics, from historical lore to histrionic lampoons, Clinton's address affected a near-perfect tone that placed Democratic Party unity above her own immediate personal political interests.

Listeners may recall their favorite moments of the speech. Mine came near the end, when Clinton began the crescendo toward her conclusion, drawing on the imagery of Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad:

My mother was born before women could vote. My daughter got to vote for her mother for president. This is the story of America, of women and men who defy the odds and never give up.

So how do we give this country back to them? By following the example of a brave New Yorker, a woman who risked her lives to bring slaves to freedom along the Underground Railroad.

On that path to freedom, Harriet Tubman had one piece of advice: "If you hear the dogs, keep going. If you see the torches in the woods, keep going. If there's shouting after you, keep going. Don't ever stop. Keep going. If you want a taste of freedom, keep going."

Senator Clinton continued, rallying the delegates at the Pepsi Center, exclaiming, "In America, you always keep going. We're Americans. We're not big on quitting."

Those words, of course, provide the perfect summation for her 2008 campaign. Like Roman General Maximus Decimus Meridius of the Academy Award-winning film epic, Gladiator, Hillary Clinton simply wouldn't die.

From New Hampshire to Pennsylvania to Indiana, Hillary Clinton always kept going, scoring big electoral wins thoughout the primaries season, demonstrating massive appeal across demographic constituencies (not the least, significantly, being working-class whites).

But the power of her winning appeal will be tested over the next couple of days.

Sunday's CNN poll found the 27 percent of Democratic Hillary supporters saying they'd vote for John McCain in November. In Denver this week, Clinton supporters have joined together in solidarity to toast McCain at GOP-sponsored happy hour events.

Of course, it seems incredible that so many people - in their unhappiness with Barack Obama - would either bolt the party or stay home on election day - so the remaining months of the campaign will be instructive.

Much now depends on Obama himself. His political liabilities are manifold. From inexperience to perceived anti-American values, the success of his presidential bid rests fully in his hands.

Hillary Clinton tonight made a resounding case for party unity. If Democrats indeed submerge their rivalries in time to bolster their sagging fortunes, no small amount of the credit will be due to Hillary Clinton's unofficial announcement that she intends to be a major player in presidential politics four years from now.

Photo Credit: New York Times

McCain Surges as Obama's Biden Pick Flops in Public Opinion

The trends in polling this week are even more advantageous to the GOP than I've predicted thus far.

I argued previously that "Obama Will Get No Post-Denver Polling Bounce," but even with that I'm caught off guard by Gallup's latest tracking numbers finding John McCain leading Barack Obama 46 to 44 percent:

It's official: Barack Obama has received no bounce in voter support out of his selection of Sen. Joe Biden to be his vice presidential running mate.

Gallup Poll Daily tracking from Aug. 23-25, the first three-day period falling entirely after Obama's Saturday morning vice presidential announcement, shows 46% of national registered voters backing John McCain and 44% supporting Obama, not appreciably different from the previous week's standing for both candidates. This is the first time since Obama clinched the nomination in early June, though, that McCain has held any kind of advantage over Obama in Gallup Poll Daily tracking.

The race for president has been virtually tied since mid-August. In this period, Obama's support from national registered voters has consistently ranged from 44% to 46%. The 46% currently supporting McCain is technically his best showing since late May/early June, but is not a statistically significant improvement over his recent range from 43% to 45%. (To view the complete trend since March 7, 2008, click here.)

An analysis of historical election poll trends by Gallup Poll Managing Editor Jeff Jones shows that recent presidential campaigns have enjoyed a small (though short-lived) bounce from the running mate announcement. This includes a four percentage point bounce for John Kerry in 2004 after selecting John Edwards, a 5-point bounce for Al Gore in 2000 with his announcement of Joe Lieberman, and a 3-point bounce for George W. Bush in 2000 upon choosing Dick Cheney. Bob Dole received an extraordinary 9-point bounce in 1996 after bringing Jack Kemp onto his ticket.

