Obama in Israel

Why are Jews suspicious of Barack Obama? Jennifer Rubin notes that Obama's "expressed puzzlement at how American Jews could be wary of him."

Rubin discusses Obama's reception in Israel, and points readers to Calev Ben-David's essay at the Jerusalem Post, "A Harsh Welcome Message for Barack Obama":

Welcome to Israel, Senator Obama!

Although you haven't yet attained the White House, your hosts have still graciously prepared for you all the honors and activities usually received for visiting heads of state....

On top of all that, a special unexpected welcoming reception was arranged on Tuesday afternoon, by a young man of this city who seemed determined to deliver a message to you on the day of your arrival in Jerusalem.

Although subsequent investigation may prove different, there's good reason to believe Ghassan Abu Tir's bulldozer terror attack was deliberately staged as a greeting gift for you, Senator Obama.

He belongs to the same Jerusalem family clan as imprisoned Hamas official Muhammad Abu Tir, so he is likely to have had ties to radical Islamist elements. He was shot dead as he was driving his bulldozer up King David Street straight in the direction of the King David Hotel, which you were due to check into later in the day.

And the timing of the incident was logical, since such an attack would have been much harder to pull off after your arrival, when the heavier police presence on the street would have stopped Abu Tir's rampage even sooner than was the case.

What was the message, then, that Abu Tir was likely trying to deliver to you? Well, let's consider some of the few facts about him that we already know. His village of Umm Tuba is one of those fortunate Arab neighborhoods on the periphery of Jerusalem that is not cut off from the rest of the city by the security barrier. Thus it is one of the better-off Arab communities in the capital - just like Jebl Mukaber and Sur Bahir, the neighboring Arab villages that produced the perpetrators of the previous two terror attacks in Jerusalem, including the original bulldozer rampage just three weeks ago.

So keep in mind, Senator Obama, that the gainfully employed Abu Tir was probably not one of those Palestinians you spoke about earlier on your trip, whose motivation to carry out terror was primarily due to economic deprivation. Nor is he likely one of those who shared your dream to see a Palestinian state rise up alongside Israel.

His message to you was that some things are not negotiable, and some people do not really wish to be negotiated with, at least not on any terms but their own; that Israel's crime is not what it does or where its borders are, but its very existence; and that no matter which president sits in the White House, those basic - or, one might say, sacred - principles will remain unchanged.

Of course, Senator Obama, you already know all that, and Abu Tir has perhaps only done you a favor of sorts in giving you the opportunity to further demonstrate this understanding to the voters back home - especially those Jewish Democratic voters who care deeply about the security of Israel.

Yes, Senator Obama, we're well aware here that you're currently polling at about 60 percent of the American Jewish vote, some 20 points behind the percentage of this constituency that supported the previous three Democratic presidential candidates.

And while it's true that adding to that number would only constitute a small sliver of the overall vote, that might still make a difference in such crucial battleground states as Ohio - where your campaign just last week appointed a special Jewish-outreach coordinator - and Florida, whose popular Jewish congressman Robert Wexler is co-chair of your campaign there and has even been mentioned in recent weeks as a potential vice-presidential pick for you....

We know you've had your occasional difficulties with some in the Jewish community, and if chosen president you would also have differences with Israeli policy, just like all previous occupants of the White House. From the Israeli perspective, though, especially considering our own deep divisions, the details of your policies here and elsewhere in the region are of secondary importance.

The one thing that all Israelis can agree on is that whoever sits in the Oval Office must understand what a difficult and dangerous corner of the globe this nation finds itself in, one that would be so even if the Jewish State had never been founded.

Thus we need a U.S. president wise enough to understand the need for diplomacy, yes - but equally so, one strong and courageous enough to utilize America's incomparable might when diplomacy fails.

In short, we need a president who won't be bulldozed by those who hold in contempt the values that both the US and Israel stand for. That, Senator Obama, is the message you can send back home from Jerusalem, on the day after the blood spilled by Ghassan Abu Tir practically on your doorstep ran down King David Street.

Recall, though, that Obama has spent recreation time with Rashid Khalidi, a "critic of Israel and advocate for Palestinian rights," who has served as an Obama fundraiser (see also, "Rashid Khalidi and the Risks for Obama").

Obama also hung out with Louis Farrakhan, participating in the Muslim hate-preacher's Million Man March.

Obama opposed the Kyl-Lieberman amendment, the congressional measure formally identifying Iran's Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization.

Not only that, Obama declared in May that Iran's hegemonic ambitions pose no "serious threat to the U.S.", and by extension to the state of Israel.

Given all of this, Obama's outward solidarity with Israel this week can be seen as another flip-flop: The Illinois Senator stated last year that the U.S. cannot military to stop genocide, while at Yad Vashem he's turned around to say "never again"!

Obama on genocide ... change we can believe in?

If one can be judged by their actions and words, Barack Obama seems an unlikely friend of Jewish people.

American Jews might keep this in mind as the November election approaches.

For the bulldozer attack, see "Construction Vehicle Attack in Israel."

See also, "Obama Sizes up Mideast Stage."

Photo Credit: "Senator Barack Obama at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem on Wednesday," New York Times.

All Hail McBama!

I frankly don't think folks anticipated the political implications of victory in Iraq.

It's a strange turn of events, where the candidate who was right all along is now a spectator in the media's adulation of Barack Obama. Thomas Friedman's even gotten to calling the Democratic nominee, "McBama."

Yet, interesting, the antiwar crowd remains determined to deny the surge had anything to do with Iraq's stunning achievement, which is the basis for the McBama phenomenon. To hear folks on the left, the strategic turnaround had entirely local origins, with the indigenous Anbar Awakening, for example.

Looking at the timelines on Anbar, the Weekly Standard offers a compelling rebuttal to the left's version of pre-surge Anbar provine:

As Frederick Kagan wrote in September 2007: “Anbari tribal leaders did begin to turn against AQI in their areas last year before the surge began, but not before Colonel Sean MacFarland began to apply in Ramadi the tactics and techniques that are the basis of the current strategy in Baghdad.”

If McCain was saying that Col. McFarland's counterinsurgency approach "began the Anbar Awakening" then that's pretty much on the mark. The "surge" after all is often shorthand for both the addition of U.S. troops as well as the adoption of a counterinsurgency strategy.

