Mark Casey Online

Should we cross the border from Afghanistan and run anti-terror missions in Pakistan, where Bin Laden lives?

It’s a fair question, and a delicate foreign policy area.  Barack Obama said he would in a debate many months ago, and McCain called him out on it during Friday night’s debate.  So a kid asks Palin about it in a cheesesteak hut, and she says Obama’s right.

Today, McCain gets angry, cancels his town hall meeting, and yells at George Stephanopoulos about it.  Pretty funny.

Click here for video.

You can turn to any corner of the internet — and I mean any corner — and read pages upon pages of post-debate reaction. Who won, who lost, who looked more presidential — these are all important things to consider.

But my reaction? YAAAWWN!

I never would’ve thought I’d be longing for the days of Bush vs. Kerry, but here I am today, almost putting myself to sleep trying to write about last night’s debate. Don’t get me wrong — I like substance, and substance is kind of what we got. But whether it was McCain somehow still tripping over endless regurgitations from his stump speech (”I’ll veto spending and be famous!”), or Obama taking way too much of his own time responding to McCain’s consistent attacks, I can only think of one word to sum up the debate: repetitive.

• Obama’s strengths: Civility, bipartisanship, calm.
• Obama’s weaknesses: Being baited into responding to McCain’s attacks, not spending enough time on his own plans
• McCain’s strengths: Staying on-message, attacking Obama with every single answer
• McCain’s weaknesses: He appeared contemptuous, angry, old and bitter. He was highly partisan.

According to post-debate polls, people are just loving Obama. I don’t totally get it, but I approve of it. I think he did, in fact, have the better debate. His answers were more appealing to everyday folks, and he had more specifics about his plans. McCain only seemed to offer specifics about Obama, and hardly any about himself.

McCain repeatedly interrupted Obama and the moderator, PBS’ Jim Lehrer, often raising his voice and speaking over them until they gave up, which could take up to 30 seconds of crosstalk, just like on Bill O’Reilly’s godforsaken show. This was one of the more annoying traits I’ve seen in a debater.

Other than that, next time bring out the fireworks, boys! Try to convince us that you have at least some passion for the job. (Note: McCain getting angry about Obama’s record does not count. Negativity doesn’t win debates, and the Independents polled proved that.)

Anyone who follows politics now knows about John McCain’s 12-hour political stunt, where yesterday evening he announced that he was “suspending his campaign” because the economy was in such crisis. He called for the postponement of the first debate, which really was a ploy to cancel Sarah Palin’s vice presidential debate, which they are undoubtedly nervous about. Of course, they said it would all go away if congress signed Bush’s $700 Billion bailout bill — which they are, today, with no thanks to John McCain.

And now we’re getting to know all the juicy details of the McCain stunt, not the least significant of which is that he never actually suspended his campaign, and he never will. Andrew Sullivan notes that all the McCain ads are still up all over the country, and David Letterman was miffed last night to learn that McCain cancelled his appearance on the show because he had to “rush back to Washington,” when, really, he was in New York City giving an interview to Katie Couric instead of Letterman.

So while McCain is happy to call press conference after press conference talking about how eager he is to put his country first (even if he can’t seem to deal with more than one issue in that country at a time), his surrogates are still doing smear interviews, his ad team is still buying ads, and he himself is still not in the senate.

The final joke, of course, was that instead of being in the Senate this morning, helping to get the damn deal done, which was allegedly what the whole purpose of this “suspension” was, McCain was speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative. Way to crack that whip over Congress, senator.

And check out this bonus video, where McCain says he’s never actually read the bill that he fictionally suspended his campaign over because it’s so important to pass:

As the sexist media narrative already takes shape that neither reporters nor Ms. Palin’s political opponents are allowed to attack her because she’s a woman, and attacking her will make them look “mean,” I’m more inclined to believe that she can take care of herself just fine.

She was elected mayor of a backwoods town in Alaska, and then governor of the state, which is a notoriously arch-conservative electorate, filled with burly woodsmen and a citizenship influenced by traditional frontier “values” more than anything else — or at least wannabes, trying to imitate the above.  I’m not going to say it’s entirely unlikely that such a culture would elect a female as its leader, but it can be difficult to pull off.

Most importantly, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that Palin knows how to game the media in her favor.  Just before she was officially announced as the Vice Presidential choice of John McCain, her Wikipedia page was scrubbed of anything that might reflect poorly on her by a user going by the name of “Young Trigg,” which happens to be the name of her son.

