It has been established that Barack Obama is a celebrity without portfolio, to combine lines from Lindsey Graham and former Democrat Joe Lieberman. The latest Gallup tracking poll, the one which recently had Obama up by nine points, “has moved back into a statistical tie,” with Obama up by only one: 45% – 44%.

The latest three-day average confirms that Obama was unable to solidify the significant lead he briefly enjoyed among registered voters at the height of publicity surrounding his weeklong visit to Afghanistan, Iraq, the Middle East, and Europe… [and] the presumptive Democratic nominee has been losing ground.”

Desperation?

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It’s not been a good few days for our buddy, ABC News’ Jake Tapper. Yesterday, he was chanting the non-sequitur mantra of Obama’s peeps, asserting that because there was no solid proof that Obama wanted a photo op at Germany’s Landstuhl military hospital, Axelrod was above that sort of thing and Obama was on the right side of the matter and McCain was wrong to point out that Barry blew off our injured soldiers.

Something had hold of his mind and was not letting him think about what he was writing. Ah, it could happen to anyone. I suppose.

But he’s done it again.

Yesterday, candidate McCain released an advertisement making the point that Obama was really just an empty celebrity. Tapper shoots back today with a childish “quiz,” identifying McCain as a candidate who knows celebrities, whose family knows celebrities, and who has hosted Saturday Night Live. Be those things as they may, it does not affect that narrative of McCain’s commercial. Barack Obama is one of the world’s biggest media celebrities, a pop star. Tapper’s quiz, possibly an attempt at pop cleverness, is naught but a seemingly purposeful non-sequitur designed to distract the more flighty amongst his readership.

Jake, you can do better. Remember, McCain himself was something of a media celebrity during the 2000 nominating season, albeit nothing insubstantial like Obama. That’s an angle.

Tapper is still a young man. He has plenty of time to avoid becoming addled and intellectually vapid, a la… okay, let’s leave Joe Klein out of this. Klein’s condition, we can attribute to his bad dose of Obamamania.

On WILM AM in Dover, Delaware, this afternoon, Mitt Romney tell us that he does not “plan on being part of the [Republican Presidential] ticket.”

Promises, promises.

What if McCain were to offer the job to him? Respondeth Mitt: “I think any Republican who was offered the chance to be VP would certainly serve their party and serve our nominee and do so proudly.”

The question is, would Romney help out with the fundraising even if he is not on the ticket?

The Washington Post and ABC News’ Jake Tapper have a gripe with the McCain camp. Since Tapper has been one of the stars of this campaign’s coverage so far, let’s pick it up from him.

Tapper quotes John McCain regarding Barack Obama’s refusal to visit wounded American soldiers in Germany’s Landstuhl Hospital.

“I have no idea except that I know that according to reports that he wanted to bring media people and cameras and his campaign staffers,” McCain said [to Larry king].

That’s what I’ve heard speculated, as well, and I thought it possible, even likely, given David Axelrod’s prefabricated European stage show starring the Dem candidate.

But Tapper is livid:

The part about wanting to bring the media is decidedly not true. There were never any plans for Obama to “bring media people and cameras.” Never.

His lividity mirrors that of an Obama spokesman, quoted in this morning’s Washington Post:

“Absolutely, unequivocally wrong,” Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said in an e-mail after McCain’s comments to Larry King.

Yes, they are livid at the WashPost as well.

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We’ve heard that Barack Obama finally realizes why he was put on the Earth. We know that this is the moment for which the world is waiting. Barack Obama has become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions. (He did not specify to which traditions he will return us, but I suppose their very nice. You know, the Monroe Doctrine, manifest destiny, the pre-New Deal ethic, maybe the gold standard. Who knows but Barry?)

All this nonsense brings to mind the end of the third book of Keats’ fragment Hyperion. The printed version ends with the word “celestial,” but the tubercular genius penned a few words in his own hand afterward. Keats was writing of Apollo in 1819, as the gods rose and the titans fell. A quick substitution on my part gives us the sense that John Keats foresaw the coming of our political messiah.

At length
Apollo shriek’d; — and lo! from all his limbs
Celestial Glory dawn’d: he was a god!

(Or to paraphrase a line from Monty Python and the Holy Grail: “It’s only a model.”)

Governor Tim Kaine, the lightweight Virginia Democrat, is getting some buzz as Barry’s possible Veep pick. Should Kaine be the chosen one’s chosen one, Lt. Governor Bill Boiling, a Republican, would become governor of that Commonwealth.

