Defining the Campaign's Iraq Narrative

I get the sense, from the response to my Iraq post this morning, and by a look around the leftosphere, that the antiwar types still think Iraq's a winning campaign issue for Barack Obama. Of course, we heard all about it last month when the leftists went ape with claims that Nouri al-Maliki had endorsed Barack Obama's 16-month plan for retreat from Iraq.

The truth is that no matter how much Democrats try to spin it, Obama's been a surrender hawk from the beginning, and he opposed the surge that has made all of this discussion possible. Not only that, McCain's runaway train in national security polling long ago left the station.

Nevertheless, as the left continues to hammer away on the "Iraq disaster" meme, it might be helpful to clarify the narrative on the war for the post-Labor Day campaign.

Thomas Donnelly makes the case in his esssay, "McCain Is the Clear and Courageous Commander in Chief":

In the end, it’s about Iraq. Sure, pocketbook and social issues matter, but the president does not command the economy or the mores of the American people. For Barack Obama, the clear call to withdraw from Iraq was the sole policy difference with Hillary Clinton; the rest was personality. For John McCain, the clear call to stay the course was the rallying point that brought his candidacy back from the graveyard.

Thus the presidential contest remains, most centrally, a contest to define the Iraq narrative, both in content and meaning. To Senator Obama, it was a mistake from the start and a strategic sideshow that diverted American attention from finishing the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. To Senator McCain, Iraq was the central front in the struggle against Islamic extremism and in what we have come to call “the long war” to build a more liberal and stable order in the greater Middle East. So when the candidates made back-to-back appearances before the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention, the Iraq debate was the lead item in both candidates’ speeches, elbowing aside any discussion of Russia’s invasion of Georgia and even the necessary kowtowing on the subject of veterans’ benefits.

Senator McCain spoke on Monday and went right at it: “Though victory in Iraq is finally in sight, a great deal still depends on the decisions and good judgment of the next president…. The lasting advantage of a peaceful and democratic ally in the heart of the Middle East could still be squandered by hasty withdrawal and arbitrary timelines.” The success of the Iraq surge has reinforced Senator McCain’s belief in his own judgment and the possibility of victory.

Senator Obama isn’t backing down from the narrative of trying to minimize the consequences of what he sees as an Iraq defeat. To him the surge was a costly failure: “We have lost over 1,000 American lives and spent billions of dollars since the surge began, but Iraq’s leaders still haven’t made hard compromises or substantial investments in rebuilding their country.” Echoing the line long ago advanced by Carl Levin, the Democratic senator from Michigan and the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Barack Obama argues that a redeployment from Iraq within 16 months is the only way to “press the Iraqis to take responsibility for their future.”

It was also revealing to note where the speeches sought sources of authority for their arguments. Senator McCain cited Gen. David Petraeus and “our troops on the ground when they say, as they have on my many trips to Iraq, ‘Let us win. Just let us win.’” Senator Obama noted that Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, Iraq’s prime minister, has embraced his 16-month withdrawal timetable.

How the candidates interpret the larger strategic meaning of Iraq uncovers an even deeper divide. Senator McCain sees Iraq as one theater — the central theater — among many in the long war. Underlying that analysis is a traditional understanding of geopolitical realities: Iraq is an inherently strong and oil-rich nation in the Arab heartland (a view shared, as it happens, by Osama bin Laden). Senator Obama sees Afghanistan and the tribal areas that have been Al Qaeda sanctuaries as the key front. While he realizes that these may be inherently poor and powerless regions in the traditional sense, he still sees the struggle as a “war on terrorism” and Al Qaeda in particular. In sum, we have a choice between the broad and narrow interpretations of what the war is.

Americans haven’t quite decided which of these Iraq narratives they prefer, which is why the presidential race is essentially a tie. According to a Reuters/Zogby poll released Wednesday morning, John McCain has overtaken Barack Obama. Americans prefer commanders in chief who exhibit clarity and courage rather than nuance and intellect, Dwight Eisenhower to Adlai Stevenson. That’s an advantage for John McCain.

As David Gergen noted on Wednesday, Barack Obama needs "a game changer," and the change needed is to shift the campaign's narrative away from national security.

See also, Josh Hartman, "Obama Lacks Substance That McCain Displays."

McCain-Lieberman 2008?

As I noted previously, the selection of Joseph Lieberman as John McCain's running mate would probably cause a revolt at the GOP Convention in Minneapolis. The safe choice is Mitt Romney, who - for all is flaws - would energize the Republican base, and would probably be the ultimate salve in healing whatever scars are left over from the primaries.

What I didn't note is that I'm secretly favoring a Lieberman pick. Naturally, for me, as a dreaded "neocon," McCain couldn't possible select a better running-mate than an Israel-backing war hawk who has denounced the Democratic Party as beholden to netroots extremists. If McCain really plays the "Maverick" in tapping the Connecticut Senator, let's just say, with apologies to McDonald's, that I'm lovin' it!

I found a pleasant surprise in the Wall Street Journal's essential endorsement of Lieberman yesterday:

Our own view is that Mr. Lieberman would make a fine Secretary of State, and that, given the political risks, making him vice president would probably be too great an election gamble. But Mr. Lieberman's national security credentials are first-rate, and we've known him long enough to remember his opposition to an income tax in Connecticut, and his support for lower capital gains taxes, school vouchers and private Social Security accounts. Liberated from having to run as a Democrat, he might recall those policy instincts.

We have no doubt he'd be a better vice president than many oft-mooted Republicans, including some of those who are favorites of the anti-Lieberman alarmists.

Lieberman's also solidly conservative on moral issues - recall in the 2000 presidential camapaign, the Senator took issue with the Hollywood film industry's infatuation with sex and violence, and in 1998 Lieberman denounced former President Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky as "immoral."

Yet, for all of Lieberman's conservative assets, it's hard to dismiss Captain Ed's observation that his selection as veep "will convince an already-skeptical GOP base that McCain is a RINO."

Still, speculation's swirling over a potential Lieberman pick, and what's surprising is the warm reception the idea's getting in some for the deepest corner's of the right-wing universe.

For example, National Review's Rich Lowry supports a McCain-Lieberman ticket as part of a one-term pledge for a McCain administration (McCain, of course, should never pledge to serve one term, as he'd be a lame-duck from the moment he took office). Also, Dan Schnur, McCain's national communications director in 2000, is making the case for McCain as well:

Speculation has grown in recent days that Mr. McCain is still considering Joseph Lieberman, the Democratic-turned-independent senator from Connecticut, as a potential running mate, which frames the two sides of John McCain in stark relief. On one hand, he is an unconventional politician who has made a career out of violating partisan and establishment norms. But he is also a strong conservative, not just on the national security issues on which he and Mr. Lieberman agree, but also on economic and social policy matters on which Al Gore’s former running mate is well to the left of center.