All of these bounces occurred before the respective party's convention began, and in most cases the candidates received an additional boost in the polls upon completion of the convention. Thus, any increase in Obama's support in the coming days would seem to be more the result of the star-studded and well publicized Democratic national convention than the apparently lackluster Biden selection.

Note that while, yes, McCain's lead remains within the margin-of-error range, holding statistical significance aside, over the last week McCain's picked up 6 percent on Obama on a straight point basis.

Trend-wise, this is even better than I'd hoped. My expectation earlier was for Obama to stagnate this week, getting a small single-digit bounce coming out his acceptance speech, a lead that would collapse upon the announcement of McCain's running mate.

Hillary better knock a Mile High home run tonight at the Pepsi Center. Obama's lagging behind historical benchmarks, and the more I look at the data, the less favorable appear Democratic Party prospects, not only for a post-convention polling bounce, but for post-Labor Day campaign success as well.

Note finally, if McCain announces his vice-presidential running mate ahead of schedule, possibly on Thursday, the GOP may well chip into Obama's numbers even more (and a Thursday veep announcement could dramatically jumble the day's press cycle, surpressing the media bounce from Obama's acceptance speech in Denver).

Photo Credit: Cleveland Leader, "McCain Pulls Ahead of Obama in Second Poll this Month."

Obama Dogged by 1960s Radical Ties

The American Issues Project has released a rebuttal to Barack Obama's Chicago-style campaign of intimidation against those speaking out against the Illinois Senator's associations with 1960s-era radical terrorists.

USA Today offers a background report, "Obama Dogged by Links to 1960s Radical":

Conservatives are stepping up efforts to turn 1960s radical Bill Ayers into a political liability for Barack Obama.

This spring, Obama's links to Ayers briefly became a campaign controversy. Now American Issues Project is spending $2.8 million to air a TV ad highlighting links between Obama and Ayers, a founder of the Weather Underground Organization, which opposed the Vietnam War and was responsible for several bombings.

Obama released a rebuttal TV ad Monday. "With all our problems, why is John McCain talking about the '60s, trying to link Barack Obama to radical Bill Ayers?" a narrator asks.

A movie, Hype: The Obama Effect, was first shown Sunday in Denver. It was made by Citizens United, another conservative group, and explores the Ayers-Obama connection and questions whether Obama can unite the country.

Documents released today by the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) will be scrutinized for clues to the relationship.

Ayers was a founder of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a school-reform group. Obama chaired its board from 1995-99. National Review reported last week that UIC said records detailing meetings and other business were public, then reversed itself. UIC said Friday there was a misunderstanding.

Obama and Ayers, now a professor and author, live a few blocks apart in this city's Hyde Park neighborhood. Conservative activists say their relationship is evidence that Ayers' radical politics helped mold Obama's views.

"Ayers is clearly a relevant issue as it relates to Obama's pattern of relationships," says David Bossie of Citizens United.

American Issues Project spokesman Christian Pinkston says Ayers' influence is an open question, but "it's hard to see how one actually could resolve having any sort of relationship with an admitted, remorseless domestic terrorist."

The ad notes that Weathermen bombed the Capitol and asks why Obama would "be friends with someone who bombed the Capitol and is proud of it?"

Ed Failor, a founder of American Issues Project, worked for John McCain's Iowa campaign.

The Obama campaign on Monday released a letter sent to the Justice Department last week asserting that the American Issues Project ad violates federal rules that bar tax-exempt political groups from advocating a candidate's election or defeat. Pinkston called it "a sad ploy to circumvent the First Amendment." The campaign also released a letter sent last week to TV stations disputing the ad's truthfulness.

Campaign officials say the 47-year-old candidate and the 63-year-old UIC education professor have only a casual relationship.

"The last time Obama saw Ayers was about a year ago when he crossed paths with him while biking in the neighborhood," says Ben LaBolt, a campaign spokesman. "The suggestion that Ayers was a political adviser to Obama or someone who shaped his political views is patently false."

Actually, the patent falshood is the lie that Obama's trying to perputate on the American people.

