Political Philosophy

Lipstick on a Pig — D’oh!

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Just when we had finished chuckling over “my Muslim faith” J. Danforth Obama sets off the Quayle-O-Meter again.

Seems like a day cannot pass without the leaden-tongued messiah failing the Quayle test.

He’s gaffe-o-riffic!

That clattering and banging you hear is the MSM flinging themselves bodily in front of their darling, trying to change the subject.

Thought experiment: Imagine Obama had a female VP and John McCain had said this. What would the reaction have been from the MSM? Not too hard to imagine, is it?

If McCain and his team are smart, and they have been lately, they will say nothing about this, or just laugh it off. Barack has disdain for anyone who dares to stand in the way of Divine Destiny. This arrogance is very unattractive. And it speaks for itself. Loudly.

UPDATE: So they made an ad out of it. Maybe it is good, if it gets under the skin of some undecided voters. I notice even in a five second spot Barack says “uh”. He is not a good speaker unless reading from a script.

UPDATE 2: Heh:

∅bama has made a statement about pigs in lipstick that seems to insult Sarah Palin. In fact it seems to have insulted a lot of women.
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If it was unintentional – ∅bama is a stupid politician.
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If it was intentional – ∅bama is a stupid politician.

OK. OK. Let’s not get cocky. Obama is human and makes mistakes, and will no doubt land some heavy blows before this is over — however it comes out. But he does not seem to have a good “gut” when things are not going totally his way, or when his opponent goes off of his pre-programmed script.

“The McCain Gamble”

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Robert Bidinotto makes a thoughtful case for McCain from a libertarian perspective. This is the best reasoned and most concise argument for McCain that I have read so far:

The gamble we now face is that in voting for a ticket that professes hopelessly confused moral, political, and economic premises, we will not be doing greater damage to our nation’s future than by simply allowing the ascendancy of the overtly collectivist, anti-American left, represented by Barack Obama.
 
However, the operative word in the preceding sentence is “confused.” The Republican Party and its standard bearer are a mixed bag of clashing ideas. Inside that bag are not just anti-individualist and progressive ideas, but individualist and capitalist ideas, as well. It’s an incoherent hodge-podge. But it’s not all toxic; there is a lot of good in the mix.
 
This still makes the Republican Party infinitely better than the consistently anti-individualist, anti-capitalist, and ultimately anti-American Democratic left. The very fact that, in order to have a prayer of holding and inspiring his party core, McCain had to bring aboard a running mate who was much more consistently pro-free-market, speaks volumes about the priorities of the Republican base, and also their animosity toward McCain’s more statist inclinations. And in order to retain their support in governance, McCain will be forced to abandon or at least water down his worst initiatives, and also to promote a lot of pro-capitalist measures. He already has come around on the need for more offshore oil drilling, and you heard no mention of the terms “global warming” or “climate change” in his acceptance speech.
 
On individualist philosophical grounds, then, we are left with the choice of supporting either a profoundly flawed representative of America’s founding premises, or of supporting a candidate whose philosophy and every policy proposal are profoundly at odds with those premises. For me, that is no choice at all. (I leave aside the Libertarian candidacy of Bob Barr, who has zero chance of being elected; the only meaningful choice is between McCain and Obama.)
 
John McCain loves America and has its best interests at heart, even when his “heart” leads him to mistaken conclusions. I have no doubt that if persuaded that his ideas are contrary to America’s best interests, he would abandon them without hesitation. But can anyone say that about a candidate whose long-time minister damns America and whose long-time Chicago political associate bombed its institutions?
 
On the most gravely important policy issues of our day — national defense and energy development — the choice is clear. No, I will not expect much from a McCain-Palin administration; in fact, I will expect policies as incoherent as its premises. But I will never expect McCain and Palin to intentionally undermine the nation they love.

It’s worth reading the whole thing.

(Via Johnathan Pearce.)

UPDATE: Another thoughtful pro-McCain argument, this one by libertarian columnist Vin Suprynowicz.

The Country Mouse and the City Mouse

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In an earlier post, Jonathan sums up Palin as a “frontierswoman.”   This seems to me to be true, but she also represents an old tension – between the city and the country.   The distinction between Moscow and pretty much all the rest of Russia seems to be awfully important to the few Russians I know; a similar tension exists between Paris and rural France, Prague and (especially) Moravia.   One of the commuting families at U.T. in the seventies split because, the husband explained, his wife could not imagine not living on one of the coasts.  (Not surprisingly, similar commutes began happening here:   if Austin’s the sticks, how much more are the hinterlands.)     Some people identify with a city and some with the city.   I can hardly complain about such self-definitions, since I’ve always felt the powerful pull of place; it’s a key part to the identity of many of my family and friends.     Those of us from  flyover country   speak of it with some irony, but also with  pride:   all  intensified and sometimes defensive because we feel others say it with disdain.  

If, as one wit put it, McCain/Palin gets all the votes of  brides  pregnant on  their wedding days (maybe add in the grooms), then  if we can add the votes of those with strongly felt  country roots,  the favored Obama/Biden ticket will  need to resurrect all  those  dead voters Acorn was finding.   How well this  plays out  depends on how  many understand  these two and, on the other hand, how  many can’t.   They are hardly typical of “Jesusland” but in important ways they represent it.   Plain talking, for instance,  arises from  the Puritan plain style,  echoed in the American middle west & west.   (And embodied in the Laura Ingalls Wilder  books my mother gave every grandchild.)    We speak with a tough wit,  but,  aren’t ironic about duty, loyalty, resilience, perseverance, active engagement, hard work.   We  don’t consider them ambiguous; we assume  they just are, in themselves, good.  

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O.T. Comment on Shannon’s Last Post

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I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a “community organizer,” except that you have actual responsibilities.

Obama  (apparently  from a  very early stage in his career) has left little  paper trail.    Decision making means taking risks – of criticism, of results.   I don’t see risk-taking but the kind of assurance that comes from not having to live with consequences.  

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“Working” versus “Fighting”

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The Assistant Village Idiot observes that Democratic politicians tend to say “I’ll fight for you,” whereas Republican politicians tend to say “I’ll work for you.” His explanation:

Republicans run for office telling you they’re going to work for you, because that’s how they perceive progress happening: someone works for it. Democrats run telling you they’re going to fight for you, because they believe that’s how improvement comes: someone has to wrest good stuff away from others.

I think it’s generally true that Republicans have tended to say “work” and Democrats have tended to say “fight”, although I did notice that McCain used the F-word several times during his announcement of Gov Pailin’s candidacy.

Neptunus Lex had some related thoughts:

The innate character flaw of the political right, with its thrumming appeals to the logic of blood and soil, is its lamentable tendency to go in search of enemies abroad. The left, on the other hand, with its own appeals to the politics of envy and class warfare, is content to find mortal enemies closer to hand.

To me, it seems pretty clear that today’s Democrats view society basically as a neo-Hobbesian war of group against group…hence, their preference for the “fight” formulation–with the fighting, of course, to be done against fellow Americans–is a natural one.