Breaking Down the Obama-McCain Debate

Nick Kristof elaborates on the “Impulsive, Impetuous, Impatient” McCain that quickly became evident during the debate.

As Mr. McCain demonstrated in Friday evening’s debate, he is a serious foreign policy thinker who has traveled widely, and he certainly showed vision and bipartisanship in helping to repair relations with Vietnam. But it’s equally clear that in recent years Mr. McCain has become impish cubed — impulsive, impetuous and impatient — and those are perilous qualities in a commander in chief.

Although he is frantically trying to distance himself from President Bush, Mr. McCain, by his own accounting, would be more Bushian in foreign policy than even Mr. Bush is now. While Mr. Bush has been forced to accept more sensible policies in his second term, Mr. McCain has become steadily more of a neocon in the cowboy role that Mr. Bush played in his first term, prone to solving problems with stealth bombers rather than United Nations resolutions.

Judging from Mr. McCain’s own positions, he might well revive a cold war with Russia and could start a hot war with Iran or North Korea. In those three hot spots, Mr. McCain could constitute a dangerous gamble for this country:

Iran seems determined to continue its uranium enrichment and will be vexing for any president. But Mr. Bush, under the influence of Bob Gates and Condoleezza Rice, has realized that the best hope is diplomacy and negotiation. In contrast, Mr. McCain denounces Barack Obama’s call for direct talks with Iranian leaders and speaks openly about the possibility of bombing Iranian nuclear sites.

“There’s only one thing worse than military action against Iran, and that is a nuclear-armed Iran,” Mr. McCain has told me and others, repeating the line regularly. That’s a nice sound bite, but it suggests that if Iran continues to enrich uranium he would feel obliged to launch airstrikes. And while Mr. McCain understands the lack of any effective military solution (we don’t even know exactly what to hit), he can sound cavalier about a new war. When a South Carolina man asked him about Iran, he responded by singing to the tune of the Beach Boys’ “Barbara Ann”: “Bomb, bomb,
bomb, bomb, bomb Iran.”

So if Iran continues its policies as most expect, we might well find ourselves under a McCain presidency headed toward our third war with a Muslim country. The result would be an Iranian nationalist backlash that would cement ayatollahs in place, as well as $200-a-barrel oil, open season on Americans in Iraq, and global fury at American unilateralism.

North Korea is one of the Bush administration’s greatest failures, and Mr. McCain seems intent on making it worse. For eight full years, the Clinton administration kept North Korea from obtaining plutonium to make a single nuclear weapon; on Mr. Bush’s watch, North Korea has obtained enough for a half dozen weapons and has conducted a nuclear test.

Even President Bush recognized the failure of his first term’s hard-line policy and abandoned it, instead pursuing negotiations and diplomatic solutions with North Korea. Mr. McCain fumes that this is accommodation and seems to prefer the first-term fist-waving that was emotionally satisfying but failed catastrophically.

A McCain administration would thus apparently mean no more diplomatic track with North Korea. The upshot would be North Korea’s restarting its nuclear weapon assembly line. In similar circumstances in 1994, Mr. McCain raised the prospect of military strikes on North Korea and suggested that war might be inevitable
(instead, President Clinton stopped plutonium production with a negotiated deal).

Russia underscores Mr. McCain’s penchant for risk-taking, theatrics and fulmination. Most striking, he wants to kick Russia out of the Group of 8. Mr. McCain’s lead-with-the-chin approach to Russia reflects the same pugnacity that resulted in obscenity-laced dust-ups with fellow Republican senators, but it’s less endearing when the risk is nuclear war. Do we really want to risk an exchange of nuclear warheads over Abkhazia or South Ossetia? The Spanish prime minister, José Zapatero, told me a few days ago that what he fears most under a McCain administration is a revival of the cold war with Russia.

In Friday’s debate, Mr. McCain was on his best behavior. But he did reiterate his suspicion of diplomacy with our enemies, and he has often shown that his instinct in a confrontation (whether with a colleague or a country) is the opposite of John Kennedy’s in the Cuban missile crisis; Mr. McCain responds to challenges by seeking to escalate, to fight.

All in all, it’s astonishing that Mr. McCain seems determined to return to Mr. Bush’s first-term policies that have been utterly discredited even within the administration. Judging from Mr. McCain’s own positions, on foreign policy he could well end up more Bush than Bush.

Meanwhile, EJ Dionne points out McCain’s missed opportunities during the debate, the only one with a focus on foreign affairs (his alleged turf):

September began as John McCain's month and ended as Barack Obama's. McCain's high-risk wagers aimed at shaking up the campaign turned into very bad investments. And Friday's debate eliminated McCain's best chance to deliver a knockout blow to an opponent whose most important asset may be his capacity for self-correction.

McCain is supposed to own the foreign policy issue -- and he should have owned Friday's debate. During their respective primary battles, McCain was a better debater than Obama, who could be hesitant, wordy and thrown off his stride.

But the Obama who showed up at Ole Miss was sharper and more concise than the man who frequently lost debates against his Democratic foes. He was also resolutely calm in standing his ground against McCain, whose condescension became a major talking point after the debate. If Al Gore suffered from his sighs during the 2000 debates, McCain will be remembered for his supercilious repetition of seven variations on "Senator Obama doesn't understand."

This gave special power to Obama's peroration about McCain's "wrong" judgments on going to war in Iraq. McCain's dismissal of Obama brought back memories of how advocates of the war arrogantly dismissed those who insisted (rightly, as it turned out) that the conflict would be far more difficult and costly than its architects suggested.

McCain's derisive approach may help explain why the instant polls gave Obama an edge in a debate that many pundits rated a tie -- and why women seemed especially inclined toward Obama. CNN's survey found that 59 percent of women rated Obama as having done better, with just 31 percent saying that of McCain.

An Obama adviser who was watching a "dial group" -- in which viewers turn a device to express their feelings about a debate's every moment -- said that whenever McCain lectured or attacked Obama, the Republican's ratings would drop, and the fall was especially steep among women. But if the debate was indeed a tie -- and McCain certainly looked informed and engaged once the discussion moved from economics to foreign affairs -- this would count as a net gain for Obama. A foreign policy discussion afforded McCain his best opportunity to aggravate doubts about his foe. That opportunity is now gone.

As for the first 40 minutes devoted to the economic crisis, Obama was more forceful in addressing public anxieties. He used the occasion to tout his middle-class tax cut that a large share of the electorate doesn't even know he's proposing. Obama's campaign quickly went on the air with an ad noting that McCain did not once mention the words "middle class" during the discussion.

Thus ends a month that began with such promise for McCain. His choice of Sarah Palin as a running mate at the end of August created a fortnight of excitement among Republican loyalists who were less than enthusiastic about McCain. Some said Palin would also enhance his appeal to female voters and help him recast his candidacy as a maverick's crusade.

But it was a reckless choice. Palin has proved herself to be spectacularly unprepared for a national campaign and embarrassingly inarticulate and unreflective. She is held in protective custody by a campaign that trusts her less and less. A few conservatives have suggested she should be dropped from the ticket.

Then came McCain's abrupt foray into Washington's negotiations over a Wall Street bailout bill. His showy call for postponing Friday's debate was serenely rebuffed by Obama, and McCain was forced to retreat. The candidate with 26 years of congressional experience lost a test of wills to an opponent with just four years on the national stage.

And when McCain intervened in the rescue package discussions, his position on the matter was muddy. This champion of bipartisanship briefly stood up for a House Republican minority that was battling against a bipartisan accord largely accepted by his Senate Republican colleagues, and then he pulled back. The McCain who had once allied with such liberals as Ted Kennedy and Russ Feingold was suddenly flirting with an approach to the economic rescue that was recommended by Newt Gingrich. The
post-Labor Day period has thus brought the campaign to an unexpected point.

