Joe, Where Art Thou?

"Joe's with us
today - Joe, where
are you? Where is
Joe? Is Joe with us
here today? Joe, I
thought you were
here today. All
right, well, you're
all Joe the
Plumber, so all of
you stand up!"

Thus spoke John McCain about his poster boy at a rally in the aptly named Defiance, Ohio. That missing mofo Joe was probably out conferring with his publicist in an effort to cash in on his proverbial 15-minutes of fame. Let's hope the numbnut pays off his tax debt to the state of Ohio before he inevitably sinks back into anonymity.

Obama the Better Choice

The Financial Times, in its lead editorial, makes the argument that Obama is the better choice:

Mr Obama fought a much better campaign. Campaigning is not the same as governing, and the presidency should not be a prize for giving the best speeches, devising the best television advertisements, shaking the most hands and kissing the most babies.

Nonetheless, a campaign is a test of leadership. Mr Obama ran his superbly; Mr McCain's has often looked a shambles. After eight years of George W. Bush, the steady competence of the Obama operation commands respect.

Nor should one disdain Mr Obama's way with a crowd. Good presidents engage the country's attention; great ones inspire. Mr McCain, on form, is an adequate speaker but no more. Mr Obama, on form, is as fine a political orator as the country has heard in decades. Put to the right purposes, this is no mere decoration but a priceless asset.

Rogue Sarah

Apparently Sarah Palin cannot wait until election results are in to look beyond next Tuesday. According to CNN, the Alaska governor has calculatedly gone off message - "gone rogue" - in distancing herself from the McCain campaign.

Thoreau's Advice for RNC

Before investing the exorbitant sum of $150,000 to outfit and accessorize vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, the Republican National Committee would have been well-advised to heed the admonition of Henry Thoreau in Walden:

I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. If there is a new man, how can the new clothes be made to fit? If you have any enterprise before you, try it in your old clothes. All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be. Perhaps we should never procure a new suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until we have so conducted, so enterprised or sailed in some way, that we feel like new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping a new wine in old bottles. Our moulting season, like that of the fowls, must be a crisis in our lives.

The Fashionable Palin

Besides her glib style on the campaign trail, Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin has garnered as much attention for her fashion style. Now the word is, the Republican National Committee forked over more than $150,000 to make the Alaska governor presentable to the rest of the country.

Joe the Plumber is a Fraud

The McCain campaign probably thought they had seized on something significant by having its candidate repeatedly invoke the name of Joe the Plumber in Wednesday night's final debate with Barack Obama. But Joe the Plumber is a fraud. Had they done their homework, the campaign would have discovered that the dude's first name isn't even Joe, it's Sam; that 95% of all small businesses don't earn $250,000 annually; that Joe Wurzelbacher's total earnings last year was $40,000 (which means that he would benefit from Obama's tax proposal); that he isn't licensed to practice plumbing in Ohio; and that he owes the state of Ohio $1,200 in back taxes, resulting in a lien against his property.

Another Hail Mary

Weekly Standard editor and New York Times columnist William Kristol advises John McCain, with about three weeks to go, to jettison his campaign and return to the happy warrior he was in 2000 (which is odd, given that George W. Bush after punking McCain, emerged as the GOP standard bearer). Kristol's advice amounts to another Hail Mary, which in football parlance is the last desperate gasp to wring victory from the jaws of defeat. Kristol, and perhaps McCain, suffers from a confusion of sports metaphors, in that he apparently believes that Hail Marys come in threes like the proverbial three strikes associated with baseball. First, it was his selection of the unremarkable Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate - a not so thinly veiled attempt to appeal to the voters who supported Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential primaries. Then there was the self-serving suspension of the campaign to return to Washington amid the greatest financial crisis since the depression to assist in the bailout talks. In both instances, the calculation never really produced the desired effect. Thus there is no reason to believe that it won't be any different this time, as the clock is running out.

McCain's Latest Straight Talk

In John McCain's latest stump speech unveiled today in Virginia Beach, Virginia, the Republican presidential nominee and self-declared straight talker said:

We cannot spend the next four years as we have spent the last eight waiting for our luck to change. The hour is late; our troubles are getting worse; our enemies watch. We have to act immediately. We have to change direction now.

The McCain campaign has always had a surreal quality: at once labeling itself as the reformers while being part of the political party that was in power for the last eight years and largely responsible for the mess the nation finds itself in. Which raises the question, is he suggesting that the Bush Administration, which he supported more than 90% of the time, spent two terms in the White House "waiting for our luck to change"? And given his record, isn't it somewhat incredulous that he casts himself and Palin as agents "to change direction now"? Obama was right: a wheel has come off of the straight talk express.

Cunning Sarah

Jonathan Raban, writing in the London Review of Books, has an interesting take on the now apparently waning phenomenon of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin:

What is most striking about her is that she seems perfectly untroubled by either curiosity or the usual processes of thought. When answering questions, both Obama and Joe Biden have an unfortunate tendency to think on their feet and thereby tie themselves in knots: Palin never thinks. Instead, she relies on a limited stock of facts, bright generalities and pokerwork maxims, all as familiar and well-worn as old pennies. Given any question, she reaches into her bag for the readymade sentence that sounds most nearly proximate to an answer, and, rather than speaking it, recites it, in the upsy-downsy voice of a middle-schooler pronouncing the letters of a word in a spelling bee. She then fixes her lips in a terminal smile. In the televised game shows that pass for political debates in the US, it’s a winning technique: told that she has 15 seconds in which to answer, Palin invariably beats the clock, and her concision and fluency more than compensate for her unrelenting triteness.

Palin Exposed

News that an Alaska state investigator found that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin abused her authority in an attempt to fire her former brother-in-law should put to rest any notions about the governor being the true blue reformer and a cut above your garden variety politician who will stop at nothing to retain power.

The Big Payback

A Las Vegas jury found O. J. Simpson guilty of armed robbery and kidnapping exactly 13 years after being acquitted for the murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. True, the jurors prior to being selected swore they could render a verdict with no regard to the famous trial of the century in 1995 but it strains credulity to believe that it had no bearing on the outcome. Of course, the arrogant and incredibly stupid Simpson could never resist the allure of public regardless of the notoriety, so it was only a matter of time before he got himself in legal trouble for which he could not extricate himself. That he seriously thought he could engineer a heist to retrieve his "stuff" only underscores his imbecility.

A Diversion

Conservatives are in an uproar over Gwen Ifill, tonight's moderator in the vice presidential debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin. They say that Ifill's ability to be fair and impartial is compromised because she has a book coming out in January about Barack Obama. The charge is nonsense. Ifill is a seasoned professional who is able to set aside her personal opinions and beliefs and treat both Biden and Palin. This is nothing but a lame attempt to divert attention away from Sarah Palin's performance.

Gotcha Journalism

John McCain complains that his sequestered vice presidential running mate Sarah Palin has been victimized by the media practicing "gotcha journalism." McCain's charge has about as much credibility as, say, Alaska's proximity to Russia imbuing Palin with foreign policy experience. Witness this pathetic exchange between Katie Couric and Palin on the mundane matter of reading material:

COURIC: What newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this -- to stay informed and to understand the world?

PALIN: I've read most of them again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media --

COURIC: But what ones specifically? I'm curious.

PALIN: Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me over all these years.

COURIC: Can you name any of them?

PALIN: I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news.