Of course, the official "surge" was ordered by President Bush in January 2007--four months after the Awakening began. Some are pointing to this statement as proof that McCain gets "his facts all wrong", as Matthew Yglesias writes.

But Yglesias's colleague Marc Ambinder writes that a charitable reading of McCain's statement is "that the surge helped the Anbar Awakening to succeed because the shieks could actually be protected."

Indeed, the surge did not midwife the Anbar Awakening--it kept the Awakening from being strangled in the crib. Here's how the Washington Post characterized a Marine intelligence report on Anbar from mid-November 2006:

The U.S. military is no longer able to defeat a bloody insurgency in western Iraq or counter al-Qaeda's rising popularity there [...]

Moreover, most Sunnis now believe it would be unwise to count on or help U.S. forces because they are seen as likely to leave the country before imposing stability.

So two months after the Anbar Awakening began, the province looked hopeless. Yet Yglesias contends that the surge was not largely responsible for the progress in Anbar:

This specific timing issue aside, we can see here the larger point that McCain doesn't actually seem to know what the surge was. But the surge troops were overwhelmingly sent to increase the level of manpower in Baghdad (i.e., not where the Anbar Awakening happened)

But Fallujah--in Anbar--is about 30 miles west of Baghdad. That's the distance between Washington D.C. and Dulles airport. Might not U.S. forces killing terrorists in Baghdad have reduced the level of violence in Fallujah as well as 30 miles farther west in Ramadi?

Furthermore, two additional Marine battalions were sent to Anbar, and it wasn't until they were deployed and the counterinsurgency implemented that the Anbar Awakening flourished.

The Awakening, Kagan wrote,

proceeded slowly and fitfully for most of 2006 and, indeed, into 2007. But when Colonel John Charlton’s brigade relieved MacFarland’s in Ramadi and was joined by two additional Marine battalions (part of the surge) elsewhere in Anbar, the “awakening” began to accelerate very rapidly. At the start of 2007 there were only a handful of Anbaris in the local security forces. By the summer there were over 14,000. [...] The fact is that neither the surge nor the turn of the tribal leaders would in itself have been enough to turn Anbar around — both were necessary, and will remain so for some time.

Of course, the hated Kagans will never be credited with being right about anything on Iraq, so the truth of the story will be like a giant Sequioa felled in a forest grove, silent but deadly.

More deeply, though, is the propensity of left-wing pundits and the mainstream press to posit Barack Obama as "right all along." You know, how John McCain's "adopted" Obama's plan for withdrawal. Or most recently, McCain's age increasingly reveals a propensity for gaffes.

Yet, beyond the tit-for-tat on media missteps, it's McCain who's been right all along, and with the meme now well established that Obama's "right" on Iraq, McCain needs to go with the flow to focus on exactly the details of the Obama foreign policy. The Washington Post, for example, indicates that Obama's wrong in his military proposals for Iraq:

THE INITIAL MEDIA coverage of Barack Obama's visit to Iraq suggested that the Democratic candidate found agreement with his plan to withdraw all U.S. combat forces on a 16-month timetable. So it seems worthwhile to point out that, by Mr. Obama's own account, neither U.S. commanders nor Iraq's principal political leaders actually support his strategy.

Gen. David H. Petraeus, the architect of the dramatic turnaround in U.S. fortunes, "does not want a timetable," Mr. Obama reported with welcome candor during a news conference yesterday. In an interview with ABC, he explained that "there are deep concerns about . . . a timetable that doesn't take into account what [American commanders] anticipate might be some sort of change in conditions."

Further, on Iraq and the larger terror war:

Obama's account of his strategic vision remains eccentric. He insists that Afghanistan is "the central front" for the United States, along with the border areas of Pakistan. But there are no known al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan, and any additional U.S. forces sent there would not be able to operate in the Pakistani territories where Osama bin Laden is headquartered. While the United States has an interest in preventing the resurgence of the Afghan Taliban, the country's strategic importance pales beside that of Iraq, which lies at the geopolitical center of the Middle East and contains some of the world's largest oil reserves. If Mr. Obama's antiwar stance has blinded him to those realities, that could prove far more debilitating to him as president than any particular timetable.

Facts like this should form the basis for a major adjustment in John McCain's presidential campaign.

The Arizona Senator needs to make a national address on victory in Iraq. McCain's mission is to hammer the point that Obama's been consistently wrong on Iraq and the surge, and that Obama's proposals for the future direction of the war are out of touch with military and strategic realities on the ground.

More importantly, as Rich Lowry and Ramesh Ponnuru argue, McCain needs to go on the attack across the board - he needs to pull a Hillary Clinton, with 3am campaign spots, beer and chasers with the working class, topped off the Maverick-style GOP talking points on promising public policy solutions to the electoral angst of American people.

Photo Credit: "Obama Survives Iraq, Looks Ahead," Time

Barack Obama at the West Bank

Via Little Green Footballs, here's Palestinian artist Walid Ayyub completing a portrait of Barack Obama in Ramallah, West Bank:

As Barack Obama prepares to visit the city of Ramallah in the West Bank, a Palestinian artist sketches Obama among his other portraits of Jesus, “martyred” Hamas terrorist Abdel Aziz Rantisi (“The Pediatrician of Death”), and Che Guevara.

With a peace dove, of course. You couldn’t make this up.

See also, "Obama Reaps Whirlwind of Positive Coverage In Iraq."

Photo Credit: Getty Images

President-Elect Obama Tours Europe

The National Review offers a penetrating editorial of Barack Obama's appeal in Europe:

When Barack Obama arrives in Europe this week, the senator will be greeted as a president-elect. His election in November is regarded as a mere formality — and in Europe it would be one. Obama’s margin of victory over John McCain in opinion polls is 51 percent in France, 49 percent in Germany, and 30 percent in Britain. What some skeptical European governments call “Obamania” is sweeping the continent.

Two factors largely explain this opinion tsunami: race and George W. Bush.

Taking their cue from America’s Obamaniacs, Europeans see the Illinois senator as a healer bringing absolution for the Republic’s original sin of racism. He shall overcome. But that blinding confidence is as far as the argument goes. How Obama will overcome is largely left unstated. Obama’s election, achieved in part by white votes, would itself mark a defeat for what remains of anti-black racism. But once an attempt is made to take the argument further, doubts set in.