Mr. McCain is also a very visceral politician, someone who works best with those with whom he has close personal ties. That type of comfort level is critically important to him, so Mr. Lieberman’s presence next to him would undoubtedly make him a much more effective candidate and more successful president as well.

Even though Mr. Lieberman has largely isolated himself from congressional Democrats by becoming an independent, his political history allows Mr. McCain to plausibly make the case that he is reaching across party lines with the selection. And there’s no doubt that the current crisis between Russia and Georgia puts a premium on Mr. Lieberman’s foreign policy experience and underscores his support for Mr. McCain’s approach to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But the most important benefit that Mr. Lieberman would bring to the ticket is that it would allow Mr. McCain to be a maverick again. There is nothing that John McCain treasures more dearly than his nonconformist reputation, the idea that he’s a different breed of politician. Even as he makes up ground in the polls, pulling even or slightly ahead this week, he has done so by running a very effective, yet extremely conventional campaign. Make no mistake: John McCain would rather be a president than a maverick. But in his ideal world, you have to believe he’d like to do both.

I'm sold, personally, except I dread a long post-Labor Day war with the Coulter-Malkin-Limbaugh axis of evisceration should McCain throw the conservative base under the bus with a Lieberman selection.

Most of all, however, I want to win, and as Ronald Brownstein notes, bipartisan "unity tickets" haven't done well historically, so I'm going to say again, "better safe than sorry."

For more on that, see "Republicans Worry That McCain Pick Will Rile Party Base."

Iraqi Army Stands Up

Last summer, the antiwar debate focused on Iraq's presumed failure to meet congressionally-mandated benchmarks on political and military progress. In spring 2008, prominent leftists claimed Iraq's army was disastrously weak, going so far to announce that "the Iraqi Army is forever too weak to be an effective force without massive American presence."

Well, it turns out this morning's Wall Street Journal has some news for the "reality-based community": The developments of the Iraqi army have been so substantial that they are facilitating the drawdown of U.S. troops under the new bilateral security pact:

The Bush administration's preliminary security pact with Iraq calls for withdrawing most American combat troops by 2011, a development that seemed almost unthinkable even a few months ago.

One reason they're thinking about it now: the new assertiveness of Iraqi soldiers such as Brig. Gen. Sabah Fadhil Motar al-Azawi. His brigade helped chase militants from Ramadi and wrest control of Basra from the once-feared Mahdi Army. Now, it's helping to push the U.S. out of Iraq.

Several factors have helped bring a withdrawal deal closer. Tribal leaders from the Sunni Muslim sect turned against the terrorist group al Qaeda in Iraq; the Mahdi Army called a cease-fire; and the U.S. began a new counterinsurgency strategy, deploying units to small outposts in Iraqi towns and neighborhoods.

But above all, the Iraqi army has needed to reverse a track record of high-profile failures. In earlier years, Iraqi forces often fled and left heavy fighting to the U.S. Now the Iraqis are mounting large-scale operations in restive areas like Diyala Province, a longtime stronghold of Sunni insurgents, and holding large swaths of territory -- 10 of Iraq's 18 provinces -- largely on their own.

"History is replete with armed forces having to get bloodied a little bit before they get better," says Maj. Gen. Michael Oates, who commands U.S. forces in central and southern Iraq. He says the Iraqi forces have improved from five years of fighting and from mentoring by U.S. military advisers. The recent surge in U.S. troop levels allowed senior commanders to deploy larger numbers of American trainers, accelerating the Iraqis' improvements, U.S. officials believe.

The U.S. gives Iraqi troops access to American air power and helps them resupply their forces, but many of the Iraqi units plan and conduct their operations independently. In many of the Iraq army's 10 provinces there are no U.S. troops at all, and where there are, U.S. troops coordinate their operations with the Iraqis. When the former Soviet country of Georgia unexpectedly recalled its 2,000-soldier contingent to fight the Russians, Iraqis, not Americans, were sent to replace them.

The Iraqi army's growing capabilities bolstered Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's insistence on setting at least a rough timetable for U.S. withdrawal. The preliminary security pact calls for the Iraqi army to take responsibility for all major cities next summer, with most U.S. combat forces withdrawing to the outskirts and then leaving the country altogether by 2011.

The pact still has to be formally approved by the Bush administration and several layers of Iraqi government. Some of its provisions -- including the target dates -- could still change before it's final, and the draft also allows for U.S. and Iraqi officials to jointly change the withdrawal goals later based on security conditions.

Senior American military officers in Baghdad say, however, that the final agreement is virtually certain to retain the U.S. commitment to gradually withdraw its combat forces and turn missions over to the Iraqis. "Everyone understands that the clock is ticking," one senior officer said. "We're not leaving tomorrow, but it's the beginning of the end."

The prospect of major U.S. withdrawals comes at a pivotal moment in the five-year-old war here. The recent numbers of U.S. and Iraqi casualties are down; the 13 American military personnel killed in July were the lowest monthly death toll since the 2003 invasion. Iraqi troop and civilian casualties also have been falling steadily for months, to a fraction of their peak about 18 months ago. The Iraqi economy is growing sharply because of soaring oil revenues, and Mr. Maliki's political standing is at an all-time high.

Many potential pitfalls, both military and political, remain. The Iraqi government has spent little of its oil windfall to improve basic services for its citizens. Most Iraqis only get roughly 12 hours of electricity per day, despite billions of dollars in U.S.-funded reconstruction projects. A long-sought law setting up provincial elections remains bottled up in Iraq's fractious Parliament. Corruption remains endemic.

There is no guarantee that Iraqi forces will continue to improve -- or even maintain their current levels of performance. Iraqi units in many parts of the country complain that they are chronically short of fuel, ammunition and spare parts for their vehicles. The army's performance can vary widely across the country, says Colin Kahl, a professor of security studies at Georgetown University who studies the Iraq war and visited Basra this summer.

"You have new units fresh from basic training that sometimes desert and then you have older units that have had years of American advising and fight quite well," he says. "There's no doubt they're a lot better than they used to be, but there's still tremendous variation from unit to unit."

There's more at the link.

See also, Long War Journal, "Iraqi Army Beefs Up Armored Forces."

Obama's Class Warfare

I'm sure many engaged in today's huge controversy over John McCain's houses believe they've found a winning ticket in portraying the Arizona Senator as "elitist" and "out of touch" with average Americans facing economic dislocation.

