guy shoots at White House

Dear political pundits and commentators (especially those of you on cable TV):

Just in case you did not notice, some guy shot an AK-47 at the White House the other day. He was arrested in Pennsylvania this afternoon. This post is a plea for sanity.

Please do not try to turn this into something is it not. This guy is not an individual representation of the tea party or Occupy Wall Street or the degradation of political discourse in America. He is probably just a crazy guy who shot an AK-47 at the White House.

He is also not a symbol that should be used to make the public afraid of itself. You know, you might be tempted to say, "not only is political discourse degrading, but it is getting totally out of control and violent revolution is just around the corner."

He is just a crazy guy. Nothing more, nothing less.

Thanks.

Your Friend,
Rob

Tony Blair and progressive discontent

This is an interesting post on some comments made by former British PM Tony Blair. It raises some important questions about how the political process works and the role of individuals and activists in that process. It reminds me of a characterization of political principles that I like. We have sets of ethical/principle callings. For example, we have beliefs and policy positions that we want to advance (i.e. cutting taxes or providing health care for all). We also have an ethical calling in our conduct when attempting to advance those policies (i.e. is it okay to lie in order to win an election – that is, do ends justify means?).

The problem is that sometimes we have to choose between those two ethical callings.

We can spread half-truths or outright lies about our political opponents or run attack ads (ads which may have some truth to them, but are slanted to paint an ugly picture of our political opponent) in order to win an election. Once the election is won, we are free to pursue the policy positions we believe will most benefit the nation. So, we have traded certain principles about clean politicking in exchange for the ability to advance those political principles.

On the other hand we can run a clean campaign, do no mud slinging, and lose. This means we are unable to advance a policy agenda, but we can still say we adhered to those political principles of clean electioneering (but at what cost).

Similarly, Blair wants progressive activists and rank-and-file voters to do a little more marching in line so to speak. We need to stick up for Obama a little more even if he gives us milquetoast SCOTUS nominees instead the progressive equivalents of John Roberts and Samuel Alito. Even if there is no public option we need to fall in line and defend HCR to the death. And even though the Employee Free Choice Act seems to have fallen off the agenda we should get out and pound the pavement to save the Democratic majorities in congress.

Up until recent years, the right has done a much better job keeping their troops in a line. It seems that on the whole conservative voters are more willing to line up behind an R and march. And here is where competing political principles have to be reconciled. Democratic/progressive voters can sit at home in November and watch Democratic congressional majorities disappear. Next year we can look forward to trumped up investigations in house committees that will put a complete stop to a less-than-progressive agenda (that is still better than the right-win agenda we are going to get or had through the Bush years), not to mention the conservative threats to simply shut down the government (exactly what we need in the middle our economic problems).

As a result, we will still have our principles though. We can still proudly say we didn’t go out and vote for some senate, congressional or gubernatorial candidate who wasn’t progressive enough. And we can feel really good about that while Pat Toomey runs amok in the Senate.

This is the political conundrum we face. I don’t think we should reflexively line up behind a pol like Tony Blair. At the same time, I think progressives have been too critical, and not strong enough in defense of President Obama. We haven’t gotten a strong enough fight in favor of progressive policy positions from the White House or congressional Democrats. But sitting at home in November and turning congress over to a paleo-conservative, Club for Growth corporatist like Pat Toomey isn’t going to help things at all.

The question is which set of political/ethical principles are most important to us right now, because I don’t think progressive, or conservatives for that matter, can have political purity.

Libertarians and Ballot Access

The Libertarian Party of PA is sounding a little progressive today. Not a lot, just a little. I think it’s sad that in PA we had all five third-party candidates for statewide office knocked off the ballot this year; truly a shame. In the report on WITF this morning, this statement caught my ear though:

State Libertarian Party Chairman Mik Robertson said what used to be an unlevel playing field has turned into a "vertical barricade." He says it prevents citizens "who have a modicum of support but do not have large financial resources from gaining access to the ballot," he says. "Today we are asking the General Assembly to tear down that wall."

Now, there are a couple points to make about this. He is absolutely right that state law makes it difficult for third-party candidates to get on the ballot and the law should be changed to increase access. This is a case of the two major parties protecting incumbents and the consolidation of power between Democrats and Republicans. It is wrong and it should change. Third-party candidates from across the political/ideological spectrum should have access to the ballot if they are able to gather the signatures necessary, and that necessary number should be the same for all parties, Democrat, Republican or other.