If Obama follows the sort of race-conscious policies he has faithfully supported for the last quarter century — racial preferences and set-asides, now made more burdensome and complex by immigration — then racial divisions will continue and perhaps sharpen. If he is true to the “post-racial” rhetoric of his campaign, however, and seeks healing indirectly by helping the poor lift themselves out of poverty, then he would have better chances of long-term success. Short-term, though, he would invite noisy denunciations of betrayal from the Jacksons and Sharptons of this world.

In either event, healing would be postponed — and after a while, the failure of America to recreate itself as a post-racial utopia of universal goodwill would be held up as evidence of an unshakable racism. Disappointment on two continents is inherent in the current enthusiasm.

George W. Bush presents Obama with an even more tangled problem. Europeans regard Bush, his America, and his foreign policy as little short of diabolical. They see Obama as the Fifth Cavalry riding in to save them from such dangerous folly. But while they were demonstrating against “Bushitler,” his foreign policy changed sharply on a range of issues — North Korea, Iran, European defense — in a “European” direction. Since the primaries ended and the Iraq surge succeeded, moreover, Obama has hedged his position on Iraq withdrawal (among other things). And Sen. McCain was already closer than President Bush to the European allies on most foreign-policy issues, including climate change.

So, as European governments (but not European peoples) see it, Obama differs only modestly with both McCain and Bush on the foreign-policy matters about which they care most. What distinguishes him is his lack of experience.

Obama is uneasily aware of this. He is also usually too shrewd to flatter European prejudices at the cost (paid by Sen. John Kerry) of seeming either anti-American or nationally ambivalent. He is likely therefore to play it safe in three ways. To the Europeans he will offer a strong and eloquent defense of the Atlantic alliance. To the Americans watching on television, he will stress that Europe must play a stronger part in NATO and in such alliance ventures as Afghanistan both by contributing more troops and resources and by actually fighting the enemy. And to both sides, he will avoid taking on contentious issues: Would he stand up to the Russians, for instance, and install missile defenses in central Europe?

There's more at the link.

For a more wonkish example of Obama's likely vision of Europe, see Jamie Rubin, "Building a New Atlantic Alliance: Restoring America's Partnership With Europe."

For a sample of the nihilist "Bushitler" European base, see Battle Angel, "How Do I Get These Stains Out?"

Progressivism Goes Mainstream?

Sometimes I ask myself "why"?

Why worry about the likes of Markos Moulitsas and the angry hordes of the hard-left blogosphere? These folks can't genuinely threaten traditional decency and order. They're nothing more than an extreme fringe, unnoticed by the great silent majority of Americans, to be tolerated, even indulged once in a while, right?

I'd say yes, but for the life of me Kos and others like him get a lot of attention, and their bullying totalitarianism gets results.

It turns out that the Austin American-Statesman has repudiated and removed from its website a front-page story on last week's Netroots Nation convention at the insistence of Daily Kos.

An article, critical of the netroots radicals, was written by Patrick Beach, a "featured writer" at the paper. In turn, Greg Mitchell, at Daily Kos, attacked Beach as writing an "opinion" piece instead of hard news:

The new newspaper trend - even extending to boring old AP - of encouraging reporters to not merely report but opine in their "news" pieces reared its ugly head again this morning by way of a front page story in the Austin American-Statesman on Saturday's Netroots Nation events.

Patrick Beach, a feature writer at the paper who once described himself as a "raging moderate," repeatedly described the gathering in stereotypes that better fit the aging Old Left of years ago than the much younger Netroots of today. I mean, how many of you have ever read much of Chomsky...?

What was Beach's sin? Hitting a little too close to home, I'd say. Here's a sample:

Name-dropping Al Gore and his call for a switch to clean, renewable energy within 10 years was enough to pull whoops of approval from the 2,000 or 3,000 marauding liberals gathered for Netroots Nation at the Austin Convention Center on Saturday morning.

So when the former vice president and Nobel Prize co-winner made a surprise — and cleverly scripted — appearance during U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's talk, it looked like the conference might turn into a faint-in.

Talk that Pelosi (who is arguably so left-leaning that her parenthetical should be D-Beijing) would have a Very Special Guest had been buzzing about the conference of liberal bloggers, pols and media types since it began Thursday (it concludes today). But it wasn't clear to attendees that something was afoot until a schedule change handed out Saturday morning indicated the speaker's talk would last 45 minutes longer than previously indicated.

Not that Gore's appearance was necessary to whip up the troops.

From the beginning, it was clear these people were convinced the electoral map would be repainted with a brush sopping with blue paint come November.

Perhaps the piece is a bit satirical, but it's not unlike what's published routinely on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, which includes an offbeat news story at the bottom of column three every morning, or the Los Angeles Times, which features "Column One" daily, with many of the feature stories comprising fun-loving takes on the quirks of life.

No matter ... the newspaper caved:

Readers expect front-page stories to speak directly and clearly about events and issues. Eliminating the possibility of misunderstanding from our work is a critical part of our daily newsroom routine. When we communicate in a way that could be misinterpreted, we fail to meet our standards.

Our front-page story Sunday about the Netroots Nation convention included doses of irony and exaggeration. It made assertions (that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi might find herself at home politically in Beijing, for example) and characterizations ("marauding liberals" was one) meant to amuse. For many readers, we failed.

In trying for a humorous take on the Netroots phenomenon without labeling it something other than a straightforward news story, we compromised our standards.

I guess that's it then. No more room for irony in serious journalism. I somehow doubt Jonathan Swift would be amused.

But there's more: Katherine Seelye reports that Markos Moulitsas - again - has announced that his progressive movement's the new mainstream:

Back in the early 1990s, with the rise of talk radio, conservative commentators derisively dubbed newspapers, magazines and broadcast television as the “mainstream media.” More recently, with the run-up to the Iraq war, liberal bloggers joined in, abbreviating the term to MSM.

But now the Internet has overtaken most newspapers and broadcasts as a source of news, and some on the left say the lingo ought to reflect that.

Markos Moulitsas, founder of the DailyKos Web site, the biggest liberal hub online, wrote on Monday that the heretofore “mainstream media” should be called the “traditional media.” Calling it mainstream implies that the Internet is fringe, he said, when in fact liberal bloggers, at least, are “representatives of the mainstream, and the country is embracing what we’re selling.”