McCain, once the candidate of tested experience, must now battle the perception that he has become the riskier choice, a man too given to rash moves under pressure. Obama, whose very newness promised change but also raised doubts, has emerged as the cool and unruffled candidate who moves calmly but steadily forward. However one judges the first debate, it did nothing to block Obama's progress.

Breaking Down the Obama-McCain Debate

On Five Thirty Eight, Nate Silver breaks down why Barack Obama won the first presidential debate. An excerpt:

Specifically, by a 62-32 margin, voters thought that Obama was “more in touch with the needs and problems of people like you”. This is a gap that has no doubt grown because of the financial crisis of recent days. But it also grew because Obama was actually speaking to middle class voters. Per the transcript, McCain never once mentioned the phrase “middle class” (Obama did so three times). And Obama’s eye contact was directly with the camera, i.e. the voters at home. McCain seemed to be speaking literally to the people in the room in Mississippi, but figuratively to the punditry. It is no surprise that a small majority of pundits seemed to have thought that McCain won, even when the polls indicated otherwise; the pundits were his target audience.

Something as simple as Obama mentioning that he’ll cut taxes for “95 percent of working families” is worth, I would guess, a point or so in the national polls. Obama had not been speaking enough about his middle class tax cut; there was some untapped potential there, and Obama may have gotten the message to sink in tonight. By contrast, I don’t think McCain’s pressing Obama on earmarks was time well spent for him. One, it simply is not something that voters care all that much about, given the other pressures the economy faces. But also, it is not something that voters particularly associate with Obama, as the McCain campaign had not really pressed this line of attack. If you’re going to introduce a new line of attack late in a campaign, it has better be a more effective one that earmarks. And then there was McCain's technocratic line about the virtues of lowering corporate taxes, one which
might represent perfectly valid economic policy, but which was exactly the
sort of patrician argument that lost George H.W. Bush the election in 1992.

Meanwhile, voters thought that Obama “seemed to be the stronger leader” by a 49-43 margin, reversing a traditional area of McCain strength. And voters thought that the candidates were equally likely to be able to handle the job of president if elected. These internals are worse for McCain than the topline results, because they suggest not only that McCain missed one of his few remaining opportunities to close the gap
with Barack Obama, but also that he has few places to go. The only category
in which McCain rated significantly higher than Obama was on “spent more time attacking his opponent”. McCain won that one by 37 points.

My other annoyance with the punditry is that they seem to weight all segments of the debate equally. There were eight segments in this debate: bailout, economy, spending, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Russia, terrorism. The pundit consensus seems to be that Obama won the segments on the bailout, the economy, and Iraq, drew the segment on Afghanistan, and lost the other four. So, McCain wins 4-3, right? Except that, voters don’t weight these issues anywhere near evenly. In Peter Hart’s recent poll for NBC, 43 percent of voters listed the economy or the financial crisis as their top priority, 12 percent Iraq, and 13 percent terrorism or other foreign policy issues... By this measure, Obama “won” by 14 points, which almost exactly his margin in the CNN poll.

McCain’s essential problem is that his fundamental strength – his experience -- is specifically not viewed by voters as carrying over to the economy. And the economy is pretty much all that voters care about these days.

EDIT: The CBS poll of undecideds has more confirmatory detail. Obama went from a +18 on "understanding your needs and problems" before the debate to a +56 (!) afterward. And he went from a -9 on "prepared to be president" to a +21.

The Palin Problem Continued...

And to make matters worse for Sarah Palin, Tina Fey is back!

"Like every American I'm speaking with, we're ill about this. We're saying, 'Hey, why bail out Fanny and Freddie and not me?' But ultimately what the bailout does is, help those that are concerned about the healthcare reform that is needed to help shore up our economy to help...uh...it's gotta be all about job creation, too. Also, too, shoring up our economy and putting Fannie and Freddy back on the right track and so healthcare reform and reducing taxes and reigning in spending...'cause Barack Obama, y'know...has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans, also, having a dollar value meal at restaurants. That's gonna help. But one in five jobs being created today under the umbrella of job creation. That, you know...Also..."

The Palin Problem Continued...

Wolf Blitzer and the crew dissect the Katie Couric interview of Sarah Palin:



Meanwhile, Jack Cafferty tells you what he really thinks.

Biden-Palin

Talking Points Memo lays out “Ten Questions That Palin Should Be Asked in Thursday's Debate:”

1. Yes or no: if Ted Stevens’ trial is not yet concluded, are you voting for Ted Stevens?

2. You are on record as opposing abortion even in cases of rape and incest, and as Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, your town forced rape accusers to pay for the rape kits used to gather evidence in their rape cases. Do you presently agree with either of these positions, and if so, why?

3. John McCain said in October 2007 that he did not need any on the job training to serve as President, because he had not briefly been a mayor or governor. You have been a governor more briefly than Governor Romney, to whom Governor McCain was apparently referring. Do you agree that having been a governor only briefly, that you, unlike Senator McCain, would need on the job training to serve as President?

4. When you first were selected by Senator McCain, you frequently evoked Senator Clinton in your public remarks. Her positions are almost invariably far closer to Senator Obama’s than to Senator McCain’s. Why should a supporter of Senator Clinton in the Democratic primaries support you?

5. In his closing remarks last Friday, Senator McCain said that Senator Obama had neither the knowledge or experience to be President. Do you have a broader knowledge of domestic and foreign issues than Senator Obama, and are you in that sense as ready as Senator Obama to be President?

6. When you discussed soldiers in Iraq being on a mission from God, what did you mean, and do you believe that America’s fight against radical Moslem terrorists is a Christian fight or a holy war in any sense?

7. Having said before your nomination that you would cooperate with the Troopergate investigation into your firing of Walt Monegan, the head of the Alaska State Troopers, run by a committee of ten Republicans and four Democrats, why are you not willing to cooperate, why are you causing state employees to refuse to cooperate with the probe?

8. As governor, you addressed the convention of the Alaska Independence Party, which favors secession, and the founder of which vilified this country and its flag. Particularly in light of your ticket’s motto, Country First, how do you defend speaking in a friendly manner to this secessionist party?

9. This nation stands on the brink of huge economic problems. What makes you expert in economics to a degree sufficient to be the chief steward of the American economy, and does your personal vision for economic policy differ from that carried forward by George W. Bush?

10. John McCain suggested that you know more about energy than anyone in America. What do you know about the viability of alternative forms of energy, such as solar and wind, and what proportion of our national use of energy would solar and wind comprise by the end of a second McCain term?

The Palin Problem

The fall-out from the Katie Couric interview continues… As reported by Ed Schultz:

Capitol Hill sources are telling me that senior McCain people are more than concerned about Palin. The campaign has held a mock debate and a mock press conference; both are being described as "disastrous." One senior McCain aide was quoted as saying, "What are we going to do?" The McCain people want to move this first debate to some later, undetermined date, possibly never. People on the inside are saying the Alaska Governor is "clueless."

It’s gotten so bad that even Conservatives, such as columnist Kathleen Parker, have shifted from enthusiastically suuporting the choice of Sarah Palin to urging her to be dropped from the ticket.

“If at one time women were considered heretical for swimming upstream against feminist orthodoxy, they now face condemnation for swimming downstream — away from Sarah Palin. To express reservations about her qualifications to be vice president — and possibly president — is to risk being labeled anti-woman. Or, as I am guilty of charging her early critics, supporting only a certain kind of woman.

