Weekly Hit & Run Archive 2008 August 29-31

The Washington Post has a pretty thorough article today on John McCain's early life. I was grateful to see this rarely expressed (though true) statement:

At its start, McCain's professional life was shaped for him by a family whose Washington-centric base, with its insider connections to high-ranking military officials and powerful politicians, belied the Washington-outsider persona for which he became celebrated as his political career soared.

His father Jack, the article suggests, was much more of a "political admiral" than his son John has ever admitted on paper, and at any rate was a Beltway fixture all through McCain's formative adolescent years:

He was a submarine commander during World War II, before coming back, in 1950, for a decade-long stint in the city of his youth. He went to work in the office of the chief of naval operations, known as the CNO, before becoming chief of the Navy's legislative affairs office.

The post meant serving as the Navy's top liaison to Congress, a job for which Jack McCain was ideally suited, having established connections with congressmen and senators who determined the size and shape of the Navy's budget.

With his wife and their three children, he lived on Capitol Hill, virtually kitty-corner from the Cannon House Office Building. The McCains' home on First Street SE quickly became a political salon for key lawmakers, who had standing invitations on most workdays to drop by, make themselves at home, have a drink and chat with their colleagues. Roberta McCain, who regularly mingled with legislators and their spouses in the House and Senate galleries, came to be recognized as Jack McCain's charming political partner, a garrulous ally who entertained frequently and sometimes cooked breakfast for politicos crucial to her husband's success, including House Armed Services Chairman Carl Vinson of Georgia. Richard Russell Jr., a powerful senator from Georgia, was an occasional visitor, as was Sen. Everett Dirksen of Illinois, who, a friend remembers, had sometimes given his attention to the eldest McCain boy, whom he'd enjoyed bouncing on his knee years before, during then-Capt. McCain's days in the CNO office.

Jack McCain was by then a veteran Washington insider, another player in an insular world where politics was a round-the-clock exercise, and a young liaison's political friendships were his lifeblood.

John would go on to take Jack's old job as liaison in the late 1970s, which was (along with his marriage to young billionaire heiress Cindy Hensley) the main springboard to his political career. To state an obvious if under-observed fact, John McCain has been marinating in Washington D.C. political life for most of the past 58 years.

You can read about the impact such a definitionally elite upbringing had on McCain in my book (now out in paperback), in a chapter entitled "The Elitist." It's not about arugula, sadly, but rather both the good and the bad political philosophies that stem from living a top-down life.

Also, my curated list of 10 good non-reason articles written about McCain can be found here.

The Washington Post has a pretty thorough article today on John McCain's early life. I was grateful to see this rarely expressed (though true) statement:

At its start, McCain's professional life was shaped for him by a family whose Washington-centric base, with its insider connections to high-ranking military officials and powerful politicians, belied the Washington-outsider persona for which he became celebrated as his political career soared.

His father Jack, the article suggests, was much more of a "political admiral" than his son John has ever admitted on paper, and at any rate was a Beltway fixture all through McCain's formative adolescent years:

He was a submarine commander during World War II, before coming back, in 1950, for a decade-long stint in the city of his youth. He went to work in the office of the chief of naval operations, known as the CNO, before becoming chief of the Navy's legislative affairs office.

The post meant serving as the Navy's top liaison to Congress, a job for which Jack McCain was ideally suited, having established connections with congressmen and senators who determined the size and shape of the Navy's budget.

With his wife and their three children, he lived on Capitol Hill, virtually kitty-corner from the Cannon House Office Building. The McCains' home on First Street SE quickly became a political salon for key lawmakers, who had standing invitations on most workdays to drop by, make themselves at home, have a drink and chat with their colleagues. Roberta McCain, who regularly mingled with legislators and their spouses in the House and Senate galleries, came to be recognized as Jack McCain's charming political partner, a garrulous ally who entertained frequently and sometimes cooked breakfast for politicos crucial to her husband's success, including House Armed Services Chairman Carl Vinson of Georgia. Richard Russell Jr., a powerful senator from Georgia, was an occasional visitor, as was Sen. Everett Dirksen of Illinois, who, a friend remembers, had sometimes given his attention to the eldest McCain boy, whom he'd enjoyed bouncing on his knee years before, during then-Capt. McCain's days in the CNO office.

Jack McCain was by then a veteran Washington insider, another player in an insular world where politics was a round-the-clock exercise, and a young liaison's political friendships were his lifeblood.

John would go on to take Jack's old job as liaison in the late 1970s, which was (along with his marriage to young billionaire heiress Cindy Hensley) the main springboard to his political career. To state an obvious if under-observed fact, John McCain has been marinating in Washington D.C. political life for most of the past 58 years.

You can read about the impact such a definitionally elite upbringing had on McCain in my book (now out in paperback), in a chapter entitled "The Elitist." It's not about arugula, sadly, but rather both the good and the bad political philosophies that stem from living a top-down life.

Also, my curated list of 10 good non-reason articles written about McCain can be found here.

