Seems like an appropriate link to recommend tonight: The Poetry of Sarah Palin. A whimsical, ironical (re)take on Palin’s words, written with a gentle and creative humor. The author, or should I say editor, is Hart Seely. You might remember how he turned Donald Rumsfeld’s cryptical utterings into The Existential Poetry of Donald Rumsfeld.

“You Can’t Blink”

You can’t blink.
You have to be wired
In a way of being
So committed to the mission,

The mission that we’re on,
Reform of this country,
And victory in the war,
You can’t blink.

So I didn’t blink.

Two items in today’s New York Times:

U.S. Grant: upgraded to second-worst two-term president

The CBS News poll found that President Bush had tied the presidential record for a low approval rating — 22 percent, matching Harry S. Truman’s Gallup approval rating in 1952, when the country was mired in the Korean War and struggling with a stagnant economy.

And Timothy Egan:

In a survey of scholars done earlier this year, just two of 109 historians said the Bush presidency would be judged a success. A majority said he would be the worst president ever.

Well, at least with respect to the historical community, Bush has fulfilled his promise to be a “uniter, not a divider.” To appreciate the scale of his achievement, though, we really need to look at the competition.

Matt Yglesias thinks so:

Gwen Ifill

If I may state the obvious, the fact that Gwen Ifill apparently has a forthcoming book titled Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama is a huge advantage for Sarah Palin. If you look at the demographic breakdowns of any poll, you could probably count on one hand the number of college educated African-American women who are favorably disposed toward Palin. But because of the book, and because Ifill has a reputation as a professional to maintain, she’s now in a situation where she’ll bend over backwards to avoid appearing too hard on Palin.

I tend to agree. When I chewed my fingernails and worried about how the Biden/ Palin debate would go down, that was one thing that I found reassuring — that the debate would be moderated by a woman. I think that Palin and the McCain campaign are going to look for any excuse to cry “sexism,” and that it will blunt their ability to do so if the follow-ups (which are frequently Palin’s Kryptonite — not that she was so Super in the first place) come from a woman.

That was a big part of why Katie Couric’s interviews created so many jaw-dropping soundbites — Couric would gently, smilingly offer a follow-up, and the follow-up would make it clear that the barn door was flapping but the horses had already bolted. (I either mangled an idiom or coined one there, I’m not sure.)

Note, I don’t think that the book actually indicates that Ifill will be unfair. I just think that

1. It means that Ifill will have to be considerably more careful than she would have been if this wasn’t made an issue ahead of the debate, and
2. The book will be used as a bludgeon in the post-debate spin. Even if Biden is impeccable (which is a largish if), McCain people can (and will) go after Ifill as impartial and attempting to embarrass poor, long-suffering Governor Palin

Update:  Nate Silver has an interesting point — if Ifill is replaced at the last minute, the bludgeon is removed AND it throws both debaters a curveball.  (They have been preparing with Ifill in mind — watching the 2004 VP debate, etc.)  And who is more likely to deal well with a curveball?

Hey, Katie, are you available??

Trivia absurdism of the day. At Beyond Red and Blue, Robert David Sullivan last month did some serious research into bellwether states:

I calculated the percentage-point differences between each county’s swing and the nationwide swing for each election from 1980 through 2004, then added them all up to find out the places that have deviated the least from the US total over that time. (For example, there was a swing toward the GOP and George W. Bush of 2.86 points in the last election. A county that swing 12.86 points toward Bush and a county that swung 7.14 points away from Bush would each be penalized 10 points for that election.)

The result is a map, list and Excel spreadsheet of the Top 50 Bellwether Counties, 1980-2004.

Which county is #1 — the single most conformist county in matching the country’s overall swing for the last seven elections?

Defiance, OH.

McCain Speaking at a Veteran's Day Event in South Carolina

John McCain presents himself as the champion of the military.  The truth is the complete opposite.  Brandon Friedman over at Huffington Post has collected a list of McCain’s votes for veterans and it’s truly scary. Worse, it reflects a type of military elitism that the press will never recognize, but that those of us who have served see all the time. McCain’s father and grandfather were admirals and he made captain. That’s rarified territory in the US military and far from the high school grads looking to trade in service for the growth in skills and maturity that the military can offer. No where was this more evident than in McCain’s opposition to the new GI Bill.

Who voted for the “bailout” bill? (Talking of lousy branding.) More relevantly, who voted against it? Ever since it all fell apart, pundits are dissecting consequences and solutions, but also simply the lay-out of the vote itself. How did the expected majority collapse? Who defected? Are there any patterns?