Seelye notes, thankfully, that Moulitsas' megalomania hasn't gone unnoticed:

As you might imagine, not everyone agrees that Kos now represents the mainstream, and some have been mocking him (“If Moulitsas’s netroots were truly the mainstream, why would they attack a MODERATE Democrat who rarely strayed from the party line?” one asked, in reference to his debate Friday with Harold Ford, chairman of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council.)

That's fine, although leftist hopes are indeed high that the long-awaited proletarian revolution's coming in November.

Ezra Klein, a prominent left-wing writer in attendence at Netroots Nation, asked of the event's political significance, "Is Social Democracy A-Coming?"

It turns out that Klein's vision of this coming millenarian social democracy includes the elimination of meat from the diet. That's right: Meat's the new Marlboro, a socially incorrect health hazard that should be phased out of American diets to save the environment (meat production leaves a larger "carbon footprint").

This is the kind of progressivism that the netroots hordes want to ram down Americans' throats. But let's be honest: While perhaps the netroots hordes aren't up on Chomsky, they're certainly right at home with the kind of drastic change called for by '60-era ideology.

Indeed, Moulitsas has a new book forthcoming that offers a manifesto for today's netroots progressivism, Taking On the System: Rules for Radical Change in a Digital Era. Here's the product description:

The Sixties are over and the rules of power have been transformed. In order to change the world one needs to know how to manipulate the media, not just march in the streets. Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, otherwise known as "Kos," is today's symbol of digital activism, giving a voice to everyday people. In "Taking on the System," Kos has taken a cue from his revolutionary predecessor's doctrine, Saul Alinksy's Alinsky's Rules for Radicals, and places this epic hand-book in today's digital era, empowering every American to make a difference in the 21st century.

There's some sheer hypocrisy - if not irony - inherent in this blurb.

Markos Moulitsas, who proclaims himself a digital revolutionary in his new book, sponsors attacks on news coverage of the very radicalism of his own movement - with the desired result achieved in the capitulation of the Austin American-Statesman to the left's totalitarian thought police.

But lest readers forget: Daily Kos is the blogosphere's top portal for the left's secular demonology of hate. Not only are moderate Democratic Party officials savagely attacked, the most extreme racist, anti-Semitic essays are published regularly on the blog.

Moulitsas himself is not above attacking John McCain for his teeth. As I've noted before:

The Kos page still hosts the rabidly anti-Semitic entry, "Eulogy before the Inevitability of Self-Destruction: The Decline and Death of Israel."

Kos himself recently attacked John McCain's physical appearance, ridiculing the Arizona Senator in a post entitled "McCain's Teeth."The "teeth" post is particularly egregious, considering that the McCain's teeth were broken off at the gumline by his North Vietnamese captors in 1968.

I think people really need to step back and think about this.

Kristin Power argued recently that the Kos kids hardly represent mainstream Democrat voters, people who are more concerned about paying their mortgage or securing health insurance than about FISA wiretaps.

And she's right, but incomplete. Moulitsas is onto something when he makes the case that the revolution's gone online, at least in the sense that the radical left bloggers are the "squeaky wheel" of the current Democratic Party policy base. Sure leftists lost on the FISA domestic surveillance bill, but look at the left's gleeful triumphalism this week on Barack Obama's world tour.

An Obama administration will restore 1930s-era pacifism as "mainstream" American foreign policy. Obama has said he'd consider war crimes trials for Bush administration officials - a main quiver in the leftosphere's Jacobin agenda - upon taking power. Obama's proposed dismantling America's nuclear arsenal. He reportedly had no problem with the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a Palestian terrorist cell, providing security for his visit to Ramallah on the West Bank. And he's on board the radical global warming agenda, pushed by the Al Gore-faction of the Democratic Party left.

And that's just a sample in foreign policy! Domestically, from affirmative action to taxes, Barack Obama's a radical's dream.

So, while folks can quibble on whether or not Moulitsas represents the mainstream, the big picture suggests that should Obama be elected to office, he'll be pulled even further left than he already is. Call it a realignment or a revolution, but it's a direction in which many traditional Americans would not rather not go.

Postmodern Truth on Obama and Iraq

Michael Goldfarb, the Deputy Communications Director for John McCain's presidential campaign, makes a very concise argument on Barack Obama's consistent demands for withdrawal from Iraq, regardless of circumstances on the ground:

The reduction in violence, political reconciliation, the decimation of al Qaeda in Iraq, and the freedom of the Iraqi people--these are the fruits of the surge strategy that Barack Obama opposed and that John McCain advocated. The American people want their troops to come home, but the premise of this campaign is that they want the troops to come home with honor, having won the victory they've earned, and having left behind a stable and democratic Iraq that will be an ally in the war against radical Islamic extremism.

While Barack Obama promises to bring the troops home within 16 months, an unconditional timeline we reject not only as being dangerous but infeasible, John McCain promises to bring the troops home with victory secured. If there is a "growing consensus" to withdraw American troops, that consensus only exists because the American people now recognize that victory is at hand and our presence will not be required in Iraq for much longer. But Barack Obama has always supported withdrawing troops, regardless of the consequences for Iraq, the region, and American national security. At some point, we will be 16 months away from leaving Iraq, and then Obama will be claiming he was right all along. But even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Barack Obama's been wrong on Iraq from the beginning.

What's amazing, though, is how the postmodernists' version of the truth can now be pushed as the reality on Iraq, that, for example, both John McCain and President Bush have now "adopted" Obama's Iraq policy.

We've got a freaky, postmodern, post-MSM news spin, which is working very hard to elect our first postmodern president.

See also, for further effect, "Boost for Obama Over Iraq Withdrawal."

**********

UPDATE: There's still hope in the world! See, Allahpundit, "Obama: If I Had it to Do Over Again, I’d Still Oppose the Surge; Update: 'Clearly There’s Been an Enormous Improvement'."

Soak the Rich?

The Wall Street Journal reports on newly-released 2006 data showing windfall tax receipts from top income-earners, especially from the top 1:

Washington is teeing up "the rich" for a big tax hike next year, as a way to make them "pay their fair share." Well, the latest IRS data have arrived on who paid what share of income taxes in 2006, and it's going to be hard for the rich to pay any more than they already do. The data show that the 2003 Bush tax cuts caused what may be the biggest increase in tax payments by the rich in American history.