Your reason team began its invasion of the Twin Cities yesterday afternoon, just in time for a corporate-tastic "MORE TO LIFE" party at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. On the way there I ran into the staff of The Daily Show, who were bummed that Ron Paul's Campaign for Liberty wouldn't return their calls and credential them for the Monday-Tuesday Rally for the Republic. "If they're worried that we'd make fun of them: Well, yeah," said field producer Miles Kahn. "Who do we not make fun of?"

Back to the party. It was on a slightly smaller scale than the corresponding party in Denver, which I take as a further sign that corporations are putting their money on blue and expecting to work with Democrats come January. Security was mellow, hence the presence of Code Pink ne'er do well Medea Benjamin:

The topics of the night were Hurricane Gustav and Sarah Palin. On Gustav, I'd characterize the Republican reaction as one long "phew." Bush and Cheney can't come to the Twin Cities? Oh, too bad! Fresh-scrubbed Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) will be on TV screens demonstrating how a zero-experience executive gets things done? Good luck to him! No one yet was talking about the possibilty of further convention nights being cancelled or reworked. That's all happening today.

On Palin, what had been a sense of euphoria was tempered by 24 hours of blinkered news coverage. The consensus was that Palin could be a disaster or a narrow boost. If McCain had picked a bland white guy running mate, he'd be on the path to defeat: with Palin, he at least has a chance of exciting the base and pulling some female independents for victory. Be assured, exciting the base was what this was all about. Rumors swirled about how much money the campaign had raised since the pick (around $7 million) and how this was a jolt for bored, distaff conservatives. But there's a heavy expectation that reporters will try and trap Palin in a gaffe on an issue she 1) doesn't understand or 2) disagrees with the 72-year old guy on. And if that happens, we're in Quayle Country, population Ferraro.

I've been wondering what people are making of the remarkable detail that Sarah Palin and her husband are respectively former and current union members, and that John McCain saw fit to make this a bragging point in his introduction. From McCain's introduction of Palin:

The person I'm about to introduce to you was a union member and is married to a union member and understands the problems, the hopes and the values of working people...

And from Palin's introduction of her husband (which in the delivery really sounded like the part where Pat Sajak reels off a few biographical details about a new Wheel contestant):

Todd is a production operator in the oil fields up on Alaska's North Slope. And he's a proud member of the United Steelworkers union. And he's a world-champion snow machine racer.

Because somebody's always thought of something before you have, Matt Bodie at PrafsBlawg gives it an excogitational rumination:

The real question, in my view, is whether policy will follow rhetoric.  Will McCain-Palin advocate for greater restrictions on trade?  Will they adopt a more restrictive position on immigration policy, or will they drift back towards McCain's more pro-immigration views?  And given that Palin is a former union member, and her husband is a Steelworker, will they support the Employee Free Choice Act?

I'm not sure Palin's own views on any of these matters are that important, given how little Vice Presidents matter in the first place. Nor is this move likely to cause any friction in the storybook marriage of labor leaders and the Democrats (though rank and file union members tend to be less faithful to the party). But it's certainly notable that McCain seems to think of union membership as an advantage here. What are the angles?

Reason Foundation's Mike Flynn talked with protesters and Dems in Denver about immigration policy to see what Donkey Party enthusiasts really want in the area. The short answer: It's totally unclear, with folks saying back off on raids of illegal workers, others pushing the breakdown of the global capitalist system and still others, including former Clinton Secretary of Energy and mayor of Denver Federico Pena, lambasting the Bush administration for not doing enough to enforce the border.

Watch now and share the confusion, before the GOP gets into the mix:

Stop reading if you've already heard these, but I found this Harper's-style list of Palin/McCain zingers at a random political listserv on Yahoo!:

45: number of months Sarah Palin has been pregnant
20: number of months Sarah Palin has been governor

9,000: population of Wasilla, AK the town of which Palin was mayor                      15,000: the number of people at the rally announcing her nomination as VP

7: number of people in the Palin family
7: number of houses John and Cindy McCain own

72: years that John McCain has been alive
49: years that Alaska has been a state

1: number of times McCain and Palin had met before today
20 million: the number of dollars that the city of Wasilla was left in
debt when Palin's term as mayor ended

When John McCain started his campaign, Sarah Palin was not yet governor of Alaska.

John McCain left both his first wife and Mitt Romney for beauty queens.

A mystery grand prize goes to the commenter who writes the best addition to the list.

Suzanne Gamboa previews the Ron Paul Rally for the Republic with details on how Paul will be treated at the RNC (guess) and how Paul diehards are getting to the event.

Paul has no speaking role at the GOP convention. He said his staff made overtures to the party, but nothing came of its efforts.

Republican Party spokeswoman Joanna Burgos said she had to research whether Paul was invited to speak when asked about a convention role for Paul.

"Our focus is really on this side of the river," Burgos said. "We think there's enough excitement and energy on this side." McCain's campaign spokesman did not return a phone message.

Rally attendees can pay extra to attend an electoral boot camp. To save money, some are bunking outside the city.

Paul backers who aren't staying at the Minneapolis hotel or a budget motel planned to bunk in group cabins at Camp Ihduhapi on Lake Independence, park RVs or pitch tents at campgrounds or head to a Goodhue, Minn., dairy farm for Ronstock '08, an imitation of the 1960s Woodstock counterculture festival. Organizers there say a neighbor of the farm's owner is donating a cow to feed the flock.

