McCain Reaches Out to Social Conservatives

The Los Angeles Times reports that John McCain's looking to consolidate social conservative support:

Sen. John McCain, who has struggled to win the trust of evangelical voters, met privately Thursday in Ohio with several influential social conservatives who have been critical of him -- and impressed them, while telling them only some of what they wanted to hear.

McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, told the small assembly that he was open to learning more about their opposition to embryonic stem cell research despite his past disagreements with them on the issue.

And, according to participants, he indicated that he would take seriously their requests that he choose an anti-abortion running mate and would talk more openly about his opposition to gay marriage -- a pledge he carried out later in the day by endorsing a ballot measure in California to ban gay marriage.

"It was obvious there were a lot of changed hearts in the room," said Phil Burress, who led Ohio's anti-gay-marriage ballot measure in 2004. "We realized that he's with us on the majority of the issues we care about."

McCain's campaign sought the meeting after recent comments from Burress and others that the conservative movement would not be as energized for the Arizona senator as it was for President Bush in 2004, when a GOP voter mobilization effort spurred the party's decisive victory in Ohio.

Thursday's gathering reflected an increasingly aggressive push by McCain to try to corral a party base that, for the most part, backed his rivals for the Republican nomination and have long viewed him with suspicion. McCain's outreach is part of a careful political balancing act as he also tries to appeal to independent voters and moderate Democrats who could be turned off if he closely embraces social conservatives.

The session followed a larger but less-talked-about gathering last weekend in which McCain's top two aides responsible for evangelical outreach laid out the candidate's record on key policy issues.

Many conservatives have been upset that McCain opposed a federal constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, a position he said he took because he believes states should decide the issue. At the meeting, McCain sought to reassure conservatives by emphasizing his work on behalf of an anti-gay-marriage measure in his home state.

He referred to that in his endorsement of the California initiative, lauding efforts to "recognize marriage as a unique institution between a man and a woman, just as we did in my home state of Arizona. I do not believe judges should be making these decisions."

McCain is scheduled to fly Sunday to Asheville, N.C., to meet privately with the Rev. Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham. The younger Graham met this month with McCain's rival, presumptive Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama, who has launched his own effort to court skeptical evangelical leaders.

McCain told the activists Thursday that he also hoped to meet with James C. Dobson, founder of the influential group Focus on the Family, who has said he would not vote for McCain. "The senator spoke fondly of him, but believes there's probably room for some bridge-building," said Mike Gonidakis, head of Ohio Right to Life.

See also, "Dark Moment of American Conservatism?," and "Will Conservatives Be Roused Into Action?"

Photo Credit: "Sen. John McCain is asked a question by Piper Macke, 5, in Cincinnati. She and brother Spencer, 6, center, were granted an interview because he raised money for troops," Los Angeles Times

Nobama! Democratic Unity May Prove Elusive

Barack Obama sought to heal the rifts of the primary campaign by appearing on stage today with Hillary Clinton at a party rally in Unity, New Hampshire.

At the same time, a "Nobama" initiative of Hillary Clinton suporters is picking up steam around the web, and just today activists released a statement from the Just Say No Deal Coalition, issued in New Hampshire:

While the Coalition respects the genuine nature of Senator Clinton in keeping her word to campaign with and for Senator Obama, we will not support him now or on November 4, 2008. Senator Clinton’s vote is her own; our votes are our own and they will not be cast for Senator Obama. The Just Say No Deal Coalition members will either choose to stay home in protest, write in Senator Clinton’s name or vote for Senator John McCain. Our votes are our voices and Just Say No Deal’s voices are 2 million strong and growing.

Checking the link one finds a huge array of pro-Clinton bloggers and others who are oppposed to Barack Obama's drive to power.

The coalition includes the McCain Democrats, Hillbuzz, as well as Larry Johnson's No Quarter.

No Quarter was in the news this last couple of weeks with the hoax on Michelle Obama's "whitey" tape, but Johnson's crew's just warming up.

For example, the lead article at No Quarter right now is, "Boston Globe Exposé, Part I: Introducing Cecil Butler, Obama’s West Side Slumlord Patron."

Plus, a reader forwarded to me another article from No Quarter, "Free Larry Sinclair, Obama's Political Prisoner."

I'll have updates later.

Meanhwhile, see Marc Ambinder, "After The Press Leaves, Some Edgy Questions."

Barack Obama is No Michael Dukakis!

In 2007, Barack Obama racked up the most liberal voting record in U.S. Senate, according to National Jounal's report, "Obama: Most Liberal Senator In 2007."

Now, however, folks are noticing a shift in Obama's campaign rhetoric toward greater centrism.

The lurch to the middle is a regular feature of presidential politics. After wrapping up the nomination, the party standard-bearer needs to heal the party wounds from the primaries and then tailor the campaign's message to voters in the general electorate.

How far to the center can Barack Obama go? Is he a traditional liberal, perhaps like Michael Dukakis, who lost in 1988 to G.H.W. Bush? Or is he further to the left, in radical territory?

A look at Obama's campaign platform indicates an extremely left-wing agenda, on fiscal policy, social issues, and the war in Iraq. Yet as the recent debates over FISA have shown, the Illinois Senator's not far enough to the left for the most implacable forces of the hardline Democratic Party base.

Well, Nate Silver, at 538, argues that Obama's no liberal in the Michael Dukakis mode: "Why Obama isn't like Dukakis":

As several observers have noted recently, including yours truly, June polling has not been a particularly good predictor of November results. In four out of the last five elections, the candidate leading in the polls in June went on to lose the popular vote. The largest discrepancy was in 1988, when Michael Dukakis, 8.2 points ahead in June, would eventually lose the election by 7.8 points -- a catastrophic 16-point swing against the Massachusetts governor.

This election too could move in any number of different directions. While Obama can presently be regarded as the healthy favorite, think of what a 16-point swing would mean in this year's election. If that swing were in Obama's direction (giving him a 21-point victory when added to his current lead of about 5 points) we would project Obama to win all states except Alabama, Idaho, Oklahoma and Utah. If it were in John McCain's direction instead, giving him an 11-point win nationwide, we would have him winning 42 out of 50 states.

The way that the Republicans achieved that big swing in 1988, assisted by a couple of significant gaffes from the Dukakis campaign, was to portray Dukakis as too liberal for the American mainstream. The same basic strategic template was employed against John Kerry in 2004. However, this strategy is unlikely to work in 2008. How come? Barack Obama is already perceived as being very liberal.

Silver goes on to elaborate his argument further, but the conclusion caught my attention:

There is also a school of thought that voters in Presidential elections tend to base their decisions less on the ideological attributes of a candidate and more on the personal ones. Obama's favorability rating presently stands at a +25. By contrast, John Kerry rarely did much better than even on this metric, depending on the specific wording of the question.

Either way, this is a significant problem for the Republicans. If their strategy is to say "Hey! Hey! Barack Obama is a liberal!", the American public's reaction is likely to be "Well, no shit! We're voting for him anyway."

This is not to say that McCain can gain no traction at all by trying to seize the political center. In fact, in an election in which the Democrats have something like a 4:3 edge in party identification, McCain absolutely has to find some way to win a majority of independent voters, and perhaps a fairly substantial one. Moreover, while the voters appear to be ready to elect a President they perceive as liberal, they surely won't be ready to elect one they perceive as radical, and so we can expect the Republicans to continue to play up Obama's associations with figures like Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers. This remains relatively dangerous territory for Obama.