The nearby chart shows that the top 1% of taxpayers, those who earn above $388,806, paid 40% of all income taxes in 2006, the highest share in at least 40 years. The top 10% in income, those earning more than $108,904, paid 71%. Barack Obama says he's going to cut taxes for those at the bottom, but that's also going to be a challenge because Americans with an income below the median paid a record low 2.9% of all income taxes, while the top 50% paid 97.1%. Perhaps he thinks half the country should pay all the taxes to support the other half.

Aha, we are told: The rich paid more taxes because they made a greater share of the money. That is true. The top 1% earned 22% of all reported income. But they also paid a share of taxes not far from double their share of income. In other words, the tax code is already steeply progressive.

We also know from income mobility data that a very large percentage in the top 1% are "new rich," not inheritors of fortunes. There is rapid turnover in the ranks of the highest income earners, so much so that people who started in the top 1% of income in the 1980s and 1990s suffered the largest declines in earnings of any income group over the subsequent decade, according to Treasury Department studies of actual tax returns. It's hard to stay king of the hill in America for long.

The most amazing part of this story is the leap in the number of Americans who declared adjusted gross income of more than $1 million from 2003 to 2006. The ranks of U.S. millionaires nearly doubled to 354,000 from 181,000 in a mere three years after the tax cuts.

The Journal editors argue that these data show the dynamism of the economy amid lower tax rates, and they suggest that the increasing shifts in the ranks of high income earners is predicted by supply-side economic theory.

There's more at the link.

See also, "Dems Favor Economic Redistribution by 2 to 1 Over Republicans."

Obama Finance Director is Failed Subprime Banker

There's some dabate this morning as to whether the media's not just in the tank for Barack Obama, but whether there's a vast left-wing conspiracy to put the Illinois Senator in the White House.

Rasmussen, for example, reports that 49 percent of voters believe that media outlets are trying to help Obama with their coverage, up from 44 percent a month ago. What's more, CBS News asks, "Is Obama Getting Too Much Coverage?" And it's not just that: The New York Times has apparently rejected John McCain op-ed rebuttal to Obama's "Plan for Iraq" from last week.

On a related note, there's some left-wing agitation of late surrounding Randy Scheunemann, a top-foreign policy advisor to McCain. According to Lindsay Beyerstein:

John McCain's senior foreign policy adviser is a close business associate of Stephen Payne, the lobbyist caught on tape offering access to top administration officials in exchange for donations to the Bush Library.

This is explosive news because Payne's company's entire business model is international influence peddling in exchange for oil and gas leases from politically unstable and dictatorial regimes.

Presumably, Beyerstein's looking to expand Congress' Stephen Payne/Worldwide Strategic Partners cash-for-access probe of the Bush administration to the McCain campaign. As Beyerstein notes, emphatically:

Scheunemann, is listed as a member of Worldwide Strategic Energy's executive team...

Interesting, neither Beyerstein nor other contingents in the leftosphere are chumming the scandal waters this morning over the Wall Street Journal's report that Penny Pritzker, the national campaign finance chair of the Obama presidential campaign, is a former director of Superior Bank, an Illinois subprime institution half-owned by the Pritzker family. The bank's collapse resulted in the loss of savings for 1,400 depositors, and the institution was subject to a FDIC reorganization plan costing taxpayers tens of millions of dollars:

For the Pritzker family of Chicago, the 2001 collapse of subprime-mortgage lender Superior Bank was an embarrassing failure in a corner of their giant business empire.

Billionaire Penny Pritzker helped run Hinsdale, Ill.-based Superior, overseeing her family's 50% ownership stake. She now serves as Barack Obama's national campaign-finance chairwoman, which means her banking past could prove to be an embarrassment to her - and perhaps to the campaign.

Superior was seized in 2001 and later closed by federal regulators. Government investigators and consumer advocates have contended that Superior engaged in unsound financial activities and predatory lending practices. Ms. Pritzker, a longtime friend and supporter of Sen. Obama, served for a time as Superior's chairman, and later sat on the board of its holding company.
Sen. Obama has long criticized predatory subprime mortgage lenders and urged strong actions against them.

In a prepared statement, the Obama campaign noted that Ms. Pritzker was never accused of wrongdoing by regulators in connection with Superior, and that her family agreed to pay $460 million to help defray the costs of Superior's collapse.

In a written response to questions, Ms. Pritzker said the reasons for Superior's fall "were complex. They include changes in accounting practices, auditing failures, reversals in regulatory positions and general economic conditions." During her tenure at the thrift, she said, she believed it followed "ethical business practices" and complied with "fair lending laws." For years, she said, Superior's financial statements were found to be acceptable by regulators.

The Obama campaign recently faced a controversy related to mortgage lending. A member of Sen. Obama's vice-presidential selection committee resigned after a Wall Street Journal story said he received favorable treatment on personal loans from Countrywide Financial Corp., a major subprime lender.

Ms. Pritzker's connection to Superior dates to the late 1980s, when the late Jay Pritzker, her uncle and then the family patriarch, moved to buy from federal regulators a troubled Illinois savings and loan. Ms. Pritzker, who has law and business degrees from Stanford, was to be the venture's chairman, said Mr. Pritzker's partner on the deal, New York real-estate developer Alvin Dworman, in a December 2006 deposition. "Jay bought the bank for her," he said in the deposition, taken in connection with litigation in Illinois state court related to the collapse. Mr. Dworman declined a recent interview request. Ms. Pritzker, in her statement, said she never heard her uncle mention her as a reason for the purchase.

Ms. Pritzker served as Superior chairman until 1994. During that period, Superior "embarked on a business strategy of significant growth into subprime home mortgages," which were then packaged into securities and sold to investors, according to a 2002 report by the Treasury Department's Inspector General.

"Superior was at the forefront of the securitizing of subprime mortgages," says Timothy Anderson, a retired bank consultant who has studied Superior and other failed thrifts.

If we use the same logic that Beyestein employs to suggest "explosive" implications for Scheunemann ties to Worldwide Strategic Energy, we should see similar outrage regarding Ms. Pritzker's background as subprime banking predator.

It is highly contradictory that Barack Obama employs a subprime lending boss as his finance director, when his own campaign platform on the economy pledges to "crack down on fraudulent brokers and lenders."