On the other hand, I can’t help but point out the un-libertarian language employed by Robertson. He is essentially arguing that government needs to act in order to help those with less financial resources to gain access to the ballot, where access is limited to only those with money and an established political infrastructure.

It seems to me a more libertarian attitude to take would be to say, “If the Libertarian Party had the popular support necessary for gaining access to the ballot this wouldn’t be a problem. If the general public truly wanted a strong Libertarian Party they would donate enough money to pay for those legal challenges, or there would be enough volunteers to gather more than the required number of signatures to make a legal challenge a moot point. The public has access to the Internet, giving the Libertarians a voice in the marketplace that is just the same as the voice of the two major parties. So if the public doesn’t really seem to want the Libertarian Party to play a more significant role in Pennsylvania politics, why should government take action to “level the playing field,” wasting our tax dollars and the legislature’s time pursuing something that is only of interest to a small minority of voters who support third parties?”

If I were a Libertarian I might say something like that. But I’m not a Libertarian, so I won’t.

Dick Armey is a man of the people

This editorial by Dick Armey is hilarious in its inauthenticity. It trumpets the beauty of a non-hierarchical grassroots movement in language clearly written by a PR firm. It is the velvet glove of populism. I feel like I’m still hearing the echoes of Spiro Agnew saying “nattering nabobs of negativity.”

The editorial describes the tea party as “decentralized,” as not a “top-down hierarchy.” I just wonder if the writers would apply the logic of the analysis to corporate governance. Would they apply their same populist message to the people at the bottom of corporate hierarchies having tea parties to improve their working conditions or increase their wages or to decry the growing gap between the pay of the people at the top and the people at the bottom?

Would Dick Armey celebrate a labor movement that, instead of looking to government for regulation of working conditions, self-organized in a decentralized leaderless movement that forced an oil company to improve the safety conditions on a drilling rig? Would he celebrate in the same glowing terms a decentralized labor union that applied the same logic to corporate governance as the tea party does to national governance, bottom-up rather than top-down; a labor movement that would work for higher wages, shorter hours, increased job security, and a raised standard of living for themselves and their families?

It seems to me that such a movement would decrease the need for government regulation because the labor movement would be able to advocate on its own behalf, making regulation unnecessary or less necessary. It would be labor taking a more assertive position in the free market that the libertarians love so much. So I would hope that people like Dick Armey would support such a movement wholeheartedly. I would like to think he would apply the same logic to such a movement in organized labor. But somehow I doubt it.

I remember reading Invisible Hands, describing the foundation of the movement we are seeing now, in the Goldwater years. There is a lot of talk from those people about the labor movement and the questioning of authority (i.e. capital) as somehow a moral shortcoming on the part of the general populace. This is why I’m skeptical of the tea party organizers (i.e. Freedom Works, not the people attending the rallies).

There are two moments in here that make me see this top-down attitude hiding behind what I think is faux-populism on Armey’s part. First is the fact that he says the tea party “rebellion's name derives from the glorious rant of CNBC commentator Rick Santelli, who in February 2009 called for a new "tea party" from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.” I can’t imagine a greater symbol of being “of the people” than standing on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

There is also a sort of linguistic slip in his call for letting “the leaders be the activists.” I know in this sentence he means that the activists should lead, but it’s funny that this can easily be read as meaning the opposite; let the leaders become like activists, as Patricia Clough (2004) says, “there is something more than intimacy between power and resistance in the ever-growing dependency of power on the usurpation of resistance” (p. 18).

This final point draws me into the problem of the analysis of a movement like the tea party, especially for someone who is outside of the movement. Who am I to say that, even if I disagree with their conclusions, the people attending tea party rallies are inauthentic in their feelings about government? How does one manage an analysis with the politics of it lurking in the background? How do we locate what constitutes a political “movement” like the tea party. Is it possible to separate the people or the movement from the PR company Freedom Works or do we have to call the people at the rallies a “front for” or “dupes to” a corporate organization that is using a bottom-up populist message to push what is really a top-down corporate agenda?

“It takes something like courage to admit that we will never do better than a politician…”

At this hour it looks like Arlen Specter is going to be on his way out of the U.S. Senate. I voted for Sestak … strike that, as I write this the AP has just called the race for Sestak.

I have mixed feelings here. Even though I voted for Sestak I feel a little sad that Specter is done. I can’t remember a time when he was not the senator for Pennsylvania. I love politics on many levels. I love it as a policy debate, governing process, but most of all as a fight, a struggle between candidates, or parties or coalitions.