However, if the Republicans attempt to recycle the 1988 or 2004 playbooks, they will probably not find the results to their liking. And if McCain at any point refers to Obama as a "Card-carrying member of the ACLU", you can be pretty sure that this election is over.

Actually, I think the issue's more complicated than that.

Obama is liberal, extremely so. But as Silver notes, he's also an extremely unusual candidate in his genuine ties to a range of ideological elements on the left-wing fringe - extremist radical factions, essentially, groups whose views and history are highly unfamiliar to rank-and-file Americans.

As Andrew McCarthy has demonstrated, in his essay, "Mr. Obama's Neighborhood," Barack Obama has emerged out the Hyde Park political environment - a place unlike any other neighborhood in America, where '60s-era bombers live a few doors down.

Obama's associations became a legitimate issue of the Democratic primaries, and it's foolish to think that Republican voters won't be interested in knowing that William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn are considered "pillars of the community."

Barack Obama may well be the next president of the United States, but if his past associations with radical ideologues - not to mention black liberationists - are not better explained and repudiated, he won't be accepted by moderates making up a large swath of the electorate.

No, Obama's no Michael Dukakis - unless he fully clarifies his past associations, he just might make the former Massachusetts governor look positively center-left.

(Side Observation: Silver's using the term "radical" in the appropriate fashtion: to denote the ideological elements of the extreme left-wing, currently popluated in American politics by the Democratic party "progressive" of the netroots establishment.)

Stand Aside: Greenwald and Olbermann Battle

I wrote about the leftosphere's split over Barack Obama's FISA vote yesterday (here).

Well the fighting's picked up some steam overnight, with Keith Olbermann reponding to Glenn Greenwald's personal blindsiding attack. The Huffington Post has the details:

A war of words has broken out between two of the progressive blogosphere's most beloved figures: MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and blogger/author Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com.

In a post yesterday, Greenwald charged that Olbermann's "blind devotion to Barack Obama" had let him to excuse and defend Obama's support of the FISA 'compromise' legislation. Greenwald noted that Olbermann has previously condemned the idea of giving immunity to telecom companies that spied on Americans, calling it a "shameless, breathless, literally textbook example of Fascism" and comparing it to the actions of the Third Reich.

"But," Greenwald wrote, "[n]ow that Barack Obama supports a law that does the same thing -- and now that Obama justifies that support by claiming that this bill is necessary to keep us Safe from the Terrorists -- everything has changed."

Last night, Olbermann invited Newsweek's Jonathan Alter onto his show to discuss Obama's support for the FISA and telecom amnesty bill (video of the segment is here). There wasn't a syllable uttered about "immunizing corporate criminals" or "textbook examples of Fascism" or the Third Reich. There wasn't a word of rational criticism of the bill either. Instead, the two media stars jointly hailed Obama's bravery and strength -- as evidenced by his "standing up to the left" in order to support this important centrist FISA compromise. [...]

Grave warning on Olbermann's show that telecom amnesty and FISA revisions were hallmarks of Bush Fascism instantaneously transformed into a celebration that Obama, by supporting the same things, was leading a courageous, centrist crusade in defense of our Constitution.

There's much more - you can read Greenwald's full post here. And Olbermann responded with a post last night on Daily Kos.

I don't watch Olbermann, so perhaps readers here can tell me what's up with MSNBC's resident spew-master? Caught up in Obamania, one presumes.

No matter ... I can't help enjoying these folks mash each other up.

Maybe today's show of unity between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will help folks on the left patch things up before November (although Greenwald will remain angry no matter what happens - it's his rage at the non-Glenn-Greenwald power structure.

Related: "Keith Olbermann: 100% Hacktacular."

Venezuela's Anti-Semitic Problem

Travis Pantin, at Commentary, offers an eye-opening analysis of the rise of anti-Semitism in Venezuela: "Hugo Chávez's Jewish Problem":

Venezuela’s Jewish community, amounting to less than 1 percent of the country’s total population of 26 million, is among the oldest in South America, dating back to the early 19th century. During the struggle for independence from Spain, the fugitive revolutionary Simón Bolívar found refuge among a group of Venezuelan Jews, some of whom later went on to fight in the ranks of his liberating army. Today, the majority of the country’s Jewish population is descended from an influx of European and North African immigrants who arrived during the years surrounding World War II. Most reside in the capital city of Caracas, comprising a tightly knit community made up of roughly equal numbers from Ashkenazi and Sephardi countries of origin.

Venezuelans pride themselves on living in an ethnic and religious melting pot. Their homeland, unlike its neighbors Argentina, Paraguay, and Chile, has no history of having harbored Nazi fugitives. Before Chávez came to power, members of the Jewish community reported little animosity from either the government or the populace, and sharply anti-Zionist rhetoric was relatively uncommon. Nor did Venezuela’s fifteen synagogues (all but one of them Orthodox) experience much of the anti-Semitic vandalism common in other Latin American countries with tiny Jewish populations. The Hebraica center—its building functions as a lavish social hub, elementary school, country club, sports facility, and gathering place for Caracas Jewry—was largely left in peace.

No longer. Since Chávez took the oath of office at the beginning of 1999, there has been an unprecedented surge in anti-Semitism throughout Venezuela. Government-owned media outlets have published anti-Semitic tracts with increasing frequency. Pro-Chávez groups have publicly disseminated copies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the early-20th-century czarist forgery outlining an alleged worldwide Jewish conspiracy to seize control of the world. Prominent Jewish figures have been publicly denounced for supposed disloyalty to the “Bolívarian” cause, and “Semitic banks” have been accused of plotting against the regime. Citing suspicions of such plots, Chávez’s government has gone so far as to stage raids on Jewish elementary schools and other places of meeting. The anti-Zionism expressed by the government is steadily spilling over into street-level anti-Semitism, in which synagogues are vandalized with a frequency and viciousness never before seen in the country.

The details are arresting.

• Graffiti, often bearing the signature of the Venezuelan Communist party and its youth organization, have appeared on synagogues and Jewish buildings, with messages like “mata niños” (“child killers”), “judios afuera” (“Jews get out”), “judios perros” (“Jews are dogs”), and swastikas linked to stars of David by an equals sign.

• Sammy Eppel, a columnist for the independent Caracas newspaper El Universal, has documented hundreds of instances of anti-Semitism in government media. To take one particularly noxious example, in September 2006 El Diario de Caracas, until recently one of the country’s most important papers, published an editorial containing these fiery words:

Let us pay attention to the behavior of the Israeli-Zionist associations, unions, and federations that are conspiring in Venezuela to take control of our finances, our industries, commerce, construction—which are infiltrating our government and politics. Possibly we will have to expel them from our country . . . as other nations have done.

• On television, Mario Silva, the host of a popular pro-Chávez show called La Hojilla (“The Razor Blade”), has repeatedly named prominent Venezuelan Jews as anti-government conspirators and called on other Jews to denounce them. “Rabbi Jacobo Benzaquén and Rabbi Pynchas Brener are actively participating in the conspiracy in conjunction with the media,” Silva has said. “So as not to be called an anti-Semite,” he added, “I repeat that those Jewish businessmen not involved in the conspiracy should say so.”