Recall that Barack Obama has a catastrophic record of failure in housing policy as an Illinois state legislator. He's also a machine politician, and in the case of Penny Pritzker, it appears that Obama finds no conflict of interest in favoring billionaire banking magnates who are on record as bilking small-time investors of their personal nest eggs.

More change we can believe in?

Batman Soars at Box Office

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Caped Crusader may be rescuing Hollywood from summer box office peril:

A record-shattering opening for Warner Bros.'s Batman movie "The Dark Knight" ushered in the biggest domestic box-office weekend in history, showcasing the film industry's ability to rally during times of economic turbulence when it has the right product.

Director Christopher Nolan's brooding sequel to his 2005 "Batman Begins" topped already-high expectations and sold an estimated $155.3 million worth of tickets since opening early Friday, according to studio figures released on Sunday. That's the biggest opening for a film in motion-picture history, unadjusted for inflation, beating the previous record held by "Spider-Man 3," which grossed $151.1 million during its opening weekend in May 2007.

The outsized box-office take came as a surprise, even to film-industry insiders, during a year when movie attendance has dropped slightly, continuing the trend of recent years.

As of early last week, some studio executives in Hollywood were expecting the film, which cost an estimated $180 million to make, to sell about $110 million worth of U.S. tickets in its opening weekend. The surprise upside is owing to a variety of factors that helped expand the audience. Those included top-notch reviews and curiosity that has been growing for months about the acclaimed performance of Heath Ledger, who died of an accidental prescription-drug overdose earlier this year after completing his role as the Joker.

I took my boys to see "The Dark Knight" on Friday, and my younger son's been playing with his "Stealth Launch Batmobile" all weekend (the inevitable mass market toystore tie-in).

Batman is the third superhero adventure we've seen in theaters this summer (in addition to "Iron Man" and the "The Hulk").

I find myself enjoying these films as much, if not more, than my kids do.

Christian Bale's Batman blows away all of his predecessors (although Michael Keaton was formidable). And while Edward Norton's going to take some getting used to as The Hulk, Robert Downey, Jr., demonstrated some captivating essence of the good in his rendition of big-shot industrialist turned Iron Man. I'm looking forward to the sequel.

See also, Kenneth Turan's review of Batman (Heath Ledger will be missed), "The Dark Knight."

Photo Credit: Wall Street Journal

Hard-Left Bloggers Prepare for Democratic Victory

If there was ever any question that the netroots form the base of the Democratic Party, today's Washington Post may help settle the debate: "Liberal Bloggers Brace for Victory." The left bloggers, sure, must share the bill with the legions of traditional left-wing party constituencies (civil rights groups, organized labor, etc.), but when it comes to current vocal intensity, the netroots takes the cake. The Post discusses the influence of hard-left bloggers following last weeks Netroots Nation convention:

"Yep, the way it's looking, we might actually win this thing . . ."

That's Markos Moulitsas talking, a.k.a. "Kos" to everyone here at Netroots Nation, the four-day liberal blogapalooza that ended Sunday at the Austin Convention Center. He's got a head cold, which explains his hoarse, strained voice, and by "we," he means the Netroots and their candidate of choice, Sen. Barack Obama. If the Netroots can be compared to high school -- still maturing, somewhat cliquish but definitely a community -- then Obama, as the presumptive nominee, had been voted Most Likely to Succeed.

Hardest Worker and Best Dressed honors went to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who kicked off Saturday morning's program with a freewheeling 40-minute "Ask the Speaker" session. ("Damn, Nancy looks grrreat in that pantsuit," a blogger was overheard saying.) Most Popular would go to Al Gore, who brought the crowd of more than 2,000 conventioneers to its feet with his surprise appearance, repeatedly asking bloggers to visit WeCanSolveIt.org, home to his new group, the Alliance for Climate Protection.

But Obama, who leads Sen. John McCain in recent national polls, is Topic A among the Netroots, his fate somewhat married to theirs. Five years ago liberal bloggers made a name for themselves at a time of defeat; Republicans controlled not just the White House but both houses in Congress. They craved a fight, and President Bush was their punching bag.

But these are changing times, and Obama, in his calls for getting past blue vs. red America, and in his recent positions on issues such as telecom immunity, is somewhat of an enigma. With the Dems taking back Congress in 2006 and the prospect of an Obama victory come November, many in the influential Netroots are left in a precarious, ambiguous position. The question is, who needs whom: Does Obama need the Netroots, or vice versa?

Moulitsas is modest about Netroots influence, and while Barack Obama snubbed the group this summer, the presumptive Democratic nominee, while not always appreciative, is well integrated with the left-wing bloggers:

Obama's standing here, especially with big-name bloggers such as Matt Stoller of OpenLeft, has proved complicated. Two years ago, frustrated by bloggers' reaction to two Democratic senators who voted to confirm John Roberts as chief justice, Obama wrote a posting on Daily Kos:

"According to the storyline that drives many advocacy groups and Democratic activists -- a storyline often reflected in comments on this blog -- we are up against a sharply partisan, radically conservative, take-no-prisoners Republican party," wrote Obama, who voted no on the Roberts confirmation.

Last year, at the height of the primary campaign, Obama often placed second behind former senator John Edwards in the monthly and unscientific Daily Kos straw polls. In October, he fell third behind Edwards and Sen. Chris Dodd. When Obama examined former president Ronald Reagan's legacy earlier this year and said it "changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not," a blizzard of comments hit blogs, many of them critical.

A few weeks ago, after Obama's upcoming vote for the FISA bill provoked angry comments on his own social networking site, My.BarackObama.com, Obama posted an explanation on his blog. "Democracy cannot exist without strong differences. And going forward, some of you may decide that my FISA position is a deal breaker," Obama wrote.

"Think about it: Netroots was born at a time when the Democrats were in opposition, and it's learning how to be a force of good when the Democrats are in power -- and could have more power next year," says Simon Rosenberg of the New Democrat Network. A speaker at the confab, Rosenberg is a bridge of sorts between Official Washington (he worked in the first Clinton White House) and New Washington (he wrote the foreword to "Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics," which Kos co-authored).

Adds Andrew Rasiej, also a speaker at the convention and founder of Personal Democracy Forum, an online think tank that analyzes how the Internet affects politics: "For most everyone in the Netroots, the main goal right now is get Obama elected. Period. Now how the Netroots and Obama move forward after November, if he is elected, is another issue."