Here's some of the combative final promotional material for the event (ostensibly written by the man, the doctor, the rEVOLutionary himself):

The situation our country faces is as dangerous as ever. A certain Democratic senator, recently passed over for the Republican vice-presidential nod, is likely to be our next secretary of state. Both major parties remain committed to militarism and reckless spending - and inflationism to fund it all.

At their convention the Democrats uttered barely a peep about the surveillance state, the police state, and the Bush administration's disastrous foreign policy. Needless to say, there was not a word about the Fed and what it's done to our economy. We can only imagine what the GOP Convention will have in store for us.

The Rally for the Republic is the first step in alerting our countrymen to these dangers, and holding out the message of freedom as the only remedy. We must resist the false choices the two major parties are giving us.

Here's the schedule:

12:30 - Intro: Tucker Carlson
12:40 - National Anthem: Matt Colvin
12:50 - Invocation: Barb Davis White
12:55 - Howard Phillips
1:10 - Doug Wead
1:30 - Tom Woods
1:50 - Grover Norquist
2:10 - Lew Rockwell
2:30 - Bill Kauffman
2:50 - Special Guest
3:10 - Bruce Fein
3:35 - Gov. Jesse Ventura
4:05 - John Tate‚ Campaign for Liberty Presentation
4:25 - Gov. Gary Johnson
5:00 - Aimee Allen
6:00 - Break
7:00 - Intro: Barry Goldwater Jr.
7:05 - Ron Paul
8:05 - Sara Evans
9:30 - End of Program
9:30 - Jimmie Vaughan After Party

Yes, Grover Norquist will share a green room with Lew Rockwell. The balance between the more nationalist, paleo Paul backers (Phillips, Woods) and the more media-friendly ones (Ventura, Johnson) is more or less 50-50. I'm not sure what I think about a whole hour of Aimee Allen. Also: If I read this correctly, Paul is speaking the same time that Rudy "Ask Me How Many Delegates I Won!" Giuliani will be grunting about 9/11 at the Xcel Center.

The Langham Charitable Trust took offense at Random House's decision to scrap Sherry Jones' The Jewel of Medina, and as a result has forbidden Random House authors from entering the trust's literary competition:

"[U]ntil The Jewel of Medina is actually published, [we] will not consider submissions of any books, for any of our prizes, from Random House or any of its affiliates."...

So that's the $1,000 David J. Langum, Sr. Prize in American Historical Fiction and the $1,000 David J. Langum, Sr. Prize in American Legal History or Biography off the table for Random-affiliated authors until 2009 at the earliest—bad news for, at the very least, David Ebershoff (The 19th Wife), David Liss (the forthcoming The Whiskey Rebels), and Jane Kamensky and Jill Lepore (the also-forthcoming Blindspot), all of whom would appear, based on an admittedly incomplete reading, to have otherwise had as strong a chance of winning the fiction prize as Random House author/editor Kurt Andersen, who won last year's award for Heyday.

Also from GalleyCat, a thorough dismissal of claims that Random House "censored" Jones:

The difference between true censorship and Random House's decision to place a higher value on the safety of its proven corporate assets than on a commercially unproven work of artistic expression is, simply, the difference between "you can't do that" and "I don't want any part of that." Random House did not join forces with Islamic leaders to explicitly condemn the book, nor is it sitting on the manuscript to prevent readers from ever seeing it; they have given the rights back to Jones, who is even now working with her agent to secure another American publisher for the novel and its sequel.

While I agree that baseless accusations of censorship devalue the term, I stand by my argument that Random acted like a bunch of n00bz when they decided to genuflect to the shadow of radicalism.

Let us hope, for the sake of all those Random House writers—many of whom without the Langham prize will be reduced to attention-starved artists—and in honor of America's love of heaving bosoms and historical fiction, that an American publisher picks up Jones' book sooner rather than later.

Michael C. Moynihan on The Jewel of Medina here.

This past week, reason Associate Editor Michael C. Moynihan took to the pages of The Los Angeles Times' Dust-Up section to debate Russia expert Andrew Meier on the question "What Does Putin Want?"

Read the full exchange here.

The chatter is all about how Gov. Palin's inexperience will undermine the McCain campaign's ability to hammer on Sen. Obama for his inexperience. The comparison seems a little odd, though. If McCain is elected, she'll be picking up highly relevant experience very rapidly, in the low exposure role of VP. Obama won't have that luxury.

But there are two possibilities we must consider:

1) The William Henry Harrison scenario: McCain could, in theory, arrive in Washington be inaugurated on a cold and blustery day, give a 2-hour, 8,444-word speech, and succumb to pneumonia a month later, leaving Palin with 3 and 11/12 of a presidency to serve and nothing besides these parting words: "Madam, I wish you to understand the true principles of the government. I wish them carried out. I ask nothing more."

2) The Battlestar Galactica scenario: McCain could also be killed when the Cylons return and wipe out most of humanity with a nuclear weapon. In Battlestar, the 42 officials in line ahead of Secretary of Education Laura Roslin fail to check in, and she assumes the presidency. She has no foreign policy experience, either.

reason on the line of succession here.  reason on the William Henry Harrison/McCain comparison here. reason with more Battlestar '08 connections here.

