The latest McCain video brushback pitch for the press, pressuring for more criticism of Obama and less criticism for the new negative strategy.
** GARAMENDI FOR GOVERNOR, SCHWARZENEGGER MAKES DRAMATIC BUDGET MOVE, JERRY BROWN SUES E.P.A., GUBERNATORIAL CAMPAIGN FINANCE, PRESIDENTIAL AD WARS. All while I have been out and about … Somewhat unexpectedly but not unproductively caugbt up away from the semi-mobile office. Too bad the software does not exist for me to publish by thinking.
Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi did declare for governor of California late this morning in a brief appearance on the West Steps of the state Capitol. Looking quite spiffy, he appeared with his wife Patti and five grandchildren, declaring at the beginning of his remarks to about 60 supporters and a group of press that he is officialy a candidate in the 2010 Democratic gubernatorial primary.
As he did so, the current governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, was about to sign an executive order cutting the pay of permanent state employees to the federal minimum wage — absent publicy safety and health workers, who are exempt from the order — and terminating contingent employees. Upon the pasage of the state’s very late budget, all permanent employees will receive back pay and those contingent employees who can be restored will be restored. In the meantime, Schwarzenegger is directing his administration to assist state workers in finding any necessary loans to tide them over.
The prospective frontrunner for 2010, former Governor-turned-Attorney General Jerry Brown, was at the same time in Los Angeles, suing the US Environmental Protection Agency for not acting to curtail greenhouse gases in the shipping field, a major contributor to the greenhouse effect. Brown has not made a declaration of candidacy, but he is raising money with the prospect of regaining the governorship that he won for two terms in the 1970s and ’80s.
2010 gubernatorial fundraising numbers are now becoming available, and I will offer an assessment of the emerging race — and the potential fields — shortly.
Back to Garamendi, who used the occasion of his formal announcement of candidacy to declare that the Capitol in his dramatic backdrop is not “a stage set,” a reference to Schwarzenegger’s governorship, and particularly to denounce Schwarzenegger for his budget move.
His crowd of supporters, who included some state employees, cheered loudly at that.
His grandfather, said the former Peace Corps volunteer, state insurance commissioner, state Senate majority leader, and US deputy interior secretary for President Bill Clinton, taught him “that you have to fix the fence to keep the cattle off the road.”
By which he meant that the state budget must be attended on a constant basis, criticizing Schwarzenegger for what he termed a lack of the attentiveness that former governors such as Pete Wilson paid to ongoing negotiations. He did not mention Brown, who also handled eight state budgets.
Garamendi declared that the answer to the chronic budget crisis is “to reform, to cut, and to raise taxes.”
He went on to outline the beginnings of a campaign platform, which included “fixing the economic engine,” promoting technological innovation, reforming education, fighting climate change, and building infrastructure. These are familiar themes for those who have followed Garamendi’s career over the years, which has included several previous runs for the governorship.
Garmendi is an experienced player with appeal who as a legislator was quite involved in the state’s budget process. He’s a rancher with a strong family background, a former star football player and wrestler at Cal with an MBA from Harvard. He starts back in the pack behind Jerry Brown, but is not to be dismissed.
Garamendi’s announcement, which began at 11, was over by 11:12, which gave me ample opportunity to dash around the side of the Capitol and go through security for Schwarzenegger’s budget announcement, which ended starting about 15 or so minutes late.
With regard to Schwarzenegger’s announcement, I’m under the impression that some key Democrats had convinced themselves he wouldn’t do it. Nope.
** GUBERNATORIAL CAMPAIGN ANNOUNCEMENT ON TAP. A very well-known figure in California politics will announce his candidacy for governor late this morning. More to follow when I get back.
The poll is an in-depth exploration of Californians’ views on environmental issues. Most notably, it shows a huge majority, 80%, in favor of taking immediate steps to curb the greenhouse effect.
The pain at the pump is hitting home, with 51% now saying they favor offshore oil drilling. The shift is mostly due to large numbers of Republican moderates changing on the issue, as Democratic and independents remain opposed. Offshore drilling is John McCain’s current big issue.
However, the preferred solution by far to high gas prices is increased vehicle fuel efficiency. Some 80% of California voters want that to happen, even if cars cost more. Barack Obama has championed this approach, while McCain has frequently voted against it.
When it comes to California’s governor, yesterday’s birthday boy himself, Arnold Schwarzenegger, he gets some good news amidst all the state’s economic and budget woes. While only 43% of California residents approve of what he’s doing as governor, 49% of California voters approve of Schwarzenegger’s performance as governor. That’s nearly twice President Bush’s rating.
Schwarzenegger, incidentally, will attempt to break through the Gordian knot around the budget fashioned by the state’s anti-government and ultra-government factions this morning when he signs an executive order reducing permanent state workers to the minimum wage and terminating contingent workers. Not that he thinks this is a good way to go other than as a pressure tactic on the Legislature. State workers will receive back pay after the budget is passed.
** WHERE THEY ARE TODAY.
Barack Obama is in Iowa. He meets with flood victims in Cedar Rapids and holds a town hall, also in Cedar Rapids, on economic security.
John McCain is in Wisconsin. He holds a town hall meeting in Racine.
The poll’s director says that the results show Obama’s foreign tour didn’t help him in these states, as folks there are much more concerned with domestic economic insecurity. You can’t really say that, though, as the poll was still in the field during the second half of Obama’s tour, which included the Berlin speech and the fawning receptions of Obama by the leaders of Britain and France.
McCain seems to be making headway with the offshore drilling issue, at least in the interior states. You know my views on the longtime political salience of this issue. Beneath the surface, the facts are not there, and voters don’t like to feel conned. Intriguingly, the poll did not measure the question of vehicle fuel efficiency, improvements in which will yield much faster savings at the pump.
Nevertheless, this is a useful snapshot, bearing in mind that if McCain actually lost Ohio or Florida, he would almost certainly lose the election.
** 13 THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT MAC’S 3RD STRAIGHT ATTACK AD. The reason the McCain campaign is so worried is that the Olympics start in less than two weeks. The next big event right after the Olympics? The Democratic National Convention. From my other blog.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the new Russia Today channel. You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti.
While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, which I know as a former DemRussia advisor, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND U.S. ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. After crashing over $147 for yet another record on July 11th, crude oil is trading in the $126 to $128 per barrel range, up a few dollars from yesterday. The drop of over $20 per barrel came amidst multiple signs that the weak US economy will cut future demand and fresh signs of a detente between the US and Iran.
Obama hits back against the series of McCain attack ads. The spot is called “Low Road.”
** OBAMA STRIKES BACK. Barack Obama has just this evening released a new TV ad in response to the latest attack ads from John McCain.
Here’s the script:
Announcer: He’s practicing the politics of the past. John McCain. His attacks on Barack Obama: Not true. False. Baloney. The low road. Baseless. John McCain. Same old politics. Same failed policies. (Screen fills with McCain shaking hands with President Bush.)
Barack Obama supports a $1,000 middle class tax cut, an energy plan that takes on oil companies, develops alternative fuels and breaks the grip of foreign oil.
I don’t know how big a buy is behind this ad.
I’ll have a full column on the media wars tomorrow, linked to here.
And the hits keep on coming. John McCain’s fourth straight attack ad against Obama, this one perhaps with a real buy. It’s called “Celeb” and features shots of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears.
Weaver described the brand-new McCain ad you see above as “childish.”
“John’s been a celebrity ever since he was shot down,” Weaver said. “Whatever that means. And I recall Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush going overseas and all those waving American flags.”
Weaver remains in contact with senior McCain strategists and, for a while early this year, regularly talked to McCain. The strategy of driving up Obama’s negatives “reduces McCain on the stage,” Weaver said.
“For McCain to win in such troubled times, he needs to begin telling the American people how he intends to lead us. That McCain exists. He can inspire the country to greatness.”
He added: “There is legitimate mockery of a political campaign now, and it isn’t at Obama’s. For McCain’s sake, this tomfoolery needs to stop.”
** MICHIGAN POLL: SLIGHT OBAMA EDGE. Barack Obama leads John McCain in a brand-new Public Policy Polling survey of Michigan, 46% to 43%. That’s down from a 9-point edge earlier, with McCain making up a lot of ground amongst white voters. In the Senate race, Democratic incumbent Carl Levin — who is chairman of Senate Armed Services — leads his Republican challenger, 54-35. Obama has a unique challenge in Michigan, where the black mayor of Detroit is embroiled in a horrendous scandal.
** NEW MAC ATTACK AD. Another day, another McCain attack ad. This one posits Barack Obama as the world’s biggest celebrity — which is another way to spin the extremely good response to Obama’s big foreign tour last week — and attacks him for opposing offshore oil drilling and wanting higher taxes.
Here’s the script:
Announcer (a rather mocking female voice): He’s the biggest celebrity in the world.
But, is he ready to lead?
With gas prices soaring, Barack Obama says no to offshore drilling.
And, says he’ll raise taxes on electricity.
Higher taxes, more foreign oil, that’s the real Obama.
McCain: I’m John McCain and I approved this message.
After I verify the size of the buy — I wrote yesterday on my other blog that the “Troops” attack ad on Obama was a tiny buy fake-out to get the media to show the ad and talk about it, thus promoting McCain’s storyline — I’ll write a column about the McCain strategy.