Barack Obama led the charge himself at a campaign rally today in Chester, Virginia, where he claimed:

I guess if you think that being rich means you gotta make five million dollars, and if you don’t know how many houses you have, then it’s not surprising that you might think the economy is fundamentally strong.

There's no other way to look at Obama's outburst (and the left's piling on) than anything besides rank class warfare.

Maybe this tack will play well in stoking latent working class resentments at inflation, housing instability, and rising unemployment. Maybe this meme will stick if the American electorate is undergoing a fundamental shift in ideological orientation toward the abandonment of free market competition and opportunity-based upward mobility. Or, perhaps Obama's income-envy will play with those who harbor genuine revolutionary inclinations, and see the Illinois Senator as the vanguard of the proletariat.

More likely, Obama's attack on McCain's residential non-recollection reveals the candidate's subterranean push to resurrect Great Society liberalism in America.

Note that Obama's quoted in the Wall Street Journal today, regarding his recent statements on health care reform:

'If I were designing a system from scratch, I would probably go ahead with a single-payer system," Barack Obama told an audience in Albuquerque on Monday. He was lauding the idea of a health-care market -- or nonmarket -- entirely run by the government.

Most liberals support single payer, aka "Medicare for All," because it would eliminate the profit motive, which by their lights is the reason Americans are uninsured....

With good reason, critics often call this a back-door route to a centrally planned health-care bureaucracy. For all his lawyerly qualifications, Mr. Obama has essentially admitted that his proposal is really the front door.

Thus, Obama's smears this afternoon are of a piece with his larger shift toward leftist ideological transparency.

Indeed, it's all coming together: Obama has been under fire this week for advocating an abortion position tantamount to infanticide, which has placed him to the left of NARAL. Obama's also been revealed as nothing more than a two-bit machine politician (rather that some ethereal agent of post-partisan transformation) by reports that he won his first election to the Illinois legislature in 1996 by disqualifying all of his electoral opponents from the ballot. It turns out, moreover, that the Obama camp may be involved in a massive cover up of his failed leadership as board chairman overseeing the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.

In any case, do the Obama people really think this is smart politics? Obama generated big political trouble previously with his bitter comments on working class resentments (remarks that were widely perceived to be based in Marxist sensibilities). The candidate himself resides in a million-dollar mansion, in Chicago's tony Hyde Park neighborhood (where few people of color reside, not to mention the lumpen proletariat). He purchased his seven-figure abode through the good offices of convicted felon Tony Rezko. And for good measure, the Obamas provide their children with elite private education, at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, where the tuition costs from $15,528 for kindergarten to $20,445 for high school!

The truth is that Obama's had difficulties connecting with average Americans all year, and his appeal to class warfare goes against traditional American support for free markets; current polling indicates that citizens overwhelmingly "prefer that the government focus on improving overall economic conditions and the jobs situation in the United States as opposed to taking steps to distribute wealth more evenly among Americans."

To top it all off, the left's attack on McCain is essentially dishonest: "McCain himself doesn’t own any property and isn’t “rich”, and Cindy and her family earned their money honestly."

After weeks of collapsing numbers in presidential preference surveys, Obama and his left-wing partisans are naturally pumped at the prospect of a potent smear against John McCain. Unfortunately, class warfare has never been a winner in American politics, and even now, in an ostensibly Democratic year, the left's going to need something bit more powerful than a couple of misplaced condominiums if they hope to retake the White House.

Attack Ads Slam Obama Ahead of Democratic Convention!

Presidential mudslinging has gone full bore today, with the release of two new ad buys slamming Barack Obama.

The first, embedded here at top, is from the American Issues Project, which has launched a 2.8 million TV campaign attacking Obama's deep ties to former Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers. The second, embedded below, is John McCain's new spot hitting Obama for enlisting convicted Chicago land racketeer Tony Rezko to purchase his million-dollar mansion.

The McCain campaign is responding the Obama camp's attacks on McCain's comment that he "wasn't sure about how many houses he and his wife own."

The intensity of the attacks indicates the high-stakes nature of the current political battle. While Obama hopes to portray McCain as a hopeless elitist out of touch with average families, GOP forces seek to build on the summer's increasing evidence of Barack Obama's radicalism.

Obama's Failed Leadership at Chicago Annenberg Challenge

New reports are emerging that cast a damaging light on Barack Obama's leadership tenure at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), an educational reform initiative promoting innovative learning methodologies. Obama was Chairman of the Board at CAC from 1995 to 1999.

Thomas Lifson has the background:

The cloak of media invisibility is slowly beginning to lift from Barack Obama's most important administrative leadership experience, helming an expensive educational reform effort in Chicago that failed to produce any measurable academic gains, according to the project's own final report.

Add in the fact that former Weatherman and admitted terrorist William Ayers (whom Obama described in the Philadelphia debate as merely a "neighbor") was head of the operating arm of the CAC, working with Obama on distributing scores of millions of dollars to grantees in the wards of the city, and you have a topic that the Obama campaign wishes to avoid at all costs.

A compliant media has averted its eyes so far. A timeline of Obama's career from George Washington University omits it. Why the McCain campaign has not raised more questions on the subject is a question beyond my pay grade. But there are signs it is on the case.

The four plus years (1995-1999) Barack Obama spent as founding chairman of the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) represent his track record as reformer, as someone who reached out in a public-private collaboration and had the audacity to believe his effort would make things better. At the time he became leader of this ambitious project to remake the public schools of Chicago, he was 33 years old and a third year associate at a small Chicago law firm, Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland.

This was a big test for him, his chance to cut his teeth on bringing hope and change to the mostly minority inner city school children trapped in Chicago schools. And he flopped big time, squandering lots of money and the time of many public employees in the process.

Given Senator Obama's lack of any other posts as leader of an organization, someone unschooled in the ways of the American media might expect that for months reporters have been poring over the records of the project to get an idea of how it managed to fail so badly. Examining the track record of the guy who wants to lead the federal government would seem to be part of the campaign beat for media organizations.

Dan Riehl has more:

Continuing to follow up on what can be learned of Barack Obama's tenure as the Chairman of the Board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), evaluations of the program during his tenure available on line demonstrate that in his only real executive test, Barack Obama was a dismal failure squandering millions of dollars on education programs which had basically no real effect. They also strongly suggest Obama's claim that un-repentant terrorist Bill Ayers is just a teacher who lived down the block is an outright lie. The structure and tone of the CAC, addressed in the documents, leave a strong impression the two men had to work together closely over a number of years. Also, as copies of CAC internal documents were given over to the evaluators, any notion that they now shouldn't be immediately shared with the public is an absolute farce.