• Armed government agents have conducted two unannounced raids on the Hebraica club during the past five years. The first occurred during the early morning hours of November 29, 2004, when two dozen men wearing masks invaded the elementary school just as pupils were arriving for class. In the second, which came shortly after midnight on December 2, 2007, government agents broke through the front gate and disrupted hundreds of celebrants at a wedding party in the nearby synagogue. In each case, allegedly, the agents were looking for weapons and other evidence of “subversive activity.”

• The last few years have seen the creation of a terrorist group in Venezuela calling itself Hizballah in Latin America. The group has already claimed responsibility for placing two small bombs outside the American embassy in Caracas in October 2006—one of them, it is thought, intended for the embassy of Israel. Although neither of the two bombs detonated, the group’s website hailed the man who planted them as a “brother mujahedin” and has urged other, simultaneous attacks throughout Venezuela in solidarity with Hizballah in Lebanon.

In this connection, although there is no direct evidence linking Chávez with Hizballah in Latin America, the group’s website has featured words of praise for him, and the feeling may well be mutual. Not only has Chávez repeatedly expressed support for Hizballah in general, but (according to Venezuelan newspapers) he paid $1 million to print posters of himself with Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah to be displayed at a Hizballah rally in Beirut.

Be sure to read the whole thing, at the link.

What's interesting is how Pantin makes clear that Venezuela's anti-Americanism interacts closely with trends in anti-Jewish sentiment under the Chávez regime.

See also, the Wall Street Journal, "Anti-Americans On the March: Inside the Unlikely Coalition of the U.S.'s Sworn Enemies, Where Communists Link Up With Islamic Radicals."

Blogopticon: A Guide to the Blogosphere

I enjoy all of the maps and guides to the blogosphere, and Vanity Fair's is especially cool:

Click on the link for the full "blogopticon."

While Vanity Fair doesn't match the techno-sophistication of the Presidential Watch "map of the blogosphere," the blogopticon's got a neat four-quadrant frame that intuitively places blogs and news aggregators within categories of news and opinion, and earnest and scurrilous.

Plus you can click on each icon to reach that page.

Enjoy!

(Side Observation: I would suggest that the placement of Crooks and Liars and Think Progress, among others, should be much closer to the scurrilous side. Still, folks can quibble with individual blog placement and still marvel at the chart's parsimonious organization of the blogosphere's diversity).

Calls for War Crimes Indictments are Misguided

I've noted previously how Democrats and their netroots supporters are pushing for war crimes trials for Bush administration officials (see, "In Power, Obama May Seek War Crimes Tribunals").

Stuart Taylor argues that calls for war crimes tribunals are deeply misguided:

Almost 60 House liberals, along with prominent lawyers, journalists, and retired officials and military officers, are lobbing an inflammatory charge - "war crimes" - toward a large number of the Bush administration's most senior current and former officials and lawyers. These critics accuse them of approving torture and other illegal interrogation methods.

We are likely to hear a growing clamor for appointment of a special prosecutor, presumably by the next administration. And human-rights activists are already suggesting that their friends abroad should snatch and prosecute any former members of what they call the Bush "torture team" who dare visit Europe.

These critics are right to denounce waterboarding and some other interrogation methods that were approved at the administration's highest levels as abusive, deeply damaging to the nation's traditions and international standing, arguably torture, and profoundly unwise. Critics also make a strong case that under the Supreme Court's broad interpretation of the Geneva Conventions two years ago in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the harsher methods violated international law.

But the critics are deeply misguided to call for criminal investigations of people who did their best to protect the country in dire times. The process would ruin lives and tear the country apart. And there is no evidence that any high-level official or lawyer acted with criminal intent.

Among those calling explicitly or implicitly for criminal investigations are 56 House Democrats; retired Maj. Gen. Anthony Taguba, who headed the Army's investigation into the Abu Ghraib torture scandal; liberal groups including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the ACLU; human-rights lawyers including Scott Horton of New York and Philippe Sands of London; and the New York Times editorial page. Retired Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who was chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, has raised the possibility of prosecuting current and former administration lawyers "in a foreign court, or in an international court."

Is Wilkerson aware that his friend Powell is also among the targets of those hurling accusations of war crimes? So are Vice President Cheney; David Addington, Cheney's powerful legal counsel; Condoleezza Rice, Powell's successor; former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld; former CIA Director George Tenet; and former Attorney General John Ashcroft. With the approbation of Bush, they all discussed in detail and approved specific interrogation methods, including simulated drowning ("waterboarding"), according to an April 9 ABC News report.

The most immediate target appears to be former Pentagon General Counsel William J. (Jim) Haynes II, whom Sands indicts at length in a recent book, Torture Team, and whom Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., grilled with palpable hostility at a June 17 hearing.

Why single out Haynes? Perhaps in part because targeting Bush, Cheney, or Rumsfeld at this point might seem too radical. Perhaps in part because the top officials would (and Haynes might not) have a solid defense of good-faith reliance on authoritative Justice Department advice that the methods they approved were legal. And perhaps in part because a detailed paper trail shows that Haynes--along with Rumsfeld--approved a list of 15 coercive methods for use against an identified detainee and other "uncooperative" prisoners at Guantanamo.

(Disclosure: At Haynes's invitation, I joined a group of journalists and others in a one-day tour of the Guantanamo Bay prison facility last summer, at Pentagon expense. I also met him several times for lunch at his Pentagon office at his invitation, usually in the wake of columns assailing administration policies on Guantanamo. He has always struck me as thoughtful, patriotic, and extraordinarily interested in dialogue with critics.)

Haynes has another distinction that his attackers ignore or play down: He is the only former official whose paper trail also shows that he blocked a request to use waterboarding and two other harsh methods that administration lawyers had advised were legal and that the CIA had already employed.

In the same November 27, 2002, memo to Rumsfeld that recommended approval of 15 of the 18 methods proposed by officers at Guantanamo, Haynes also wrote that the three other methods--waterboarding, threats of severe pain or imminent death, and exposure to cold weather or water--"might be legally available" but were not warranted "as a matter of policy ... at this time," because "our armed forces are trained to a standard of interrogation that reflects a tradition of restraint."

Haynes wrote that memo under excruciatingly difficult circumstances. In the wake of deadly Qaeda bombings in Bali, Pakistan, and Tunisia, and amid urgent intelligence warnings of a possible attack even more catastrophic than 9/11, the administration was desperate for clues.

Meanwhile, the military had learned that a Guantanamo detainee named Mohammed al-Kahtani had probably been the "20th hijacker," slated to help four others seize United Flight 93, which ended up crashing in rural Pennsylvania on 9/11. Kahtani had flown from London to Orlando in August 2001 to meet Mohamed Atta, who was waiting at the airport. But an alert immigration agent turned Kahtani back. He ended up being captured in Afghanistan three months later.

Might Kahtani have information that could save lives? After months of gentle questioning, he was mocking his interrogators with obvious lies. So officers at Guantanamo sent their list of 18 coercive methods up the chain of command. The attacks on Haynes center on some of the 15 that he and Rumsfeld approved as legal, with the concurrence of Gen. Richard Myers, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and then-Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith:

Isolation for up to 30 days; "use of 20-hour interrogations"; "removal of clothing"; forced grooming and shaving of beards; depriving detainees of light and sound; hooding them (without restricting breathing); withholding hot rations; "grabbing, poking in the chest with the finger, and light pushing"; using "individual phobias (such as fear of dogs) to induce stress"; and "the use of stress positions (like standing) for a maximum of four hours."