A couple of basic ones have been presented, beyond the partisan breakdown of Democratic and Republican votes. Since two-thirds of Republicans and 40% of Democrats voted no, the landscape is more interesting than usual.

Breakdown one: those in more or less safe seats versus those in vulnerable seats. Representatives who are facing a tough fight this campaign, or who were elected last time by a narrow margin, were much more likely to vote against. Two: ideology. A rebellion of the rock-ribbed conservatives in the Republican Party, and a lesser one of liberals in the Democratic Party. Three, and mentioned less often: those who are in or close to the party top or House Committees versus the rank and file.

You’ve read all this, though there are more twists to it than you might think. What I was wondering was whether there was a fourth axis: geography. How do the votes from the different regions stack up? A question of combining roll call 674 with Wikipedia’s list of US Representatives by state. Green stands for “yes” votes, red for “noes”:

Republican vote by region

There are significant variations by region — and by state. Republican opposition was strongest in Texas, which delivered 15 “noes”, the Southwest and the Plains. Of the 13 remaining republicans in the Northeast, however, a majority voted in favour.

The Democratic vote varied at least as greatly by region. The Democrats in the Northeast voted in favour by almost 3:1. But more than two-thirds of the Democrats in the Southwest and Mountain states voted against.

Democratic vote by region

Theodoric (R-York)

The Republicans, it seems, have a solution to every problem.  Or, to be more precise, the Republicans have a solution to every problem.  Like the medieval barbers who thought that the cure for every malady was bloodletting, the GOP believes that the cure for every ailment is tax cutting.  The economy is good?  Cut taxes!  The economy is bad?  Cut taxes!  Taxes are too low?  Cut taxes!  I await the inevitable day when the Republican Party advocates tax cuts as a means of overturning Roe v. Wade, forestalling gay marriage, and putting a massive granite sculpture of the ten commandments in every federal courthouse.  Remember, if we don’t cut taxes, the terrorists have won.

The latest GOP quacksalver to prescribe this nostrum is the Republican Study Committee, a bunch of right-wingers that used the opportunity of the Wall Street bailout to push for a two-year moratorium on the capital gains tax and, in the process, also managed to scuttle the Wall Street bailout.  According to the folks at NRO, the RSC plan would be just the tonic for an ailing economy.  “Private capital will flood into Wall Street with zero capital gains and it will come at no cost to the taxpayer.”

Now, you may be asking yourself: “how many different kinds of crazy is this proposal?”  Well, first of all, assessing lower taxes on capital gains is justified primarily as a means of encouraging investment (it also compensates very roughly for inflation, but a system of indexing could work just as well).  The problem, though, is that, in the short term, cutting capital gains taxes merely encourages the sale of capital assets.  Far from encouraging investment, the elimination of capital gains taxes would instead lead to a fire sale of assets, with the inevitable result that prices would fall.  Moreover, a two-year moratorium won’t encourage the kind of long-range investment that either the economy needs or that Republicans tend to tout as the chief virtue of low capital gains taxes.  Instead, it would, under normal circumstances, simply push more assets into the marketplace and depress prices even further.

I live in Ohio. In my immediate area there were a lot of Obama signs before the primary. One person on my street was a rabid Hillary Clinton supporter, though. She had about five different Hillary signs on her lawn and festooned to her porch and one big handmade one — “We’ve got your back, Hillary!”

Just drove past her house today and saw this in her yard:

It doesn’t mean that much in and of itself but it made me smile, anyway.

In the Axis of Evil, there is one evil that stands above the rest, a country whose president will cause protests and allows commentators to rant for days in advance of his visits.  Of course that country is Iran.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

President Ahmadinejad visited the UN last week and we were treated to all the usual fireworks.  Senator Clinton and Governor Palin jostled to attend a National Coalition to Stop Iran Now protest, President Ahmadinejad made more anti-Zionist remarks and generally heaped ridicule on the US and both Senators McCain and Obama vowed to prevent Iran from getting the bomb in last Friday’s debate.  More important though, are Obama’s and McCain’s positions on negotiating directly with Tehran.  Are we missing a rare opportunity to actually make some progress with a country that has been a thorn in our side for twenty five years?

Expecting to see a repeat of the Couric interview on the stage Thursday night? Get used to disappointment. What we will see is Sarah Palin relentlessly attack Biden — about his gaffes, his age, made up stuff, whatever. Do not expect her to even try to answer a question with any depth. She is at her best when delivering snarky lines about her opponents with cutesy lip smacking femininity. Her base will LOVE it. Biden might too.