The outlines, however, are certainly evident. The McCain campaign doesn’t want Obama to have a solid lead going into the Olympics weekend after next. Because if he does, they will probably have to wait until the Republican National Convention in early September to try to recover.
Incidentally, Obama is going to be advertising during the Olympics. Presidential campaigns never do that, on account of the cost.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signing California’s landmark climate change plan in this NWN video.
The Morning Column: SCHWARZENEGGER AT 61.
Do terminators age? Apparently, they do. As do we all. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is 61 today.
His old franchise has a new lease on life, with a new Terminator movie filming now and a Terminator series on network TV, not that he is directly involved in either. And his new career is perking right along, though there is the pesky matter of the chronically unresolved state budget.
Schwarzenegger’s popularity has ebbed and flowed since his landslide election in the dramatic California recall of October 2003. He’s been at times the most popular governor in history and among the least popular. Right now, he’s at a lower ebb, with widespread fear about the economy and that budget situation. But he looks to be in the mid-40s in job approval, with room to go up again, as he remains personally liked by most.
There’ve been missed opportunities and missteps, more about those in a moment, but it’s also been a governorship with real markers.
Schwarzenegger stanched the bleeding of the state budget a few months after assuming office, getting voters to make constitutional the massive borrowing that former Governor Gray Davis and the Legislature had decided to employ in order to keep state government afloat. He reformed the workers compensation system that had been a millstone around the necks of many businesses.
After decades of neglect of California’s infrastructure, he proposed and won passage of the biggest infrastructure programs in the state’s history, perhaps rivaling though not surpassing those of the late Governor Pat Brown, who created the template for the modern California.
He proposed, as he promised in his 2003 campaign, a major program to curtail greenhouse gases, and worked with legislators to make it happen, placing California in a leading role in the world on the issue of climate change. (Though the Bush Administration has done its best to delay the program.)
He’s championed renewable energy, creating the most aggressive renewable portfolio standard in the country and promoting major investment in solar energy through the Million Solar Roofs initiative.
He’s been tough on crime but open to rehabilitation and reform, though the state’s long-festering prison system retains elements of intractability.
There’s more to say, pro and con, on a variety of issues, but this is not an exhaustive look at Schwarzenegger’s governorship, merely a momentary marker on the occasion of an anniversary.
One final word, for now that is, about Schwarzenegger and the budget. If there was a moment when the current impasse might best have been avoided, it was probably in 2004. Schwarzenegger’s first official act upon his inauguration in November 2003 was to repeal the wildly unpopular hike in the car tax effectuated by his recalled predecessor. That was a big boost for most Californians, and hence very popular.
But it greatly accentuated a gap between revenue and spending that first emerged when the Legislature — with Davis fatefully going along against his own best judgment — decided to act as though the dot-com boom would last forever. How best to deal with this gap?
The most logical answer would be through a combination of efficiencies and revenues. As in how one best loses weight. Eat less and exercise more.
That’s not what happened then. Schwarzenegger’s subsequent efforts to reform the state budget ran aground in various ways. And the state’s budget became hostage, along with Schwarzenegger himself, to a certain degree, to the unhealthy dynamic that underlies California’s legislative politics. Which is to say, the death match between the ultra-government faction which dominates legislative Democrats and the anti-government faction which dominates legislative Republicans.
Perhaps Schwarzenegger will find a way to unravel this Gordian knot.
** 13 THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT MAC’S 3RD STRAIGHT ATTACK AD. The reason the McCain campaign is so worried is that the Olympics start in less than two weeks. The next big event right after the Olympics? The Democratic National Convention. From my other blog.
** WHERE THEY ARE TODAY.
Barack Obama is in Springfield, Rolla, and Union, Missouri. Obama holds town halls on the economy and a barbeque.
John McCain is in Aurora, Colorado and Kansas City, Missouri. McCain tours a Colorado plant that makes Caterpillar earthmoving equipment and holds a fundraiser in KC.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the new Russia Today channel. You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti.
While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, which I know as a former DemRussia advisor, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND U.S. ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. After crashing over $147 for yet another record on July 11th, crude oil is trading in the $122 to $123 per barrel range. The drop of over $20 per barrel came amidst multiple signs that the weak US economy will cut future demand and fresh signs of a detente between the US and Iran.
UPDATE: The earthquake has been downgraded to 5.4 on the Richter scale.
** SCHWARZENEGGGER LIVE WEBCAST THIS AFTERNOON ON EARTHQUAKE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will hold a press conference on today’sm earthquake in Southern California. The seismic event was rated 5.8 on the Richter scale and took place about 30 miles east of Los Angeles in the Chino Hills.
** WESTERN REPUBLICAN SENATOR INDICTED FOR CORRUPTION.Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, age 84, has been indicted on seven counts of political corruption. He was already trailing his Democratic opponent by nine points in recent polling. Stevens is a pork barrel Republican despised by John McCain. But Stevens’s woes add to those of the Republican brand. McCain has only a narrow lead over Barack Obama, despite the fact that this is a perenially Republican state in presidential elections. It is almost certain that McCain will have to spend at least a day making the trek to Alaska if he hopes to hold on to the state.
Barack Obama is in Washington, DC. He has a variety of meetings today, mostly on the economy, including the chairman of the Federal Reserve, the House Democratic Caucus, and the prime minister of Pakistan.
John McCain is in Nevada and Colorado today. He has a town hall in Sparks and a fundraiser in Incline Village. Then he goes to Colorado for a fundraiser in Englewood.
** FROM THE ARNOLD FILE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s move to cut state employee compensation to the minimum wage level and terminate contingent employees may be paying off as California’s chronic budget crisis drags on.
State Senate leader Don Perata cancelled his scheduled floor session and vote on his version of the budget today. He is negotiating with the governor and other leaders. For his part, the former action superstar postponed his executive order until Thursday.
** SCHWARZENEGGER LIVE WEBCAST THIS MORNING ON OCEAN PROTECTION. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, acting from the state Capitol, will join Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski and Washington Governor Chris Gregoire via satellite to launch a new plan addressing ocean and coastal management issues along the West Coast.
** DEMS AND OBAMA LAUNCH LARGEST EVER LATINO VOTER MOBILIZATION.The Democratic Party and Barack Obama are launching the largest ever mobilization program for Latino voters. In the 2004, the party and the John Kerry campaign spent $8.7 million to identify, register, and turn out Latino voters. This year, the party and the Obama campaign will spend $20 million on the task. The drive will be run out of Chicago, now the location for most national Democratic Party efforts following Obama’s victory in the Democratic presidential nomination fight against Hillary Clinton. This may have its largest impact in the new battleground region of the Mountain West.
** SIX REASONS MCCAIN’S LUCKY HE DIDN’T MAKE IT ON THAT OIL RIG. From my other blog.
** MCCAIN TRIES TO COUNTER-PROGRAM A WAVE. You know, Obama’s new flood of foreign policy cred. Resulting in a somewhat confusing, rather sulky, kitchen sink approach. With full analysis of the two new anti-Obama attack ads, first of the general election. One is arguable. The other is preposterous. From my other blog.
Russia is unhappy with John McCain’s effort to kick it out of the G8 group of top industrial nations.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the new Russia Today channel. You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti.
While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, which I know as a former DemRussia advisor, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND U.S. ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. After crashing over $147 for yet another record on July 11th, crude oil is trading in the $123 to $124 per barrel range. The drop of over $20 per barrel came amidst multiple signs that the weak US economy will cut future demand and fresh signs of a detente between the US and Iran.
“All liberals should be killed,” wrote Jim David Adkisson, who was wearing a Tennessee flag shirt, which bears a certain modernistic resemblance to the Confederate flag, when he was arrested by local police.
Adkisson, who of course hated gays and feminists (and almost certainly Barack Obama, for that is part of the psychological profile of such folk), was also, ironically, upset about his failure to find employmennt. Something very hard to blame liberals for in the Republican state of Tennessee.
My view, as I’m sure readers have gathered from how I run NWN, is that wildly inflammatory rhetoric is a major negative in American political life. It leads the weak-minded, as this poor soul obviously is, to do stupid and irrational things. In this case, horrific things. And as longtime readers know, I favor capitol punishment. He’s taken lives, if the evidence in this case bears out, almost certainly of pacifists. So, if he actually committed these terrible acts, his life is now forfeit. So be it.
If the likes of Hannity, Limbaugh, and Savage played any role in pushing this poor soul over the edge into acts which cannot be countenanced, much less forgiven, they had better take a real look at their own provocative acts.
** MCCAIN IN BAKERSFIELD. John McCain was in the Central Valley city of Bakersfield, California earlier today for a fundraiser. And for this press event at an oil well. Where he called for increased offshore oil drilling to solve the current problem of high gasoline prices. The site for the event was, of course, dictated by McCain’s fundraising schedule.
A few points to consider.
While California is already one of the nation’s largest oil-producing states, it is the only one without an oil severance tax. Bakersfield, which is essentially the Tulsa of California, is 90 miles north of Los Angeles, up I-5. It is nowhere near the coast. And the oil wells near Bakersfield, which are mostly to the moonscape west of the city, deliver a harder-to-produce and lower quality heavier oil. To further excavate the oil reserves near Bakersfield requires higher tech/lower margin techniques. None of which have anything to do with McCain’s message of offshore drilling as a putative panacea for today’s gas price crisis.
The only real reason to do such a media event is that there are a lot of oil rigs at hand.