If Obama has a problem, it's not with the people who attended Netroots Nation, it's with the PUMA folks, are are intensely organized against Obama's nomination as the Democratic Party nominee, and perhaps the Illinois Senator's election in November.

The PUMA people have 1000 reasons not to vote for Barack Obama, and while that's significant, most Obama opponents can likely count the reasons on one hand.

Barack Obama's support by the nihilist, anti-Semitic Kos-kids contingent is certain to top the list.

See also, Protein Wisdom, "Obama is Just Not That Into the Netroots."

Related: "Obama's Website: Agent for Vile, Filthy Change."

Photo Credit: Washington Post

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UPDATE: See the New York Observer's perceptive essay, "Netroots Nation Reckons With Life After the Revolution."

Obama Picks Hitler's Favorite Monument for Berlin Speech!

Captain Ed reports that Barack Obama's alienated Germany's leadership - and illustrated his own historical illiteracy - by choosing to relocate his highly-anticipated Berlin speech to the city's Siegessäule Victory Column, which is considered a symbol of Imperial Germany's militarism, and was a favorite memorial of Adolph Hitler:

After receiving a hailstorm of criticism for considering Brandenburg Gate for a public speech, as well as official German dissuasion, Barack Obama moved the venue to the Siegessäule monument. Obama will speak about “historic” US-German relations, but once again, Obama’s own grasp of history has been proven deficient. Not only does the site contain a monument to Prussian victories over other American allies in Europe, its placement was decided by Adolf Hitler — in order to impress crowds in his idealized version of Berlin called Germania:

Still, even as the issue of his speech’s location has now been settled, a number of politicians in Berlin are still dissatisfied with the site. The Siegessäule — or Victory Column — was erected in memory of Prussia’s victories over Denmark (1864), Austria (1866) and France (1870/71). The column originally stood in front of the Reichstag, Germany’s parliament building, but was moved by Adolf Hitler to its current location in 1939 to make way for his planned transformation of Berlin into the Nazi capital “Germania.”

“The Siegessäule in Berlin was moved to where it is now by Adolf Hitler. He saw it as a symbol of German superiority and of the victorious wars against Denmark, Austria and France,” the deputy leader of the Free Democrats, Rainer Brüderle, told Bild am Sonntag. He raised the question as to “whether Barack Obama was advised correctly in his choice of the Siegessäule as the site to hold a speech on his vision for a more cooperative world”....

Hitler didn’t just move the monument to its more central location. He had a taller column built for it as well, to emphasize its message of German military domination over Europe. He saw it as a message to Germans of their destiny — as well as to other Europeans as their destiny as well. It was never meant as a symbol of peaceful, multicultural co-existence.

Captain Ed goes on to speculate why Barack Obama's even making a campaign speech in Germany: "In his rush to look impressive for no one’s purposes but his own, Obama has made himself look ignorant and arrogant all over again."

Image Credit: The People's Cube

The Obama Birth Certificate Forgery

Pamela Geller has a major new report claiming that Barack Obama's certification of birth, which was posted at Daily Kos, is a complete forgery:

It is irrefutable, empirical evidence - Obama's birth certificate is a forgery...

The expose's been picked up by Israeli Insider:

Barack Obama may be on a world tour surrounded by a fawning media, but Sunday an expert in electronic document forensics released a detailed report on the purported birth certificate - actually a "Certification of Live Birth" or COLB - claimed as genuine by his campaign. The expert concludes with 100% certainty that it is a crudely forged fake: "a horribly forgery," according to the analysis published on the popular right-wing Atlas Shrugs blog.

The purported birth certificate was published by the left wing Daily Kos blog on June 12 in response to unconfirmed reports that Obama was not in fact born in the United States (Canada and Kenya were suggested as the possible locations of his actual birth). Since he would in that case not be a natural born US citizen (his mother was not present in the US sufficiently long as an adult to pass American citizenship on to him automatically), he would not be eligible to be president. Israel Insider has followed the story in five previous articles (the previous one here) and uncovered evidence, most recently, of admitted forgery among Daily Kos bloggers, tolerance of electronic forgeries on the blog site, as well as efforts by a blog administrator to conceal the admission of forgery.

The latest examinaton of the purported documents is by far the most detailed and technically sophisticated to date.

Atlas Shrugs publisher Pamela Geller reports that the expert analyst, who goes by the screen name "Techdude", is "an active member of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, American College of Forensic Examiners, The International Society of Forensic Computer Examiners, International Information Systems Forensics Association -- the list goes on. He also a board certified as a forensic computer examiner, a certificated legal investigator, and a licensed private investigator. He has been performing computer-based forensic investigations since 1993 (although back then it did not even have a formal name yet) and he has performed countless investigations since then"....

After more than a month of controversy and demands that the Obama campaign produce a paper birth certificate for analysis, this damning new evidence raises the stakes for the democratic party and its front-runner.

Will Obama and his people continue to stonewall in the facing of the mounting evidence of forgery, and provide paper proof of an authentic, original birth certificate or even a genuine secondary Certificate of Live Birth? And will the mass media and mainstream pundits -- which so far have hesitated to touch the hot potato -- finally address the loaded issue of his possible unfitness to meet the basic Constitutional requirement for a President?

Perhaps the outspoken Israeli press corps will be able to do what their fawning American counterparts have failed to do so far. Obama's visit this week to Israel will be an opportunity to begin asking the tough questions -- however unpolitically correct -- about his apparently forged birth certificate and what that means for his citizenship status and Constitutional fitness to be the next leader of the free world.

Note, however, AJ Strata, who has done a good deal on research this, calls out the Atlas Shrugs report as perpetuating a "myth."

See also, "Daily Kos Documents Official Coordination with Obama Campaign."

Conservatives Think Ahead

The death of conservative ideology has become practically a cliché this election season. With an arguably war-weary electorate, and worry about the economy, what do conservatives have to offer, beyond social hot-buttons and tax cuts?

The New York Times suggests that conservatives are thinking fresh about the direction of the movement:

ALMOST anything can happen in an election year, but among conservatives, almost everyone seems to agree that no matter who captures the White House in November, the movement that has ruled the Republican Party since the 1960s and mostly dominated American politics since 1980 has lost its way. Across the spectrum of the right, writers and thinkers have turned their relentless analysis inward, a kind of political EST seminar aimed at self-transformation.