Some of the passionately feminist critics of Palin who attacked her personally deserved some of the backlash they received. But circumstances have changed since Palin was introduced as just a hockey mom with lipstick — what a difference a financial crisis makes — and a more complicated picture has emerged. As we’ve seen and heard more from John McCain’s running mate, it is increasingly clear that Palin is a problem. Quick study or not, she doesn’t know enough about economics and foreign policy to make Americans comfortable with a President Palin should conditions warrant her promotion.

Yes, she recently met and turned several heads of state as the United Nations General Assembly convened in New York. She was gracious, charming and disarming. Men swooned. Pakistan’s president wanted to hug her. And, yes, she has common sense, something we value. And she’s had executive experience as a mayor and a governor, though of relatively small constituencies (about 6,000 and 680,000, respectively).

Finally, Palin’s narrative is fun, inspiring and all-American in that frontier way we seem to admire. When Palin first emerged as John McCain’s running mate, I confess I was delighted. She was the antithesis and nemesis of the hirsute, Birkenstock-wearing sisterhood — a refreshing feminist of a different order who personified the modern successful working mother. Palin didn’t make a mess cracking the glass ceiling. She simply glided through it. It was fun while it lasted.

Palin’s recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity, and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League. No one hates saying that more than I do. Like so many women, I’ve been pulling for Palin, wishing her the best, hoping she will perform brilliantly. I’ve also noticed that I watch her interviews with the held breath of an anxious parent, my finger poised over the mute button in case it gets too painful. Unfortunately, it often does. My cringe reflex is exhausted.

Palin filibusters. She repeats words, filling space with deadwood. Cut the verbiage and there’s not much content there. Here’s but one example of many from her interview with Hannity: “Well, there is a danger in allowing some obsessive partisanship to get into the issue that we’re talking about today. And that’s something that John McCain, too, his track record, proving that he can work both sides of the aisle, he can surpass the partisanship that must be surpassed to deal with an issue like this.”

When Couric pointed to polls showing that the financial crisis had boosted Obama’s numbers, Palin blustered wordily: “I’m not looking at poll numbers. What I think Americans at the end of the day are going to be able to go back and look at track records and see who’s more apt to be talking about solutions and wishing for and hoping for solutions for some opportunity to change, and who’s actually done it?” If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself.

If Palin were a man, we’d all be guffawing, just as we do every time Joe Biden tickles the back of his throat with his toes. But because she’s a woman — and the first ever on a Republican presidential ticket — we are reluctant to say what is painfully true. What to do?McCain can’t repudiate his choice for running mate. He not only risks the wrath of the GOP’s unforgiving base, but he invites others to second-guess his executive decision-making ability. Barack Obama faces the same problem with Biden.

Only Palin can save McCain, her party, and the country she loves. She can bow out for personal reasons, perhaps because she wants to spend more time with her newborn. No one would criticize a mother who puts her family first. Do it for your country.”

"Parachute"

McCain: Wrong on Iraq

McCain versus McCain

Veterans for Obama

Biden Breaks Down the First Presidential Debate

Palin, the Protector

"As Putin rears his head and comes into the airspace of the United States of America, where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border. It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there, they are right next to our state."

-- Sarah Palin

Brown rips McCain

Campbell Brown rips into the McCain campaign for its chauvinistic treatment of Sarah Palin.



“Tonight I call on the McCain campaign to stop treating Sarah Palin like she is a delicate flower that will wilt at any moment," said Brown. "This woman is from Alaska for crying out loud. She is strong. She is tough. She is confident. And you claim she is ready to be one heart beat away form the presidency. If that is the case, then end this chauvinistic treatment of her now. Allow her to show her stuff. Allow her to face down those pesky reporters... Let her have a real news conference with real questions. By treating Sarah Palin different from the other candidates in this race, you are not showing her the respect she deserves. Free Sarah Palin. Free her from the chauvinistic chain you are binding her with. Sexism in this campaign must come to an end. Sarah Palin has just as much a right to be a real candidate in this race as the men do. So let her act like one."

Legendary Political Ads

On Slate, John Dickerson recently picked out his all-time favorite political ads. Good stuff.

Obama Meets Bartlet

For Maureen Dowd, West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin recently conjured a meeting between Barack Obama and Jed Bartlet. It’s a brilliant read. Here’s a little taste:

Obama: What would you do?

Bartlet: GET ANGRIER! Call them liars, because that’s what they are. Sarah Palin didn’t say “thanks but no thanks” to the Bridge to Nowhere. She just said “Thanks.” You were raised by a single mother on food stamps — where does a guy with eight houses who was legacied into Annapolis get off calling you an elitist? And by the way, if you do nothing else, take that word back. Elite is a good word, it means well above average. I’d ask them what their problem is with excellence. While you’re at it, I want the word “patriot” back. McCain can say that the transcendent issue of our time is the spread of Islamic fanaticism or he can choose a running mate who doesn’t know the Bush doctrine from the Monroe Doctrine, but he can’t do both at the same time and call it patriotic. They have to lie — the truth isn’t their friend right now.

Get angry. Mock them mercilessly; they’ve earned it. McCain decried agents of intolerance, then chose a running mate who had to ask if she was allowed to ban books from a public library. It’s not bad enough she thinks the planet Earth was created in six days 6,000 years ago complete with a man, a woman and a talking snake, she wants schools to teach the rest of our kids to deny geology, anthropology, archaeology and common sense too? It’s not bad enough she’s forcing her own daughter into a loveless marriage to a teenage hood, she wants the rest of us to guide our daughters in that direction too?

It’s not enough that a woman shouldn’t have the right to choose, it should be the law of the land that she has to carry and deliver her rapist’s baby too? I don’t know whether or not Governor Palin has the tenacity of a pit bull, but I know for sure she’s got the qualifications of one. And you’re worried about seeming angry? You could eat their lunch, make them cry and tell their mamas about it and God himself would call it restrained. There are times when you are simply required to be impolite. There are times when condescension is called for!

Obama: Good to get that off your chest?

Bartlet: Am I keeping you from something?

Obama: Well, it’s not as if I didn’t know all of that and it took you like 20 minutes to say.

Bartlet: I know, I have a problem, but admitting it is the first step.

Obama: What’s the second step?

Barlet: I don’t care.

The Trainwreck

The disaster that was the Katie Couric interview of Sarah Palin is as awkward and painful to watch as her answers were confusing and illogical. It has best been likened to a 5th grader giving an oral book report on a book she has never read, but nevertheless ineffectively tries to fake her way through. Unfortunately, the stakes are a bit higher when it comes to a candidate who is trying to place herself one 72 year-old heartbeat away from the Presidency. No wonder the McCain campaign has sheltered her from any media exposure. Hopefully her performance in the interview will raise enough red flags to prompt the American people to demand more vetting of this candidate and her ideology.

In the first clip, she makes the inexplicable point that reducing taxes has to be accompanied by tax reductions. That makes sense, right?



Even more painful is her attempt to justify the campaign's claim that Alaska's proximity to Russia gives her foreign policy experience.


Watch CBS Videos Online

Enjoy it while you can because I doubt John McCain will let her out from behind the teleprompter again any time soon.

The Temperament of McCain

On the Daily Dish, Andrew Sullivan highlights the final two paragraphs of the recent George Will column on John McCain that raised so many eyebrows.

Will: Conservatives who insist that electing McCain is crucial usually start, and increasingly end, by saying he would make excellent judicial selections. But the more one sees of his impulsive, intensely personal reactions to people and events, the less confidence one has that he would select judges by calm reflection and clear principles, having neither patience nor aptitude for either. It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?