Human-rights activists view some of these methods as torture. But as a legal matter, Haynes's advice was reasonable. None of the approved methods comes close to violating the 1994 U.S. law that makes torture a crime. That law defines torture quite narrowly, as the intentional infliction of "severe physical or mental pain or suffering." The law further specifies that mental suffering qualifies as "severe" only if it involves "the prolonged mental harm" caused by use of mind-altering substances or the threat of severe physical suffering or imminent death.

Some of the Pentagon-approved methods do appear to violate the 1949 Geneva Conventions' ban on "humiliating or degrading treatment." And as of 2002, the War Crimes Act of 1996 provided criminal penalties for violations of that Geneva provision.

But until the unprecedented June 2006 Hamdan decision, administration officials reasonably believed--as did a federal Appeals Court and four of the Supreme Court's nine justices--that the Geneva Conventions were not intended to protect stateless terrorists such as Al Qaeda. The president had so determined, based on a plausible (if debatable) Justice Department reading of the treaties' language and history. That determination was binding on all executive branch officials. In Hamdan, however, a bare majority of five justices held that Geneva did protect Al Qaeda.

It would be a grave injustice to prosecute any official who had relied before Hamdan on the executive branch interpretation of Geneva. And in the Military Commissions Act of October 2006, Congress effectively barred any such prosecutions.

Critics such as Levin claim that pressure for harsh interrogations originated from high-level political appointees including Haynes, rather than from Guantanamo. The evidence suggests some of both. But the important question is not which people took the lead in pushing coercive methods. It is whether they acted with criminal intent. The answer is no.

Haynes's attackers also fault him for disregarding the concerns of some senior military lawyers about the methods he approved; for failing to set limits on simultaneous use of several harsh methods for long periods of time; for failing to prevent Kahtani's interrogators from tormenting him to extremes by overdoing the approved methods--with 18-to-20-hour interrogations almost daily for seven weeks, for example--and for using unauthorized methods such as repeatedly pouring water over his head. More broadly (and more debatably), critics accuse Haynes, Rumsfeld, and others of allowing a culture of prisoner abuse to infect the military in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as at Guantanamo in late 2002 and 2003--while giving them no credit for later adopting a ban on coercive methods.

It's fair game to accuse these people of tragic failures of judgment and leadership. But such failures do not make them war criminals.

Legalities aside, we should all have some empathy for those who had to make the hard decisions about interrogation methods in the dark aftermath of 9/11, and who had to weigh what might be the cost in American lives of failing to learn the secrets of the man whose apparent mission had been to help crash United Flight 93 into the Capitol.

I wrote on Phillippe Sands' research (which forms the classic antiwar manifesto for war crimes) in an earlier entry, "From Impeachment to War Crimes: The New Revenge Against BushCo."

Recall, too, that Scott McClellan's embrace by the left is founded in the expectation that he'll be the next John Dean, providing inside information to bolster the left's vindictive push for criminal indictments against the administration.

Bush Administration's Korea Diplomacy Defies Critics

The New York Times reports that the Bush administration's diplomatic breakthough on North Korea's nuclear program is one for the history books:

North Korea’s declaration of its nuclear activities is a triumph of the sort of diplomacy — complicated, plodding, often frustrating — that President Bush and his aides once eschewed as American weakness.

In more than two years of negotiations, the man who once declared North Korea part of an “axis of evil” with Iran and Iraq, angrily vowing to confront, not negotiate with, its despotic leader, in fact demonstrated a flexibility that his critics at home and abroad once considered impossible.

That is why Mr. Bush is likely to receive only grudging credit, if any, for the accomplishment, which could turn out to be the last significant diplomatic breakthrough of his presidency.

North Korea’s declaration — and the administration’s quid pro quo lifting of some sanctions — faced criticism from conservatives who attacked it as too little and from liberals who said it came too late.

“The regime’s nuclear declaration is the latest reminder that, despite Mr. Bush’s once bellicose rhetoric, engaging our enemies can pay dividends,” Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, whom Mr. Bush defeated in the 2004 presidential election, said in a statement after the declaration on Thursday.

“Historians will long wonder,” he continued, “why this administration did not directly engage North Korea before Pyongyang gathered enough material for several nuclear weapons, tested a nuclear device and the missiles to deliver them.”

History will not judge Mr. Bush as a dove, even if North Korea steps back from the nuclear threshold. The war in Iraq and his sanction of aggressive tactics in the war on Al Qaeda and other terrorists will shape his legacy more than anything he accomplishes diplomatically.

But his second term has featured far more pragmatism and far less confrontation in matters of national security than his first, reflecting the ascendancy of aides like Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and, most significantly in the talks with the North Koreans, Christopher R. Hill, the assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific affairs.

The White House is now pursuing a similarly painstaking multilateral strategy for resolving the international confrontation over Iran’s nuclear activities. Mr. Bush has invested his personal prestige in a peace treaty between the Israelis and Palestinians after years of unambiguous support for Israel’s toughest actions.

It's not unusual for presidents to seek diplomatic triumphs toward the end of their terms - President Reagan's INF treaty of 1987 was seen as a dramatic breakthrough that contrasted with the often bellicose bilateral U.S.-Soviet relations of the administration's first term.

But note that "peace through strength" applies here: Having shown a willingness to topple regimes that violate international law and multilateral norms of world community, the United States has shown its diplomacy will move beyond the language of deterrence in bringing about fundamental change in the international system.

Thus, it's much too early to go soft on Iran, for example, by continuing the endless U.S.-European diplomatic track that's allowed the Tehran regime to move closer to nuclear capability.

Will Conservatives Be Roused Into Action?

Here's an interesting follow-up to my previous entry, "Dark Moment of American Conservatism?"

Grover Norquist, over at the Financial Times, argues that the right will come out in droves in November in support of the Republican ticket:

The case for Republican pessimism is well understood. Too much President George W. Bush for too long. Gasoline at $4 a gallon. Most Americans believe we are heading in the wrong direction. Iraq drags on. Republicans are listless. Time for something new.

The election is Tuesday, November 4, still four months away, and the case for a Republican resurgence is strong, if unseen by the establishment media.

What is the centre-right coalition that rose up to elect Ronald Reagan in 1980, install a Republican Congress in 1994 and for the next five elections, and drag Mr Bush across the finish line twice? This coalition is made up of voters who, on their main vote-moving issue, want one thing from the government: to be left alone.

Taxpayers want lower taxes. Businesses want low taxes and less regulation. Investors and owners of 401ks want low taxes on their retirement portfolios. Second Amendment voters – the 4m members of the National Rifle Association and 20m hunters – want their guns left alone. Home-schoolers wish to be left alone to educate their children. Social conservatives – the so-called religious right – are a parents’ rights movement that wishes to be left alone with their faith and families. They organised in the late 1970s when the government threatened Christian radio stations and Christian schools with new regulations.

In 1994, every segment of the centre-right, “leave us alone” coalition felt threatened by Bill Clinton and a Democrat congress that raised taxes and threatened to nationalise healthcare, steal their guns, tax private pensions, empower unions against small businessmen and heavily tax the self-employed and small business owners. Parents were told the “village” would be running more family matters, displacing their authority.