A. The race is not actually close. If you don’t select the right polls, I simply draw your attention to the rather desperate behavior evidenced by John McCain’s campaign. Three straight Mac attack ads. The latter of which, incidentally, is essentially a big fake-out for a credulous national (read: East Coast) media. I’m about to get into this issue. Which will be familiar to longtime readers of NWN who recall the early stages of the Schwarznegger 2006 re-elect.
B. Uh, he’s black. And young. If he were a white guy, this race wouldn’t even be in question. Even amongst the credulous.
Perhaps because it adds to the skyrocketing cost of health care. Wide loads equal bigger health care costs. As an ex-jock, I must say there is a lot of snark available in this item. But I will resist temptation.
The Morning Column: MONDAY MORNING QUARTERBACK.
Less than two weeks until the start of the Olympics, as the campaigns of both John McCain and Barack Obama are well aware. McCain is trying to prevent Obama from locking down a clear lead going into the quadrennial global festival of sport which, coming at the height of summer, tends to distract greatly from campaigning. Obama is trying to consolidate his gains from his excellent week of campaigning, er, touring in the Middle East and Europe.
Meanwhile in California, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic and Republican legislative leaders continue to struggle with the state’s chronic budget crisis. With the Republicans dominated by their anti-government faction, the Democrats dominated by their ultra-government faction, and the state one of only three requiring a two-thirds vote to pass a budget, the situation is fairly intractable.
Schwarzenegger is trying to force the situation with a series of moves, the first of which, as regards the Democrats, is to cut state worker salaries to minimum wage and lay off contingent employees. Legislative Democrats, dominated by public employee unions, are balking, despite a 2003 California Supreme Court ruling granting the governor such authority.
Barack Obama at 10 Downing Street in London, following his Saturday meeting with Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
In the presidential race following Obama’s extraordinary tour last week of Afghanistan, Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan, Israel, Germany, France, and Britain — McCain is trying to tear down Obama while Obama is pivoting swiftly from the Reaganesque and Kennedyesque elegance of the global stage into nitty-gritty domestic economic concerns.
Barack Obama yesterday appeared on Meet The Press, taped previously in London, and John McCain appeared on ABC’s This Week. Obam acquitted himself well. He was not asked about the end of the week controversy over his cancelling out of going to the Landstuhl military hospital. He was asked about his opposition to the surge, which the media has decided is a success. (I think it’s a success, too, as expected, but not the only factor in the current improvement in Iraq.) Obama pointed out that there are multiple factors in Iraq’s improvement, and the key questions are whether or not the invasion was warranted and whether we should be moving to withdraw.
John McCain’s third straight TV attack ad against Obama, this one for supposedly not honoring US troops.
For his part, McCain attacked Obama for not appearing at the military hospital. (It’s not a clearcut situation either way. I think Obama should have gone to prevent precisely this sort of attack, even though the Pentagon pulled a change-up telling him he couldn’t travel with any of his campaign staff, not even retired Air Force General Scott Gration, who was perturbed with the DoD.) He denied questioning Obama’s patriotism when he said that Obama “would rather lose a war than lose a campaign.” He insisted that the decision to invade Iraq was correct and that Saddam was preparing weapons of mass destruction. He walked back from his seeming embrace of a 16-month timetable for Iraq withdrawal late on Friday. He repeated his call for Russia to be expelled from the Group of 8, supported by no other nation. And he said that payroll tax increases may be necessary to preserve Social Security. Which may make it harder to attack Obama.
McCain’s campaign rolled out its third straight TV attack ad late Saturday. It goes after Barack Obama for supposedly not supporting the troops. I’ll get into a full analysis of it later, here and elsewhere. Campaigns, as you know, get into steady attack mode when they have some problems, and after last week, McCain has some more problems.
** WHERE THEY ARE TODAY.
Barack Obama is in Washington, DC and Arlington, Virginia. Obama meets with high-level economic advisors in Washington and has a fundraiser in Arlington.
John McCain is in Bakersfield and San Francisco, California. This is a fundraising trip, as Obama leads McCain in California’s latest Field Poll, 54-30. McCain will visit an oil well outside Bakersfield to push his drill now message. I know a lot about the oil business in Kern County.
McCain has fundraisers in both the Central Valley oil city and the City by the Bay. His San Francisco fundraiser will be a glittering evening affair at the Fairmont Hotel, high atop Nob Hill, where my parents took me as a child to learn how to eat and behave in public.
** SIX REASONS MCCAIN’S LUCKY HE DIDN’T MAKE IT ON THAT OIL RIG. From my other blog.
** FROM THE ARNOLD FILE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is in private meetings today, in and around the Capitol, as California’s state government struggles once again to resolve its chronic budget deficit.
** MCCAIN TRIES TO COUNTER-PROGRAM A WAVE. You know, Obama’s new flood of foreign policy cred. Resulting in a somewhat confusing, rather sulky, kitchen sink approach. With full analysis of the two new anti-Obama attack ads, first of the general election. One is arguable. The other is preposterous. From my other blog.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the new Russia Today channel. You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti.
While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, which I know as a former DemRussia advisor, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND U.S. ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. After crashing over $147 for yet another record on July 11th, crude oil is trading in the $124 to $125 per barrel range. The drop of over $20 per barrel came amidst multiple signs that the weak US economy will cut future demand and fresh signs of a detente between the US and Iran.
With The Dark Knight matching America’s dark mood, shattering box office records, the superhero movie vogue is bigger than ever. Next year’s Watchmen will test the limits.
** WHO WATCHES THE WATCHMEN? If Hollywood has its way next year, a great many of you.
The phrase is from the classic Latin question with regard to a self-governing society: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Which begins to get at the philosophical implications, if not pretentions, of Watchmen, slated to be an even edgier superhero movie in March 2009.
Which also begins to get at the question of what on Earth is this strange trailer atop the NWN Weekend Edition, which plays in theaters before The Dark Knight.
The Dark Knight has continued and expanded upon the recent vogue of superhero movies. This weekend, this dark and edgy new iteration of the Batman saga smashed yet another set of domestic box office records. In only 10 days of release, it has taken in over $314 million. It’s now likely to be the first movie to challenge Titanic‘s $600 million domestic box office take in the late ’90s. (I don’t think it will catch it. It’s not a date movie, and it’s more disturbing than uplifting.)
But it has just blown past the fourth Indiana Jones picture, at least in the domestic numbers, in only its second weekend of release. And Indy 4 was set to be the biggest movie of the year prior to The Dark Knight.
For all its darkness and edginess, Dark Knight may not be as dark and edgy as Watchmen. That’s based on a mid-’80s comic book series turned into a graphic novel — written by Alan Moore (who also wrote V for Vendetta, From Hell, and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) and illustrated by Dave Gibbons — which is the only work in its genre to win a Hugo Award for science fiction and to be named to Time Magazine’s list of the best novels of the 20th century.
Not to give too much of the plot away, but it posits an alternate history America in 1985. Richard Nixon is in his fifth term as president. Re-elected after America’s victory in the Vietnam War — and the timely murder of two young reporters named Woodward and Bernstein, probably by someone who calls himself The Comedian — his administration works with and then mostly outlaws a rather motley crew of “superheroes,” or masked vigilantes, or costumed adventurers. Who, though mostly retired, are suddenly being killed off. Only one of whom actually has superpowers.
That would be a brilliant scientist dematerialized in an accidental nuclear experiment who later rematerializes as something called Dr. Manhattan. (After the Manhattan Project.) Who wins the Vietnam War pretty much singlehandedly and gives the US the upper hand in its nuclear stand-off with the Soviet Union. The good doctor, now in blue superbeing form, was to have been played by some guy named Arnold Schwarzenegger when the book was first to have been made into a movie. But director after director found the material unfilmable. Finally Zack Snyder, who made last year’s neoconservative favorite 300, about the Spartans fighting the Persians, stepped up.
Incidentally, speaking of the right, some are now claiming Batman is equivalent to President Bush. Not kidding about that one, folks. I’m prepping a piece on The Dark Knight and its underlying politics. And while it’s hardly a liberal movie, though it makes clear that escalation brings its own unforeseen and frequently adverse consequences, it’s certainly not a conservative movie, either.
** SUNDAY SHOWS. Barack Obama appeared on Meet The Press, taped previously in London, and John McCain appeared on ABC’s This Week. Obam acquitted himself well. He was not asked about the end of the week controversy over his cancelling out of going to the Landstuhl military hospital. He was asked about his opposition to the surge, which the media has decided is a success. (I think it’s a success, too, as expected, but not the only factor in the current improvement in Iraq.) Obama pointed out that there are multiple factors in Iraq’s improvement, and the key questions are whether or not the invasion was warranted and whether we should be moving to withdraw.
For his part, McCain attacked Obama for not appearing at the military hospital. (I’ll get into the details tomorrow. It’s not a clearcut situation either way.) He denied questioning Obama’s patriotism when he said that Obama “would rather lose a war than lose a campaign.” He insisted that the decision to invade Iraq was correct and that Saddam was preparing weapons of mass destruction. He walked back from his seeming embrace of a 16-month timetable for Iraq withdrawal late on Friday. And he said that payroll tax increases may be necessary to preserve Social Security.
** MCCAIN’S THIRD STRAIGHT TV ATTACK AD. John McCain’s campaign rolled out its third straight TV attack ad late Saturday. It goes after Barack Obama for supposedly not supporting the troops. I’ll get into a full analysis of it for Monday, here and elsewhere. Campaigns, as you know, get into steady attack mode when they have some problems, and after last week, McCain has some more problems.