The next few passages review changes at the American Enterprise Institute (with the obligatory reference that President Bush killed the movement), but later down the piece looks at where conservatism might go:

For some on the right, the conservative decline is simply the result of veering away from the golden age of Ronald Reagan....

For others, however, the nub of the problem is not deviance from the 1980s agenda but worshipful adherence to it. Mr. [David] Frum is one of those who has undergone a conversion (or two). His book “Dead Right,” published in 1994, was a brisk catalog of Reagan’s failures (especially his failure to reduce the size of government). Then, after writing speeches for President Bush, Mr. Frum wrote “The Right Man,” in which he characterized President Bush’s leadership as “nothing short of superb.” But in his newest book, “Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again,” Mr. Frum confesses that his former boss has “led his party to the brink of disaster.”

Mr. Frum’s transformation has caused him to rethink the role of government. Not only does he now promote an idea that has long been conservative heresy — that tax rates have gone as low as they can — he also calls for new taxes on consumption and energy. Taxing “those forms of energy that present political and environmental risks,” he writes, “would look exactly like the carbon tax advocated by global-warming crusaders.”

Mr. Frum also departs from the smaller-government-is-always-better-government dogma and concedes that there are some areas where government has to step in — for instance, prison reform. His list here includes “opportunities for education and self-improvement; conjugal visits; mentoring and support for prisoners’ children.”

Many of Mr. Frum’s allies in this debate come from a group of younger conservatives who were born more than 15 years after he was and came of age after Reagan. “The world is different, the priorities are different,” said Yuval Levin, 31, who is at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and recently edited a book with Mr. DeMuth. “In 1985, the big issues were the cold war, crime, welfare reform, taxes and social issues. Now, most of those are no longer on the list.”

Social issues are still a priority, he said, but they are joined by others that have floated to the top of the agenda, including energy, the environment, immigration, health care and expensive entitlements....

Another new-generation conservative, Ross Douthat, argues that “Reagan was right for his time, but now it’s a different time.” Mr. Douthat, 28, and Reihan Salam are the authors of a new book, “The Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream.” Mr. Douthat says that social conservatives have gotten stuck and need to move beyond their focus on gay marriage and abortion — a focus, he said, that does nothing to help a single African-American mother trying to raise a family. Instead, conservatives need to “figure out a way to talk about the problem of family breakdown and the extent to which that’s linked to social mobility, economic troubles.”

In his eyes, while the network of research groups and journals helped build conservatism, it has also contributed to its stagnation. “Conservatives have always criticized the liberal establishment” — universities, magazines, organizations — for a “tendency toward cocooning,” Mr. Douthat said. Now, it is conservatives who are cocooning, talking only to each other and not looking around for new ideas.

“There was this tremendous generation of intellectuals who came of age in the ’70s and ’80s, but I think there’s been some difficulty in establishing a new generation,” Mr. Douthat said. “On the right, a lot of them did their best work 20 years ago.”

Election day would seem to be the pivotal moment in this debate. Adam Bellow, a conservative book editor, recently argued that “the G.O.P. will not be revived through the efforts of intellectuals but by a talented politician who can build a new majority coalition. When that happens, as eventually it will, the intellectuals will be there to translate his or her political instincts into a new conservative ideology.” But as Ramesh Ponnuru, a senior editor at National Review, long a flagship of the right, said: “Whether or not McCain wins, there is going to be a lot of rethinking among conservatives.”

Kevin Hassett, an economist at A.E.I. who is advising Senator McCain, went out of his way to emphasize his own lack of partisanship. “I’m thrilled that John McCain has proposed a big reduction in the corporate tax rate,” he said, but he added that similar ideas have also been adopted by Democrats, including Senator John Kerry during his 2004 presidential run. “If we do our job really, really well, then we don’t help one political side or the other,” Mr. Hassett said.

Meanwhile, Megan McArdle, a libertarian writer, thinks conservative organizations will actually have a tougher time influencing policy if Senator McCain is elected. “He doesn’t have an ideological framework,” she said. “He has a superhero view of politics. There are good guys and bad guys and you’ve got to elect the good guys to kick the butts of the bad guys.”

It's probably going to take a combination of those factors: good ideas and strong leadership.

On ideas, I genuinely think Douthat's research holds promise. Some recent books making the case for a new conservativism aren't, frankly, very conservative (like Frum's Dead Right, and Michael Gerson's, Heroic Conservatism), but Douthat seems to get to the nub of things when he talks about winning over socially-moderate voters looking for effective governmental responses to bread-and-butter issues.

It's not as though Democrats are necessarily going to ride a wave of big-government liberalism to power in November.

Kimberley Strassel, at the Wall Street Journal, has been focusing on congressional elections around the country, where conservative Democrats have been elected on traditional Republican themes, while stressing the added appeal of anti-corruption reformism. See, for example, Strassel's, "A Louisiana Lesson for the GOP":

With Democrats actively recruiting conservative candidates, it's no longer good enough for the GOP names to fall back on cultural credentials, to demagogue immigration, or to simply promise lower taxes. Voters care about the size of government, but they are equally worried about the cost of doctor visits and gas prices. The winners will be those who explain the merits of a private health-care reform, who talk about vouchers, who push for energy production. And given its reputation on ethics, it's clear the GOP has to recruit Mr. Cleans, who also make voters believe they are more interested in solving problems than bringing home pork.

On leadership, I don't think Megan McArdle's making much sense about John McCain's "superhero view" of politics. McCain is a genuine war hero, and frankly, it's his largest electoral asset.

Indeed, McCain's a national greatness conservative at a time when people are arguing America's not so great, especially on the economy (see, for example, Peter Gosselin, "In This Economy, Failure is an Option"). We need McCain to stand tall; even if he's not a perfect Ronald Reagan candidate, he's got enough of the optimism of America's mission to keep the flame of exceptionalism burning.

Now, that's not to say there's no current economic dislocation. We have sectoral crises (housing and money markets), but we're not sinking into recession, and some sectors are seeing robust growth (in the technology sector, for example, which is a sign of business confidence and investment in the economy).

This is a Democratic year, no doubt, but as we've seen so far, Americans respect a candidate who will stand tall for American values and traditionalism. McCain can make the sale by finding a vigorous message that combines his patriotic heroism with a policy focus demonstrating convincingly how he can help American help themselves.

Photo Credit: New York Times