Sullivan: We forget that McCain has no executive experience, just as Obama has no executive experience. But in terms of judgment, of selection of a running mate, of calm in crisis, of a smooth operation, it is McCain who is revealing his total inexperience and unreadiness for the job, not Obama. In fact, there is no comparison. One campaign is chaotic, secretive, impulsive, unpredictable and losing. The other is supremely well-run, as transparent as a campaign can be, unflappable, very predictable, and winning. I know which man I'd prefer to be runing the country in a crisis. Not hotheaded, mercurial, impulsive, gambling McCain.

Palin's Oil Infatuation

In the LA Times, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. lays out Sarah Palin's Big Oil infatuation.

Now John McCain has chosen as his running mate Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a diligent student of Big Oil's crib sheets. She's something of a flat-earther who shares the current administration's contempt for science. Palin has expressed skepticism about evolution (which is like not believing in gravity), putting it on par with "creationism," which posits that the Earth was created 6,000 years ago.

She used to insist that human activities have nothing to do with climate change. "I'm not one ... who would attribute it to being man-made," she said in August. After she joined the GOP ticket, she magically reversed herself, to a point. "Man's activities certainly can be contributing to the issue of global warming," she told Charles Gibson two weeks ago.

Meanwhile, Alaska is melting before our eyes; entire villages erode as sea ice vanishes, glaciers are disappearing at a frightening clip, and "dancing forests" caused by disappearing permafrost astonish residents and tourists. Palin had to keep her head buried particularly deep in an oil well to ever have denied that humans are causing climate change. But, as Upton Sinclair pointed out, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

Palin's enthusiastic embrace of Big Oil's agenda (if not always Big Oil itself) has been the platform of her hasty rise in Alaskan politics. In that sense she is as much a product of the oil industry as the current president and his vice president. Palin, whose husband is a production operator for BP on Alaska's North Slope, has sued the federal government over its listing of the polar bear as an endangered species threatened by global warming, and she has fought to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and Alaska's coast to oil drilling.

When oil profits are at stake, her fantasy world appears to have no boundaries. About American's deadly oil dependence, she mused recently, "I beg to disagree with any candidate who would say we can't drill our way out of our problem." I guess the only difference between Sarah Palin and Dick Cheney is ... lipstick.

A Letter from President Bush

Thomas Friedman recently penned an interesting letter from President Bush to Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, and Speaker Mahmoud al-Mashadani, speaking to the proper way forward in Iraq.

Dear Sirs, I am writing you on a matter of grave importance. It’s hard for me to express to you how deep the economic crisis in America is today. We are discussing a $1 trillion bailout for our troubled banking system. This is a financial 9/11. As Americans lose their homes and sink into debt, they no longer understand why we are spending $1 billion a day to make Iraqis feel more secure in their homes.

For the past two years, there has been a debate in this country over whether to set a deadline for a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. It seemed as if the resolution of that debate depended on who won the coming election. That is no longer the case. A deadline is coming. American taxpayers who would not let their money be used to subsidize their own companies — Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch — will not have their tax dollars used to subsidize your endless dithering over which Iraqi community dominates Kirkuk.

Don’t misunderstand me. Many Americans and me are relieved by the way you, the Iraqi people and Army have pulled back from your own brink of self-destruction. I originally launched this war in pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. I was wrong. But it quickly became apparent that Al Qaeda and its allies in Iraq were determined to make America fail in any attempt to build a decent Iraq and tilt the Middle East toward a more democratic track, no matter how many Iraqis had to be killed in the process. This was not the war we came for, but it was the one we found.

Al Qaeda understood that if it could defeat America in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world, that it would resonate throughout the region and put Al Qaeda and its allies in the ascendant. Conversely, we understood that if we could defeat Al Qaeda in Iraq, in collaboration with other Arabs and Muslims, that it would resonate throughout the region and pay dividends. Something very big was at stake here. We have gone a long way toward winning that war.

At the same time, I also came to realize that in helping Iraqis organize elections, we were facilitating the first ever attempt by the people of a modern Arab state to write their own social contract — rather than have one imposed on them by kings, dictators or colonial powers. If Iraqi Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds can forge your own social contract, then some form of a consensual government is possible in the Arab world. If you can’t, it is kings and dictators forever — with all the pathologies that come with that. Something very big is at stake there, too.

It’s not the stakes that have changed. It is the fact that you are now going to have to step up and finish this job. You have presumed an endless American safety net to permit you to endlessly bargain and dicker over who gets what. I’ve been way, way too patient with you. That is over. We bought you time with the surge to reach a formal political settlement and you better use it fast, because it is a rapidly diminishing asset.

You Shiites have got to bring the Sunni tribes and Awakening groups, who fought the war against Al Qaeda of Iraq, into the government and Army. You Kurds have got to find a solution for Kirkuk and accept greater integration into the Iraqi state system, while maintaining your autonomy. You Sunnis in government have got to agree to elections so the newly emergent Sunni tribal and Awakening groups are able to run for office and become “institutionalized” into the Iraqi system.

So pass your election and oil laws, spend some of your oil profits to get Iraqi refugees resettled and institutionalize the recent security gains while you still have a substantial U.S. presence. Read my lips: It will not be there indefinitely — even if McCain wins.

Our ambassador, Ryan Crocker, has told me your problem: Iraqi Shiites are still afraid of the past, Iraqi Sunnis are still afraid of the future and Iraqi Kurds are still afraid of both. Well, you want to see fear. Look in the eyes of Americans who are seeing their savings wiped out, their companies disappear, their homes foreclosed. We are a different country today. After a decade of the world being afraid of too much American power, it is now going to be treated to a world of too little American power, as we turn inward to get our house back in order.

I still believe a decent outcome in Iraq, if you achieve it, will have long-lasting, positive implications for you and the entire Arab world, although the price has been way too high. I will wait for history for my redemption, but the American people will not. They want nation-building in America now. They will not walk away from Iraq overnight, but they will not stay there in numbers over time. I repeat: Do not misread this moment. God be with you.

George W. Bush

The Push to ‘Otherize’ Obama

In a recent column, Nick Kristof speaks to the sleaziness of the political campaign launched by conservatives to transform Barack Obama into a Muslim.

Raising doubts about a candidate based on the religion of his grandfather is toxic and profoundly un-American, cracking the melting pot we emerged from. Someday people will look back at the innuendoes about Mr. Obama with the same disgust with which we regard the smears of Al Smith as a Catholic candidate in 1928.

Mini-Bush

Paul on McCain

In a recent MSNBC interview, Ron Paul explains why he can't support John McCain.

Hagel on Palin

"She doesn't have any foreign policy credentials. You get a passport for the first time in your life last year? I mean, I don't know what you can say. You can't say anything."

-- Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE), quoted by the Omaha World-Herald, on John McCain's pick of Sarah Palin as his running mate.

Bushonomics

To the Rescue...

Sunday Roundup

Sarah Palin, reformer or earmark queen? Let's hear what the pundits have to say...

An Exit Strategy

In a recent post in the Times, John Nagl, a former Army lieutenant colonel, Colin Kahl, an assistant professor of security studies at Georgetown, and Shawn Brimley, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security, lay out a strategy for moving forward in Iraq.

With the Bush administration now working out an agreement on having American troops out by 2012, understanding how this withdrawal will proceed is vital. Basra is as an example of what an exit strategy might look like — and of the dangers of getting it wrong.