And Specter represented, up until tonight, a guy who knew how to win those fights.

Specter is cagey. He’s a political animal. There is something that transcends ideology for me: political talent. I can respect a politician who knows how to fight, even when I disagree with him or her. I love politics and Arlen Specter is a consummate politician.

He just came up against his last fight tonight. He’s giving his concession speech at the moment and it is a little sad.

Specter makes me think of Bruno Latour’s (1988) defense of the politician:

“…no one does any better than the politician. Those others simply have somewhere to hide when they make their mistakes. They can go back and try again. Only the politician is limited to a single shot and has to shoot in public. I challenge anyone to do any better than this, to think any more accurately, or to see any further than the most myopic congressman.” (The Pasteurization of France, p. 210)

On that note I leave this post with a double illustration of Specter at his most politically adept; a double feature that shows how truly good this guy was. How many other politicians have anything equivalent to back-to-back TV ads from Barack Obama in one reelection campaign and George W. Bush in the preceding reelection campaign? No one even comes close.

So ideology aside, my thanks to Arlen Specter for thirty years of service to Pennsylvania and now on to a Sestak victory in November! The last thing we need is a Santorum clone representing us in the U.S. Senate!

I’ve been working here at my desk with the BBC humming in the background. It floats in and out of my consciousness, periodically grabbing and losing my attention. One moment that particularly pulled me in was when the hosts began discussing the merits of a two party system over having multiple minor parties.

The two party system is more stable they said; it is less susceptible to “horse-trading,” making it difficult to form a truly representative government.

Most of all, above all other concerns, is that of stability of government. They lamented the fact that they could potentially have a governing body that did not receive a majority or plurality of votes. They claimed that Gordon Brown had already started the “horse-trading” before the votes were fully counted.

What is most fascinating to me about all of this is that process of horse-trading. How do people form a governing coalition? It amazes me that the Tories might win the most votes, but instead of ending up with Prime Minister David Cameron the UK may end up keeping Gordon Brown who would be forced to build a coalition with the Lib Dems. Even more interesting is that fact that the Lib Dems ended up with a disappointingly small amount of the vote, less than the media hype of the last few weeks, and they would be the kingmakers.

What if the Lib Dems decide to build a coalition with the Tories?! How fascinating that politics would make such strange bedfellows!

Could it be that Gordon Brown becomes the Bush 2000 of England; he loses in the vote count and still, because of the quirks of the system, becomes the head of state? The UK political process is going to be fun to watch over the next few days.

health care vote and the coming election

Over the last few weeks I have had an ongoing debate with a friend of mine about the political implications for the health care vote that happened last night. My friend thinks it will end up costing the Democrats electorally and potentially make Barack Obama a one-term president. I suspect, as in most midterm elections, the Democrats will lose seats because that is the nature of those elections, but that they will retain smaller majorities and Obama will be reelected (mostly because there doesn’t seem to be a single Republican challenger that needs to be taken seriously, but that’s another post).

What has been most stunning about this past year in politics is the conduct of many on the right. I found it distasteful when liberals compared George W. Bush to Hitler. I think if you compare your opponent to Hitler and your opponent is not literally committing a holocaust you automatically lose the debate. But I don’t think liberals and Democrats in the Bush years are comparable to what’s been happening from the right over the last year. Just in the last few days we’ve had reports of hate speech about the race and sexual orientation of Democratic members of congress. Much of the tea party movement is based upon simply being at best rowdy and at worst threatening.

Yet, there was this from Boehner; a call for house Republicans to be civil after the vote. It just reminded me of this moment from the Clinton years recounted by former PA representative Marjorie Margolies.

Eighteen years ago, I was elected on the coattails of a popular young Democratic president who promised a post-partisan Washington. A year later, with partisan gridlock capturing the Capitol, there was a razor-thin vote on the House floor over legislation that Democrats said would remake the country and Republicans promised would bankrupt it. I was pressed on all sides: by constituents opposed, my president needing a victory and Republicans promising my demise. I was in the country's most Republican district represented by a Democrat. I had repeatedly said "I will not be a 'read my lips' candidate." I voted my conscience and it cost me. I still remember how, after I voted, Bob Walker jumped up and down on the House floor, yelling "Bye-bye, Marjorie!" I thought, first, that he was probably right. Then, that I would expect better behavior from my kids, much less a member of Congress. And then, that he was a remarkable jumper.