** SUNDAY — WHERE THEY ARE TODAY.
Barack Obama is in Chicago. He addresses the Unity conference of ethnic journalists.
John McCain is in Sedona, Arizona.
Both men appear on Sunday talk shows. Obama has the entire hour on Meet The Press, taped in London with Tom Brokaw. McCain is on ABC’s This Week.
** SATURDAY — WHERE THEY ARE TODAY.
Barack Obama is in London and Chicago. He’s already met with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the special Mideast envoy, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and Conservative Party Leader David Cameron. I’ll have video on Monday.
John McCain is in Sedona, Arizona, holding a barbeque for top backers and advisors.
** SIX REASONS MCCAIN’S LUCKY HE DIDN’T MAKE IT ON THAT OIL RIG.From my other blog.
Good morning. I’m John McCain, and this week the presidential contest was a long-distance affair, with my opponent touring various continents and arriving yesterday in Paris. With all the breathless coverage from abroad, and with Senator Obama now addressing his speeches to “the people of the world,” I’m starting to feel a little left out. Maybe you are too.
Back here in the country that we are competing to lead, a lot of folks were having trouble trying to square Senator Obama’s multiple positions on the surge in Iraq. First, he opposed the surge and confidently predicted that it would fail. Then he tried to prevent funding for the troops who carried out the surge. But now that it’s clear that the surge has succeeded, and brought victory in Iraq within sight, Senator Obama can’t quite bring himself to admit his own failure in judgment. Instead, he commits the even greater error of insisting that even in hindsight, he would still oppose the surge. Even in retrospect, he would choose the path of retreat and failure for America over the path of success and victory. That’s not exactly my idea of the judgment we seek in a commander-in-chief.
Oddly enough, my opponent advocates the deployment of two new combat brigades to Afghanistan — in other words, a surge. We’re left to wonder how he can deny that the surge in Iraq has succeeded, while at the same time announcing that a surge is just what we need in Afghanistan. I’ll leave all these questions for my opponent and his team of 300 foreign policy advisors to work out for themselves. With luck, they’ll get their story straight by the time the Obama campaign returns to North America. …
** MCCAIN TRIES TO COUNTER-PROGRAM A WAVE. You know, Obama’s new flood of foreign policy cred. Resulting in a somewhat confusing, rather sulky, kitchen sink approach. With full analysis of the two new anti-Obama attack ads, first of the general election. One is arguable. The other is preposterous. From my other blog.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the new Russia Today channel. You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti.
While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, which I know as a former DemRussia advisor, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND U.S. ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. After crashing over $147 for yet another record on July 11th, crude oil closed down on Friday at $123.26 per barrel. The drop of over $24 per barrel came amidst multiple signs that the weak US economy will cut future demand and fresh signs of a rapprochement between the US and Iran.
Barack Obama addressed more than 200,000 people yesterday in Berlin.
** MCCAIN MEETS WITH THE DALAI LAMA. After a tough speech to the Latino-oriented GI Forum convention in Denver knocking Barack Obama for opposing the surge in Iraq, John McCain met for 45 minutes in Aspen with the Dalai Lama. While the famed spiritual leader is not urging Tibetan Buddhists in the US to vote for McCain, which would be a rather worldly act on their part, he and McCain share a common goal of building pressure on China to gain autonomy, if not independence, for Tibet.
The Dalai Lama, wearing his traditional robes as a monk, presented the Vietnam War hero with a white silk scarf, a sign of respect.
John Ackerly, president of the International Campaign for Tibet, said McCain had requested the meeting months ago, and that while they had never met, the two had spoken by phone. “And the Dalai Lama doesn’t talk on the phone very often,” Ackerly said.
The number in favor of a rapid US withdrawal from Iraq has consistently been around 60% since the polling on this question began in August 2007.
Within that 63% of American voters who favor a rapid withdrawal from Iraq, two-fifths want the troops withdrawn “immediately.” Which is, of course, impossible. That’s 24% of the US electorate.
Only 35% of American voters want US troops to stay in Iraq “until the mission is completed.”
According to the National Journal’s Congress Daily: Among those who will not attend are Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, who is not close to presumptive presidential nominee Sen. John McCain of Arizona, and Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who is a McCain loyalist. Stevens and Collins will use the convention week to focus on their campaigns. Also sending regrets is former Rep. Bob Schaffer of Colorado, running for the seat being vacated by retiring GOP Sen. Wayne Allard.
Six others — Sens. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, John Sununu of New Hampshire, Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina and Gordon Smith of Oregon and challengers John Kennedy of Louisiana and Rep. Steve Pearce of New Mexico are still on the fence. Their spokesmen offered responses ranging from “there are no plans yet” to “no decisions have been made.”
By contrast, most Democrats in those races are either planning to attend the party’s late August convention in Denver or are leaning toward attending the event that will formally make Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois the party’s nominee for president.
“Obviously,” said the French president hailed by the American right upon his election, “one is interested in a candidate looking toward the future rather than the past. We say ‘good luck’ to Barack Obama. If he is chosen then France will be delighted. And if it is someone else then France will be the friend of the United States.”
That sounds a lot like an endorsement.
Sarkozy went on in this vein.
“We have been following with passion the election campaign in the United States. Barack Obama’s America is an adventure that rings true in the hearts of our people.”
Sarkozy and Obama called one another “dear friend” and “buddy” at various points during their joint appearance this morning following an hour-long private meeting in the Elysee Palace.
Many on the American right must be going … Huh?
Sarkozy, after all, was the interior minister who cracked down on rioters earlier in the decade. The interior minister who was adamant that French culture not be overwhelmed by an encroaching culture advanced by Islamic immigrants. And John McCain frequently cites Sarkozy on the campaign trail.
Yet here he is embracing Obama, a figure that many on the far right of American politics have convinced themselves is a sort of “Manchurian candidate” out to undermine and ultimately destroy Western civilization. Thus showing they have never seen the movie, incidentally.
I’m not surprised at all by this. Yes, Sarkozy opposed radical Islamic elements in France. And in the context of French politics — he defeated the glamorous Socialist Segolene Royal for the presidency of France in May 2007 — he is a conservative.
But in America, he might be a Democrat. Or an Arnold Republican.
And in France, Obama might be a Conservative.
Or he might be, as Tony Blair was and is in Britain, a modernizer of the left-of-center party. Obama, incidentally, is about to meet privately with the former British prime minister.
Before casting Obama in the ranks of the (relative) right, a bit more on Sarkozy. He made it plain in his election campaign that he would champion efforts to cut the emission of greenhouse gases. As I pointed out at the time. This is an issue that the American right still denies.
Although not John McCain, the scarcely remembered man of the week. Who Sarkozy also likes. Just not as much as he likes Obama.
As Obama pointed out, after he was elected to the Senate in 2004, Sarkozy came to Washington while still France’s interior minister, and a controversial one at that on the left. He met privately, as Obama noted this morning, with only two senators. Obama and McCain.
“So if you want to see the way things are going, watch what President Sarkozy does,” Obama said, with an amused smile toward his friend.
For his part, in a striking interview in this morning’s Le Figaro, Sarkozy exclaimed: “Obama? He’s my pal. Unlike my diplomatic advisors, I never believed in Hillary Clinton’s chances. I always said that Obama would be nominated.”
An Obama victory, he said, “would validate” his stance of friendship with America.
Obama also, for all their evident chemistry and an undeniable certain ideological simpatico, suits Sarkozy’s purpose in trying to unify his own country, riven as it is in ways by racial strife. Though as he noted in today’s press conference — in answer to a question from CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in which she pointed out that he had called rioters “scum” while interior minister — the streets have been peaceful during his presidency.
After Paris, Obama is off to London, where he will meet, as I mentioned, with Tony Blair, as well as Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the Tories’ moderate young Opposition Leader, David Cameron.
** WHERE THEY ARE TODAY.
Barack Obama is in France and Britain. He meets with President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris and holds a press conference. He then flies to London.
John McCain is in Denver and Aspen, Colorado. He addresses the American GI Forum and meets with the Dalai Lama.
** FROM THE ARNOLD FILE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will join Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg live via satellite in St. Paul, Minnesota at noon to deliver remarks at the Building America’s Future Coalition tour.
Schwarzenegger, Rendell and Bloomberg all co-chair the Building America’s Future coalition which highlights the need for more federal investment in infrastructure.
Schwarzenegger was to have joined the other two yesterday in New Orleans and today in St. Paul, but cancelled due to the chronic California budget crisis. He will address the US Olympic team at San Jose State University this afternoon.
** MCCAIN TRIES TO COUNTER-PROGRAM A WAVE. You know, Obama’s new flood of foreign policy cred. Resulting in a somewhat confusing, rather sulky, kitchen sink approach. With full analysis of the two new anti-Obama attack ads, first of the general election. One is arguable. The other is preposterous. From my other blog.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the new Russia Today channel. You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti.
While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, which I know as a former DemRussia advisor, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND U.S. ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. Crude oil is trading now in the $123 to $125 per barrel range. After crashing over $147 for yet another record on July 11th, crude oil closed down on Friday at $128.88 per barrel. The drop of over $20 per barrel came amidst multiple signs that the weak US economy will cut future demand and fresh signs of a rapprochement between the US and Iran.