After the 2003 invasion, control over southern Iraq was handed over to British forces. Without adequate troops to protect the population, security in Basra deteriorated, the British withdrew and Shiite militias took control. In late March of this year, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki launched an offensive in Basra to clear the city of militias, but the Iraqi Army quickly got bogged down. American special operations forces and combat advisers reinforced Iraqi units, providing crucial air and fire support and detailed intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. As a result, Iraqi security forces turned the tide and now control the city.

The lesson of Basra is clear: a rapid withdrawal risks a resurgence of violence, but a responsible drawdown and a reorientation of the mission away from combat and toward advising Iraqi forces stand a good chance of advancing our interests in Iraq at acceptable cost.

Under this model, embedded military advisers would provide just enough help to give Iraqis what they need on the battlefield, but not so much that it stymies their development and perpetuates a view of Western occupation. Yet this transition is risky. Security gains could come undone if Iraqis fail to strike political deals on elections, oil revenues and disputed territories. Sectarian conflict could also reignite if the Shiite-dominated government fails to accommodate the predominantly Sunni
“Sons of Iraq,” the 100,000 security volunteers, many former insurgents, who have taken up arms against Al Qaeda.

The biggest challenge America will face is our rapidly diminishing leverage. Iraq’s
government is increasingly asserting sovereignty, demanding a new bilateral security relationship with the United States with more constraints on how American forces operate — and limits on how long they can stay. Mr. Maliki and his advisers have inflated confidence in the ability of the Iraqi forces to maintain security that has reduced our influence. This is apparent in the negotiations over a United States-Iraq security framework. The draft pact agreed to last month seems likely to establish a timeline for withdrawing American forces and moving from a lead combat role to a support role, but it asks little of Iraqis in return for continued assistance through 2011 and beyond.

In this context, they offer two things we must do and one thing we must not do.

First, we must adopt a policy of strategic conditionality at the presidential level. For two years, the perception of an American blank check has been reinforced by regular video conferences in which President Bush has assured Mr. Maliki of his unwavering support. This has to change. The next president must make it clear that we do not endorse a particular set of Iraqi leaders, but rather the system as a whole, and thus our financial and military support is contingent upon progress toward political accommodation and improved governance. Most Iraqi leaders want continued security assurances, technical support for Iraqi ministries and help in renegotiating
debt obligations and other financial liabilities. This support should be tied directly toward governmental progress.

Second, we must exploit our still-significant leverage over Iraq’s security forces. While Mr. Maliki and others may be overconfident, the truth is that recent Iraqi operations in Basra, Sadr City and Mosul would not have succeeded without American military support. Underneath their rhetoric, most Iraqi leaders — civilian
and military — understand they are not able to provide domestic order, combat terrorism or deter external foes without some continued American support. There are disturbing reports that the Iraqi government has been cracking down on the Sons of Iraq and stalling their integration into the Iraqi security forces. If Mr. Maliki persists in pursuing this sectarian agenda, our support — including technical advice and weapons sales — should be limited accordingly.

Last, it is vital that the next president not send a signal that he hopes to establish an enduring Korea-style presence in Iraq. Most Iraqi leaders want continued American military support for several years, but do not want a permanent presence beyond the minimum advisory effort. If the next administration tries to lay the groundwork for an indefinite footprint, it will be forced to give in to all sorts of Iraqi demands.

An Email from Wasilla

Last month, Anne Kilkenny, a homemaker and education advocate in Wasilla, sent an email to friends expressing her thoughts about Sarah Palin, whom she personally knows. Since then, the email has spread like wildfire. Here is the email in its entirety:

I am a resident of Wasilla, Alaska. I have known Gov. Sarah Palin since 1992. Everyone here knows Sarah, so it is nothing special to say we are on a first-name basis. Our children have attended the same schools. Her father was my child's favorite substitute teacher. I also am on a first-name basis with her parents and mother-in-law. I attended more City Council meetings during her administration than about 99 percent of the residents of the city.

She is enormously popular; in every way she's like the most popular girl in middle school. Even men who think she is a poor choice for vice president and won't vote for her can't quit smiling when talking about her because she is a "babe." It is astonishing and almost scary how well she can keep a secret. She kept her most recent pregnancy a secret from her children and parents for seven months.

She is "pro-life." She recently gave birth to a Down's syndrome baby. There is no cover-up involved here; Trig is her baby. She is energetic and hardworking. She regularly worked out at the gym. She is savvy. She doesn't take positions; she just "puts things out there" and if they prove to be popular, then she takes credit.

Her husband works a union job on the North Slope for BP and is a champion snowmobile racer. Todd Palin's kind of job is highly sought-after because of the schedule and high pay. He arranges his work schedule so he can fish for salmon in Bristol Bay for a month or so in summer, but by no stretch of the imagination is fishing their major source of income. Nor has her lifestyle ever been anything like that of native Alaskans. Sarah and her whole family are avid hunters. She's smart.

Her experience is as mayor of a city with a population of about 5,000 (at the time) and less than two years as governor of a state with about 670,000 residents. During her mayoral administration, most of the actual work of running this small city was turned over to an administrator. She had been pushed to hire this administrator by party power-brokers after she had gotten herself into some trouble over precipitous firings, which had given rise to a recall campaign.

Sarah campaigned in Wasilla as a "fiscal conservative." During her six years as mayor, she increased general government expenditures by more than 33 percent. During those same six years, the amount of taxes collected by the city increased by 38 percent. This was during a period of low inflation (1996-2002). She reduced progressive property taxes and increased a regressive sales tax, which taxed even food. The tax cuts that she promoted benefitted large corporate property owners way more than they benefited residents.

The huge increases in tax revenue during her mayoral administration weren't enough to fund everything on her wish list, though — borrowed money was needed, too. She inherited a city with zero debt but left it with indebtedness of more than $22 million. What did Mayor Palin encourage the voters to borrow money for? Was it the infrastructure that she said she supported? The sewage treatment plant that the city lacked? Or a new library? No. $1 million for a park. $15 million-plus for construction of a multi-use sports complex, which she rushed through, on a piece of property that the city didn't even have clear title to. That was still in litigation seven years later — to the delight of the lawyers involved! The sports complex itself is a nice addition to the community but a huge money pit, not the profit-generator she claimed it would be. She also supported bonds for $5.5 million for road projects that could have been done in five to seven years without any borrowing. While Mayor, City Hall was extensively remodeled and her office redecorated more than once. These are small numbers, but Wasilla is a very small city.

As an oil producer, the high price of oil has created a budget surplus in Alaska. Rather than invest this surplus in technology that will make us energy independent and increase efficiency, as Governor Sarah proposed distribution of this surplus to every individual in the state. In this time of record state revenues and budget surpluses, she recommended that the state borrow/bond for road projects, even while she proposed distribution of surplus state revenue: Spend today's surplus, borrow for needs.

She's not very tolerant of divergent opinions or open to outside ideas or compromise. As mayor, she fought ideas that weren't generated by her or her staff. Ideas weren't evaluated on their merits but on the basis of who proposed them.

While Sarah was mayor of Wasilla, she tried to fire our highly respected city librarian because the librarian refused to consider removing from the library some books that Sarah wanted removed. City residents rallied to the defense of the city librarian and against Palin's attempt at out-and-out censorship, so Palin backed down and withdrew her termination letter. People who fought her attempt to oust the librarian are on her enemies list to this day.

Sarah complained about the "old boy's club" when she first ran for mayor, so what did she bring Wasilla? A new set of "old boys." Palin fired most of the experienced staff she inherited. At the city and as governor, she hired or elevated new, inexperienced, obscure people, creating a staff totally dependent on her for their jobs and eternally grateful and fiercely loyal — loyal to the point of abusing their power to further her personal agenda, as she has acknowledged happened in the case of pressuring the state's top cop.