Where do you think TimKaine.com now points? Check it out.

Disgraced former White House Press Secretary Scott McLellan has said that the Bush White House sent talking points to TV Talkers, most specifically at FNC. He added that both political parties do this.

Not McLellan, mind you, someone else at the White House:

“Certainly it wasn’t necessarily something I was doing, but it was something we at the White House, yes, were doing in getting them talking points and making sure they knew where we were coming from,” he said, although he qualified, “I think that happens both ways when people go on other networks that are favorable to Democrats.”

Dick Morris has said that Clinton (Bill) did this, and that it was his (Morris’s) idea.

Keith Olbermann has asserted that he knew all about this but is “shocked” anyway.

Bill O’Reilly has denied using WH talking points, and he has said that he no longer respects McLellan, to whom he probably refers as a pinhead. I saw a bit on O’Reilly’s show in which he dismissed Howie Kurtz, who has been making some noise about this, by saying that Kurtz does not believe it but is after ratings.

But McLellan told Chris Matthews the other people who worked at the White House were using the commentators as White House spokespeople:

Matthews: “So you were using these commentators as your spokespeople.”

McClellan: “Well, certainly.”

I’m just a blogger. I am besieged by talking points from the right and from the left. Congress does it, the White House does it, the campaigns do it. I imagine FNC, CNN, and the other networks get these talking points. I don’t recite them, and I doubt the FNC people do.

I watch the Sunday Morning Talk Shows and write a review. I heard Dem guests, mostly Congress critters, repeating their talking points. Different people, different show, same words. Talking points exist because those who generate them want them to be repeated and to become the story. Olbermann, for example, seems to receive talking points from Democrats, from lefty causes, from conspiracy theorists, and from civilizations from other galaxies. And he repeats them all.

This is neither shocking nor wrong.

What would strike me as misleading would be if people like Bill O’Reilly received these White House talking points and repeated them without attribution. Scott McClellan no longer accuses Bill O’Reilly of this:

“The truth is I messed up. I was specifically not trying to single anyone out, including you,” said McClellan [to O'Reilly on the radio]. “There were people, not you, but there were people.”

As for the response to his comments: “Some people tried to paint it in a black and white term to their preconceived notions,” said McClellan. “I should not have left it open to interpretation.”

Regarding MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, who conducted the original interview, O’Reilly said, “Matthews played you. He played you.”

McLellan later accused O’Reilly of playing him, so that’s how that is. Johnny Dollar has the Radio Factor audio.

So where does that leave this story?

Wherever. I’m done.

(cross-posted at rathergate.com)

Barack Obama is presenting a problem for the older American left. As strieff earlier pointed out, liberal Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen has little nice to say about Barack Obama’s losing battle with vacuity [Obama the Unknown]:

“Just tell me one thing Barack Obama has done that you admire,” I asked a prominent Democrat. He paused and then said that he admired Obama’s speech to the Democratic convention in 2004. I agreed. It was a hell of a speech, but it was just a speech.

Not even the reliable (Dem) Richard Cohen understands the mystical concept of Hopechangehope. Sure, Obama promises it, and if feels great when he does – and we have to know in our hearts that we should aspire to it – but we don’t know what IT is. Hopechangehope is that indefinable something which encompasses all that can be good about all things, both in their general senses and in their particular sense.

The new kids in the American left are smoking Hopechangehope, but Cohen seems not to be buying.

But at least he admires John McCain’s character:

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Just now, on FNC’s Hannity & Colmes program, Mike Huckabee said that the two names he has heard being mentioned as John McCain’s likely Veep pick were Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty. Asked who he would choose, Huckabee replied: “I’d go Pawlenty.”

I ought to leave the Veep talk to the smart people, those who participate at RedState.com, but I agree with Huckabee — if the choice were that limited.

PREFACE:

Sunday, July 27, 2008

On ABC’s This Week, John McCain stressed his bipartisan skills, his ability to “reach across the aisle to Democrats.” He stressed that we should leave Iraq when conditions dictate, not on some arbitrary timetable.

On FOX News Sunday, Dem Senator Claire McCaskill said that Obama’s 16-month timetable was only a “goal,” subject to change based on conditions. Republican Senator John Thune referred to Obama’s recent jaunt through Europe as a “flashbulb tour.”