Bob Walker was once my congressman, before Joe Pitts (ugh). I imagine that he is a remarkable jumper.

No more U.S. currency in South Carolina?

The conservative voyage into absurdity continues full steam today. This has to be my favorite news item of the week. It appears a state legislator in South Carolina is proposing that U.S. currency no longer be recognized by the state. 

This is a broader problem of a particular reading of the constitution that is endorsed by the so-called tea party movement, this reading that sees almost any act of the federal government as being unconstitutional to the point where it is almost a knee-jerk reaction, something that does not need to be preceded by thought.

More than that is the apocalyptic undertones of movement conservatives. Everything these days seems to be about the total collapse of the economy, the end of all freedom; every statement is colored with hyperbole. This particular SC state rep. is no exception. His rationale for switching from U.S. currency to gold and silver?

“I’m not one to cry ‘chicken little,’ but if our federal government keeps spending at the rate we’re spending I don’t see any other outcome than the collapse of the economic system,” Pitts said.

The chicken little reference is especially amusing. If I can be a chicken little myself, Rick Santorum appears to be getting ready to run for president.  

Death of polling?

An interesting post on politicalwire caught my attention earlier this week, getting me thinking about crowds and audiences again, but in a slightly different stratum. This isn’t about the activity of the crowd or controlling it, but rather coming to know it. I present the quote here in its entirety because it’s just that interesting to me.

Phone polling depends on a set of assumptions: "You're at home; you have a phone; your phone has a hard-coded area code and exchange which means I know where you are; ... you're waiting for your phone to ring; when it rings you'll answer it; it's OK for me to interrupt you; you're happy to talk to me; whatever you're doing is less important than talking to me; and I won't take no for an answer -- I'm going to keep calling back until you talk to me."

However, the reality is much different: "In fact, you don't have a home phone; your number can ring anywhere in the world; you're not waiting for your phone to ring; nobody calls you on the phone anyway they text you or IM you; when your phone rings you don't answer it -- your time is precious, you have competing interests, you resent calls from strangers, you're on one or more do-not-call lists, and 20 minutes [the length of many pollsters' interviews] is an eternity."

In the article linked from PW the speaker, pollster Jay Leve, also defends the use of automated phone polls, which I could devote a lot of time to discussing another time. What I’m more concerned with is what Leve implies about the impact of cell phones on social geography. My mind immediately went to a piece from my audience studies class in the spring, Relocating the site of the audience by Martin Allor. Allor (1988) talks about the audience member as “an autonomous unit separable from systems of singification” and at the same time “a faceless member of a class of people” (218).

Allor isn’t talking about the “site” of the audience in a geographical sense but the wordplay here is fun. Like Allor, Leve is constructing the audience as a commodity to his client; they represent informational power in a political campaign. He is thinking of them as unpaid labor; taking up twenty minutes of their time for them to do the work of organizing that information; except the audience doesn’t even get the illusory pleasure of seeing their labor as leisure, as when they’re watching television. Finally, Leve points out the flaw of modern polling in one big assumption, thinking that the audience is at home.

Here again is the wordplay of “site.” As Allor says, the audience “exists nowehere; it inhabits no real space” (228). How true. Allor says the “place of the audience is multiple” in the sense of being defined by gender or labor or decoding; but the place of the audience is also multiple in the sense of geography. Leve also said that during the 2008 election his firm was getting about 24% of the 18 to 24 year old respondents they should have been. The cell phone has given this audience a locational fluidity that makes it impossible for the pollsters to follow; the poll respondent is no longer confined to domestic spaces.

Where Roger Silverstone (1991), for example, talked about domestic media allowing for the dispersal of the family throughout the household, complicating the ratings process for programmers, cell phones allow for a geographic dispersal that even further complicates the process of solidifying a picture of what they’re thinking. Leve concludes that for polling in 2009 "it's over...this is the end. Something else has got to come along." The double articulation of audiences, audiences consuming and being consumed is a little harder to accomplish. They’re still everywhere consuming, but pinning them down, at least in the realm of political polling, is a trickier process. Yet, polls are still being consumed in the political realm; the audience is still looking at and potentially being swayed by polls (“I want to vote for a winner”), but the pollsters can’t quite get to the audience, to formulate an accurate polled image (if such a thing was possible to begin with). Is it going too far to say the political pollster is living in a reverse Panopticon at the moment? Or shall we just default to Raymond Williams (1961) and say “There are no masses; there are only ways of seeing people as masses” (20).

refs
Allor, Martin. “Relocating the site of the audience.” Critical Studies in mass communication, 5(1988): 217-233.