For analysis and giggly conjecture, check out the NPR audio of the story.

For a list of the changes made, when, and by whom, the most comprehensive piece I’ve seen is this Daily Kos diary.

So while the cable news talking heads fabricate their “you can’t discuss the pros and cons of a woman” storyline, the woman in question appears to be one step ahead of them.  And hey, so are most people — but I suppose the talk shows have to do something to keep the debate over this strikingly bad choice of a VP from turning into a bloodbath.

For no apparent reason other than the fact that the Democratic National Convention is next week, CNN has once again trotted out its own private Clinton employee, Paul Begala, to lament the current choice of presidential candidates (read: no Clinton to vote for), as well as to lament the fact that Bill Clinton wasn’t named president for life.

No, really:

[Clinton’s environmental speech] was a tour de force: so deep in the details that the propeller-heads were swooning, yet simple and compelling enough that I could follow it. On the day before his 62nd birthday, I couldn’t help cursing the 22nd Amendment, which limited Clinton to two terms. Heck, he’s still 10 years younger than McCain.

Now might be a good time to mention that Begala has been an employee of the Clintons for nearly two decades, and as a senior political correspondent for CNN during the most recent Democratic primaries (not to mention during the entire 2000 era), he was the clear architect of their unabashedly pro-Hillary bias.

After Hillary lost in the primary, Begala has been relatively scarce on CNN — apparently, he didn’t have anything left to say about the presidential race now that a Clinton wasn’t involved. (Note: CNN took so much heat for regularly featuring Begala and James Carville’s political commentary while they were paid staffers for Hillary Clinton, they briefly kicked them off the air for the final part of the primaries. Now, CNN has a massive disclaimer at the beginning of all his articles disclosing all his Clinton affiliations and promising that he’s no longer on the Clinton dole. Right.)

But now, just before the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado, Begala reemerges to claim that neither the Obama nor the McCain presidential tickets are likely to be good enough, and that no one should care who they choose as vice president.

This is an ominous sign for the Denver convention, as Democrats are still worried about what sorts of antics the Clintons and their rabid fans might pull. Clinton is already going to ask that her delegates are seated — it’s considered an “honorary” measure, but it will do nothing to make the party appear unified behind Obama — and Bill Clinton has been wildly unpredictable and bitter regarding his post-primary remarks about Barack Obama.

Most people think the Clintons will do all they can to help Obama win. I’m not so sure. They seem to still be considering an Obama win tantamount to a Clinton loss. And Paul Begala’s timely reemergence is not a good sign.

Yesterday, John McCain and George W. Bush visited the flood-damaged state of Iowa together… only, not together.

For whatever reason, they showed up on the same day. And for obvious, 29%-approval-rating reasons, they were very careful to never be anywhere near each other the whole time. They wouldn’t even visit the same towns at the same time.

The whole thing seems very awkward to me, and it’s not the first time Bush/McCain has attempted such an organized, separate-but-equal, fundraising/photo-op effort. They often go to the same places, or say the same things, on the same day — but make sure never to be seen in the same place with one another. What possible value being in the same state as Bush at the same time has for McCain is beyond me. It’s obvious that they tried to orchestrate some kind of “Look, the Republican party cares about you” press blitz, but it seems unnecessary.

Oh yeah, and there is that little matter of putting an enormous amount of strain on Iowa’s law enforcement officials, who are already overburdened and undermanned in the face of a disaster. They didn’t really need to be escorting odious politicians around to their various simultaneous photo-ops, which is why Iowa’s governor asked McCain not to appear in the state on the same day as the president — a request McCain ignored.

McCain’s people deny that they were asked to stay away from the state, but they would probably also deny that they were there with president Bush at this point.

Very interesting stuff coming out of the McCain campaign today. I’m not really sure what it means.

First, John McCain’s top media adviser stepped down yesterday because he’s been saying for months and months that if Obama becomes the Democratic nominee, he wouldn’t want to run against him. Now, surprisingly, he’s actually made good on his word, choosing to resign rather than trying to stop an Obama presidency. He said:

“I just don’t want to work against an Obama candidacy. [Having him as president] would send a great message to the country and the world.”