As mayor, Sarah fired Wasilla's police chief because he "intimidated" her, she told the press. As governor, her recent firing of Alaska's top cop has the ring of familiarity about it. He served at her pleasure and she had every legal right to fire him, but it's pretty clear that an important factor in her decision to fire him was because he wouldn't fire her sister's ex-husband, a state trooper. Under investigation for abuse of power, she has had to admit that more than two dozen contacts were made between her staff and family to the person that she later fired, pressuring him to fire her ex-brother-in-law. She tried to replace the man she fired with a man who she knew had been reprimanded for sexual harassment; when this caused a public furor, she withdrew her support.

She has bitten the hand of every person who extended theirs to her in help. The City Council person who personally escorted her around town, introducing her to voters when she first ran for Wasilla City Council became one of her first targets when she was later elected mayor. She abruptly fired her loyal city administrator; even people who didn't like the guy were stunned by this ruthlessness. Fear of retribution has kept all of these people from saying anything publicly about her.

When then-Gov. Frank Murkowski was handing out political plums, Sarah got the best, chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission — one of the few jobs not in Juneau and one of the best paid. She had no background in oil and gas issues. Within months of scoring this great job, which paid $122,400 a year, she was complaining in the press about the high salary. I was told that she hated that job: the commute, the structured hours, the work. Sarah became aware that a member of this commission (who was also the state chair of the Republican Party) engaged in unethical behavior on the job. In a gutsy move which some undoubtedly cautioned her could be political suicide, Sarah solved all her problems in one fell swoop: got out of the job she hated and garnered gobs of media attention as the patron saint of ethics and as a gutsy fighter against the "old boys' club," when she dramatically quit, exposing this man's ethics violations (for which he was fined).

As mayor, she had her hand stuck out as far as anyone for pork from Sen. Ted Stevens. Lately, she has castigated his pork-barrel politics and publicly humiliated him. She only opposed the "bridge to nowhere" after it became clear that it would be unwise not to. As governor, she gave the Legislature no direction and budget guidelines, then made a big grandstand display of line-item vetoing projects, calling them pork. Public outcry and further legislative action restored most of these projects — which had been vetoed simply because she was not aware of their importance — but with the unobservant she had gained a reputation as "anti-pork."

She is solidly Republican: no political maverick. The state party leaders hate her because she has bit them in the back and humiliated them. Other members of the party object to her self-description as a fiscal conservative.

Around Wasilla, there are people who went to high school with Sarah. They call her "Sarah Barracuda" because of her unbridled ambition and predatory ruthlessness. Before she became so powerful, very ugly stories circulated around town about shenanigans she pulled to be made point guard on the high school basketball team. When Sarah's mother-in-law, a highly respected member of the community and experienced manager, ran for mayor, Sarah refused to endorse her.

As governor, she stepped outside of the box and put together of package of legislation known as "AGIA" that forced the oil companies to march to the beat of her drum. Like most Alaskans, she favors drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). She has questioned if the loss of sea ice is linked to global warming. She campaigned "as a private citizen" against a state initiaitive that would have either protected salmon streams from pollution from mines or tied up in the courts all mining in the state (depending on whom you listen to). She has pushed the state's lawsuit against the Department of the Interior's decision to list polar bears as a threatened species.

McCain is the oldest person to ever run for president; Sarah will be a heartbeat away from being president. There has to be literally millions of Americans who are more knowledgeable and experienced than she. However, there are a lot of people who have underestimated her and are regretting it.

Claim vs. Fact

"Hockey mom": True for a few years

"PTA mom": True years ago when her first-born was in elementary school, not since

"NRA supporter": Absolutely true

Social conservative: mixed. Opposes gay marriage, but vetoed a bill that would have denied benefits to employees in same-sex relationships (said she did this because it was unconsitutional).

Pro-creationism: Mixed. Supports it, but did nothing as governor to promote it.

"Pro-life": Mixed. Knowingly gave birth to a Down's syndrome baby but declined to call a special legislative session on some pro-life legislation.

"Experienced": Some high schools have more students than Wasilla has residents. Many cities have more residents than the state of Alaska. No legislative experience other than City Council. Little hands-on supervisory or managerial experience; needed help of a city administrator to run town of about 5,000.

Political maverick: Not at all.

Gutsy: Absolutely!

Open and transparent: Good at keeping secrets. Not good at explaining actions.

Has a developed philosophy of public policy: No.

"A Greenie": No. Turned Wasilla into a wasteland of big box stores and disconnected parking lots. Is pro-drilling off-shore and in ANWR.

Fiscal conservative: Not by my definition!

Pro-infrastructure: No. Promoted a sports complex and park in a city without a sewage treatment plant or storm drainage system. Built streets to early 20th century standards.

Pro-tax relief: Lowered taxes for businesses, increased tax burden on residents

Pro-small government: No. Oversaw greatest expansion of city government in Wasilla's history.

Pro-labor/pro-union: No. Just because her husband works union doesn't make her pro-labor. I have seen nothing to support any claim that she is pro-labor/pro-union.

Why am I writing this? First, I have long believed in the importance of being an informed voter. I am a voter registrar. For 10 years I put on student voting programs in the schools. If you google my name, you will find references to my participation in local government, education, and PTA/parent organizations. Secondly, I've always operated in the belief that "bad things happen when good people stay silent." Few people know as much as I do because few have gone to as many City Council meetings.

Third, I am just a housewife. I don't have a job she can bump me out of. I don't belong to any organization that she can hurt. But I am no fool; she is immensely popular here, and it is likely that this will cost me somehow in the future: that's life. Fourth, she has hated me since back in 1996, when I was one of the 100 or so people who rallied to support the city librarian against Sarah's attempt at censorship. Fifth, I looked around and realized that everybody else was afraid to say anything because they were somehow vulnerable.

Caveats: I am not a statistician. I developed the numbers for the increase in spending and taxation two years ago (when Palin was running for governor) from information supplied to me by the finance director of the City of Wasilla, and I can't recall exactly what I adjusted for: Did I adjust for inflation? For population increases? Right now, it is impossible for a private person to get any info out of City Hall — they are swamped. So I can't verify my numbers.

You may have noticed that there are various numbers circulating for the population of Wasilla, ranging from my "about 5,000" up to 9,000. The day Palin's selection was announced, a city official told me that the current population is about 7,000. The official 2000 census count was 5,460. I have used about 5,000 because Palin was Mayor from 1996 to 2002, and the city was growing rapidly in the mid-1990s.

Tina Fey as Sarah Palin

Country Club Economics

John McCain once told us that “the issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should.” Well, that much is clear. After all, how could he explain the inconsistencies between his rhetoric and the policies he advocates?

At every campaign stop, McCain is quick to tell adoring crowds that he would usher in a fiscal discipline that would put us quickly back on the path toward balanced budgets. It’s not clear how he plans to honor these promises but, if we look at his words, we must assume that ridding the budget of earmarks would be at the top of his list. In fact, it has almost become a holy crusade for him – a self-proclaimed maverick fighting valiantly to abolish the “pork-barrel projects” that slowly tear away at the soul of our government and undermine the trust of our citizens. For those bold enough to slip an earmark or two in legislation while McCain is President, he threatens: “I will make them famous and you will know their names.”