After 12 years of a Republican Congress and seven years of Mr Bush, all parts of the “leave us alone” coalition felt safer and forgot the plans Democrats have for them. Since the 1993 Clinton tax rise, no tax increase has been enacted at the federal level. This is the longest period in US history – going back to that tea thing – without one. Gun laws lapsed. There have been no labour union power grabs. Add the boat anchor of Iraq to a coalition lulled into a false sense of security and many conservative voters failed to notice that the left is unchanged in its ambitions.

The next four months will provide the necessary and perhaps sufficient reminders to bring them to the polls in force....

The centre-right voters, Reagan Democrats and Ross Perot voters are coming to understand the sharp edges of the Democrats’ agenda: the old one borrowed unchanged from Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Mike Dukakis, Al Gore and John Kerry.

It's interesting that Norquist fails to mention John McCain's name.

If "centre-right" voters are going to turn-out in large numbers come November, they'll need to be motivated by more than an anything-but-Carter-Mondale-Dukakis-Gore-Kerry antipathy.

We've already seen a large number of "Obamacans" emerge by now, and for the life of me, I can't understand it (the interaction of Bush and McCain derangment on the right of the spectrum, perhaps).

Whatever happens, Norquist's thesis needs vindication, that's for sure, or we'll be out in the political wilderness for four years, at the least.

Dark Moment of American Conservatism?

I took a lot of heat this winter and spring in my unfllinching support for John McCain, as many readers may recall.

It's hard to forget how bitter were the attacks against those supporting McCain, or against those backing Mike Huckabee - with some of the most intense attacks levied by the right-wing partisans at the National Review (which had endorsed Mitt Romney).

I'm thus once again feeling on the "right" side of things - being faithful to my convictions, in my earlier blogging - after reading this piece by Adam Graham on his second thoughts about joining the "relentless assaults" against Mike Huckabee's primary bid:

National Review is set this Friday to release the names of four people it views as unacceptable Vice-Presidential Candidates: Tom Ridge, Charlie Crist, Joe Lieberman, and Mike Huckabee, and frankly I could care less.

In December, I listened to and joined in the DC echo-chamber that slammed Mike Huckabee mercilessly. I fed on the constant negative drumbeat of National Review and their relentless assaults on Arkansas’ former Governor. I bought into it, I regurgitated it.

I never bothered to look into the facts, particularly in regards to the charges against Mike Huckabee’s fiscal record. If I had, I would have found out that he had two court rulings come out against his state that forced increases in Medicaid and Education, and that on top of that he faced a legislature that was at least 70% Democrat every year he was in office and could override his veto by a simple majority. I wonder which Huckabee critic could have done more for conservative values than Huckabee under those circumstances.

If this past election cycle taught us nothing, it taught us that bias exists in the conservative media. The one-sided attacks on Mike Huckabee last December were not only unfair, they allowed the rise of John McCain to the Republican nomination, as the National Review-anointed leader of the Conservative movement surrendered on February 7th after having won only one competitive primary.

Conservative defeat is the legacy of National Review in the 2008 campaign. Why bother listening to them? Last week, I did a podcast in which I began to talk about some of the activities of John McCain, the nominee that obsessive huckacritics pushed over the top by becoming the echo chamber of groups like National Review and the Club for Growth and I wept for what I helped to bring about.

I feel as Heritage Foundation Founder Paul Weyrich did when he rose to speak to the National Policy Council to confess, “Friends, before all of you and before Almighty God, I want to say I was wrong”....

Beyond this dark moment in the history of American Conservatism, I see glimmers of hope ... There is hope for our country. It just won’t be found in places you’d expect like the offices of National Review.

I just don't pay that much attention to National Review, although actually some of the recent writing over there's gotten better, with Andrew McCarthy and Peter Weiner, for example.

But this is the first I've heard about National Review's warning on the un-Fantastic Four noted above. I don't know enough about Crist to say either way, but I think Ridge is a no-name, and Lieberman is simply a pro-war Democrat who would not be accepted by rank-and-file Republicans as McCain's running-mate.

With Huckabee, however, I personally thought he might consolidate a lot of evangelicals around McCain in the general, if he were to wind-up on the ticket (I also noted, at the time, however, that Huckabee needed to drop out of the race, rather than delay McCain's victory lap).

I generally don't prognosticate on the veepstakes - as long as McCain selects someone young and experienced, I'll be happy.

Neocon Blog Wars! An Update

In an earlier entry, "Neocon Blog Wars!," I made light of the conflict between Joe Klein and the neoconservatives over at Commentary.

Well, it turns out this is not a laughing matter. As Jennifer Rubin relays, the Anti-Defamation League has gotten involved, calling out Klein for allegations of "divided loyalties" among Jewish Americans on the war in Iraq:

Fulfilling its historic role as a nonpartisan watchdog against anti-Semitism, the Anti-Defamation League has acted quickly in the case of Joe Klein and his jaw-dropping use, on the Time Magazine blog Swampland, of the anti-Semitic argument of “divided loyalties” against Sen. Joseph Lieberman and those neoconservatives who supported the war. In a plainly worded letter sent yesterday, the ADL honcho said this:

We were deeply troubled by your outrageous assertion on Time Magazine’s “Swampland” blog that Jewish neoconservatives “plumped” for the war in Iraq and are now doing the same for “an even more foolish assault on Iran” with the goal of making the world “safe for Israel.” (”Surge Protection,” June 24). Whether or not one feels that America’s war on Iraq was justified, the charge that it is being fought by the United States on behalf of Israel is both offensive and categorically false.

There can be no question that in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, legitimate and serious American security and foreign policy interests played a critical role in President Bush’s decision to attack Iraq. Moreover, many top decision-makers in the administration who advocated for war hardly fit the mold of a “Jewish Neocon” – Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell being the most prominent among them.

The notion that Jews with “divided loyalties” were behind the decision to go to war is reminiscent of age-old anti-Semitic canards about a Jewish conspiracy to control and manipulate government….We are disappointed that a respected and thoughtful writer of your caliber you would resort to such stereotyping.

Klein responded quickly, and with the same quiet dignity that characterized his original post:

I have never said that Jewish neocons were the primary reason we went to war in Iraq….But Jewish neoconservatives certainly played a subsidiary role in providing an intellectual rationale for the war. In a 2003 column, I called their arguments “the casus belli that dare not speak its name.” The notion of a “benign domino theory”–benign, that is, for the interests of Israel—was certainly abroad in the community during that time….And there is now, in my opinion, an even more dangerous tendency among Jewish neoconservatives to encourage a pre-emptive attack on Iran’s nuclear program. Their gleeful, intellectual warmongering—given the vast dangers and complexities of an attack on Iran–is nauseating….

I am disappointed, but not surprised, by your claim of antisemitism. But that’s what you do for a living, isn’t it? I find your “outrage” particularly galling because the people you defend are constantly spewing canards against those who favor talking to the Palestinians, or who don’t favor witless bellicosity when it comes to Iran. Their campaign of defamation has cost people jobs, damaged reputations and careers. I am very tired of having reasonable people accused of being “soft on terrorism” or “unpatriotic” or favoring “surrender”–Joe Lieberman’s favorite—by Jewish neoconservatives who seem to have a neurotic need to prove their toughness….