Given Obama's significant lack of experience, aside from any Ayers connection which Stanley Kurtz continues to pursue, it's doubtful he'd want America to learn any details behind his obviously failed performance during the one time he was expected to perform as an executive in the real world.

Continue reading Reihl at the link.

Here's the screen shot of the executive summary of the institution's final report, "The Chicago Annenberg Challenge: Successes, Failures, and Lessons for the Future":

Lifson indicates that journalists and researchers have been denied access to the Annenberg project's data base, housed at the publicly-funded University of Illinois Chicago.

Andrew Malcolm and John Kass have the details on the university's refusal to release the records.

George W. Bush and World Politics

Robert Kagan, at the new Foreign Affairs, makes the case that President George W. Bush came to office with a realist perspective on international affairs.

This approach hardly endeared the administration to the nations of the world.

The U.S. in the late-1990s was frequently rebuked for pursuing a narrow national interest on issues ranging from global warming to the International Criminal Court to Saddam Hussein's Iraq. American preponderance was ridiculed in 1998 by French Foreign Hubert Védrine as unreconciled "hyperpower." Leaders across the capitals of Europe called for promoting an "international community" concerned with "the common interests of humanity." America's focus on self-interest power maximization was out of step with international demands for a more cooperative internationalism.

Thus, the accession of President Bush to the White House was seen around the world as a continuation of the 1990s pattern of self-centered power management in in international politics:

Even before he took office, cartoonists were drawing him as a Texas cowboy with six-shooters and a noose. The French politician Jack Lang called him a "serial assassin." The Guardian's Martin Kettle wrote, on January 7, 2001, in The Washington Post, that "the mounting global impatience" with the United States predated Bush but that his election was the "best recruiting sergeant that the new anti-Americanism could have hoped for."

Kagan's historical refresher on the Bush transition in global poltics will likely cause fits of cognitive dissonance for those hostile to this adminstration's foreign policy. For one thing, he makes the case that the war on terror has been an astounding success:

Judged on its own terms, the war on terror has been by far Bush's greatest success. No serious observer imagined after September 11 that seven years would go by without a single additional terrorist attack on U.S. soil. Only naked partisanship and a justifiable fear of tempting fate have prevented the Bush administration from getting or taking credit for what most would have regarded seven years ago as a near miracle. Much of the Bush administration's success, moreover, has been due to extensive international cooperation, especially with the European powers in the areas of intelligence sharing, law enforcement, and homeland security. Whatever else the Bush administration has failed to do, it has not failed to protect Americans from another attack on the homeland. The next administration will be fortunate to be able to say the same -- and will be contrasted quite unfavorably with the Bush administration if it cannot.

But what may be particulary touchy for the antiwar forces is Kagan's dicussion of the link between September 11, bipartisanship, and American regime change in Iraq:

The invasion was partly related to the war on terror. The Clinton administration had also worried about Saddam's terrorist ties and had used those suspected links to justify its own military action against Iraq in 1998. Clinton himself warned that if the United States did not take action against Saddam, the world would "see more and more of the very kind of threat Iraq poses now -- a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction, ready to use them or provide them to terrorists, drug traffickers, or organized criminals who travel the world among us unnoticed." After September 11, a dramatically lowered tolerance for threats helps explain why realists such as Cheney, who had earlier believed Saddam could be safely deterred and contained, suddenly felt differently. The same logic drove Senator Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and many other Democrats and moderate Republicans in Congress to authorize the use of force in October 2002, producing the lopsided Senate vote of 77-23. It was why outspoken opposition to the war was so rare. The Time columnist Joe Klein reflected the mood in an interview on the eve of the war: "Sooner or later, this guy has to be taken out. . . . The message has to be sent because if it isn't sent now . . . it empowers every would-be Saddam out there and every would-be terrorist out there."

The principal rationales for invading Iraq predated the war on terror, however, and also predated Bush's realism. They were consistent with the broader view of U.S. interests that had prevailed in the Clinton years and during the Cold War. Iraq in the 1990s had been seen by many not as a direct threat to the United States but as a problem of world order for which the United States had a special responsibility. As then National Security Adviser Sandy Berger had argued in 1998, "The future of Iraq will affect the way in which the Middle East and the Arab world in particular evolve in the next decade and beyond." That was why people such as Richard Armitage, Francis Fukuyama, and Robert Zoellick could sign a letter in 1998 calling for Saddam's forcible removal. That was why, as The New York Times' Bill Keller (now the paper's executive editor) wrote at the time, liberals in what he called "The I-Can't-Believe-I'm-a-Hawk Club" supported the war, including "op-ed regulars at [The New York Times] and The Washington Post, the editors of The New Yorker, The New Republic and Slate, columnists in Time and Newsweek," as well as many former Clinton officials.

Those liberals and progressives who favored war against Iraq did so for much the same reason they had favored war in the Balkans: as necessary to help preserve the liberal international order. They preferred to see the United States get UN backing for the war, but they also knew this had been impossible in the case of Kosovo. Their chief worry was that the Bush administration, after toppling Saddam, would take a narrow realist approach in dealing with the aftermath. As Senator Joe Biden (D-Del.) put it, "Some of these guys don't go for nation-building." A former Clinton official, Ronald Asmus, asked, "Is this about American power, or is it about democracy?" If it was about democracy, he believed, the United States would "have a broader base of support at home and more friends abroad."

This broad consensus among American conservatives, liberals, progressives, and neoconservatives, however, was not replicated in the rest of the world. For Europeans, there was a big difference between Kosovo and Iraq. It was not about legality or the UN. It was about location. Europeans were ready to go to war without UN authorization in a matter that concerned them, their security, their history, and their morality. Iraq was another story. To American liberals such as the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, "Europe's cynicism and insecurity, masquerading as moral superiority," was "insufferable."

Kagan concludes the essay making the case for America adopting a more "enlightened" view of U.S. interests in the world, interests of a more normative, liberal internationalist tone. He also reminds us, however, of the importance of values, and that America's vision of democracy and liberty remain the touchstone of expansive global freedom.

This too may strike readers as neoconservative ideological hubris, although the facts indicate that Americ's self-image as a beacon of liberty also predates the years of George W. Bush.

See also, "The Bush Legacy Begins."

Obama's Polling Slide Reveals Deep Liabilities

Barack Obama's deep collapse in public opinion continues this afternoon with the findings from the new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll. Obama holds advantages on domestic isssues, but he's far from where he should be for a generic Democrat at this stage of the campaign, and he's showing deep liabilities on intenational affairs and crisis leadership. Chuck Todd provides the analysis:

The Wall Street Journal's data is in line with other recent survey's tracking an Obama collapse.