When one looks at reality, this bizarre obsession becomes more and more absurd. While acknowledging the inconvenient fact that earmarks (which were so shamelessly embraced by his running mate until recently) make up less up less than 1 percent of the federal budget, it’s also important to look at what they actually are. Technically, earmarks are provisions in law that direct approved funds to specific projects. Is there waste involved? Of course, there is. “Waste” is in the eye of the beholder but it’s tough to argue that there are many parts of the budget that could not use some trimming or efficiencies. And yes, there are often “bridges to nowhere” and funds directed toward questionable projects that get slipped mischieviously into legislation. That's why earmark reform should require a greater deal of transparency. At the same time, earmarks often provide much-needed funding for projects and programs such as child advocacy centers that provide care for sexually abused children or literacy programs that help low-income rural children learn how to read. Just because certain funding is “earmarked”, does that make it corrupt pork-barrel spending? If so, would you rather have, instead of your Members of Congress, unelected bureaucrats in Washington prioritizing the funding needs of your district and states?

The more inexplicable aspect of John McCain’s economic policy is that, while waging a crusade against earmarks, he has no problem with spending over $10 billion per month in Iraq when the Iraqi government has a budget surplus of nearly $80 billion. To compound the hypocrisy, he also supports the Bush tax cuts that have hampered our economy. Yes, the same cuts he once criticized for being too overly-generous for the wealthy. It’s a shame that he’s now blatantly pandering to that same population at the expense of middle-class working families.

So yes, it’s quite obvious that John McCain simply doesn’t understand economics. After all, his plan to balance the budget consists of “slashing” earmarks that make up less than 1 percent of the budget while dumping tens of billions of dollars into the pockets of millionaires and hundreds of billions into a war with no end in sight (if you follow his rationale).

For the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Richard Kogan and Gillian Brunet recently provided a better look at “How Projected Surpluses Became Deficits.” Was it earmarks? Not so much. It was tax cuts and increases in national security spending.

Impact of Tax Cuts and Spending Increases on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2009

As noted, tax cuts and program increases enacted by Congress have worsened the budget by about $1 trillion in 2009. (These figures assume that tax and program policies in place today will be continued.) As shown in Figure 1, the key components
are:

Tax cuts. Enactment of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, along with AMT relief, the normal “tax extenders,” and a variety of minor tax provisions have worsened the 2009 budget by $427 billion and thus account for 42 percent of the $1 trillion deterioration. These figures include both the direct costs of the tax cuts and their associated interest costs. (By reducing projected revenues, the tax cuts have increased deficits and debt relative to the January 2001 projection. With higher debt, the Treasury must pay more interest.)

Increases in appropriations for defense, international affairs, and homeland security. Expenditures projected for this portion of the budget in 2009 are much higher than CBO projected in early 2001. While a substantial portion of the extra costs stem from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there have also been significant increases in the underlying budgets of the Departments of Defense, State, and Homeland Security that are not directly related to these wars. Total increases in this part of the budget amount to $399 billion in 2009, relative to CBO’s projection, and thus account for 40 percent of the $1 trillion deterioration, when the associated interest costs are included.

Increases in entitlement programs. Since 2001, Congress has enacted a number of entitlement increases, most notably the Medicare prescription drug benefit, but also increases in farm and nutrition programs, military retirement and health care, veterans’ education benefits, and other, smaller programs. These cost increases amount to $119 billion in 2009, or 12 percent of the $1 trillion deterioration.

Increases in appropriations for domestic, or non-security, programs. Funding for this portion of the budget has also increased above the levels projected in 2001, although this funding peaked in real terms in 2004 and has generally declined since then. The largest increases have occurred in education programs, veterans’ health care, and transportation programs. The increased expenditures in this part of the budget total $66 billion in 2009, or 6 percent of the $1 trillion deterioration.

As can be seen, tax cuts and defense/security increases account for 82 percent of the budget deterioration in 2009 that is attributable to legislation enacted since January 2001. Increases in domestic spending account for 18 percent.

Impact of Tax Cuts and Budget Increases Over the 2002-2011 Period

Tax cuts and program increases enacted by Congress have worsened the budget by almost $7.2 trillion over the entire 2002-2011 period, an average of almost $720 billion per year. (As noted above, these figures assume that tax and program policies in place today will be continued) As Figure 2 shows, the key components are:

Tax cuts. The 2001 and 2003 tax cuts and other tax provisions listed earlier will increase deficits by more than $3.3 trillion over the ten-year period, accounting for 46 percent of the $7.2 trillion deterioration. These figures include both the direct costs of the tax cuts and their associated interest costs.

Increases in defense, international affairs, and homeland security. These increases total almost $2.7 trillion over the ten-year period, or 37 percent of the $7.2 trillion deterioration, when the associated interest costs are included.

Increases in entitlement programs. These increases, plus the associated interest costs, total $745 billion over the ten-year period, or 10 percent of the $7.2 trillion deterioration.

Increases in domestic (or non-security) discretionary programs. These increases, plus the associated interest costs, total $456 billion over the ten-year period, or 6 percent of the $7.2 trillion deterioration.

Tax cuts and defense/security increases account for 83 percent of the budget deterioration over the 2002-2011 period that is attributable to legislation enacted since January 2001. Domestic spending increases account for 17 percent. In sum, tax cuts, increased defense and security funding, and a dose of economic cold water are, in order, the three key reasons that the large surpluses projected in January 2001 turned into substantial deficits. Increases in domestic programs have been relatively modest in comparison.

The federal budget is projected to run a $546 billion deficit in 2009, compared with the $710 billion surplus that budget experts projected for 2009 back when President Bush took office nearly eight years ago. This $1.3 trillion deterioration in the nation’s fiscal finances for 2009 can be seen by comparing estimates that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released this week with those that CBO released in January 2001.

The story is much the same for the entire ten-year period covered by CBO’s 2001 projection. In January 2001, CBO projected a cumulative $5.6 trillion surplus for 2002-2011. Now, CBO’s new report suggests the nation will amass a cumulative deficit of $3.8 trillion over that same period, marking a $9.4 trillion deterioration.

For both 2009 and the ten-year period, this massive deterioration is partly due to weaker-than-expected performance of the economy, along with other “technical” factors that are beyond policymakers’ control. But these economic and technical factors account for less than one-fourth of the fiscal deterioration for each period, and they are not responsible for the return of deficits. Even given the disappointing performance of the economy since 2001 relative to CBO’s earlier projections, there would have been large surpluses in every year — totaling $3.4 trillion over the 2002-2011 period — if policymakers had enacted no tax cuts or program increases since 2001.

The dominant factor in the unprecedented fiscal deterioration thus was not the performance of the economy. Nor was it increases in domestic programs. The key factors have been large tax cuts and increases in security-related programs. For fiscal 2009, some $1 trillion of the $1.3 trillion deterioration in the nation’s fiscal finances stems from policy actions, and tax cuts account for 42 percent of this $1 trillion deterioration. Increases in military and other security programs account for another 40 percent of the deterioration.

The story is much the same for the ten-year period as a whole. For the 2002-2011 period, tax cuts and increases in security programs account for more than four-fifths of the fiscal deterioration caused by policy actions. Increases in domestic programs played a much more modest role.

Damon v. Palin

The Palin campaign's response: "It's not surprising that the Barack Obama and his celebrity supporters continue to tear down Governor Palin with little more than blatant name-calling. It's clear they're threatened by a candidate who actually has a record of achieving reform and change, while Barack Obama just talks about it."

On-the-Job Training

"I have had a strong and a long relationship on national security, I've been involved in every national crisis that this nation has faced since Beirut, I understand the issues, I understand and appreciate the enormity of the challenge we face from radical Islamic extremism. I am prepared. I am prepared. I need no on-the-job training. I wasn't a mayor for a short period of time. I wasn't a governor for a short period of time."