But that’s not all. A friend of McCain’s, Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, had some choice words in response to McCain and Obama’s manufactured foreign policy arguments about Iran and Palestine. This, from CNN.com:

Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel … said Tuesday he is “very upset” with some of the things the party’s presumptive presidential nominee has been saying as he campaigns for the White House.

“We know from past campaigns that presidential candidates will say many things,” Hagel reportedly said. “But once they have the responsibility to govern the country and lead the world, that difference between what they said and what responsibilities they have to fulfill are vastly different.”

Like I said, very strange.

Why is everyone treating Obama with kid gloves again? After months of hard-edged fighting with Hillary Clinton, we’re back to that point in time where people seem to think that attacking Obama will only hurt their public perception. And hey, maybe they’re right. But it almost makes me miss the days of Karl Rove.

Okay, maybe it doesn’t.

Is anyone else just a little bit sad that John McCain’s bid for president comes during a year which looks so hopelessly glum for the GOP?

I mean, it’s not as if the Republicans will be running a candidate like him every year.  In fact, if he loses this year, and loses badly, they probably never will again.

After months and months of pandering to the more hawkish, theocratic, and just plain fanatical sections of the GOP base, McCain has once again shifted his message back to sounding like it used to sound pre-2000.  His speech on Thursday about what “The world will look like” in 2013 was far more reasonable, and even hopeful, than he has been this year.

Even though, by my estimate, it was more strategy than substance, and even though it’s already being torn down and criticized as a little naive and silly, it certainly serves as a reminder of the John McCain we once knew, who was cheered for standing up against both the GOP and Democratic strategies when he disagreed with them.

Does that John McCain actually still exist?  After his bitter loss in 2000 and eight subsequent years of cynical pandering, and even losing some of his edge as his age advanced, I’ve come to the sad conclusion that McCain might finally be what he never was: a career politician, more interested in ambition than principle.

Sigh.  Senator McCain, we hardly knew ye.

I’ve said since 2004 that the reason we’re invading Iraq is because the people in charge had no idea how things worked in the middle east. I’ve said that our poor understanding of the politics and culture of Middle Eastern nations is why we’re having such a hard time “winning the hearts and minds” in Iraq. And I’ve said that I’m all for sending in Green Berets and Navy Seals and whoever you want to send into any nation you want to carry out small, covert missions against terrorist cells. I’m all for that, yes I am.

But invasion is wrong. It’s destructive, it’s inefficient, and it kills almost nothing but civilians — we saw that in Iraq. These countries, of all the places in the world, need their infrastructure. They need their power grids. They need their water supply. For God’s sake, this isn’t Nazi Germany we’re dealing with — this is a nation of oppressed people whose lives we make nothing but worse by invading their countries. And so all it accomplished was to initiate a huge, visible, agit-prop marketing campaign against our own country.

That’s why I support the Democrats in this election. Very simple. We need someone who is willing to learn and understand the culture of the region. Someone whose policies will be informed by the actual situation on the ground — not the situation as we’d like to be.

But I was conflicted, because John McCain is a pretty smart cookie when it comes to foreign policy. Or so I thought. Until today, when he was discussing his imminent plans to invade Iran, and said that Iran was supplying and training Al-Qaeda. Yes, that’s Iranian Shiites that he claims are aiding Sunni’s in Al-Qaeda. It’s not true, it’s impossible, and most importantly — it’s the same faulty argument we heard for invading Iraq. So Joe Lieberman whispered in his ear, and he corrected himself “Oh, I mean extremists, not Al-Qaeda.” Right.

I’m willing to forgive a slip of the tongue. I hate the “gotcha!” game. But he’s basically talking about invading Iran, and it seems to me like the act of invasion is primary, and the reasons why and how are secondary. We can’t afford that again.

Just two days after winning in Iowa, the spotlight appears to be getting to Mike Huckabee. For one thing, the increased scrutiny that comes with being a frontrunner has thrown even more attention onto the candidate’s troubled son, who’s just run into some more poorly-timed trouble–an early-morning car accident.

Now, whispers have already begun suggesting that John McCain is primed to supplant the new leader for the GOP nomination.

The New York Times is reporting that the politicos of the Republican party are stepping away from the populist preacher candidate, fearing that he doesn’t have the chops to win nationally in the general election. I guess something about a Southern governor and religious fanatic seems a little too familiar to the GOP elite.

Oh, and did I mention that Mitt Romney just took Wyoming?