In Which I Say Something Nice About Sarah Palin

. . . for a change. (And that's change you can believe in!)

I am watching a program called View from the Right on CNN International, with David Brody, Stephen Hayes, David Madden, and a couple other conservative pundits. One of them just referred to the fact that Gov. Palin "can see Russia" as a reason not to present her as a foreign policy expert.

Amazing, isn't it, that Republican pundits have assimilated Tina Fey to the point that they attribute her joke to Gov. Palin? Because Gov. Palin never said "I can see Russia from my house." That was Tina Fey on SNL.

Of course, Gov. Palin did say a lot of silly stuff, but nothing quite that deliberately stupid. After all, Wasilla is on the mainland, in the Mat-Su Valley, and not on the island that shares a maritime border with Russia.

Just interesting, isn't it, how such a claim not made by the candidate can come to so thoroughly permeate the national discourse . . . Not unlike the claim that Al Gore said he invented the internet (which, likewise, he never actually claimed to have done) . . .

A Case of Pot Calling Kettle "Socialist"

Brokaw was especially deft at drawing at McCain's own brand of "socialism" (which is not actual socialism, as practiced in countries such as Cuba, Venezuela, or Bolivia, where the government controls the means of production. Stop me before I go all book learnin'!).

First, Brokaw tosses out a seeming softball, asking McCain to gloss the S-word:

MR. BROKAW: But there, there is this continuing use...

SEN. McCAIN: ...I feel that...

MR. BROKAW: ...of the phrase "socialism." How would you describe the $700 billion bailout that has the United States government buying shares in American banks, in effect nationalizing those banks to a degree, and even your own mortgage plan of spending $300 billion to buy bad mortgages from banks, having taxpayers who have done the responsible thing, in effect, subsidize people who've done the dumb or wrong thing?

SEN. McCAIN: Because we are in a financial crisis of monumental proportions. The role of government is to intervene when a nation is in crisis. A homeowner's loan corporation was instituted in the Great Depression. They went out and they bought people's mortgages, and, over time, people were able, then, to pay back those mortgages. And the Treasury actually made some money.

OK, fair enough, McCain does not want to go on record that a significant number of Americans were irresponsible and bought homes they knew (or should have been adult enough to know) they couldn't afford. Straight Talk is so Y2K.

But, then, Brokaw seems to let the matter drop, only to come back around to the nasty S-word (which is a word and not a "phrase") a few questions later [with my comments/imagined internal monologue in brackets and boldface]:

MR. BROKAW: Let me ask you quickly about your $300 billion bailout of, of mortgages.

SEN. McCAIN: Hm. [Uh-oh.]

MR. BROKAW: Some people have said, look, if there's a homeowner out there who's done the irresponsible thing... [Can we please have more of the media and politicians calling out Americans as "irresponsible," "dumb," and "wrong" when we have in fact behaved that way? That's straight talk, my friends.]

SEN. McCAIN: Mm-hmm.

MR. BROKAW: ...and a bank is looking at that foreclosure and saying, "Hey, I don't have to work this out. I can just get the government to pick it up," why should a taxpayer in Waterloo, Iowa, or in Akron, Ohio, have to subsidize somebody who has done the dumb, wrong thing? ["EXACTLY!" shouted I to the webcast. Can we please have some Republicans who think that government is not the answer to every problem in American life? So we could have an actual debate on both parties' policies, rather than a debate solely about one party's candidate and his policies?]

SEN. McCAIN: Well, in simplest terms, if their neighbor next door throws the keys in the living room floor and leaves, then the value of their home is going to dramatically decrease as well. [Indeed, so-called abandonments "by throwing of keys" are the number 3 cause of home loss in my home state of Ohio, after foreclosure and fire. Usually, though, it's the kitchen or, most likely, garage.] And again, this has been done before. As I said, during the Great Depression and... [Oh my Lord, he is not going to use FDR as an example of what Republicans should do now!!!!!!!]

MR. BROKAW: And that's when Republicans called it socialism under FDR. [Dude, if you did not see that one coming, how are you gonna, like, stop us from having wars, and stuff?]

SEN. McCAIN: Well, look, in the Great Depression, there were some things that worked and some things that didn't work. [Most of them didn't.] But for the government to do nothing in the face of a massive crisis of proportions that we have not seen, [So the current crisis is worse than the Great Depression? I didn't know unemployment had topped 20 percent. And where are the Okies?] I mean, it's hard for us to imagine how, in, in retrospect, how serious the Great Depression was [Actually, World War II worked. Not to give you ideas . . .], but the fact is that Senator Obama, by the way, opposes that, that [I can hear the ad voice-over now: "Who is Barack Obama? He opposes the Great Depression."]; and I want to use some of the $750 billion to go and buy those mortgages and that, I think, will stabilize the market. [Since the bailout passed, the markets have been nothing but stable. You can count on them to go up or down by several hundred points on a daily basis -- that's reliability!] It's not the only thing that needs to be done, but I think it's a vital first step so Americans can realize the American dream. [So socialism is okay, in this instance, since it's necessary as a "vital first step" for the American dream. And Obama opposes that socialism . . . but he's probably still bad anyway since by inference he also opposes the American dream. Hey, it's not like we're going to be Sweden, with the government installing saunas in everybody's house.]