Foxman has now responded:

Our concern is with the term “Jewish neoconservatives” and the distressing claim that those individuals are eager to serve Israel’s interests against the interests of their own country….

Neoconservatives have the right to make their case without having their religion brought up. So, too, do those on the opposite end of the political spectrum, whether Jewish or not….Contrary to your assertion, ADL is extremely careful in making accusations about anti-Semitism and we spend every day in our work all over the country assessing the validity — or lack thereof — of such accusations….

The letters can be read in full here.

I'll update when I have more.

Klein's essay in question, "Surge Protection," is here.

Barack Obama and Progressive Netroots Rage

Anyone who's followed the FISA debate this week will have seen the violent froth around the blogosphere, which is a good indicator as to how totalitarian are those on the extreme left of the political spectrum.

For example, Sam Stein, at Huffington Post, discusses just how angry were some leftists with Barack Obama's support for the congressional compromise on government surveillance:

Only weeks into the general election campaign and already a notable tension is beginning to materialize within the Democratic Party. At question is Sen. Barack Obama's relationship with the progressive netroots, the online community that helped aid the Senator's rise to the presidential nomination, but has since seemingly played second fiddle in terms of courted constituencies.

Obama's decision to embrace a compromise on FISA legislation -- a virtual slap in the face to some progressive bloggers demanding no legal immunity for telecommunications companies -- was the catalyst of the recent chatter. Other concerns arose days prior when Obama cut an advertisement on behalf of a conservative southern Democrat whose primary challenger was favored by the liberal blogosphere.

But for some progressive activists, the issue is not simply one of policy, but a concern that Obama's willingness to snub their political wishes is far more endemic.

"You can see it with FISA. He really doesn't feel that much kinship with the priorities of the netroots and I don't think he has made any secret of that," said Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake. "I have to say he is very consistent. He has gone outside the netroots for his strategy... People who feel betrayed right now, I'm not sure why, because it is extremely consistent with what they should have expected."

Stein notes that not all of those in the radical leftosphere are upset with Obama, which further enrages those steaming at Obama's apostasies. In addition to Jane Hamsher, Glenn Greenwald's been going off on anyone who's not taking HIS position on FISA's alleged extreme criminality.

Rick Moran, at Right Wing Nuthouse, in his post on the "progressives" and FISA, really captures the essence of the far-left's rage:

The hysterically exaggerated, intellectually dishonest portrayal of the workings of the NSA surveillance program by many on the left is something I have catalogued on this site since its existence was revealed by the New York Times way back in December of 2005.

To be honest, the netroots have made themselves ridiculously easy targets for ridicule.

My own reservations about the program remain. Reasonable, honest people can debate how this program skirts the law and may – depending exactly how it works which is something that to this day remains hidden – cross the line of legality. The fact that debate raged in the Justice Department over the legality of the program with many career prosecutors opposed while others supported it should demonstrate to any reasonable person that at worst, the Terrorist Surveillance Program was an extremely close call.

Not so scream the netnuts. To the hysterical three year olds who make up the “reality based community,” facts don’t matter nor does it cross their infantile minds that such a surveillance program is even necessary. The program is illegal – no debate is allowed.

To such an incurious crowd we are now about to hand the reigns [sic] of government.

What is most worrisome is that they have so much invested in denying the reality of the terrorist threat – that the whole thing was dreamed up by Bush to seize power and become dictator – that one can legitimately question just how serious these mountebanks will be about national security. No doubt they will be relentless in their pursuit of terrorists – after we’ve been hit again. Cold comfort for those Americans who die as a result of their “terrorists are innocent until they commit an overt act” mindset.

Holy Christ! Even Barack Obama thinks the NSA surveillance program is indispensable to our national security. Of course, Obama has no better idea that the program is or was illegal despite his claims to the contrary. He is simply “playing the rubes” in the netroots community as Ian Welsh tells it at Firedoglake:

The FISA Cloture vote just passed. The Senate will now consider the motion to proceed with the bill, then they’ll head to the bill itself ... Various motions will be put forward to strip immunity, odds are they will fail. Then a number of the 80 who voted to restrict debate will vote against FISA so they can say they were against the bill. However this was the real vote, and the rest is almost certainly nothing but kabuki for the rubes.

Obama and McCain were both absent, as was Clinton. Unimpressive, but unsurprising, though I suppose I’m disappointed by Clinton (Obama has made it clear he didn’t intend to try and stop the bill.) Clinton and Obama will claim there was no point since it wasn’t close. But, with their leadership, it might well have gone the other way.

The folks who actually voted for the Bill of Rights are listed below. Remember, after the debate there’ll be a larger number of people who vote against this bill, but this was the real vote, and those Senators are just playing the rubes.

In less stressful, less partisan times, it may have been possible to debate the necessity for this surveillance program and even whether or not it actually steps over the line of legality, although how any definitive answers could have been arrived at with key parts of the program still classified and unknown to all but a very select few in government would have been problematic indeed.

Note again Moran's key point: These are the folks we're about to hand the reins of government.

Of course, we've still got the fall campaign, but I'll be relieved if Obama, upon taking office, really does diss the radical lefties. Such a turn could be the biggest act of political statesmanship since Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon.

See also, "Netroots Jilted by Obama FISA Stand."

The Thugs Win? The Liberal Backlash Begins

The ink's barely dry in today's Supreme Court ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller, but the left-wing backlash has begun.

Here's Colbert King at the Washington Post:

There's one group of District residents absolutely unfazed by today's U.S. Supreme Court ruling shooting down the District's strict handgun ban: the dudes who have been blowing away their fellow citizens with abandon since the law was put on the books 32 years ago.

Operating under the notion that it's better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission, our shooters long ago decided not to wait for the high court's thoughts on the matter. They simply arrogated to themselves the right to keep and bear arms and, with that right, license to shoot and kill, with impunity, whatever and whenever the evil spirits moved them.

The record will show that our home-grown shooters have blown through the city's so-called strict handgun ban like John Riggins going up the middle. Over the past 20 years, there have been more than 6,500 homicides in the nation's capital, most committed with firearms, predominantly handguns. In 1976, the year the ban was put in place, the District had 135 gun-related murders, according to CNN. Last year, the number reached 143. Thus far this year, we've had 85 murders.

You thought D.C. stands for "District of Columbia? "Dodge City" is more like it.

If D.C. street thugs are pleased by anything, it's probably the fact that five of the justices - a slim majority, but that's all it takes to win - have come around to seeing things their way.

Well, if D.C. really was more like Dodge City, I'm betting more citizen-cowboys would be shootin' their way to a safer metropolis.

More later...

Supreme Court Favors Gun Owners, Obama Waffles

The big political news this afternoon is the Supreme Court's decision in the D.C. Second Amendment case.

The Los Angeles Times has the background:

Americans have a right to keep a gun at home for self-defense, the Supreme Court ruled today in striking down part of a handgun ban in the District of Columbia.

By a 5-4 vote, the court concluded that the 2nd Amendment and its famous right "to keep and bear arms" protects the gun rights of individuals, rather than just a state's right to maintain a militia.

Justice Antonin Scalia, speaking for the court, said the history of the 2nd Amendment shows its authors intended to protect the "right of the people" as individuals to have weapons, both to defend themselves and their community.