-- Senator John McCain, October, 2007



Sarah Palin held the post of mayor of Wasilla for less time than Rudy Giuliani headed New York City. And her gubernatorial stint in Alaska is shorter than that of Mitt Romney's in Massachusetts.

Steinem on Palin

Gloria Steinem on the choice of Sarah Palin:

Here's the good news: Women have become so politically powerful that even the anti-feminist right wing -- the folks with a headlock on the Republican Party -- are trying to appease the gender gap with a first-ever female vice president. We owe this to women -- and to many men too -- who have picketed, gone on hunger strikes or confronted violence at the polls so women can vote. We owe it to Shirley Chisholm, who first took the "white-male-only" sign off the White House, and to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who hung in there through ridicule and misogyny to win 18 million votes.

But here is even better news: It won't work. This isn't the first time a boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with him and opposes everything most other women want and need. Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It's about making life more fair for women everywhere. It's not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It's about baking a new pie.

Selecting Sarah Palin, who was touted all summer by Rush Limbaugh, is no way to attract most women, including die-hard Clinton supporters. Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton. Her down-home, divisive and deceptive speech did nothing to cosmeticize a Republican convention that has more than twice as many male delegates as female, a presidential candidate who is owned and operated by the right wing and a platform that opposes pretty much everything Clinton's candidacy stood for -- and that Barack Obama's still does. To vote in protest for McCain/Palin would be like saying, "Somebody stole my shoes, so I'll amputate my legs."

This is not to beat up on Palin. I defend her right to be wrong, even on issues that matter most to me. I regret that people say she can't do the job because she has children in need of care, especially if they wouldn't say the same about a father. I get no pleasure from imagining her in the spotlight on national and foreign policy issues about which she has zero background, with one month to learn to compete with Sen. Joe Biden's 37 years' experience.

Palin has been honest about what she doesn't know. When asked last month about the vice presidency, she said, "I still can't answer that question until someone answers for me: What is it exactly that the VP does every day?" When asked about Iraq, she said, "I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq."

She was elected governor largely because the incumbent was unpopular, and she's won over Alaskans mostly by using unprecedented oil wealth to give a $1,200 rebate to every resident. Now she is being praised by McCain's campaign as a tax cutter, despite the fact that Alaska has no state income or sales tax. Perhaps McCain has opposed affirmative action for so long that he doesn't know it's about inviting more people to meet standards, not lowering them. Or perhaps McCain is following the Bush administration habit, as in the Justice Department, of putting a job candidate's views on "God, guns and gays" ahead of competence. The difference is that McCain is filling a job one 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency.

So let's be clear: The culprit is John McCain. He may have chosen Palin out of change-envy, or a belief that women can't tell the difference between form and content, but the main motive was to please right-wing ideologues; the same ones who nixed anyone who is now or ever has been a supporter of reproductive freedom. If that were not the case, McCain could have chosen a woman who knows what a vice president does and who has thought about Iraq; someone like Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison or Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine. McCain could have taken a baby step away from right-wing patriarchs who determine his actions, right down to opposing the Violence Against Women Act.

Palin's value to those patriarchs is clear: She opposes just about every issue that women support by a majority or plurality. She believes that creationism should be taught in public schools but disbelieves global warming; she opposes gun control but supports government control of women's wombs; she opposes stem cell research but approves "abstinence-only" programs, which increase unwanted births, sexually transmitted diseases and abortions; she tried to use taxpayers' millions for a state program to shoot wolves from the air but didn't spend enough money to fix a state school system with the lowest high-school graduation rate in the nation; she runs with a candidate who opposes the Fair Pay Act but supports $500 million in subsidies for a natural gas pipeline across Alaska; she supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, though even McCain has opted for the lesser evil of offshore drilling. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.

I don't doubt her sincerity. As a lifetime member of the National Rifle Assn., she doesn't just support killing animals from helicopters, she does it herself. She doesn't just talk about increasing the use of fossil fuels but puts a coal-burning power plant in her own small town. She doesn't just echo McCain's pledge to criminalize abortion by overturning Roe vs. Wade, she says that if one of her daughters were impregnated by rape or incest, she should bear the child. She not only opposes reproductive freedom as a human right but implies that it dictates abortion, without saying that it also protects the right to have a child.

So far, the major new McCain supporter that Palin has attracted is James Dobson of Focus on the Family. Of course, for Dobson, "women are merely waiting for their husbands to assume leadership," so he may be voting for Palin's husband. Being a hope-a-holic, however, I can see two long-term bipartisan gains from this contest.

Republicans may learn they can't appeal to right-wing patriarchs and most women at the same time. A loss in November could cause the centrist majority of Republicans to take back their party, which was the first to support the Equal Rights Amendment and should be the last to want to invite government into the wombs of women.

And American women, who suffer more because of having two full-time jobs than from any other single injustice, finally have support on a national stage from male leaders who know that women can't be equal outside the home until men are equal in it. Barack Obama and Joe Biden are campaigning on their belief that men should be, can be and want to be at home for their children. This could be huge.

Lessons of the Past

In a recent column in the Post, Charlie Wilson draws upon the lessons learned from the 1979 Russian invasion of Afghanistan and makes the point that “a strong military alone is not enough to ensure our long-term national security.”

In a scene near the end of the movie "Charlie Wilson's War," after the mujaheddin victory over the invading Soviet military, congressional appropriators turn down my request for funds to rebuild Afghanistan's schools, roads and economy. If we had done the right thing in Afghanistan then -- following up our military support with the necessary investments in diplomacy and development assistance -- we would have better secured our own country's future, as well as peace and stability in the region.

In reality, this decision played out over several years and involved many people, but the scene makes clear what a mistake we made. Sure, the problems facing Afghanistan and the region were tough -- feuding warlords, the opium crop and the shift in our attention to the Persian Gulf War. But the Afghans, with our weapons, had done nothing less than help precipitate the collapse of the Soviet Union. And instead of intensifying our diplomatic and humanitarian efforts to help the Afghans meet their postwar challenges, we simply walked away -- leaving a destroyed country that lacked roads, schools, and any plan or hope for rebuilding.

Into this void marched the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and we all know what happened after that. Today, fledgling democracies -- be it Afghanistan or Georgia -- face similar danger. We simply cannot make the same mistake.

The lesson here is about more than the good manners of reciprocating a favor. It takes much more to make America safe than winning on the battlefield. Had we remained engaged in Afghanistan, investing in education, health and economic development, the world would be a very different place today. The aftermath of a congressional committee's decision so long ago has turned out to be a warning that America is not immune to the problems of the very poorest countries. In today's world, any person's well-being -- whether he or she is in Kandahar, Kigali or Kansas -- is connected to the well-being of others.

Yet, as we commit troops to the "war on terror," America's civilian institutions of diplomacy and development continue to be chronically undermanned and underfunded. We spend 1 percent of the federal budget on these critical elements of our foreign policy, compared with 22 percent on the military and weapons.

While I have always believed in and fought for a strong defense, I know that we cannot rely on the military alone to keep us secure. As the situations in Afghanistan and Georgia suggest, our future threats are likely to come from states that cannot meet the basic needs of their people. We can avoid the need to spend so much on our military -- and put so many of our soldiers in harm's way -- simply by investing more in saving lives, creating stable societies and building economic opportunity. This strategy won't resolve the conflict in Georgia today, but it could help America prevent similar crises in the future…

Robust investments in health, education and economic development are critical elements of our national security. I hope the message of our experiences in Afghanistan will resonate with the next president, whoever he is, as he puts in place his strategic vision for America's role in the world.