MR. BROKAW: I stop...

SEN. McCAIN: And by the way, this is primary residences. [So my 12 other homes would not be eligible.]

MR. BROKAW: Yeah. [Just stop. Really.]

SEN. McCAIN: There's a lot of circumstances that, yeah. [Okay. Yeah, I'll . . . Okay. Yeah. I'll stop.]

Just to be clear: 2 of my grandparents were/are lifelong Dems who loved FDR; 2 of my grandparents were/are lifelong Republicans who hated FDR, and became Republicans because they were outraged at his various efforts (successful or not) to expand the scope and power of the federal government. And they are far from the only ones.

So McCain should seriously have seen that one coming.

Don't you love as well the false choice between "socialism" (FDR/Great Depression-style) or otherwise doing nothing, which is the only alternative McCain mentions? Of course, Brokaw was trying to highlight the hypocrisy in throwing the S-word at Obama when McCain's centerpiece proposal is from the FDR playbook (and denounced by his own party with said S-word). Makes you long for the straight talk of Mitt Romney . . .

Good to know, anyway, that Obama opposes socialism. Somebody tell Palin!

McCain on MTP

Senator McCain came back to Meet the Press today for the first time in 9 months. And it was perhaps his worst showing, in his several dozen appearances on the program.

I haven't been watching MTP that regularly since Tim Russert died. Let's be honest: Tim Russert, like most Washington journalists, was a douchebag much of the time. His basic approach was to set up a series of "gotcha" moments, finding newspaper clips or video (far more often the former) of politicans from past years, contrasting their words then with their actions now, to create the appearance of hypocrisy, and even corruption.

Now, many politicians are hypocrites, and some are actually corrupt. But they are human beings; moreover, they are allowed to change their minds on issues, and the fact that they've done so does not mean that they are hypocrites, or corrupt. In some cases, they might even change their positions on issues to better reflect the will of their electorate. This is hardly definitively a bad thing.

In any case, Russert's approach was the same for every politician on his show, so you knew what you were getting into. And you'd hear the rise in his voice as he laid out the case, brought up the old newspaper clipping, and then went in for the kill. The rhythm of it all was very familiar.

By contrast, Tom Brokaw, who's filling in through the election, has a very flat upper Midwestern accent, and the rhythm and flow of his prosecutorial style are not nearly so predictable. And some of his questions are downright odd, like the first one:

I don't have the most encouraging news for you today from the NBC News/Mason Dixon poll. Here in Iowa, it now shows that Obama has a lead of 11 points, 51 to 40 points--percent. Four years ago, as you know, George Bush won this state. It's been determined a battleground state. But the lead has been widening for Senator Obama right along the way. I know you're a film buff, so let me begin with a film metaphor. Do you feel more like Kevin Costner in the "Field of Dreams," or like George Clooney at the--at the tiller of the ship in "A Perfect Storm"?

This, understandably, send McCain into a flurry of blinking and fast-thinking, leading to the inevitable "I would be the Gipper in the Knute Rockne picture" response. Honestly, Brokaw might as well have asked, "Are you Che Guavara in The Motorcycle Diaries, or Ray Cohn in Angels in America?"

The most brutal twist came near the end. Brokaw spent several minutes retelling McCain's POW story (as today is the 41st anniversary of him getting shot down over Hanoi), and reading a letter his mother wrote to LBJ supporting the president, even though he was from the other party. McCain must have thought Brokaw was gonna lob a softball. Instead, a very nasty changeup:

MR. BROKAW: For all the obvious reasons, that experience was a defining moment in your life, and you said it changed your attitude toward you are your country's from then on, not your own man. How has this campaign changed you?

SEN. McCAIN: It hasn't changed me. It's made me humble and grateful and aware of the trust and faith and confidence that so many people have in me that it motives me to continue to want to serve my country. But I think it also validates service to country and putting your country first. We're going to do well in this campaign, my friend. We're going to win it, and it's going to be tight, and we're going to be up late; but it will be because there's so many Americans who believe that I can give them the future for themselves and their children and their grandchildren that we all aspire to. And I'm deeply honored.

So Palin isn't the only one who doesn't read The New York Times.

All in all, Brokaw more than redeemed himself for the disastrous job he did moderating the 2nd debate. And, despite all my qualms about a continuous climate of "gotcha" journalism (which becomes a bit silly when the stakes are smaller than they are this year), there's something wonderfully tense and clarifying about getting a politician in the chair on live TV and making them answer questions for 20 minutes solid without a commercial break.

There's a very telling exchange from the interview as well, which I'll post separately.