Silverstone, Roger. From audiences to consumers: The household and the consumption of communication and information technologies.” European Journal of Communication, Vol. 6, No. 2 (1991): 135-154.

Williams, Raymond. Culture and society. London: Random House, 1961.

Health care crowds

Talk of the crowd is all the rage these days. The word rage here is convenient for me, given that the word describes much of the imagery of the crowd currently being discussed. There are crowds at tea parties, with their subtle and sometimes overt racism; there are crowds at congressional town hall meetings, with their vague and seemingly, amazingly, misinformed anger over health care reform; the crowds that talk to pollsters that are harder to define and thus slowly eroding the credibility of those pollsters (more on that in a later post); shouting; throwing punches; and in all of the talk about these crowds we find a movement toward making the act of gathering problematic in itself.

One image keeps recurring in my mind, that of Kathleen Sebelius attempting to address an audience with Arlen Specter in Philadelphia recently. The key moment comes at about one minute into this video:



She doesn’t seem to understand the nature of the crowd she’s dealing with. As she throws her hands up in frustration, as if to say, “why won’t you listen to reason” she misses the point that the crowd is not there to have a reasonable discussion. It is there to yell. And herein lies the problem for me; the ideological challenge with which I am faced. Can I continue to hold on to the assumption that crowds/audiences, not to mention individuals, can be reasoned with?

I use the term crowd rather than audience because it is a better description. The people who are shouting at members of congress about health care appear to be “barking mad” for lack of a better phrase. I say this not because they have an opinion counter to my own, but because they literally, at points, look like they’re barking rather than speaking; and look mad, crazy-mad not angry-mad.

And here I reach the depressing point. Is the act of gathering in and of itself now damaged? Will pro-health care reform gatherings now be presented in a similar light by media? These “barking-mad crowds” are coming under scrutiny for the organizations behind them, calling into question the act of organization vis-à-vis astroturfing. Will all organization now be tarred as astroturfing?

All of this misses an important point; if the crowd is “inauthentic,” they are not necessarily there to debate the issue of health care, but rather to act as a communication jam; to stop the flow of communication between representatives and constituents who want to interact. Thus, what is presented by actants (the crowd) as authentic outrage and anger as a political act of participation is instead a political act of interruption, at least as it is described here: “If the event were a shouting match, the mob won. [Rep.] Kagen tried talking about the health-care bill, but the roaring chants deafened his attempts.” This textual description is reinforced by video shown on Rachel Maddow.

The word “mob” is becoming more common these days. I’m afraid it might be an accurate description. I don’t recall protests of the left ever substance-less anger. Maybe that’s because I am of the left and I am blinded by my own beliefs here; I think I’m more fair-minded than that, but who knows. We’ll see how today’s forum with Arlen Specter goes.

McLuhan on TV

“Do you really want to know what I think of that thing? If you want to save one shred of Hebrao-Greco-Roman-Medieval-Renaissance-Enlightenment-Modern-Western civilization you’d better get an ax and smash all the sets.”

Bringing back the era of big government

One thing that I have been happy to see from Obama over the last month, especially since the inauguration, has been his willingness to define a governing philosophy that actually allows for governing. A new day is dawning for political philosophy. It has actually become acceptable to say that the free market is not only solution to every problem. In fact, you can even say that government might be a useful tool for solving a problem or two. Meanwhile, the party of warrantless wiretapping is suddenly concerned about big government again.

What I love the most about all of this is that the Age of Reagan is officially over. It’s not that I have a particular disdain for Reagan. Removing ideology from the equation, I actually have a strange fascination with Reagan as a political figure; his abilities rhetorically; Reagan as a symbol. What I don’t like is the right’s hero worship of Reagan and the whole “government is the problem” philosophy.

It’s enjoyable to be around to see Obama bringing back the era of big government.

Throwing Shoes in Free Societies

Sin and Suds

Pirates, Terrorists and Zizek

The attacks in Mumbai have me thinking about Zizek again. I have Welcome to the Desert of the Real back out on my desk and I’ve been flipping through; returning to passages outlined; thinking about the nature of terror and stateless actors generally. I am wondering how truly novel these concepts are in the long view of history. We are seeing increased media accounts of these kinds of things; terrorists; pirates; they are not new. Why do the media present them as novelties, or at the very least, why do the media portrayals make them feel novel to me?