One of the predictions of the climate change models is that temperatures will rise faster at the poles than in the temperate and tropic regions. Last year the extent of summer Arctic sea ice dropped to a record low. A new report from the European Space Agency suggests that that low might be shattered this year:

Following last summer's record minimum ice cover in the Arctic, current observations from ESA's Envisat satellite suggest that the extent of polar sea-ice may again shrink to a level very close to that of last year.

Envisat observations from mid-August depict that a new record of low sea-ice coverage could be reached in a matter of weeks. The animation above is a series of mosaics of the Arctic Ocean created from images acquired between early June and mid-August 2008 from the Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) instrument aboard Envisat. The dark grey colour represents ice-free areas while blue represents areas covered with sea ice.

Current ice coverage in the Arctic has already reached the second absolute minimum since observations from space began 30 years ago. Because the extent of ice cover is usually at its lowest about mid-September, this year's minimum could still fall to set another record low.

Each year, the Arctic Ocean experiences the formation and then melting of vast amounts of ice that floats on the sea surface. An area of ice the size of Europe melts away every summer reaching a minimum in September. Since satellites began surveying the Arctic in 1978, there has been a regular decrease in the area covered by ice in summer – with ice cover shrinking to its lowest level on record and opening up the most direct route through the Northwest Passage in September 2007.

Press release here. More ESA images here. I'll let you know what happens in September.

Just a quick round up of what I could find about Gov. Sarah Palin's take on various scitech issues.

On teaching evolutionary biology in schools:

"Teach both. You know, don't be afraid of information....Healthy debate is so important and it's so valuable in our schools. I am a proponent of teaching both. And you know, I say this too as the daughter of a science teacher. Growing up with being so privileged and blessed to be given a lot of information on, on both sides of the subject -- creationism and evolution. It's been a healthy foundation for me. But don't be afraid of information and let kids debate both sides."

On man-made global warming:

Q. What is your take on global warming and how is it affecting our country?

A. A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I'm not one though who would attribute it to being man-made.

On endangered species (polar bears):

I am disappointed with U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne's decision to list polar bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Measures are already in place to protect the polar bear.

On abortion (and perhaps by extension human embryonic stem cell research):

I'm pro-life. I'll do all I can to see every baby is created with a future and potential. The legislature should do all it can to protect human life.

On energy policy:

Favors opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil and gas production. "I beg to disagree with any candidate who would say we can’t drill our way out of our problem or that more supply won’t ultimately affect prices. Of course it will affect prices."

On access to health care:

Against the Certificate of Need (CON) program which is a regulatory process that requires certain health care providers to obtain state approval before offering certain new or expanded services. "As I said recently in my State of the State Address to the Legislature, 'Under our present Certificate of Need process, costs and needs don't drive health-care choices -- bureaucracy does. Our system is broken and expensive.' Eliminating the CON program, with certain exceptions, will allow free-market competition and reduce onerous government regulation."

More later.

In the Denver Airport's mile-long security line, returning Democratic delegates were trying to cheer themselves up about John McCain's inspired choice of Sarah Palin as running mate. "Worst pick ever!" an obnoxious young fellow in a loud "Yes We Can" shirt bellowed, to nobody in particular. "Worst pick since Quayle!" The desperation was showing.

In one of the many other airport lines created by United Airlines, soberer delegates were shaking their heads with reluctant respect for McCain's stones. "Choosing Biden was the safe move," a Washington state Democrat said (quotes are approximate). "Choosing Palin was bold."

That seems exactly right. Biden's qualities are almost perfectly tailored to shore up precisely what people fear about Obama: Where Obama is almost dangerously inexperienced, Biden has been on the Foreign Service Committee since the Truman Administration. Where Obama is an arugula-nibbling, sophisticated Other, Biden is a lunchbucketeer who talks like Uncle Festus. Where Obama has trouble in the Rust Belt, Biden can't shut his trap about "the lineworker" and other fetishized regular Joes from Scranton. The whole play is defensive, and no matter how seemingly perfect Biden's qualities seem to fit Obama's needs, at the end of the day...he's still Joe Biden.

Palin, too, complements McCain -- he's old and crusty, she's young and hot, he is still distrusted by social conservatives, she's a social-con darling, he's been in the Senate about as long as Joe Biden, she's a newish governor several thousand miles away. But the strategic calculation is about offense. You want an identity politics election? Bring it on! Think all those wayward Hillary voters are going to automatically come back to the fold? How about a candidate who's not afraid of a strong woman! And nothing reinforces the tattered but still-effective "maverick" reputation than choosing a largely unknown woman who is "as libertarian as you can hope for on a major ticket."

One urgent theme among Democrats in 2008, from the netroots to the top of the ticket, is that the party needs to come out swinging. Learn from the pugilism of the Gingrich Revolution. Forcefully rebut any attempts at swift-boating. Run toward, not away from, national security. Go on offense.