As I argued earlier today, at this rate it's unlikely that Obama will enjoy a polling bump from next week's Democratic National Convention. Indeed, it looks like "The One" peaked way too early this year, and since the Illinois Senator's radicalism continues to provide scandal-fodder, buyer's remorse may genuinely come to characterize Democratic Party sentiment after Labor Day.

The "Clinton Factor" will be a likely contributor:

... perhaps the biggest factor keeping the presidential race close has been Obama’s inability to close the deal with some of Hillary Clinton’s supporters. According to the poll, 52 percent of them say they will vote for Obama, but 21 percent are backing McCain, with an additional 27 percent who are undecided or want to vote for someone else.

What’s more, those who backed Clinton in the primaries — but aren’t supporting Obama right now — tend to view McCain in a better light than Obama and have more confidence in McCain’s ability to be commander-in-chief.

See also, "Obama Hammered by Massive Erosion in Public Opinion."

Obama Will Get No Post-Denver Polling Bounce

In 1992, Bill Clinton enjoyed a 16 percentage-point bounce in public opinion following that year's Democratic National Convention.

Since then, the average post-convention bounce has been 5 points. Yet, because of the tightly aligned convention dates for the Democrats and Republicans this summer, as well as the expectation that John McCain will announce his running mate simultaneously with Barack Obama's acceptance speech, Democratic chances for a substantial boost in post-Denver public opinion look poor. Gallup reports:

The conventions are one of the most anticipated events of the political calendar, and thus, their potential to shift voter preferences is great. In 1988 and 1992, the conventions were the turning points in the campaign, moving the formerly trailing candidate ahead for the duration. In other years, such as 1980 and 2000, the conventions produced a change in the front-runner, but not a permanent one, as subsequent events (in particular, the debates) led to changes later in the campaign.

Typically, Gallup finds candidates gaining 5 points in the polls after their conventions, though it is far from a guarantee that the candidates will receive bounces of that size in 2008.

There are a number of factors that could lead to smaller-than-usual convention bounces this year, most notably the tightly compressed convention schedule, with the GOP Convention beginning just four days after the Democratic Convention ends. Also, it is rumored that McCain will announce his vice presidential running mate the day after the Democratic Convention ends, stealing away some of the political spotlight from Obama the day after he gives his presidential nomination acceptance speech. Lastly, the high level of early voter attention may also reduce the potential for significant shifts in voter preferences after the conventions.

More troublesome, Obama's polling numbers have declined amid a series of campaign missteps which have shifted the presidential horse race to McCain's advantage.

In the wake of the Saddleback civil forum, the Obama camp has seen a 15-point collapse in the Zogby poll, which while unusually large, is not too distinct from Obama's decline since late-July, when a the Wall Street Journal found Obama leading McCain by a 47-to -41 percent margin. The Journal survey, however, found McCain with an 11-point advantage on questions of experience and traditional values, a division that may well be exacerbated by this week's revelations on Obama's abortion extremism.

Moreover, Americans continue to harbor doubts about Obama's patriotism, which may add to the Illinois Senator's post-convention doldrums.

In the absence of a "comeback kid" moment for Barack Obama, there may be little hope for a reprise of the Bill Clinton post-convention bounce of 1992.

Darcy Burner Disappoints in November Election Preview

The Hill is portraying Darcy Burner's second-place showing in today 8th congressional district open primary as a strong effort, raising concerns for the incumbent, Republican Dave Reichert.

But considering Burner, a Democratic challenger who sought Reichert's seat in 2006, is running a 3-to-1 advantage in fundraising totals for this quarter, and who had $600,000 more cash on hand than Reichert at the end of July, her inability to out-poll the incumbent looks troubling. Particularly so, considering all the big talk of 2008 being a Democratic year, a trend that has seen some support in Democratic special election victories earlier this year.

Burner has the name recognition and campaign organization necessary for the 50 percent-plus showing necessary to put away doubts of her electoral weeknesses. Indeed, The Hill cites the agreement of the National Republican Campaign Committee:

The NRCC sought to undercut Burner for not outpolling Reichert, despite the Burner campaign's receiving heavy assistance from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). The district is part of the Democrats' Red-to-Blue program.

“The DCCC must be reconsidering the $1 million television buy they placed for Burner and looking at other, more viable races,” the NRCC’s release said.

See also, the Primary's Message: Here We Go Again

Burner is the golden child of the progressive netroots antiwar movement. She is a co-author of "A Responible Plan to End the War in Iraq," a manifesto that appears not only out to touch with the realities of war on the ground in the theater, but with public opinion as well. In fact, the plan is irresponsible, which may have contributed to her failure in today's Washington State primary.

McCain Veep Pick Under Conservative Spotlight

Captain Ed suggests that Senator Joseph Lieberman would be a disaster as John McCain's pick as vice-presidential running mate:

The addition of Joe Lieberman will not convince independents that McCain is a maverick; it will convince an already-skeptical GOP base that McCain is a RINO.

I agree, and for the McCain camp to be seriously considering the Connecticut Senator raises questions about the campaign's strategic acumen. While the length and nastiness of the Democratic primaries may hold more prominence in the popular imagination, the Republican race demonstrated tremendous schisms over the direction of the GOP and the future of conservatism. With the presidential race now deadlocked (and McCain leads in today's Zogby poll), this is no time to rekindle voter resentment among the GOP base.

This morning's New York Times examines the potential for a conservative backlash if McCain bombs in the pick for a running mate:

Senator John McCain is facing increasing scrutiny about his selection of a running mate as some social conservatives expressed alarm on Tuesday that Mr. McCain might ask a candidate who favors abortion rights to join him on the ticket.

But other conservatives said that Mr. McCain, who has long been in step with the Republican Party platform in opposing abortion, was unlikely to be the first Republican presidential nominee in decades to select such a candidate. They said that Mr. McCain’s recent public flirtation with Tom Ridge, a former Pennsylvania governor who supports abortion rights, was as much to give the appearance that Mr. McCain had an open mind on the issue as it was an embrace of Mr. Ridge.

“I think there’s such sufficient understanding at the most senior levels of this campaign of the importance of the pro-family constituency that I’m very comfortable with how the selection process is proceeding,” one Republican strategist close to the campaign said. “I think social conservatives will be fine.”

I'm surprised that Tom Ridge, with his pro-choice record, is even a top contender for the veepstakes. His abortion record alone is a killer, but his mediocre record as secretary of the DHS gargantuan is also at odds with popular hopes for the return of small-g conservatism. Besides, his ramrod straight persona seems out of step with the McCain's style of light-touch banter and easy-going demeanor.