Barack Obama, accompanied by Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, visited the community of Sderot, target of frequent terrorist rocket attacks, yesterday.
Anyone who saw Barack Obama at Berlin’s Siegessäule on Thursday could recognize that this man will become the 44th president of the United States. He is more than ambitious — he wants to lay claim to become the president of the world.
It was a ton to absorb — and what a stupendous ride through world history: the story of his own family, the Berlin Airlift, terrorists, poorly secured nuclear material, the polar caps, World War II, America’s errors, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, freedom. It’s amazing one could even pack such a potpourri of issues into sentences and then succeed in squeezing them all into the space of a speech that lasted less than 30 minutes.
So what still sticks? That Barack Obama is a passionate politician who is fixated on and takes very seriously his desire for a bit of uptopia and a better world. That he is an impressive speaker who knows how to casually draw his audience into his image of the world — one who doesn’t have any need to resort to the kind of cheap effects that tend to prompt the uproarious applause of an audience. That he is a typical American — an idealist in the true spirit of the American success story who is now very casually making his claim to become something akin to the president of the world.
He also could have said: We are a world power, the only one that exists on this planet at the moment, and I am going to act as if that were the case. But you’re also allowed to participate in the attempt to try to save the world — at least a bit of it. In that sense I am different from George W. Bush — very different. Indeed, Barack Obama has his own sound — it’s more utopian, he speaks of the general human desire for better conditions for all of humanity; and he speaks of the longing for strong and dynamic presidents and chancellors who are capable of acting on a global scale. With this drive and this radiance, he managed to drive Hillary Clinton out of the campaign. It is also the way he is going to outpace John McCain on November 4. It is the way he took the hearts of Americans by storm and it is the way he is now taking Europe by storm.
Anyone who saw him make the short way from the Victory Column in Berlin on Thursday to the podium saw a man with the serious gait of a basketball player, a man who seemed young, decisive and focused. For those who witnessed his appearance in Berlin, it is hard to imagine that John McCain still has any chance. McCain is 25 years his senior, a man who because of the torture he endured in Vietnam is in constant pain — unable to comb his hair or lift his arm in celebration.
Europe is witnessing the 44th president of the United States during this trip. Anyone who listens to him quickly realizes that he is not only ambitious but will also make demands. In the inner circles of Angela Merkel’s Chancellery, he is reportedly seen as a pleasant person, one who arouses curiosity.
However, he is also certain to demand the help of the Germans, Brits and French in Afghanistan and Iraq. He’s not going to allow NATO to shirk its duty — and that is where the perils of the engaging “we” and the catchy “Yes, we can” lie. Otherwise all these hard-nosed Europeans will hope and pray that the future President Obama isn’t really all that serious about the saving the world of tomorrow, the polar caps, Darfur and the poppy harvest over in Afghanistan.
George W. Bush is yesterday, the Texas version of the arrogant world power. Obama is all about today: the “everybody really just wants to be brothers and save the world” utopia. As for us, we who sometimes admire and sometimes curse this somewhat anemic, pragmatic democracy, we will have to quickly get used to Barack Obama, the new leader of a lofty democracy that loves those big nice words — words that warm our hearts and alarm our minds. Let’s allow ourselves to be warmed today, by this man at the Victory Column. Then we’ll take a further look.
** BERLIN ASSESSMENT. How did Berlin go for Barack Obama? Really well. Crowd of well over 200,000, according to the Berlin police, which makes it some three times larger than his previous record crowd of 75,000 in Portland during the Oregon primary in May.
Better yet, lots of Euros waving American flags. All to a pro-America/friendly yet challenging to Europe message, as you see from the full text below. (Full video tomorrow morning.)
Obama appeared unphased by the challenge, well in command of the stage, and happy to lead both the huge crowd and the global media through a narrative that positions America in a friendlier light but still insists that the world must stop Islamic jihadism in its tracks, as well as confront the challenge of global climate change.
Clearly a home run for Obama, as anticipated after he got through the mine fields of Iraq, Afghanistan and Israel with nary a scratch.
This is why the McCain campaign has been uptight all week — and I’ll have more in depth on that in a forthcoming column — and why folks we know over on the far right are laboring so vociferously to pick at nits and pretend that what obviously went very well was really a disaster.
Alternative reality novels and movies are a genre all their own.
** FROM THE ARNOLD FILE. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is in and around the state Capitol today in meetings, mostly around the tardy and chronically screwed-up state budget. Much of official Sacramento — in the government, political and journalistic circles — is very uptight about Schwarzenegger cutting state employee wages. I can assure you that average Californians don’t particularly care. And, as I told you yesterday afternoon, lay-offs appear to be in store as well. Maybe it’s time to get the budget going, folks.
Meanwhile, Schwarzenegger had to cancel out of his national infrastructure tour with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell. There’s more to say on that.
** OBAMA BERLIN REMARKS — “A WORLD THAT STANDS AS ONE.”
Thank you to the citizens of Berlin and to the people of Germany. Let me thank Chancellor Merkel and Foreign Minister Steinmeier for welcoming me earlier today. Thank you Mayor Wowereit, the Berlin Senate, the police, and most of all thank you for this welcome.
I come to Berlin as so many of my countrymen have come before. Tonight, I speak to you not as a candidate for President, but as a citizen – a proud citizen of the United States, and a fellow citizen of the world. I know that I don’t look like the Americans who’ve previously spoken in this great city. The journey that led me here is improbable. My mother was born in the heartland of America, but my father grew up herding goats in Kenya. His father – my grandfather – was a cook, a domestic servant to the British.
At the height of the Cold War, my father decided, like so many others in the forgotten corners of the world, that his yearning – his dream – required the freedom and opportunity promised by the West. And so he wrote letter after letter to universities all across America until somebody, somewhere answered his prayer for a better life. That is why I’m here. And you are here because you too know that yearning. This city, of all cities, knows the dream of freedom. And you know that the only reason we stand here tonight is because men and women from both of our nations came together to work, and struggle, and sacrifice for that better life.
Ours is a partnership that truly began sixty years ago this summer, on the day when the first American plane touched down at Templehof. On that day, much of this continent still lay in ruin. The rubble of this city had yet to be built into a wall. The Soviet shadow had swept across Eastern Europe, while in the West, America, Britain, and France took stock of their losses, and pondered how the world might be remade. This is where the two sides met. And on the twenty-fourth of June, 1948, the Communists chose to blockade the western part of the city. They cut off food and supplies to more than two million Germans in an effort to extinguish the last flame of freedom in Berlin.
The size of our forces was no match for the much larger Soviet Army. And yet retreat would have allowed Communism to march across Europe. Where the last war had ended, another World War could have easily begun. All that stood in the way was Berlin.
And that’s when the airlift began – when the largest and most unlikely rescue in history brought food and hope to the people of this city. The odds were stacked against success. In the winter, a heavy fog filled the sky above, and many planes were forced to turn back without dropping off the needed supplies. The streets where we stand were filled with hungry families who had no comfort from the cold.
But in the darkest hours, the people of Berlin kept the flame of hope burning. The people of Berlin refused to give up. And on one fall day, hundreds of thousands of Berliners came here, to the Tiergarten, and heard the city’s mayor implore the world not to give up on freedom. “There is only one possibility,” he said. “For us to stand together united until this battle is won…The people of Berlin have spoken. We have done our duty, and we will keep on doing our duty. People of the world: now do your duty…People of the world, look at Berlin!”
People of the world – look at Berlin!
Look at Berlin, where Germans and Americans learned to work together and trust each other less than three years after facing each other on the field of battle. Look at Berlin, where the determination of a people met the generosity of the Marshall Plan and created a German miracle; where a victory over tyranny gave rise to NATO, the greatest alliance ever formed to defend our common security. Look at Berlin, where the bullet holes in the buildings and the somber stones and pillars near the Brandenburg Gate insist that we never forget our common humanity. People of the world – look at Berlin, where a wall came down, a continent came together, and history proved that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one.
Sixty years after the airlift, we are called upon again. History has led us to a new crossroad, with new promise and new peril. When you, the German people, tore down that wall – a wall that divided East and West; freedom and tyranny; fear and hope – walls came tumbling down around the world. From Kiev to Cape Town, prison camps were closed, and the doors of democracy were opened. Markets opened too, and the spread of information and technology reduced barriers to opportunity and prosperity. While the 20th century taught us that we share a common destiny, the 21st has revealed a world more intertwined than at any time in human history.
The fall of the Berlin Wall brought new hope. But that very closeness has given rise to new dangers – dangers that cannot be contained within the borders of a country or by the distance of an ocean.
The terrorists of September 11th plotted in Hamburg and trained in Kandahar and Karachi before killing thousands from all over the globe on American soil.
As we speak, cars in Boston and factories in Beijing are melting the ice caps in the Arctic, shrinking coastlines in the Atlantic, and bringing drought to farms from Kansas to Kenya.
Poorly secured nuclear material in the former Soviet Union, or secrets from a scientist in Pakistan could help build a bomb that detonates in Paris. The poppies in Afghanistan become the heroin in Berlin. The poverty and violence in Somalia breeds the terror of tomorrow. The genocide in Darfur shames the conscience of us all.