But it was McCain, not Obama, who used his veepstakes to take the fight directly to the enemy. A risky and potentially disastrous move, given that Palin has zero record on national security during a time of war and would be serving a president who could keel over at any moment...but it's a bold one.

This week the U.N. announced that opium production in Afghanistan is down 6 percent from last year's record level of 8,200 metric tons. The U.N. attributes the decline to drought and "good local leadership" aimed at encouraging poppy farmers to grow other crops. (Rising food prices have made alternatives such as wheat more economically attractive than they used to be, although farmers can still make a lot more money growing poppies.) Notably, Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, went out of his way to say eradication did not meaningfully contribute to the drop in opium production:

The zero percent cultivation in 18 provinces was not—and I stress, was not—due to eradication. Only a very small amount of land was eradicated, only 5,000 hectares at a very high human cost—77 people died, half of them civilian and half of them policemen—and also at a very high economic cost. We are therefore making a change towards our policy regarding eradication.

The number of "opium-free provinces" increased from 13 to 18, and the acreage devoted to poppies fell 19 percent. But the remaining farms are producing more per acre and are increasingly concentrated in Taliban-controlled areas. Meanwhile, many of the farmers who have stopped growing poppies are growing cannabis instead, which Costa does not consider a victory.

The impact on the heroin market is even less impressive:

For the third year in a row, opium supply far outweighs world demand. Prices are falling, but not dramatically. This suggests that vast amounts of opium, heroin and morphine have been withheld from the market.

Prices are falling, but not dramatically. That's quite an accomplishment. And we should not forget (as Costa clearly has) that even if drug warriors succeeded in eliminating every last poppy from Afghanistan after years of economy-disrupting, resentment-arousing, violence-provoking, insurgency-strengthening effort, opium simply would be produced somewhere else. That will be true as long as there is a demand for heroin.

Speaking of which, Emmanuel Reinert, executive director of the Paris-based Senlis Council, a nonprofit group specializing in security and development policy, correctly says the drop in production "is no more than a ripple in the ocean" and warns that the current policy is reinforcing the nexus between drugs and terrorism. But the Reinert's alternative, buying Afghan opium for use in legal painkillers, would not affect worldwide demand for heroin and therefore would not eliminate, or even shrink, the black market, although it might change the players. 

Last month I noted a frustrated drug warrior's attempt to pin the poppy flop on everyone else. My columns on the subject are here and here.

[via the Drug War Chronicle]

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz recently announced that the company would close 600 of its approximately 12,000 American stores in the coming year, sending 12,000 managers and baristas to the unemployment line.

But as Starbucks contracts, many independent coffee shops are growing, beating the coffee giant in an upscale market it helped to create.

As anti-corporate crusaders are now discovering, instead of advocating for legal prohibitions on chain stores or attempting to zone the offending businesses off of Main Street USA, mom-and-pop shops can successfully combat the coffee behemoth by using old-fashioned market competition.

reason.tv's Michael C. Moynihan and Dan Hayes investigate. Click below to watch.

For more articles and links, and to embed this video on your website, go here.

Here is Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, John McCain's vice presidential pick, on drugs:

Palin doesn't support legalizing marijuana, worrying about the message it would send to her four kids. But when it comes to cracking down on drugs, she says methamphetamines are the greater threat and should have a higher priority.

Palin said she has smoked marijuana—remember, it was legal under state law, she said, even if illegal under U.S. law—but says she didn't like it and doesn't smoke it now.

"I can't claim a Bill Clinton and say that I never inhaled."

This was a year ago, when Palin was challenging then-Gov. Frank Murkowski for the Republican nomination. Although her child-centric defense of prohibition is standard stuff, her pot smoking admission is indeed a step up from Clinton's. (The former president, you may recall, not only claimed he didn't inhale when he tried marijuana at Oxford but initially obfuscated by saying he had never broken the drug laws of this country.) Palin's "I smoked it but didn't enjoy it" scores a bit lower on the candor meter than Barack Obama's "I smoked it and liked it but now regret it." (And neither is as encouraging as "I smoked it and liked it and still do" or "I never smoked it, but I don't think people should be arrested for it.") But compared to Murkowski, an anti-pot alarmist who pushed through a bill that purported to recriminalize private possession of marijuana, Palin sounds enlightened. Because the Alaska Supreme Court ruled in 1975 that the state constitution's privacy clause bars the government from punishing people for possessing small quantities of marijuana in the home for personal use, the courts so far have rejected Murkowski's recriminalization law (which was based on the premise that today's pot is much more dangerous than the marijuana available in the '70s). So Palin could continue to smoke pot in the privacy of her home without fear of arrest, barring a federal raid on the governor's residence. It's a good thing for McCain, who can't even tolerate the idea of marijuana as a medicine for desperately ill people, that she never really liked it.

In February I suggested what Obama should have learned from his youthful drug use.

Matthew Yglesias complains that the press is talking about Sarah Palin in purely political terms, and not asking how she could help John McCain govern.

It’s striking listening to the commentary about why this is a smart pick for John McCain that the arguments are all about how this will help him politically — attract women voters, get attention, disrupt Barack Obama’s “change” message, etc. What I haven’t seen is any conservatives making arguments about why Sarah Palin will help President McCain govern. He’ll call on her insights about... what?