This story's received intense coverage from commentators in the right-wing press and blogosphere. It's high times for the mainstream media to pick up on this scandal and run with it.

See also: "Attack Ads Slam Obama Ahead of Democratic Convention!", and "Fighting Back Against Obama’s Thugs."

McCain 3 AM Phone Call Greets Democrats on Defense

John McCain's got a brilliant new ad buy out attacking Barack Obama in 3:00am-style, with Hillary Clinton playing a starring role:

It's hard to imagine a more effective advertisement. The beauty is that by showcasing Hillary Clinton's criticism of Barack Obama, McCain inoculates the GOP from recriminations over going negative. What better way to hit the Democrats where it hurts than by using the potent Clinton wedge to both hammer Obama and potentially exacerbate tensions within Democratic ranks?

The McCain 3am call greets a Democratic Party on defense. Opening night in Denver showcased a bunch of left-wing partisans hesitant to go on attack against the GOP.

Josh Marshall wants Democrats to turn up the heat, to "attack, attack, attack," but his readers warn that Michelle Obama had to pitch her message softly. The unsaid reason? Mrs. Obama had to pump up Barack Hussein's family values. Otherwise, she'd only come off sounding shrill, with the effect of simply reminding voters of her rage against the machine, that with Barack Obama's nomination, this is the first time she's been proud of her country.

Marshall illustrates why the Democrats are on defense:

The real weapon the Republicans have on the table right now is simply burying Obama in so much sleaze, xenophobia and slurs that he becomes unelectable. In that sense, humanizing Obama, discrediting the attacks through an affirmative message, is the key to sealing the deal for Obama. I see that argument. To a significant degree I agree with it. And if this just wasn't the night for attack, attack, attack, that'd be fine. I just need to know it's coming and that - even if mainly in the hands of surrogates - it won't stop until election day. Listen to Begala. It's not about responding quickly to the attacks. It's about making McCain respond to Democrats' attacks.

Exactly.

If the Democratic nominee, his wife, and top party spokesmen have to rely on "surrogates" to attack "Bush/McCain" it defeats the whole purpose of a national nominating convention.

Paul Begala's right: The Democratic Convention got off poorly last night. The party's got emotion and uplift, but it also showed that as soon as it goes negative, it risks a "mirror, mirror on the wall" effect, that is, by going "bitter," Democratic attacks will work to emphasize the Obamas' essential opposition to American decency, an opposition that is the deep, sub rosa message of anti-Americanism from which Barack Obama and his wife so desperately need to hide.

**********

UPDATE:

Taylor Marsh laments the Democrats on defense:

Watching the convention from the media room, but also at times from inside the convention hall, you get a different take from what's being seen by the television audience. Still, when I get a gut feeling, well, it's usually worth listening to. I got that feeling last night when as the minutes, then hours ticked by, I still didn't know where it was all going. What the hell was it all about? At the end of it all I still didn't know. The whole night just floated from one moment to the next. I also didn't hear the most important thing of all.

Attacking George W. Bush? No.

Attacking John McCain who's agreed with George W. Bush 95% of the time? Nada.

Attacking the horrendous policies of the last years that has taken this country into the worst situation at home and around the world we've been in looking back decades? Zilch.

If this convention doesn't build to a unmitigated dissection of George W. Bush and John McCain, especially on foreign policy, but also the economy, one thing will happen. We will lose in November.

This is Marsh's buyer's remorse, you might say ... she's just not coming out with it.

Michelle Obama Loves America: A Reintroduction

Michelle Obama, looking radiant and brimming with confidence, delivered an impassioned speech at the Democratic National Convention tonight in Denver.