In this new world, such dangerous currents have swept along faster than our efforts to contain them. That is why we cannot afford to be divided. No one nation, no matter how large or powerful, can defeat such challenges alone. None of us can deny these threats, or escape responsibility in meeting them. Yet, in the absence of Soviet tanks and a terrible wall, it has become easy to forget this truth. And if we’re honest with each other, we know that sometimes, on both sides of the Atlantic, we have drifted apart, and forgotten our shared destiny.
In Europe, the view that America is part of what has gone wrong in our world, rather than a force to help make it right, has become all too common. In America, there are voices that deride and deny the importance of Europe’s role in our security and our future. Both views miss the truth – that Europeans today are bearing new burdens and taking more responsibility in critical parts of the world; and that just as American bases built in the last century still help to defend the security of this continent, so does our country still sacrifice greatly for freedom around the globe.
Yes, there have been differences between America and Europe. No doubt, there will be differences in the future. But the burdens of global citizenship continue to bind us together. A change of leadership in Washington will not lift this burden. In this new century, Americans and Europeans alike will be required to do more – not less. Partnership and cooperation among nations is not a choice; it is the one way, the only way, to protect our common security and advance our common humanity.
That is why the greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another. The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.
We know they have fallen before. After centuries of strife, the people of Europe have formed a Union of promise and prosperity. Here, at the base of a column built to mark victory in war, we meet in the center of a Europe at peace. Not only have walls come down in Berlin, but they have come down in Belfast, where Protestant and Catholic found a way to live together; in the Balkans, where our Atlantic alliance ended wars and brought savage war criminals to justice; and in South Africa, where the struggle of a courageous people defeated apartheid.
So history reminds us that walls can be torn down. But the task is never easy. True partnership and true progress requires constant work and sustained sacrifice. They require sharing the burdens of development and diplomacy; of progress and peace. They require allies who will listen to each other, learn from each other and, most of all, trust each other.
That is why America cannot turn inward. That is why Europe cannot turn inward. America has no better partner than Europe. Now is the time to build new bridges across the globe as strong as the one that bound us across the Atlantic. Now is the time to join together, through constant cooperation, strong institutions, shared sacrifice, and a global commitment to progress, to meet the challenges of the 21st century. It was this spirit that led airlift planes to appear in the sky above our heads, and people to assemble where we stand today. And this is the moment when our nations – and all nations – must summon that spirit anew.
This is the moment when we must defeat terror and dry up the well of extremism that supports it. This threat is real and we cannot shrink from our responsibility to combat it. If we could create NATO to face down the Soviet Union, we can join in a new and global partnership to dismantle the networks that have struck in Madrid and Amman; in London and Bali; in Washington and New York. If we could win a battle of ideas against the communists, we can stand with the vast majority of Muslims who reject the extremism that leads to hate instead of hope.
This is the moment when we must renew our resolve to rout the terrorists who threaten our security in Afghanistan, and the traffickers who sell drugs on your streets. No one welcomes war. I recognize the enormous difficulties in Afghanistan. But my country and yours have a stake in seeing that NATO’s first mission beyond Europe’s borders is a success. For the people of Afghanistan, and for our shared security, the work must be done. America cannot do this alone. The Afghan people need our troops and your troops; our support and your support to defeat the Taliban and al Qaeda, to develop their economy, and to help them rebuild their nation. We have too much at stake to turn back now.
This is the moment when we must renew the goal of a world without nuclear weapons. The two superpowers that faced each other across the wall of this city came too close too often to destroying all we have built and all that we love. With that wall gone, we need not stand idly by and watch the further spread of the deadly atom. It is time to secure all loose nuclear materials; to stop the spread of nuclear weapons; and to reduce the arsenals from another era. This is the moment to begin the work of seeking the peace of a world without nuclear weapons.
This is the moment when every nation in Europe must have the chance to choose its own tomorrow free from the shadows of yesterday. In this century, we need a strong European Union that deepens the security and prosperity of this continent, while extending a hand abroad. In this century – in this city of all cities – we must reject the Cold War mind-set of the past, and resolve to work with Russia when we can, to stand up for our values when we must, and to seek a partnership that extends across this entire continent.
This is the moment when we must build on the wealth that open markets have created, and share its benefits more equitably. Trade has been a cornerstone of our growth and global development. But we will not be able to sustain this growth if it favors the few, and not the many. Together, we must forge trade that truly rewards the work that creates wealth, with meaningful protections for our people and our planet. This is the moment for trade that is free and fair for all.
This is the moment we must help answer the call for a new dawn in the Middle East. My country must stand with yours and with Europe in sending a direct message to Iran that it must abandon its nuclear ambitions. We must support the Lebanese who have marched and bled for democracy, and the Israelis and Palestinians who seek a secure and lasting peace. And despite past differences, this is the moment when the world should support the millions of Iraqis who seek to rebuild their lives, even as we pass responsibility to the Iraqi government and finally bring this war to a close.
This is the moment when we must come together to save this planet. Let us resolve that we will not leave our children a world where the oceans rise and famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands. Let us resolve that all nations – including my own – will act with the same seriousness of purpose as has your nation, and reduce the carbon we send into our atmosphere. This is the moment to give our children back their future. This is the moment to stand as one.
And this is the moment when we must give hope to those left behind in a globalized world. We must remember that the Cold War born in this city was not a battle for land or treasure. Sixty years ago, the planes that flew over Berlin did not drop bombs; instead they delivered food, and coal, and candy to grateful children. And in that show of solidarity, those pilots won more than a military victory. They won hearts and minds; love and loyalty and trust – not just from the people in this city, but from all those who heard the story of what they did here.
Now the world will watch and remember what we do here – what we do with this moment. Will we extend our hand to the people in the forgotten corners of this world who yearn for lives marked by dignity and opportunity; by security and justice? Will we lift the child in Bangladesh from poverty, shelter the refugee in Chad, and banish the scourge of AIDS in our time?
Will we stand for the human rights of the dissident in Burma, the blogger in Iran, or the voter in Zimbabwe? Will we give meaning to the words “never again” in Darfur? Will we acknowledge that there is no more powerful example than the one each of our nations projects to the world? Will we reject torture and stand for the rule of law? Will we welcome immigrants from different lands, and shun discrimination against those who don’t look like us or worship like we do, and keep the promise of equality and opportunity for all of our people?
People of Berlin – people of the world – this is our moment. This is our time. I know my country has not perfected itself. At times, we’ve struggled to keep the promise of liberty and equality for all of our people. We’ve made our share of mistakes, and there are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions.
But I also know how much I love America. I know that for more than two centuries, we have strived – at great cost and great sacrifice – to form a more perfect union; to seek, with other nations, a more hopeful world. Our allegiance has never been to any particular tribe or kingdom – indeed, every language is spoken in our country; every culture has left its imprint on ours; every point of view is expressed in our public squares. What has always united us – what has always driven our people; what drew my father to America’s shores – is a set of ideals that speak to aspirations shared by all people: that we can live free from fear and free from want; that we can speak our minds and assemble with whomever we choose and worship as we please.
Those are the aspirations that joined the fates of all nations in this city. Those aspirations are bigger than anything that drives us apart. It is because of those aspirations that the airlift began. It is because of those aspirations that all free people – everywhere – became citizens of Berlin. It is in pursuit of those aspirations that a new generation – our generation – must make our mark on history.
People of Berlin – and people of the world – the scale of our challenge is great. The road ahead will be long. But I come before you to say that we are heirs to a struggle for freedom. We are a people of improbable hope. Let us build on our common history, and seize our common destiny, and once again engage in that noble struggle to bring justice and peace to our world.
Berlin, of couse, is an enormous symbol of the Cold War, as well as rapprochement following the most brutal world war in history.
Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit — who was apparently open to Obama speaking anywhere he wanted in this most international of cities, including the Brandenberg Gate venue which Chancellor Angela Merkel, perhaps prodded by the White House, balked at — had this gushing comment following his meeting with Obama. “He is a very charming and determined man, who has a vision for America and the whole world.”
The whole world? Hmm …
** OBAMA BERLIN SPEECH THIS MORNING. Barack Obama speaks in Berlin around 10 AM Pacific time. (That’s 7 PM in Germany.) The event will be available live on all cable news nets.
** CALIFORNIA: DEMOCRATIC PARTY FAR MORE POPULAR THAN REPUBLICAN PARTY.The new Field Poll shows that California voters are far more favorably inclined to Democrats than to Republicans.
54% of California voters have a positive impression of the Democratic Party. Only 31% of California voters have a positive impression of the Republican Party. This tracks very closely with Barack Obama’s lead over John McCain in California, which is 54% to 30%.
On a generic congressional ballot, the Democratic edge is 48% to 28%. This is interesting, because House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s numbers in her own home state — she represents San Francisco — are decidedly down.
** MCCAIN TRIES TO COUNTER-PROGRAM A WAVE. You know, Obama’s new flood of foreign policy cred. Resulting in a somewhat confusing, rather sulky, kitchen sink approach. With full analysis of the two new anti-Obama attack ads, first of the general election. One is arguable. The other is preposterous. From my other blog.
John McCain is unhappy about the publicity over Barack Obama’s foreign tour.
** WHERE THEY ARE TODAY.
Barack Obama is in Germany. He’s already met with Chancellor Angela Merkel.
John McCain is in New Albany and Columbus, Ohio.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the new Russia Today channel. You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti.
While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, which I know as a former DemRussia advisor, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND U.S. ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. Crude oil is trading now in the $125 to $126 per barrel range. After crashing over $147 for yet another record on July 11th, crude oil closed down on Friday at $128.88 per barrel. The drop of over $20 per barrel came amidst multiple signs that the weak US economy will cut future demand and fresh signs of a rapprochement between the US and Iran.