Well, maybe oil.

Kudlow: Senator McCain says [ANWR is] too pristine to drill. Senator Obama says the drilling won't work. What is your response to this? How do you fight back?

Palin: Well it will work. And Senator McCain is wrong on that issue. He’s right on a whole lot of other issues, so thank goodness that he’s understanding and evolving with his position on OCS [Outer Continental Shelf]. So that’s encouraging.

Or drugs.

Palin has said she smoked marijuana but didn't enjoy it and doesn't smoke anymore.

"I can't claim a Bill Clinton and say that I never inhaled,” she told the Anchorage Daily News in 2006.

At the time, marijuana was legal under Alaska's liberal drug laws.

She now says she's against decriminalization, but with Obama on one ticket and her on the other, I suppose the "youthful drug use" taboo has been broken for all time. And she probably isn't going to talk to McCain about abortion, but she's brought the religious right completely on board for him, having given birth to a son with Down Syndrome whom she's called "perfect."

The Palin pick is secondarily about government reform, and she's been steel-spined in attacking fellow, corrupt Republicans in her state. But that's only secondary. John McCain would have never looked at Gov. Sam Palin as a running mate, just as black Democrats and guilty white liberals would have never caught fire for white Irish senator Brian O'bama. This is an identity politics election, with independents who don't agree with anything Obama says asked to vote for him to install the first black president, and Democrats now asked to support John McCain to shatter the glass ceiling.

I don't know how I feel about that. As Kerry Howley argued this year, of course the first credible non-white male candidates can be minimized with cries of identity politics or nepotism or affirmative action. But that's how the barriers get broken. Team McCain has understood, and found, that large slice of the electorate that looks at voting as sociological validation. They were tired of Obama having it to himself. I can absolutely see the Palin choice backfiring: she hasn't been vetted by national media, who now have expense-paid trips to Alaska to book, and she could get obliterated in the VP debate with Biden. But if McCain wins this thing, we'll point to the Palin nomination as why.

Now, Jason Zengerle with the zinger:

I suppose that if McCain continues to make the argument that Putin wants "to restore the old Russian empire," then he can also argue that Palin has been playing a key national security role by preventing a Russian expeditionary force from coming across the Bering Strait.

One more thing about identity politics: It's going to be awfully, awfully tiresome to hear conservatives whine about Palin attacks being sexist. One, it's in bad faith: I challenge them to take a polygraph and say they never visited SlapHillary.com or giggled when a voter asked McCain how he could "beat the bitch." Two, it minimizes Palin by portraying her as a hapless female, and comparing her to Clinton. Clinton was and is a feminist icon. Sarah Palin is Sarah Palin.

Gov. Sarah Palin just made a serious push for those disgruntled Hillary Clinton supporters, namedropping Geraldine Ferraro and promising to break the glass ceiling. Is the McCain camp's decision to blast Sammy Hagar-era Van Halen part of this strategy? Unless my ears deceived me, I just heard Van Hagar rockin' the house in Dayton. That ain't no green collar rock! Of course, Mr. Cabo Wabo will be gracing the RNC with his stately presence. Here's hoping McCain (or Obama) taps him to head up the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.

Status updates: They're the new blogs. I just saw these three in a row:

John Heilemann is watching john mccain grapple with buyer's remorse before having exited the checkout line.

Andrew Malcolm Reacting to Palin, Kay Bailey Hutchison gets high marks for honesty.

Hal Espen The paleoconservative blogosphere believes that Palin will get McCain to finally flip on ANWR, with a joint visit to show how "ugly" it is.

Making his Palin announcement, John McCain raises an interesting weakness in his own resume: It's actually the person at the bottom of the ticket who has experience running things. When was the last time we had a Senator for Prez and a governor for Veep? Answer in the comments.

Update: Commenter Nick M gets the cigar:

The 1920 winners Senator Warren G. Harding & Governor Calvin Coolidge;

and the 1860 losers Senator Stephen A. Douglas & Former Governor Herschel Vespasian Johnson.

Nick actually pwned the challenge Friday. Sorry for the tardy update. He(?) is the fastest wiki in the west.

More on the Palin/wildlife theme:

Palin sued the federal government over the addition of polar bears to the Endangered Species list. She points out that the number of polar bears in on the rise in recent decades, and explains why adding the bear to the list is a backdoor attempt to make global warming policy in a New York Times opinion piece:

The Center for Biological Diversity, which petitioned for the polar bear to be protected, wants the listing to force the government to either stop or severely limit any public or private action that produces, or even allows, the production of greenhouse gases. But the Endangered Species Act is not the correct tool to address climate change — the act itself actually prohibits any consideration of broader issues.

She did a softball interview with Glenn Beck on the topic in June (in which, incidentally, she suggests that she might say no if tapped for VP). They discuss the fact that Alaska bargained its way into the union by promising to be pretty much self-sufficient. Interesting.

Reporting from Denver's INVESCO Field, Associate Editor David Weigel evaluates Barack Obama's big speech.

Read all about it here.