Zizek (2002) asks if international terrorists are “the obscene double of the big multinational corporations – the ultimate rhizomatic machine, omnipresent, albeit with no clear territorial base” (p.38). The same framework could be placed on recent pirate attacks. They attack, without sponsorship, whether of a state or a corporate body, not that those two entities are segregated anymore.

The coinciding spectacles of terror and piracy stand in stark contrast to the west’s increasingly blurred lines between state and corporation. Abstruse forces are bringing international capitalism to the brink; poor Allen Greenspan’s ideology failed him, not to mention the rest of us. The invisible hand of the market is slapping us around. We struggle to stabilize our markets, while still trampling retail employees to death. Meanwhile, “pirates are living between life and death…who can stop them? Americans and British all put together cannot do anything."

Contrasting forces are at work; simultaneously pulling the world toward opposite polarities. Terrorists and pirates are the “rhizomatic machines” Zizek describes, the multinational corporations their counterpoint. We have contrasting images of corporate titans begging before congress and terrorists rampaging through Mumbai. The state gradually takes over the economy; we are in the last throes of neoliberalism. Meanwhile, a small cadre of men in speedboats, who are also now shooting at cruise ships, bring international oil concerns to their knees.

The contrast between the two is stark. The free market dies as corporation and state become increasingly intertwined; state power and centralized control increase. Pirates and terror cells decentralize control and challenge the power of states and corporations. Zizek says, “the notion of the ‘clash of civilizations’, however, must be rejected out of hand: what we are witnessing today are, rather, clashes within each civilization” (p. 41). Perhaps we’re witnessing both.

The Countdown Begins

This didn't take very long. We haven't even had the inauguration yet and they're already starting to countdown to the end of Obama's first term. This drives home part of the reason that McCain lost. He, and his supporters, did not give the public a reason to vote in support of McCain; only reasons to vote against Obama. You can't win an election that way.

In 96 the Republicans ran Dole against Clinton and they thought that their hate for Clinton was persuasive enough to convince the general public to vote for Dole. In 04 Democrats did the same thing in the Kerry campaign against Bush. The problem was that the general public did not share the Republicans' visceral hate for Clinton or the Democrats' visceral hate for Bush. There were things the public disliked about Clinton and Bush; but they did not amount to the same level of disdain. McCain's campaign was predicated upon the same disdain for Obama; and that became the only message of his campaign. Attack, attack, attack!

I think negative campaign ads are an important part of the process. I disagree when I hear someone saying how they hate the negative ads and wish the campaigns would not use them. The problem is when the negative ads become the central part of a campaign strategy, as they did with McCain. You have to present yourself in the best light and your opponent in the worst light. If all you're doing is the latter, that negative light starts to reflect onto you. Apparently the group running the above ad on Drudge didn't learn a damn thing last night.

The Obama Turn

It's a good night. And it happened on my son's birthday. He's our little good luck charm. In my paper from the Obama Effect conference I used the phrase the "Obama Turn." Obama himself and his victory symbolize a transition to a new era; for liberalism, the Democratic Party and most importantly, the nation as a whole.

As one last point, Drudge continues the religiofication of Obama. Something I have addressed in my paper and in this space in the past. I'm interested to see how this rhetoric is employed in the conservative critique over the next few years.

The Palin/McCain Ticket

I picked up this screen shot from Gil Smart's blog. It's funny to me that a McCain campaign ad is just a big picture of Sarah Palin.
Who is the Republican presidential nominee again? I guess it's a good idea to give your nominee as little media exposure as possible. Especially in your paid media.

It's even more telling that Palin has already been asked about her career plans for after this election. The implication there being that once McCain is defeated Palin is the natural choice for the GOP four years from now. A prospect I find puzzling considering the disaster she has been in this election. She has fired up the base a little more, but lost the conservative intelligentsia. From David Brooks to Kathleen Parker to Peggy Noonan, the elite of the conservative coalition are not going to be happy with her four years from now. I don't understand how she has not been officially dubbed "damaged goods."

I have occassionally found myself wondering how different this campaign would be if McCain had chosen Tim Pawlenty or Charlie Crist or even Joe Lieberman for VP. I don't think it's going too far to say that with Lieberman McCain would have lost the base but maybe won the election. A McCain/Lieberman ticket may have even created a braoder shift in the electorate, puching some out of the Republican tent, bringing others in and creating an entire new right wing movement outside of the GOP. It's fun to speculate.

Gil Smart - McCain's collapse

Gil Smart - Sarah Palin fans the flames