Barack Obama discusses his trip to Iraq and Afghanistan yesterday in Amman, Jordan.
** VIRGINIA POLL: VERY SLIGHT OBAMA EDGE.The new Public Policy Polling survey of new battleground state Virginia shows Barack Obama with a tiny edge over John McCain, 46% to 44%. Virginia, until now, has been a consistent Republican state in presidential elections. But Virginia was one of Obama’s biggest victories in the Democratic nomination fight with Hillary Clinton. And former Governor Mark Warner is easily leading his U.S. Senate race, 57-32.
** MCCAIN CANCELS OIL RIG COUNTER-PROGRAMMING OF OBAMA BERLIN SPEECH. Due to bad weather. Caused by Hurricane Dolly. See the item below reporting this morning about the plan to counter-program Barack Obama’s big Thursday speech in Berlin. John McCain was going to chopper out to an oil rig off the coast of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico. To dramatize his plan to lower gasoline prices — not very soon, as it happens, as I may have mentioned — by expanding offshore oil drilling. But Hurricane Dolly made that problematic. Which may contain a hint about this energy strategy. And the McCain campaign cancelled the event. Now more talk about an early veep pick has re-emerged. It won’t happen.
** SCHWARZENEGGER MAKES A BIG BUDGET MOVE. Prior to appearing at the rally discussed in the item below, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger met with Assembly Speaker Karen Bass and Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata. The chronically deficit-ridden and now very late state budget was a major topic. This afternoon it emerged that Schwarzenegger is preparing an executive order which will reduce some 200,000 state employees to minimum wage — federal minimum wage, that is, which is less than state minimum wage, which does not apply to state employees — as the state looks toward an impending cash crunch. Some layoffs may also be on tap. This will start putting real presssure on legislators to get off the dime, with some moves to follow.
** SCHWARZENEGGER PUSHES WATER PLAN AT LATINO RALLY. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger joined Orange Cove Mayor Victor Lopez, Fresno Mayor Alan Autry, and several Democratic legislators at a spirited Capitol rally of some 1000 Latinos, mostly farmworkers, on behalf of Schwarzenegger and Senator Dianne Feinstein’s $9.3 billion water bond.
“Look,” declared Schwarzenegger to the spirited crowd, many waving signs in Spanish saying “Water Is Life,” “what has happened just because we have a lack of infrastructure. For the second year in a row now we have a drought. And, at the same time, we see that the federal judge is reducing our water consumption and pumping Delta water by 30 percent. Our reservoirs are now low, 50 percent to 75 percent lower than they should be right now. And our farmers, already all of you are cutting back and letting fields sit empty because they can’t guarantee adequate water, which means a loss of billions and billions of dollars in revenues. Developments can’t move forward, prices are going up on water and we are now water rationing in various different areas all over the state of California.
When will they finally get it upstairs that we should do water infrastructure and build and continue on with what we started in 2006, which was a comprehensive reform, comprehensive infrastructure, the Strategic Growth Plan?”
** MAC’S COUNTER-PROGRAMMING FOR THE BIG OBAMA SPEECH IN BERLIN: AN APPEARANCE ON A GULF OIL RIG. John McCain’s intends to counter-program Barack Obama’s big speech Thursday in Berlin with an appearance on an oil rig off the coast of Louisiana to further promote his theme that offshore drilling can bring down high gasoline prices. One potential hitch, however. Hurricane Dolly.
The Morning Column: OBAMA’S TRICKIEST DAY
Wednesday is the trickiest day of Barack Obama’s week-long foreign tour. Because this is the day he’s in Israel. As it’s the Middle East, and I’m in California, the day is mostly over.
It’s gone well for Obama.
He had a buddy-buddy style meeting with General Ehud Barak, the current Israeli defense minister who previously served as prime minister and as head of the Israeli armed forces. Significant joking about their similar names.
Obama was hailed by Israeli President Shimon Peres, who declared that he is looking forward to having “a great American president again.” Peres, also a former prime minister, is of course a long-time Labourite.
Obama also met with former Prime Minister Benjahmin Netanyahu, a man of the more moderate right, in Israeli terms, and with Foreign Minister Tzivi Lipni. I don’t think he met with any of the far right figures who have had increasing sway in Israeli politics. Dinner tonight with embattled Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, caught up in a lengthy corruption scandal, and unpopular from the unsuccessful 2006 war with Hezbollah.
Obama also visited the Sderot settlement, a frequent target of Hamas rocket attacks, and declared his solidarity with the inhabitants, saying he could imagine his anger at living in a place in which his two daughters came under rocket fire. And he went to Ramallah to meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
There’s a world of landmines in all of this, of course, but Obama appears not have stepped on any.
Team McCain has tried to make hay out of Obama’s obvious “no genocide” statement by distributing something he said last year about how if genocide were the standard for US intervention we would be all over Africa.
McCain himself today said that offshore oil drilling is key to bringing down gasoline prices, and that President Bush’s move last month to drop the federal prohibition caused the price of oil to drop by $10 per barrel. I have no reason to believe that’s true. McCain cancelled his usual press avail afterwards.
Of the countries Obama is visiting where polling occurs, Israel is the only one in which the population favors McCain over Obama. McCain has been a longstanding friend of Israel. And Israel has a very hawkish constituency, with a populace deeply unsettled by the very unfortunate failure of the 2006 war with Hezbollah (which was covered in detail on NWN), which signaled that the IDF is not as formidable a force as it once was, and by a threatening Iran.
Among American Jewish voters, however, and despite many dire warnings to the contrary, Obama has a 2 to 1 lead over McCain. McCain only runs about 5 or 6 points better than did George W. Bush against John Kerry.
Tomorrow is Obama’s big speech in Berlin. He tends to rise to these occasions, though this may be the biggest crowd he has ever addressed, even bigger than the 75,000 who turned out for him in Portland during the Oregon primary which notched his victory in the earned delegates race with Hillary Clinton. Unless Obama comes off like he is already the president — which, as it happens, he is not — Berlin looks to be a triumph for him.
Barack Obama visiting Afghanistan over the weekend.
** MCCAIN TRIES TO COUNTER-PROGRAM A WAVE. You know, Obama’s new flood of foreign policy cred. Resulting in a somewhat confusing, rather sulky, kitchen sink approach. With full analysis of the two new anti-Obama attack ads, first of the general election. One is arguable. The other is preposterous. From my other blog.
** SCHWARZENEGGER LIVE WEBCAST ON WATER AT NOONTIME. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger holds a rally outside the State Capitol with the California Latino Water Coalition today supporting his and Senator Dianne Feinstein’s proposed $9.3 billion water bond.
John McCain is in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania for a town hall meeting in which he calls for offshore oil drilling to bring down gasoline prices.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the new Russia Today channel. You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti.
While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, which I know as a former DemRussia advisor, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND U.S. ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. Crude oil is trading now in the $126 to $128 per barrel range. After crashing over $147 for yet another record on July 11th, crude oil closed down on Friday at $128.88 per barrel. The drop of over $20 per barrel came amidst multiple signs that the weak US economy will cut future demand and fresh signs of a rapprochement between the US and Iran.
John McCain’s campaign has released its second TV attack ad on Barack Obama in the past few days, blaming Obama for high gas prices.
** MCCAIN TRIES TO COUNTER-PROGRAM A WAVE. You know, Obama’s new flood of foreign policy cred. Resulting in a somewhat confusing, rather sulky, kitchen sink approach. With full analysis of the two new anti-Obama attack ads, first of the general election. One is arguable. The other is preposterous. From my other blog.
** IS THE INFAMOUS AHMED CHALABI BEHIND MALIKI’S PRO-OBAMA MOVE?Here is what we call reported speculation that notorious Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi, a favorite of the neoconservative faction and a chief prodder behind the US invasion of Iraq, and the faulty intelligence underlying it, is one of the people who pushed Iraq’s prime minister into lining up behind Barack Obama’s timeline for US withdrawal. This guy is such a character — once the warhawks’ choice to be prime minister of Iraq, till it turned out he wasn’t very popular with Iraqis, and may be tied to Iran — that I can’t begin to do this justice in an item. Why might he make such a move? He’s now out of favor with the Bush/Cheney White House and the Pentagon, once his key power bases. And he may see Obama as the most likely winner.
The high-speed rail bonds initiative is up, 56-30. Parental notification on abortion, a perennial, is up 48-39. Increased renewable energy requirements for the utilities is up, 63-24. And redistricting reform is up, 42-30.
Redistricting reform and high-speed rail will be priorities for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The renewable energy one is complicated, as quite a few enviros are against it for some rather technical reasons, and Schwarzenegger has already established high mandates through the Public Utilities Commission.
General voter awareness of the November ballot initiatives is low, as one might suspect in the middle of July.
** NORTH CAROLINA POLL: MCCAIN BY 3. John McCain has a surprisingly small lead in this historically Republican Southern state. In the new Rasmussen poll, it’s McCain 45%, Obama 42%. Obama is putting on a big voter registration drive in North Carolina, where he essentially won the Democratic nomination over Hillary Clinton, so this should stay close all the way to the wire.