Next on FNS, Karl Rove rated Obama’s jaunt as a plus in the short term but much less in the longer term. He said that Obama’s speech in Germany was “soaring,” to be sure, but “there was no there there.”

On NBC’s Meet the Press, Obama repeated that if he is elected, everyone will love us and the Arabs and the Europeans would drop their generations-old hatreds and prejudices regarding the United States of America and our position in the world. There would be a great harmonic convergence and love between our bothers and our sisters all over this land.

On CBS’ Face the Nation, Chuck Hagel attacked McCain for attacking Obama. Jack Reed said that McCain “should not be waging this type of campaign.” Hagel said that he did not know if he will vote for his party’s Presidential nominee and his old friend, John McCain, or for his new buddy, Obama.

On CNN’s Late Edition, John McCain underscored his support for Israel. On immigration, he supported border security first, then a regulated temporary workers program and a path-to-citizenship for those illegals willing to undergo the process. He also asserted that he “knows how” to capture Osama bin Laden (deceased).

The Show-by-Show review begins beneath begins below.

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For Sunday, July 27, 2008

FOX News Sunday (FNS): Host Chris Wallace talks to surrogates: Senators John Thune (for McCain) and Claire McKaskill (for Obama).

This Week (ABC): Host George Stephanopoulos talks to John McCain.

Meet the Press (NBC): Moderator Tom Brokaw will talk to the architect of Hopechangehope, the man who sent Europe into a swoon, Barack Obama!

Face the Nation (CBS): Host Bob Schieffer will talk to Obama’s tagalongs: Senators Chuck Hagel and Jack Reed.