Abortion politcs has emerged as one of the hottest opportunities for the GOP to pick up independent pro-lifers, as Barack Obama's abortion radicalism has been on full display this week.

This development means that Tim Pawlenty should be considered a great possibility for the GOP. While there are some concerns on Pawlenty's cap-and-trade views, I doubt there's going to be a conservative revolt if the Minnesota Governor gets the nod.

Mitt Romney's getting a lot of speculation as well.

For the most part, a Romney pick would be the safest in consolidating the GOP base, and it would have they added benefit of pumping up the delegates at the Republican National Convention (recall the National Review endorsement, as well as Romney's backing in conservative talk-radio). A rousing nominating convention, which would follow the Democrats and the Obama-triumph-of-the-will INVESCO spectacle, would help dampen down enthusiasm for the Democratic nominee, a give the GOP a potentially longer-lasting bounce in the post-Labor Day general election kick off.

Joseph Lieberman should be a top pick for Secretary of Defense or State, but he has no business running along with McCain as the GOP vice-presidential candidate.

The Left's Rachel Maddow Arousal

MSNBC has announced that progressive radio personality and political analyst Rachel Maddow will take over the network's 9pm time slot, replacing veteran anchor Dan Abrams:

With the promotion, which takes effect Sept. 8, Maddow, 35, breaks into what had been criticized as a boys club at the network, led by [Keith] Olbermann and Chris Matthews. Hillary Clinton's campaign frequently ripped MSNBC for what it called sexist coverage during the Democratic primaries. Maddow, who lives with her girlfriend Susan Mikula in Manhattan and Northampton, Mass., may also be the first openly gay woman to host a prime-time program.

Her appointment is certain to draw criticism that MSNBC is moving further left in an attempt to compete with Fox News from the opposite side of the spectrum. John McCain's campaign has repeatedly assailed the network's campaign coverage as biased.

Perhaps the network's leftward lurch explains why the radical netroots is in heat over Maddow's appointment.

Daily Kos gets worked up, "Finally":

I'll never understand why this took so damn long ... Her show will follow Olbermann's, and a HUGE congratulations to one of the smartest voices on cable land.

Spencer Ackerman erupts with some vengeance:

To see an unapologetic, confrontational progressive display a forthrightly liberal point of view from behind the anchor desk of a cable television news show with any consistency has been, for years, nonexistent, even as the country has grown progressively more progressive as the obvious decadence of conservatism has been on display. Rachel Maddow is long overdue.

David Sirota positively climaxes:

This is proof that even in today's disgusting, nepotistic and cutthroat media world - a world that too often rewards idiocy and the idiots that spout the idiocy - good things can happen to good people.

Rachel is the opposite of an idiot - she's one of the smartest people in politics today. She is not just good people - she's great people, and she deserves this.

So, I guess to be "smart," "unapologetic," "confrontational," in "today's disgusting, nepotistic" media environment generates a seal of approval from those who have said American contractors killed by terrorists in Iraq had it coming, that President Bush should die "at the hague," and that the United States deserved the "blowback" of the September 11 attacks.

Yep, "good things happen to good people," especially in the MSNBC/Olbermann universe, where former first ladies get demonized as the "worst person in the world.

Not bad for "a Ph.D. Rhodes scholar lesbian policy wonk who started as a prison AIDS activist."

I'm sure Maddow will be more than "fair and balanced" at her new home.

Obama Hammered by Massive Erosion in Public Opinion

Barack Obama's slide into oblivion is picking up, as public opinion data continues to track the Illinois Senator's abject inability to sustain the Obamania sensationalism from the primary season.

Gallup tracking has the presidential race essentially tied, but the Los Angeles Times comes right and declares Obama's collapsing fortunes:

Barack Obama's public image has eroded this summer amid a daily onslaught of attacks from Republican rival John McCain, leaving the race for the White House statistically tied, according to a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll released today.

Far more voters say McCain has the right experience to be president, the poll found. More than a third have questions about Obama's patriotism.

The survey also illustrates some of the campaign's racial undercurrents as the Illinois senator strives to become the first African American president. Most voters say they know at least some people who feel uneasy about electing a black president; 17% say the country is not ready to do so.

The Times' survey does indicates some difficulties for the GOP.

Recall, though, that a late-July Wall Street Journal survey found tremendous voter unease with Obama on questions of experience and values - and notably, Obama held a 6 percentage-point lead at that time. Since then, we've seen a series of Obama setbacks, for example, on the nature of evil, the human right to life, and on lapses of honesty and integrity.

Such problems have hammered Obama's favorables in public opinion:

Obama's favorable rating has sunk to 48% from 59% since the last Times/Bloomberg poll in June. At the same time, his negative rating has risen to 35% from 27%.

By comparison, McCain's ratings have hardly budged during the same period: 46% of voters have a positive feeling about him; 38% give him negative ratings.

Ultimately, the public widely regards John McCain as more experienced for the presidency.

Obama's collapse in public opinion has triggered a new scale of GOP demonization on the left, which is a sure indication of the dramatic turnaround in Democratic Party fortunes in the election.

Obama: Iraq is War of Choice

Barack Obama, at a New Mexico campaign rally yesterday, denounced the Iraq war as a "war of choice," one that has distracted from the "war of necessity" in Afghanistan, at 1:40 minutes into the video:

It's frankly mindboggling that Obama continues to pander relentlessly to the Democratic Party's radical base. The Iraq war has been won, and even the most implacable opponents have come around to the pro-victory side.

Obama's claim that Iraq is a distraction from Afghanistan is one of the latest antiwar memes seeking to delegitmize the Bush administration and minimize the heroism of American troops serving under the Petraeus command.

Christopher Hitchens previously took down the false war of choice/war of necessity dichotomy:

If we had left Iraq according to the timetable of the anti-war movement, the situation would be the precise reverse: The Iraqi people would now be excruciatingly tyrannized by the gloating sadists of al-Qaida, who could further boast of having inflicted a battlefield defeat on the United States. I dare say the word of that would have spread to Afghanistan fast enough and, indeed, to other places where the enemy operates. Bear this in mind next time you hear any easy talk about "the hunt for the real enemy" or any loose babble that suggests that we can only confront our foes in one place at a time.

Yes, keep this in mind as well, when considering the fact that a third of voters say they can't trust Obama on national security.

Obama's Symbol of Distress

The DNC credentials designed for those attending Barack Obama's speech at INVESCO Field display an upside-down American flag:

Some viewers contacted 9NEWS Saturday, questioning the design of the credentials to see Sen. Barack Obama accept the Democratic Party's presidential nomination at INVESCO Field at Mile High.