The ruling is the first in the high court's long history to strike down a gun law based on the 2nd Amendment.

But the court's ruling appeared to be narrow. Scalia stressed that nothing in today's decision casts doubts on laws that forbid felons or the mentally ill from having guns.

He also said the government can strictly regulate when and where people have guns. For example, he said guns may be prohibited near schools and in or near government buildings.

"Like most rights, the right secured by the 2nd Amendment is not unlimited," Scalia said.

But the four dissenters faulted the majority for opening the door to legal challenges to various gun-control measures. Justice John Paul Stevens, speaking for the dissenters, said the 2nd Amendment "was adopted to protect the right of the people of each of the several states to maintain a well-regulated militia."

"The court is making new law today" to extend this right to individuals acting on their own, Stevens said.

The White House issued a statement calling the case historic. "The president strongly agrees with the Supreme Court's historic decision today that the 2nd Amendment protects the individual right of Americans to keep and bear arms," it said. "This has been the administration's long-held view. The president is also pleased that the court concluded that the D.C. firearm laws violate that right.

From the campaign trail, Republican John McCain hailed the decision as "a landmark victory for 2nd Amendment freedom" and chided Democrat Barack Obama for not joining him in a friend-of-the-court brief. For his part, Obama issued a statement saying that the court had in effect endorsed his view that while "the 2nd Amendment protects the right of individuals to bear arms" it does not preclude "the need for crime-ravaged communities to save their children from the violence that plagues our streets through common-sense, effective safety measures."

It turns out Obama's trying to get on the right side of public opinion on gun rights (73 percent believes the 2nd Amendment guarantees the right to gun ownership).

For more, see "Obama Camp Disavows Last Year's 'Inartful' Statement on D.C. Gun Law."

Taggers Shoot Business Owner in Hollywood

The Los Angeles Times reports that an auto body shop owner was shot in the chest while confronting graffiti taggers defacing the side of his building:

An auto body shop owner shot in the chest Wednesday during a confrontation with gang-affiliated taggers who had scrawled graffiti on his Hollywood business was in stable condition today, according to authorities and the man's brother.

The midday incident took place in the 5000 block of Hollywood Boulevard shortly after 1 p.m. when workers at the business spotted taggers painting a side wall with 6-foot high black letters and told the owner.

The man and his employees were writing down license plate information when the alleged taggers got out of their car, said LAPD Sgt. Alfredo Flores. The owner told the two youths --described as white males, each not much taller than 5 feet -- not to tag his property, Flores said. One of the youths pulled out a handgun, shot the man in the chest and then got back in the car and drove away.

Authorities said the youths are believed to have ties to a local gang, known as Armenian Power. Surveillance video from the shop is being used by detectives who said they think they have identified the youths and are searching for them now, said LAPD Cmdr. Pat Gannon.

Gannon said other youths had been questioned but no arrests had been made in the case. A vehicle believed to have been used by the suspects was found Wednesday in the San Fernando Valley and seized by officers. The auto body shop had previously been tagged with graffiti and the owner had installed video cameras connected to the store's computers to monitor activity.

At the shop this morning, the wounded man's brother, who would not give his name, said only that his brother was doing fine.

The taggers' bold black letters were still fresh on the building's beige wall. At least one coat of paint already covered a previous paint job. The wall faces the parking lot for a costume rental shop and a Head Start program.

The article continues, at the link.

Neocon Blog Wars!

Let me say right off the bat that it's better to observe blog wars that to engage in them, LOL!!

My reference is the big kerfuffle breaking out between Joe Klein and the neocons.

Max Boot's got his latest installment here, but I was especially intrigued by the outside observations over at the American Scene:

I imagine Joe Klein is in a bind. He was one of the most truculent liberal hawks, when he rightly attracted the ire and condemnation of smart young liberals. He later accepted their criticisms — wisely — but instead of taking on a more humble and thoughtful pose, he has reinvented himself as a liberal firebrand, actively participating in internal debates on the left, paying close heed to the shifting moods and tendencies of the center-left blogosphere. And a good thing too: there’s a lot of wisdom to be mined there, as most readers of The American Scene know firsthand. Yet my sense is that Klein’s community-mindedness is leading him astray.

The American Scene calls the war "not the right thing to do," and links to the left's Patrick Cockburn and his recent article on Iraq, so you can see where the essay's headed.

I've written a little on the Klein/neocon blog wars, highlighting Peter Wehner's deft take down of Klein previously.

You might check out Andrew Sullivan as well, "Iraq = Germany."

It's all good reading, in any case. Enjoy!!

Obama Throws Maoist Hardliner Under the Bus

Via Gateway Pundit, it turns out another one of Barack Obama's community bloggers has been given the boot:

Mike Klonsky, the Maoist Hardliner, Obama supporter and former best friend of the Weatherman terrorist group founders William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, received a $175,000 grant from the William Ayers/Barack Obama-led Annenberg Challenge to run the Small Schools Workshop.

Klonsky belonged to the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and was best friends with William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn who later became famous for their acts of terrorism when the SDS broke up and the Weathermen terror group was formed.

Between 1979 and 1981, Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) (CPML) chairman and Obama supporter Mike Klonsky was repeatedly feted with state-dinner-level visits to Beijing.

There's more at the link. The Obama campaign's thrown Klonsky under the bus.

I'm frankly at pains to find a reason why these "community blogs" are a good thing.

But at least I'm I know this: It keeps on getting better and better at Obama's official page!

Screenshot Credit: LGF

Differing Concepts of Patriotism in Campaign '08

Newhouse News has an interesting piece on how the candidates embody differing concepts of patriotism:

The thunder of this year's Fourth of July fireworks may provide brief respite from the partisan clamor over who is the truer patriot — John McCain or Barack Obama.

The battle lines are familiar. They were drawn during the Vietnam War, when McCain was a prisoner of war, and Obama but a child.

Four decades later, the contrast between two presidential candidates has never been starker.

Here is the grizzled former Navy flier who has vowed "I will never surrender in Iraq." And there, the brash newcomer with the unlined face whose startling success already is the source of so much lump-in-the-throat pride in the genius of America.

A black father, a white mother and a name that couldn't help but confound. But here he is, and here we are.

John McCain is a classical patriot.

On the Fourth, he could deliver Thucydides' "Funeral Oration of Pericles" virtually verbatim, changing only "Athens" to "America."

It would fit, to a T.

Pericles, the Athenian statesman and military commander, delivered the oration — as recorded by the historian Thucydides — in 431 B.C., to honor those killed in the first year of what would be a very long war with Sparta. It is a paean to courage, duty and honor, but also to what Pericles proclaimed to be the uniquely Athenian virtues of democracy, freedom, tolerance and opportunity. And it is an exhortation to fight and die for the glory of an empire determined in its might — and required by its sense of superiority — to lead the world.

As his choice of Independence Day material, Barack Obama might want something a bit more contemporary, like the 1938 poem "Let America Be America Again." Written by the Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes, it is a plaintive call for America to eschew empty patriotism and live up to its founding ideals:

"O, let my land be a land where Liberty

"Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,

"But opportunity is real, and life is free,

"Equality is in the air we breathe."

"Yes We Can," cried the Obama campaign, as if in reply to Hughes' lament.

"America can change," declared Obama in his March 18 speech on race in Philadelphia. "That is the true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope — the audacity to hope — for what we can and must achieve tomorrow."