Mrs. Obama's clear goal was to instill trust in the American people, trust that her husband was just like them, trust that the Democratic nominee shared their hopes and dreams for the health and prosperity of the nation and its people. She spoke of her loving father, who in ailing health spent extra time in the mornings to get ready for work. She spoke of how her dad exemplified a loving care that she worked hard to pass down in raising her daughters. And she spoke of the opportunity that America had provided, the opportunity to attend college and to be on that stage at the Democratic National Convention, living out the true meaning of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

Her address was coherent, reasonably well-delivered, and warmly received by the delegates. Her performance seemed exponentially better than the video snippets from earlier this year, when she notoriously declared that for "the first time in my adult life I am proud of my country."

Mrs. Obama avoided such bitter negativism, finishing her encomium to the American dream with the exclamation, "And that is why I love this country..."

The Wall Street Journal provides some background on the importance of Mrs. Obama's speech:

Aides called her speech on Monday a "reintroduction" to the country. The goal was to show the Obamas as "an American family," said one. "It's get to know the Obamas; they could live next door."

In a statement Monday, the campaign said Mrs. Obama would talk about the couple's life together, "building a family grounded in faith and values."

"After all that's happened these past 19 months, the Barack Obama I know today is the same man I fell in love with 19 years ago," she planned to say in one section. "He's the same man who drove me and our new baby daughter home from the hospital 10 years ago this summer, inching along at a snail's pace, peering anxiously at us in the rear-view mirror, feeling the whole weight of her future in his hands, determined to give her everything he'd struggled so hard for himself, determined to give her what he never had: the affirming embrace of a father's love"....

Many black women hail her as an icon. She is a Princeton- and Harvard-educated lawyer who works as a hospital executive. She is also the mother of two young girls, and is seen as both stylish and outspoken on the campaign trail.

But many whites remain uneasy. In the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC poll, 29% of voters said they had a negative view of Mrs. Obama, almost twice as many as said they had a negative view of John McCain's wife, Cindy. Mrs. Obama's positives were also higher than Mrs. McCain's, with 38% saying they had a positive view of her, compared with 29% for Cindy McCain. (The rest were neutral or didn't have an opinion.)

Mrs. Obama's brother, Craig, when speaking about his sister's community service, did not mention that Public Allies Chicago, a youth leadership development organization where Mrs. Obama had been executive director, has steady ties the Gamaliel Foundation, a group spouting extreme, anti-American ideology on par with Reverend Jeremiah Revered Wright’s black liberation theology.

Stanley Kurtz has more on this:

After hearing about Barack Obama's ties to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, Fr. Pfleger and the militant activists at ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), it should be clear to everyone that his extremist roots run deep. But Obama has yet another connection with the world of far-Left radicalism. Obama has long been linked - through foundation grants, shared political activism, collaboration on legislation and tactics, and mutual praise and support - with the Chicago-based Gamaliel Foundation, one of the least known yet most influential umbrella groups for church-based "community organizers." The same separatist, anti-American theology of liberation that was so boldly and bitterly proclaimed by Obama's pastor is shared, if more quietly, by Obama's Gamaliel colleagues. The operative word is "quietly." Gamaliel specializes in ideological stealth, and Obama, a master student of Gamaliel strategy, shows disturbing signs of being a sub rosa radical himself. Obama's legislative tactics, as well as his persistent profession of non-ideological pragmatism, appear to be inspired by his radical mentors' most sophisticated tactics. Not only has Obama studied, taught, and apparently absorbed stealth techniques from radical groups like Gamaliel and ACORN, but in his position as a board member of Chicago's supposedly nonpartisan Woods Fund, he quietly funneled money to his radical allies - at the very moment he most needed their support to boost his political career. It's high time for these shadowy, perhaps improper, ties to receive a dose of sunlight. The connections are numerous.

This background provides an even greater rationale for Michelle Obama's reintroduction to the American people, and to share the story of her family and her hard-working father. It's a background that seems innocent, even poignant, but wholly alien to the fist-bumping, fatigue-wearing, Angela Davis hair-styling image of the future First Lady that Michelle Obama may well still become.

This is why the success of Mrs. Obama's reintroduction tonight was of crucial importance. Her plea to the American people, her bid to reassure average folks that she really does love America, may help her weather some of the closer scrutiny of her Chicago ties that is likely to come before the November election.