The viewers say with the stars and blue field in the lower left corner, it looks like an upside down American flag. Published flag etiquette states the stars should always be displayed in the upper left corner. An upside down flag represents an international symbol of extreme distress.

Matt Chandler with the Obama campaign says the flag is not upside down. He says it is a stylized flag designed to blend the stars on Senator Obama's shirt with the flag blowing in the wind.

Natalie Wyeth with the Democratic National Convention Committee sent 9NEWS the following statement Saturday night: "The DNCC community credentials incorporate patriotic design elements. They do not depict an actual American flag. The DNCC has full and complete respect for the flag and all rules of display."

This DNC flag imbroglio perfectly symbolizes the distress of Barack Obama's presidential campign.

The tide is turning toward the GOP. The race for the White House remains tied, the rush of Obamania has receded, and the Illinois Senator has been dogged for weeks with campaign missteps and new revelations of social policy extremism, and questions of character and integrity.

The DNC's upside-down symbol of distress is the perfect emblem for a candidate whose patriotism is questionable and one who's opposed by a third of voters on the gravest matters of international security.

Photo Credit: Hot Air

Resurgent Declinism in International Relations

Robert Lieber, at World Affairs, offers an essential rebuttal to the resurgent thesis of American decline in international relations theory.

Lieber notes that claims of America's relative international decline have ideological foundations, usually gaining popularity amid periods of robust assertions of power in American foreign affairs. As with past episodes, today's arguments of American decline ignore the realities of the balance of world power, and thus undestimate the endurance of U.S. preponderance:

Is America finished? Respected public intellectuals, think tank theorists, and members of the media elite seem to think so. The scare headline in a recent New York Times Magazine cover story by Parag Khanna titled “Waving Goodbye to Hegemony” asks, “Who Shrunk the Superpower?” Almost daily, learned authors proclaim The End of the American Era, as the title of a 2002 book by Charles Kupchan put it, and instruct us that the rise of China and India, the reawakening of Putin’s Russia, and the expansion of the European Union signal a profound shift in geopolitical power that will retire once and for all the burden of American Exceptionalism. America has become an “enfeebled” superpower, according to Fareed Zakaria in his book, The Post-American World, which concedes that, while the U.S. will not recede from the world stage anytime soon, “Just as the rest of the world is opening up, America is closing down.” With barely contained satisfaction, a French foreign minister says of America’s standing, “The magic is over . . . It will never be as it was before.”

The United States does contend with serious problems at home and abroad, but these prophecies of doom, which spread like a computer virus, hardly reflect a rational appraisal of where we stand. Moreover, it is not too difficult to see the ghosts of declinism past in the current rush to pen America’s epitaph. Gloomsayers have been with us, after all, since this country’s founding....

It was in the 1970s that declinism began to take on its modern features, following America’s buffeting by oil shocks and deep recessions, a humiliating withdrawal from Vietnam, victories by Soviet-backed regimes or insurgent movements in Africa, Central America, and Southeast Asia, and revolution in Iran along with the seizure of the U.S. embassy there. A 1970 book by Andrew Hacker also announced The End of the American Era. At the end of the decade, Jimmy Carter seemed to give a presidential stamp of approval to Hacker’s diagnosis when he used concerns about a flagging American economy, inflation, recession, and unemployment as talking points in his famous “malaise” speech calling for diminished national expectations.

By the early 1980s, declinism had become a form of historical chic. In 1987, David Calleo’s Beyond American Hegemony summoned the U.S. to come to terms with a more pluralistic world. In the same year, Paul Kennedy published what at the time was greeted as the summa theologica of the declinist movement—The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, in which the author implied that the cycle of rise and decline experienced in the past by the empires of Spain and Great Britain could now be discerned in the “imperial overstretch” of the United States. But Kennedy had bought in at the top: within two years of his pessimistic prediction, the Cold War ended with the Soviet Union in collapse, the Japanese economic miracle entering a trough of its own, and U.S. competitiveness and job creation far outpacing its European and Asian competitors.

Theories of America’s obsolescence aspire to the status of science. But cycles of declinism tend to have a political subtext and, however impeccable the historical methodology that generates them seems to be, they often function as ideology by other means. During the 1980s, for instance, these critiques mostly emanated from the left and focused on Reaganomics and the defense buildup. By contrast, in the Clinton era, right-of-center and realist warnings were directed against the notion of America as an “indispensable nation” whose writ required it to nation-build and spread human rights. Likewise, much of today’s resurgent declinism is propelled not only by arguments over real-world events, but also by a fierce reaction against the Bush presidency—a reaction tainted by partisanship, hyperbole, ahistoricism, and a misunderstanding of the fundamentals that underpin the robustness and staying power of the United States.

Lieber continues with a discussion of the elements of America's continued international preeminence.

The U.S. military, despite the strains of current deployments, is not likely to be surpassed in capabilities or readiness by any other major Western power, and America's autocratic peer competitors in Moscow and Beijing face internal challenges (Russia) or regional balancing (China) that will limit the ability of those states to pose a major challenge to continued American dominance.

Economically, the U.S. remains the engine of world economic prosperity. Beijing, which holds trillions in U.S. treasury securities, won't risk a run on the United States for risk of appreciating its own currency, and pricing its exports out of the American market.

In Europe, nationalist tendencies in the major continental states will continue to prohibit the emergence of a centralized European superpower rivaling America's global presence.

Read the whole thing, here.

Lieber also discusses threats internal to the United States, like cultural decline or unrestrained ethnic diversity, but none of these provide a compelling alternative to the basic history of assimilation and social regeneration supporting America's unrivaled world leadership:

Other countries understand the unique nature of American power—if not wholly selfless, not entirely selfish, either—and its role in underpinning global stability and maintaining a decent world order. This helps to explain why Europe, India, Japan and much of East Asia, and important countries of the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America have no use for schemes to balance against the United States. Most would rather do business with America or be shielded by it.

In the end, then, this country’s structural advantages matter much more than economic cycles, trade imbalances, or surging and receding tides of anti-Americanism. These advantages include America’s size, wealth, human and material resources, military strength, competitiveness, and liberal political and economic traditions, but also a remarkable flexibility, dynamism, and capacity for reinvention. Neither the rise of important regional powers, nor a globalized world economy, nor “imperial overstretch,” nor domestic weaknesses seem likely to negate these advantages in ways the declinists anticipate, often with a fervor that makes their diagnoses and prescriptions resemble a species of wish fulfillment.