** ALASKA POLL: MCCAIN BY 5. Alaska is a state that in the past has been easily placed in the Republican presidential column with big margins. The latest Rasmussen poll has John McCain leading Barack Obama, 45% to 40%. The Republicans have a deep problem in Alaska. Incumbent Republican Senator Ted Stevens trails Democratic challenger Mark Begich by 9 points.
John McCain may have to take the trek up near the Arctic Circle to hold these three electoral votes, for the Obama campaign has organizers on the ground and is advertising there steadily.
The Morning Column: MAC’S PROBLEM: COUNTER-PROGRAMMING. Barack Obama just held a 45-minute press conference carried live on all cable news nets from Amman, Jordan, in which he discussed his trip so far to Afghanistan, Kuwait, and Iraq. It was a smooth performance. He looked and sounded the part.
He noted the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan (which NWN has been noting for about two years) and the need to send several more US combat brigades there. He mentioned that he had “inspected the porous border” between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Recall that he advocated US military strikes against Al Qaeda and Taliban safe havens inside Pakistan, if the Pakistani government does nothing, as it generally has.
With regard to Iraq, Obama held fast to his timeline for withdrawing US combat forces, leaving a residual presence — noting that his views and those of the Iraqi government are now in concert — while retaining flexibility if the security situation were to deteriorate.
He’s touring Jordan, a not so silent lynchpin of the ME, dinner with the king and queen, then off to Israel tonight.
With all this going on, and with Obama delivering a strong performance to date, John McCain has a couple of problems. Putting aside the point that Iraq’s government has essentially endorsed Obama’s policy toward Iraq, which of course underlies a tectonic shift now underway, there is the question of what to do while all this is going on.
The answer has been something of a kitchen sink approach. McCain vehemently denounced Obama yesterday as, essentially, a know-nothing who was never in the military even as he worked to draw attention to his concern with economic and energy concerns, now intertwined. His surrogates attack Obama on national security matters. He has another town hall today in the now battleground state of New Hampshire, largely on economic matters. But inevitably the media focus will be on his reactions to Obama’s trip.
McCain also has two TV attack ads up on Obama, the first of the general election campaign.
One, discussed yesterday, and playing below, criticizes Obama for not holding a hearing of his Senate subcommittee on Europe on the topic of Afghanistan, for not going to Iraq since 2006 (he was just there, of course), and for not supporting funding for the Iraq surge.
The other, brand new, playing above, blames high gasoline prices on Obama. This tends to leave out the role of President Bush.
Incidentally, my gas price has gone down further in the past few days than it would have had the gas tax holiday (which also would have cut federal highway funding) advocated by McCain been enacted. This 20 cent a gallon drop coincided with the US publicly negotiating with Iran.
** WHERE THEY ARE TODAY.
Barack Obama is in Jordan and Israel.
John McCain is in New Hampshire and Maryland. He has a town hall meeting in Rochester, New Hampshire, meets with the New Hampshire delegation to the Republican National Convention, and has a fundraiser in Baltimore.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the new Russia Today channel. You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti.
While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, which I know as a former DemRussia advisor, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND U.S. ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. Crude oil is trading now in the $127 to $130 per barrel range. After crashing over $147 for yet another record on July 11th, crude oil closed down on Friday at $128.88 per barrel. The drop of nearly $120 per barrel came amidst multiple signs that the weak US economy will cut future demand and fresh signs of a rapprochement between the US and Iran.
John McCain attacks Barack Obama, now on his heralded foreign tour, on Afghanistan and Iraq.
** OHIO: OBAMA LEAD IN NEW POLL. In perpetual battleground state Ohio, Barack Obama leads John McCain in the new Public Policy Polling survey, 48% to 40%. McCain has the edge amongst white voters, 46-42. But Obama has the edge amongst blacks, 91-6. Obama leads by 20 amongst women, trails by seven with men. Only senior citizens give McCain an edge with the various age groups.
** FROM THE ARNOLD FILE. California legislative leaders are meeting this afternnon on the stalled state budget. They’ll join Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in the late afternoon for a Big Five meeting. Both parties are going to have to compromise on their hardcore positions.
** DARK KNIGHT DIDN’T DO $155.3 MILLION OPENING WEEKEND. That was yesterday’s estimate. It did $158.4 million at the domestic box office for its opening weekend, shattering the record of $151.1 million set last year by Spiderman III. It’s dark, long (two-and-a-half hours) and not kid-friendly. And very good.
** STUPID NEW YORK TIMES TRICKS.Now here is something very foolish. The New York Times op-ed page editor, a former Bill Clinton speechwriter, rejected John McCain’s piece on Iraq. The paper had already published Barack Obama’s piece on the issue, but the editor told the McCain campaign it wanted a piece from McCain that “mirrors” Obama’s, one which clearly defines “victory” and lays out “timetables.”
While rejecting McCain’s piece, the editor allowed as how he could submit another draft. Amazing stuff.
** OBAMA AND MCCAIN SET FIRST JOINT APPEARANCE, IN CALIFORNIA. Barack Obama and John McCain will make their first joint appearance on August 16th at Orange County’s Saddleback Church. Obama has appeared there before as the guest of Rev. Rick Warren. It’s not a debate, more of a back-to-back joint appearance with the two candidates discussing their respective approaches to governance.
Obama will speak first, taking an hour to make a presentation and answer questions. McCain will then follow.
** NEVADA REPUBLICANS CANCEL CONVENTION. Nevada’s Republican Party, which adjourned its April convention in Reno as Ron Paul supporters were on the verge of electing their own slate to the Republican National Convention, cancelled the rescheduled convention set for next weekend.
Mitt Romney won the Nevada caucuses in January, with Paul second. The the libertarian doctor and Texas congressman has the shock troops in the Silver State. And the party establishment was on the verge of further embarrassment. Which would have caused more problems for John McCain in this battleground state. So the national convention delegation will now be selected by, get this, conference call.
THE MORNING COLUMN: MONDAY MORNING QUARTERBACK.
Quite a week in store in presidential politics, with Barack Obama on his foreign tour and John McCain counter-programming him back in the US with a tour of battleground states to discuss the economy, as well as TV ad attacks on Obama’s foreign and energy policies.
Here in California, the state’s budget stalemate drags out, with a lot of bluster between the parties while discussions actually go on, including Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Later this week, Schwarzenegger goes on a tour of his own, promoting a national infrastructure project.
Obama is in Iraq today, following a weekend spent mostly in Afghanistan, after a brief beginning in Kuwait. You can look below to the candidate’s schedule to see what he’s up to today in Iraq.
Over the weekend, he toured combat zones and met and played basketball with the troops. Traveling with Obama are Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel, a decorated Vietnam vet and Republican who is an old friend of John McCain, and Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed, a West Point alum and former Army Ranger.
Obama is focusing heavily on Afghanistan, where the fight against a resurgent Taliban has taken a turn for the worse, and Pakistan, where Al Qaeda Prime, the entity which attacked America on 9/11, has established safe havens under the nose of the US-backed government.
Obama got a big boost over the weekend for his Iraq withdrawal plans — dubbed “surrender” by McCain — from Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
Obama favors a surge in Afghanistan and a residual force in Iraq to counter any resurgence of the Al Qaeda affiliate there and continue to provide training and technical assistance to the Iraqi armed forces.
Says Maliki: “U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes.”
Late yesterday, US Central Command released a statement from Maliki in which he vaguely said that his comments were misconstrued, without saying in what way they were.
In any event, Obama has already met with Maliki today, and Maliki’s spokesman said after the meeting — in English — that Iraq wants US combat forces out of the country by the end of 2010.
Which makes Obama’s trip a success right there. Unless he screws up elsewhere.
After Iraq, Obama goes to Israel and Jordan, then to Germany, France, and Britain. He will give a major speech in Berlin on Thursday — at the Victory Column, not the Brandenberg Gate — before moving on to Paris and London.
For his part, after his day in Maine, McCain will campaign in swing states Colorado, New Hampshire, Ohio and Pennsylvania. The message is about economic concerns. One who won’t be along on the trip is McCain national co-chairman Phil Gramm, the Texas senator-turned-Swiss banker who infamously called America “a nation of whiners” as he declared the country to be in an unparalleled position of economic strength. Gramm stepped down from the campaign, in which he was the top economic advisor, Friday night.
McCain will talk about energy security, housing, health care, and jobs. But he and his campaign will inevitably be drawn into the force field generated by Obama’s trip.
** WHERE THEY ARE TODAY.
Barack Obama is in Iraq, where his schedule includes meetings with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and President Jalal Talabani and dinner with General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker.
John McCain is in Maine, for a town hall meeting in South Portland and a private fundraiser at the Kennebunkport estate of former President George Bush I.
** SCHWARZENEGGER LIVE WEBCAST THIS MORNING ON HOUSING CRISIS. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger holds a press conference this morning in Stockton to announce the launch of the Community Stabilization Home Loan Program. Sponsored by California Housing Finance Authority, this is a new program to help first-time homebuyers purchase homes in communities hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the new Russia Today channel. You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti.
While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, which I know as a former DemRussia advisor, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. With U.S. cable news chattering away as it does, this sort of respite can be informative. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND U.S. ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. Crude oil is trading now in the $129 to $130 per barrel range. After crashing over $147 for yet another record on July 11th, crude oil closed down on Friday at $128.88 per barrel. The drop of nearly $19 per barrel came amidst multiple signs that the weak US economy will cut future demand and fresh signs of a rapprochement between the US and Iran.
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