Fresh in my inbox, the McCain campaign's statement on Veep pick Sarah Palin:

Governor Palin is a tough executive who has demonstrated during her time in office that she is ready to be president. She has brought Republicans and Democrats together within her Administration and has a record of delivering on the change and reform that we need in Washington.

Governor Palin has challenged the influence of the big oil companies while fighting for the development of new energy resources. She leads a state that matters to every one of us -- Alaska has significant energy resources and she has been a leader in the fight to make America energy independent.

In Alaska, Governor Palin challenged a corrupt system and passed a landmark ethics reform bill. She has actually used her veto and cut budgetary spending. She put a stop to the "bridge to nowhere" that would have cost taxpayers $400 million dollars.

As the head of Alaska's National Guard and as the mother of a soldier herself, Governor Palin understands what it takes to lead our nation and she understands the importance of supporting our troops.

Governor Palin has the record of reform and bipartisanship that others can only speak of. Her experience in shaking up the status quo is exactly what is needed in Washington today.

Update: The Obama campaign responds: 

"Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency. Governor Palin shares John McCain's commitment to overturning Roe v. Wade, the agenda of Big Oil and continuing George Bush's failed economic policies -- that's not the change we need, it's just more of the same," said Bill Burton, Obama Campaign Spokesman.  

And McCain Communications Director Jill Hazelbaker quickly returns fire:

“It is pretty audacious for the Obama campaign to say that Governor Palin is not qualified to be Vice President. She has a record of accomplishment that Senator Obama simply cannot match. Governor Palin has spent her time in office shaking up government in Alaska and actually achieving results -- whether it’s taking on corruption, passing ethics reform or stopping wasteful spending and the ‘bridge to nowhere.’ Senator Obama has spent his time in office running for President.”

It's Sarah Palin for McCain VP, and she has at least two things going for her in my eyes:

1) Lifetime membership in the NRA

2) About a year ago, she dealt the final blow to the Bridge to Nowhere, the handywork of fellow Alaskan Sen. Ted Stevens. According to the Anchorage Daily News:

She directed the state transportation department to find the most "fiscally responsible" alternative for access to the airport.

And yes, as far as I can tell, that really is a photo of Palin with a deer some kind of Alaskan wildlife that she shot.

It's Palin, folks. Looks like McCain does want those disgruntled Hillary voters. And Palin's strong anti-abortion views won't hurt with the social cons either.

Bucking the trend of Obama love, Joshua Trevino calls last night's speech an "epochal" squandering of political capital, caused by the candidate's "ego-driven indiscipline," and an error that might prove fatal. I'm not sure how well the critique hangs together, but there's some interesting stuff:

Instead of the requisite deft interweaving of righteous indignation and sunny promise that made him a political celebrity in 2004 and propelled him to the nomination in 2008, Barack Obama delivered a surprisingly strident and joyless forty-five minutes of rhetoric. The remarks should have introduced him to the American people, and shown them what the Democratic base sees in him: hope, change, can-itude, or whatever other gauzy quality made him their nominee. What the American people got was less an introduction to Barack Obama than an exposition on what Barack Obama is against. It was fantastic for the base — and especially the left-wing base, which is especially animated by its hate objects — but it was alternately boring and disturbing for everyone else. As Marc Ambinder noted from the stadium, it was basically a primary-season stump speech.

How did Obama come to fail so remarkably, having delivered so often before? The clues lie in the candidate’s character. The remarkable thing about Barack Obama is how much of a cipher he remains: he is excellent at presenting himself as a tabula rasa upon which only virtue may be written, and there should be no doubt that the effort is deliberate. John McCain’s personal flaws are well known, but Obama’s are rather elusive. Still, they exist, and they show most clearly when Obama’s subject is Obama. I first learned of his ego problems when speaking with a former law school classmate of his; and there were glimpses of it for public consumption with things like the “I have become a symbol” incident. It was not till tonight, though, that Obama’s basic internal fragility was put on stark public view. This was the biggest night of his public life, and the defining moment of his historic turn — and what did he talk about?

Barack Obama talked about John McCain.

Take a moment to feed the plain text of Obama’s acceptance speech into a weighted word-cloud generator. You’ll get something that looks like this, and you’ll note that the biggest word — signifying the noun most often invoked — is “promise,” with 32 mentions. Ordinary enough for a political speech. Next is “America,” with 28 mentions, which is also expected. Third, though, is “McCain,” with 21 mentions. It is difficult to overstate how remarkable this is: Reagan in 1980 barely mentioned Jimmy Carter, and Obama in 2004 discussed John Kerry solely because he was keynoting for the man. Set against the light of precedent and the demands of this speech, the relentless focus upon John McCain emerges as profoundly strange.

 Personally I thought the speech was humdinger, but I like Obama's speechifying generally. Matt and Jesse's legitimate reservations aside, the reason I don't like political speech is that you have to pretend to take seriously something manifestly bogus. Nobody actually believes the president's going to be saving farms or mending anybody's life. Within those parameters, this one seemed to win the crowd in the stadium and at home. (I was watching with a bunch of Democrats though, so it was an easy crowd.)

I was amused that Obama went to the Patton well one more time.

In the latest edition of Friday Funnies, Henry Payne helps Barack Obama introduce Joe Biden.