Almost all Americans consider themselves to be very patriotic, according to the Pew Research Center in Washington. But Pew has also found that Democrats and Republicans have discernibly different tendencies in the tenor of the patriotism.

Republicans tend to be far more likely than Democrats to believe "we all should be willing to fight for our country ... right or wrong," and to support the use of pre-emptive military force. They are less likely to care what the rest of the world thinks of us. (According to a recent Pew survey of citizens in 24 countries, the rest of the world prefers Obama to McCain.)

Over time, as Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer write in their book "The True Patriot," those different tendencies have hardened into a caricature that "says the right loves America, and the left looks down on it. It says conservatives are proud to wave the flag and proclaim America to be the best, and liberals, embarrassed by the whole chest-thumping spectacle, complain about America's errors."

It is a caricature that found unfortunate resonance for the Obama campaign in February, when Michelle Obama declared, "For the first time in my adult life I am really proud of my country because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback."

Before and since, said Liu, who supports Obama, nearly every assault on the Illinois senator has sought to blemish his patriotism, to pose the question, "Is he American enough?"

"This is going to be the dominant frame of the general election," said Liu, who served as a speechwriter and senior domestic policy adviser in the Clinton White House, and who believes Obama must do a better job of articulating an unself-conscious "progressive patriotism."

Well, I've offered my own theories as to why Democrats - and especially prominent Obama backers - announce their antipathy to the United States, and frankly to spin it as a postmodern version of patriotism doesn't sound compelling.

I'll let some of my commenters hash it out, but I'm firmly convinced that the GOP's brand of love-of-country's the appropriate tradition of patriotic support.

See also, "Should Revolutionaries Feel Good About Obama?"

Obama's Egocentrism

Karl Rove's got a great piece up this morning on Barack Obama's egocentrism, "It's All About Obama":

Many candidates have measured the Oval Office drapes prematurely. But Barack Obama is the first to redesign the presidential seal before the election.

His seal featured an eagle emblazoned with his logo, and included a Latin version of his campaign slogan. This was an attempt by Sen. Obama to make himself appear more presidential. But most people saw in the seal something else – chutzpah – and he's stopped using it. Such arrogance – even self-centeredness – have featured often in the Obama campaign.

Consider his treatment of Jeremiah Wright. After Rev. Wright repeated his anti-American slurs at the National Press Club, Mr. Obama said their relationship was forever changed – but not because of what he'd said about America. Instead, Mr. Obama complained, "I don't think he showed much concern for me."

Translation: Rev. Wright is an impediment to my ambitions. So, as it turns out, are some of Mr. Obama's previous pledges.

For example, Mr. Obama has said he "strongly supported public financing" and pledged to take federal funds for the fall, thereby limiting his spending to roughly $84 million. Now convinced he can raise more than $84 million, he reversed course last week, ditching the federal money and its limits. But by discarding his earlier pledge so easily, he raises doubts about whether his word can be trusted.

Last month he replied "anywhere, anytime" to John McCain's invitation to have joint town hall appearances. Last week he changed his mind. Fearing 10 impromptu town halls, Mr. Obama parried the invitation by offering two such events – one the night of July 4, when every ambulatory American is watching fireworks or munching hotdogs, and another in August. His spokesman then said, "Take it or leave it." So much for "anywhere, anytime."

Read the whole thing.

Rove offers even more examples of Obama's hypocritical arrogance and egocentrism. It looks as though there's some empirical support for the claim that Obama's a snob:

See also my earlier entry, "The Obama Seal."

Related: Pandagon, "Rove Should Get A Better Candidate."

Congratulations Fresno State!

While watching Sunday Night Baseball last weekend, I noticed a blurb scrolling at the bottom of my TV screen: Fresno State had reached the national championship in the NCAA's College World Series.

I graduated from Fresno State in 1992.

As any alumnus knows, Fresno takes enormous pride in the university's athletic programs, so I'm proud to report that the Bulldogs not only won the national championship (the first for Fresno State's men's athletics in any sport), but came back from a 1-0 deficit in the series, and that's after being the lowest seeded entry into the tournament.

From "underdogs to wonderdogs" is the banner headline in the papers this morning. Here's this, from the Fresno Bee:

It happened, just as it does in the fairy tales. A happy ending to complete this Cinderella season. A movie based on real-life memories that won't go away anytime soon. Maybe not ever.

Fresno State captured the NCAA championship Wednesday night in front of an announced crowd of 18,932 at Rosenblatt Stadium.

It took a 6-1 victory against Georgia before a national television audience to complete the improbable run, which safely goes down as college baseball's most historic underdog run.

Unseeded Fresno State -- a team that needed to win the Western Athletic Conference tournament simply to make the NCAA Tournament and then was given a No. 4 regional seed survived its sixth elimination game of the postseason.

Fresno State lost the first game of this best-of-three series then came back to win the next two against a team that was seeded No. 8 nationally.

"Isn't this amazing?" said Fresno State outfielder Steve Susdorf as he clutched the NCAA trophy wearing a national champion T-shirt. "I'm shaking."

Wednesday's game, actually, wasn't too nerve-rattling for Fresno State.

There was no need for late-inning heroics to save the day.

Those types of performances were used earlier in Fresno State's run to get to Wednesday.

It really didn't go down to the final inning, though Fresno State coach Mike Batesole took no chances and marched out closer Brandon Burke in the end.

For the most part, all Fresno State needed was pitcher Justin Wilson and outfielder Steve Detwiler.

Despite pitching on three days of rest, Wilson lived up to his big-game reputation with seven shutout innings before finally allowing a run in the eighth.

With his fastball in the low 90-mph range and his offspeed pitches biting, the left-hander from Buchanan High struck out nine and allowed just five hits against a Georgia team that came in with a .311 average and had feasted off fastballs throughout the College World Series.

Often, Wilson would put batters away with an inside fastball that seemed untouchable -- too fast for hitters to catch up to and with too much natural movement to lock on to.

"What he did off three days of rest was unbelievable," Fresno State catcher Danny Grubb said. "They weren't going to touch him. Not when Justin's throwing like that. He found energy somewhere. Man, he was amazing."

Detwiler supplied the offense with a perfect performance at the plate -- going 4 for 4 with two home runs and driving in all six runs.

Moved up two spots in the lineup because Georgia started a left-handed pitcher, the right-handed Detwiler smashed a two-run homer to right field in the second inning then connected for a three-run shot to left field in the sixth.

In between, Detwiler supplied an RBI double in the fourth to pick up a Fresno State offense that seemed spent, having used all of its bullets a night earlier in amassing 19 hits in a 19-10 victory against Georgia on Tuesday.

Take away Detwiler on Wednesday and Fresno State hit 4 for 31 as a team.

And Detwiler did it with a torn tendon in his left thumb, suffered two months ago. He also was hitting just .231 (6 for 26) coming into the CWS finale.

"For him to have the game that he had today, it was perfect for the ballclub," Fresno State coach Mike Batesole said. "He's made of heart. To see him doing what he's doing, it inspires everybody."

The title run completed, Fresno State surely will inspire future underdog teams for years to come, when coaches might recount this 2008 season and tell their team, "If Fresno State could do it, so can we."

Congratulations Fresno State!

Photo Credit: "Fresno State’s Philosophy: One Game at a Time," New York Times.