See also, Stephen Brooks and William Wohlforth, World Out of Balance:International Relations and the Challenge of American Primacy.

Obama's Abortion Extremism

Today's front-page Los Angeles Times features a strangely-titled article on abortion politics in the presidential campaign, "McCain and Obama Try to Navigate the Politics of Abortion."

It's an odd-sounding piece, in the case of John McCain, at least, as the Arizona Senator's hardly struggling to find a voice on reproductive health issues. McCain's clarity on abortion, for example, at Saturday's Saddleback civil forum offered a striking contrast to Barack Obama's all-encompassing effort to avoid alienating anyone concerned about the right to life.

Indeed, following his appearance with Pastor Rick Warren, Obama's abortion stance (stances?) is turning out to be a major campaign liabliity.

As a number of outlets have reported, Obama has taken what are considered "extreme" positions on the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, the name of proposed Illinois legislation that would have prohibited the destruction of fetuses born alive but not yet viable.

Nice Deb has the video from Jill Stanek, who lays out Obama's dishonesty on live infant abortions:

Building on Stanek's disussion is David Freddosso, who lays out the case against Obama's "life lies" with the precision of a courtroom prosecutor:

In 2001, Senator Barack Obama was the only member of the Illinois senate to speak against a bill that would have recognized premature abortion survivors as “persons.” The bill was in response to a Chicago-area hospital that was leaving such babies to die. Obama voted “present” on the bill after denouncing it. It passed the state Senate but died in a state house committee.

In 2003, a similar bill came before Obama’s health committee. He voted against it. But this time, the legislation was slightly different. This latter version was identical to the federal Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, which by then had already passed the U.S. Senate unanimously (with a hearty endorsement even from abortion advocate Sen. Barbara Boxer) and had been signed into law by President Bush.

Sen. Obama is currently misleading people about what he voted against, specifically claiming that the bill he voted against in his committee lacked “neutrality” language on Roe v. Wade. The bill did contain this language. He even participated in the unanimous vote to put it in.

Obama’s work against the bill to protect premature babies represents one of two times in his political career, along with his speech against the Iraq war, that he really stuck out his neck for something that might hurt him politically. Unlike his Iraq speech, Obama is deeply embarrassed about this one — so embarrassed that he is offering a demonstrable falsehood in explanation for his actions. Fortunately, the documents showing the truth are now available.

At the end of last week, Obama gave an interview to CBN’s David Brody in which he repeated the false claim that the born-alive bills he worked, spoke, and voted against on this topic between 2001 and 2003 would have negatively affected Roe v. Wade. This has always been untrue, but, until last week, it appeared to be a debatable point that depended on one’s interpretation of the bill language. Every single version of the bill was neutral on Roe. Each one affected only babies already born, not ones in the womb.

But in 2003, in the health committee which he chaired, Obama voted against a version of the bill that contained the specific “neutrality” language — redundant language affirming that the bill only applied to infants already born and granted no rights to the unborn. You can visit the Illinois legislature’s website here to see the language of the “Senate Amendment 1,” which was added in a unanimous 10-0 vote in the committee before Obama helped kill it.

See the post for the language of the proposed legislation. Freddosso notes that the Illinois version ended up being identical to the U.S. government's Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, which was signed into law in 2002 by president George W. Bush.

Obama claimed this week that he has fully supported efforts to protect infants born as a result of induced-abortions. However, both Jill Stanek and David Freddosso demonstrate these claims as bald-face lies.

McCain and Obama remain tied in public opinion polls, but as news of Obama's abortion extremism gets increasing attention, the survival of Democratic presidential hopes will also need protection.

See Nice Deb for additional videos of Obama's lies and obfuscations.

Catholic League Takes Issue With Offensive Lefty Blogs

I've spent a good amount of time laying out a theory of the secular demonology common among lefty bloggers. Part of this project has been to offer comparisons of crude profanity widely available across the leftosphere.

Thus, I'm not surprised that the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights has identifed as "offensive" a number of left-wing blogs that have been credentialed by the Democratic National Committee:

Over 120 blogs have been credentialed as members of the media for the Democratic National Convention; those who have received credentials are allowed to cover the Convention at the Pepsi Center. While most of them offer legitimate commentary, some do not.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue is protesting two of the blogs:

“The list of credentialed blogs include radical sites like The Daily Kos. Worse are blogs that feature anti-Catholic and obscene material. The two most offensive are Bitch Ph.D. and Towleroad.

“On the home page of Bitch Ph.D. there is a picture of two children: one of them is shown flashing his middle finger. Today’s lead post, which was written August 17, is called ‘Jesus Christ.’ It begins with, ‘I’m a really crappy Catholic who hasn’t been to mass in ages because most parishes around here ‘will’ insist on being aggressively anti-abortion….’ The writer then objects to some children’s toys on the grounds that they are more offensive than desecrating the Eucharist. The toys are actually balloons that have been made to depict Jesus in various poses, including a crucified Christ; one of these images shows Jesus with a penis. Several who commented on this image made patently obscene comments.

“Towleroad describes itself as ‘A Site with Homosexual Tendencies.’ Accordingly, it shows men in jock straps and underwear. It also has a post on Pope Benedict XVI that takes him to task for wearing a cape with ermine. Some of those who commented on this described the pope in a vile and profane way.

“Both of these blogs should be cut immediately from the list of credentialed sites. Neither functions as a responsible media outlet and both offend Catholics, as well as others. To allow them access to the Democratic National Convention sends a message to Catholics they will not forget. We look for Leah Daughtry, CEO of the Convention, to nix them ASAP.”

I can't dismiss the sense of schadenfreude at Bitch Ph.D.'s selection, as I've been singled out by that outfit for my "racism" in denouncing the black cult of victimology.

I've never heard of "Toweleroad," although by the looks of it I can understand the Catholic League's objection.

What's interesting is the affirmation of the Catholic League's concerns, as evidenced by a look at some of the lefty responses attacking the organization's president, Bill Donohue:

How dare there be gays on the internet! Amazingly, Donahue lists the jock strap photos before citing an allegedly offensive post about the Pope. No one who isn't a closeted homosexual would be so distressed about unapologetic displays of homosexuality. You should just come out of the closet, Bill. We'll accept you for who you are.

The Carpetbagger Report asks:

Did the Catholic League go through all 120 blogs, looking for something that would offend them so they could do this press release? By the looks of it, I’m pretty sure they did.

I'd bet they didn't have to view more than a quarter of these before finding some objectionable material.

Still, the issue for me is not that they should be banned, but how well they represent Democratic Party base? I'm pretty sure they do.