Thanks to Butryflynet for great information. Not everyone reads comments, so I’m adding them here. You can view one of Sarah Palin’s past debate performances here.

2006 Gubernatorial Debate — Sarah Palin, Tony Knowles and Andrew Halcro

Andrew Halcro reflects on his experiences debating Palin and has some advice for Biden.

“Andrew, I watch you at these debates with no notes, no papers, and yet when asked questions, you spout off facts, figures, and policies, and I’m amazed. But then I look out into the audience and I ask myself, ‘Does any of this really matter?’ ” Palin said.

While policy wonks such as Biden might cringe, it seemed to me that Palin was simply vocalizing her strength without realizing it. During the campaign, Palin’s knowledge on public policy issues never matured – because it didn’t have to. Her ability to fill the debate halls with her presence and her gift of the glittering generality made it possible for her to rely on populism instead of policy.

Today’s daily tracking polls offer a mixed picture, roughly showing a stabilisation of Obama’s lead.

Daily tracking polls, 9/30 - click to enlarge

Gallup has Obama’s lead down 2 points, from +8 to +6, but the other three trackers all have his lead increasing by a percentage point. Rasmussen and Hotline both have it growing from +5 to +6, while Research 2000, the Daily Kos-sponsored poll, has him going up from +9 to +10.

Both Rasmussen and Hotline have basically has Obama’s lead stable at 5-6 points for four days in a row now. Basically, it seems Obama’s lead grew as the financial crisis first became clear, then stabilised, made another jump when McCain “suspended” his campaign, and now has stabilised again.

Obama’s well; impact of debate hard to distinguish from impact of McCain’s political stunts last week

McCain announced the suspension of his campaign on Wednesday the 24th. The first day of polling after this announcement was included in the daily tracking poll releases of the 26th, and that day Obama’s average lead in the tracking polls jumped from 3.3% to 5%. As the three- and four-day rolling polls started including more days from after McCain’s announcement, Obama’s average lead increased further, to 5.5% on Saturday, 6.5% on Sunday and 6.8% on Monday. The public was obviously not impressed by McCain’s political theatre.

By then of course the debate had taken place too, though. The first day of polling after the debate was included in the releases of Sunday the 28th, when Obama’s average lead jumped up a full point to 6.5%. But that jump can’t be read to directly indicate the impact of the debate. That’s also the day, for most of the tracking polls, when the last pre-suspension day of polling rolled out from the sample. In short, just like the previous two days which also saw notable gains for Obama, it was a day on which a day’s worth of polling from before McCain’s suspension of the campaign was replaced by a day’s worth of post-suspension polling.

It’s the two days since that which seem a more logical focus for measuring the impact of the debate. And on these two days, Obama’s lead basically stabilised, with his average lead rising from 6.5% to 6.8% and 7.0%. Just going on these tracking polls, the debate was indeed something of a draw, then. Which arguably counts as a tactical victory for Obama, since he’s the one ahead, and a draw is a perfectly adequate result if you’re 7 points out ahead.

This is the kind of thing that would usually take the form of writing an email — but now we have a blog!

Joe Biden is usually gaffe-tastic enough that it’s telling that Fox would need to go back more than a year to find ammo:

When Hillary Clinton told a tall tale about “landing under sniper fire” in Bosnia, she was accused of “inflating her war experience” by rival Democrat Barack Obama’s campaign.

But the campaign has been silent about Obama’s running mate, Joe Biden, telling his own questionable story about being “shot at” in Iraq.

“Let’s start telling the truth,” Biden said during a presidential primary debate sponsored by YouTube last year. “Number one, you take all the troops out – you better have helicopters ready to take those 3,000 civilians inside the Green Zone, where I have been seven times and shot at. You better make sure you have protection for them, or let them die.”

So, when was that presidential primary debate? July 23rd, 2007.

Yet Andrew Sullivan says today:

Biden Was “Shot At” In Iraq?

30 Sep 2008 01:26 pm

No he wasn’t. He really needs to stop running his mouth off. It’s my big worry about Thursday night. If anyone can rescue the Palin farce, it’s Biden’s dumb-ass logorrhea.

Check the dates, Andrew!

Note, I worry just as much that Palin will get a Biden gaffe-gift in the debate. But I think that part of why Obama chose him was that Biden showed that he could be disciplined if he tries, and he’s done pretty well since he was selected. A few small ones, no biggies. Yet.