Blogger (and fellow IU alum) T.J. Brown cites an old column of mine and says McCain should select the guy who once held Barack Obama's Illinois seat in the U.S. Senate, ex-Sen. Peter Fitzgerald.  It isn't going to happen.  But it would have been a pretty bold and inspired move. 

Fitzgerald actually is what both Obama and McCain claim to be—an advocate for change and a straight talker, respectively.  And he was willing to risk his political career for it.  During his tenure in the Senate, Fitzgerald stood up to then- House Speaker Denny Hastert and the GOP leadership, refusing to help procure massive pork barrel and corporate welfare grants for his home state, over Hastert's objections.  He also wouldn't play ball when the party pressured him to nominate a local GOP prosecutor for the vacant U.S. attorney position in Chicago.  Fitzgerald wanted to be sure then-GOP Gov. George Ryan was properly investigated on corruption charges, and wasn't confident someone with ties to the state party would suffice.  So he nominated a prosecutor from out of state, earning him wrath from both his own party and the local media.

Naturally, Fitzgerald was soon drummed out of his party—the GOP refused to support him in his first re-election primary.  After a sex scandal bounced the party's initial nominee, Illinois Republicans had to settle for Alan Keyes, who was then trounced by Obama.

The heavy faves for McCain's VP pick include Mitt Romney and Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota. And possibly Mike Huckabee. All of whom would consolidate the idea that John McCain is a tired, worn-out politician capable of making just as dull and uninteresting and noxious a choice as Barack Obama did.

Somebody such as Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin would be a lot more interesting and fun, as it would show the Republicans are at least in the final decades of the 20th century. Palin, who may be flying into Dayton today (crap, I just realized I'm flying out of Dayton this morning!), is no great shakes from a libertarian view, but would at least put a different face on the mildly pro-market, strongly anti-gay GOP. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal would provide lots of fun, too, and probably discombobulate easy splits based on identity politics.

The VP matters less than we think. For every Dan Quayle that probably cost the first President Bush a point or two, most simply don't matter. So why not pick someone that will at least give us pixel-stained wretches to write about. In other words, Pawlenty? Puh-lease.

One sobering dataset to continue as we slide into a Labor Day Weekend that is being ruined by politics (something always ruins this weekend, isn't it?). The Harris Poll has been asked Americans their self-declared party and ideological affiliations since the early 1970s. The results are here.

In 2007, 26 percent called themselves Republicans, 35 percent called themselves Dems, and 23 percent called themselves Independents. In 1969, those figures were 32, 49, and 19. When it came to describing their political philosophy, in 2007 35 percent called themselves cons, 37 percent moderate, and 19 percent liberal. In 1968, those numbers were 37 percent, 31 percent, and 17 percent.

What this means now is not self-evident, but there is a consistency to American voter self-identification that is simultaneously comforting and appalling. And suggests that the race for president (though not necessarily for Congress) will stay tight for a long time to come, as it has been for going on 20 years now.

Jonathan Chait's latest column defends Obama against the charge of messianism. Most of his points are valid. This one is a little too valid:

Now, it's certainly true that some enthusiastic Obama fans have displayed unusual zeal for their candidate. Yet it was only a few years ago--before President Bush's approval ratings tanked and conservatives decided that he wasn't actually a conservative at all--that the right had its own personality cult. There was DC 9/11, the Stalinist-style propaganda film reimagining Bush as an action hero boldly defying the terrorists on September 11. National Review, which has published innumerable articles in recent weeks decrying Obama's personality cult, was running advertisements for bronze busts depicting Bush in his "Mission Accomplished" fighter-pilot getup.

After September 11, James Merritt, then-president of the Southern Baptist Convention, told Bush that he had been chosen by God. Bush nodded. (Fred Barnes reported this encounter in The Weekly Standard, concluding, "The stage was set for Bush to be God's agent of wrath.") As Time reported, "Privately, Bush even talked of being chosen by the grace of God to lead at that moment." Claiming you've been chosen by God to lead the world in a titanic clash of good versus evil is pretty much the definition of messianic.

The short-lived cult of Bush, in fact, merely reprised the cult of Reagan that lives on to this day. Reagan kitsch has never gone out of style among Republicans. Numerous conservative pundits have suggested that any public policy question can be solved simply by asking "What would Reagan do?" The Heritage Foundation has a dedicated wwrd website. If, say, Brookings had inserted Obama's name into a phrase usually reserved for Jesus, you can only imagine what conservatives would make of it.

This is, actually, what bothers me most about Obama's cultish followers: They remind me of Bush and Reagan's cultish followers. It's silly for anyone who screamed like a Beatlemaniac watching the "Mission Accomplished" speech to greet Obamamania with a superior dance. But some of us would prefer a little more ... what's the word? ... change.

Elsewhere in Reason: Gene Healy on the real problem: the cult of the presidency.

Government cannot solve all our problems. Just the ones involving energy, education, work, the weather, cities, the countryside, sick children, sick mothers, joblessness, hopelessness, and frightening foreigners who do not live in Iraq. Now if you'll all look under your seats, every one of you is going home with a new car!