Late Edition (CNN): Host Wolf Blitzer talks to McCain then airs one of Barry’s live press events.
~~~~

Historically, John McCain has been one of the two most seemingly frequent guests on these shows, with the other being Joe Biden; this week, though, it seems odd that someone in the media would deign to speak to the man on the weekend after Obama’s donkey has trodden the palm leaves.

The entire morning will be wonderful if only Schieffer asks Hagel what it is like for him to end his distinguished Senate career as a prop in the Presidential campaign of the most unqualified Democrat in a generation. That is precisely what has happened to Hagel.

I’ll have the review live here at RedState.com tomorrow afternoon.

Joe Klein, TIME glossy infotainment magazine columnist, is so enthralled with Barack Obama that it has driven him to anti-Semitic accusation.. In his counterfactual column of yesterday, McCain’s Foreign Policy Frustration, Klein announces:

The strategic question here is whether to go for regime change [in Iran] or diplomatic engagement. McCain hasn’t said he was for regime change, but he has rattled sabers noisily, joked about bomb-bomb-bombing Iran and surrounded himself with, and been funded by, Jewish neoconservatives who believe Iran is a threat to Israel’s existence.

Noel Sheppard at Newsbusters.org asks, “Forgive me, Joe, but was the “Jewish” necessary in this rant against neoconservatives?” I’ll ask: Which ones were Jewish, Joe? All? Some? Does it matter to anyone but to you and, perhaps, to Barack Obama?

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I’ve come to the recent realization that John McCain’s campaign is just like Luke Skywalker getting out of the Death Star – the media is firing at them from every direction, they’re coming in from everywhere.

It confirms my worst suspicions about the collective intellect of those who cover politics for the major news outlets. I’ve never seen such a band a happy dupes, at least not since the Reverend Jim Jones had nearly 1,000 of his followers drink of the magic Flavor Aid in Guyana, 1978. (NOTE: The linked story is from NPR, dealing with the: “Portrait of a Disturbed Cult Leader.” You can draw whatever parallels you want. I will not.)

In 2000, it was the campaign of Governor Bush which was patrolling that Death Star, according to McCain’s narrative; eight years later, it is the nation’s political media according to those Americans surveyed. (With theater critics playing political scribes these days, just about everyone in the press is in on Axelrod’s scriptingl.)

There will be plenty to say on the media.

I’m more enthused by what John McCain said at the Livestrong Summit Thursday evening with Lance Armstrong in Columbus, Ohio. It was an event for health care, and most notably the treatment of and finding a cure for cancer. Barack Obama refuses to be seen at such events.

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Much has been made about John McCain telling Katie Couric that the Surge “began the Anbar awakening.”

Because of the surge we were able to go out and protect that sheik and others. And it began the Anbar awakening.

McCain answered this by explaining that the Surge was more than just the addition of more troops. This would mean that the surge would have its effects long before it was fully implemented, when all the troops were in place and doing their thing.

How would Barry explain own his mistaken timeline?

Last January, in an ABC News debate in New Hamphire [transcript], Obama uttered the following to Charlie Gibson. He is answering Gibson’s question regarding the reduced violence in Iraq vs. his opposition to the surge:

I would point out that much of that violence has been reduced because there was an agreement with tribes in Anbar province — Sunni tribes — who started to see, after the Democrats were elected in 2006, you know what, the Americans may be leaving soon, and we are going to be left very vulnerable to the Shi’as.

He is asserting that it was the 2006 elections which sparked the [Spring '06] Anbar Awakening. There is a big problem with this claim, besides its prima facie absurdity. RedState.com’s Streiff caught Obama’s gaffe:

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Much has been made in the media about how John McCain shot himself in the head when he told CBS News’ Katie Couric on Tuesday:

Colonel McFarlane (phonetic) was contacted by one of the major Sunni sheiks. Because of the surge we were able to go out and protect that sheik and others. And it began the Anbar awakening. I mean, that’s just a matter of history. Thanks to General Petraeus, our leadership, and the sacrifice of brave young Americans.

On his little-watched Morning Joe program on MSNBC (vid, next page), Joe Scarborough quotes Mike Cooper in the New York Times this morning:

The Obama campaign was quick to note that the Anbar Awakening began in the fall of 2006, several months before President Bush even announced the troop escalation strategy, which became known as the surge. (No less an authority than Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, testified before Congress this spring that the Awakening “started before the surge, but then was very much enabled by the surge.”)

Don’t know if Keefums will stand for that, Joe.

Anyway, as we’ve seen, the media has been pushing the notion that John McCain has lost his raison d’etre, with the mentally aging Joe Klein leaping laughably to the fore on this one. (Check it out. His latest reads like one of the more lame cases of a BO release.)

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Barack Obama does not sit on the Senate Banking Committee. Not now, not existentially, not in a past life with the Buddha.

Something good from McClatchy: Out of bounds! Obama falsely claims to be Banking Committee member. (The “out of bounds” remark refers to the way in which the piece is written, like a football penalty call. I edited that away.)

(The quote follows. …)

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The American political media cannot understand why president candidate Barack Obama’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem Tel Aviv and elsewhere has not pushed him further to the fore in the heart’s of America’s voters. The TIME glossy infotainment magazine’s blog Swampland offers us this gem:

Lots of speculation on the web, and in whispering circles, about why Obama’s foreign trip–a slam-dunk success substantively and in photo-op terms (Obama laughing with Petraeus in the helicopter was the best)–hasn’t resulted in a polling bump. The emerging conventional wisdom seems to be that the trip is a bit too grand, too…presumptuous and voters are wary of that. (And presumption, of course, always comes with the subterranean tinge of racism.) Maybe so.

Okay. According to the media, we either see through Barry’s stage show, contemptuous as it is of our eyes, ears, and minds, or we’re racist punks who cannot bear to see a black man triumph in the manner Obama has. No, no, no to the latter excuse. Even the New York Times saw through Clinton (Bill) playing with rocks on the beach at Normandy in 1994, and Obama’s act seems much more obviously a fraud.

Joe Klein, the blogger of the piece, has his own little theory:

People may be thinking, what on earth is Obama doing over there when we have so many problems back home? Why isn’t he talking about the economy? No doubt, the Obama staff figured they needed this week abroad to establish the image of Obama as a potential Commander-in-Chief…and, no doubt, he will turn to the economy–a Democratic strength, according to the polls–when he gets home. But I wouldn’t be surprised if Obama is paying a price for vamping about overseas while banks are cratering, gas prices soar and people are getting really, really nervous about their futures.

He thinks Americans want Barry here in the States, front-and-center, blaming Bush because we’re all going to die and alien beings will invade Earth any day now.

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I think it has to do with a bottom-to-top conservatism.

Today is Vertical Day over at the Huck PAC’s site, on which a dozen or so candidates supported by Mike Huckabee’s new PAC — including Bob Clegg, Luke Puckett, Jim Inhofe, Lamar Alexander, John Cornyn, Steve Daines, Elizabeth Dole, Roy Brown, Gilbert Baker, and Brad Lage – get to blog about the issues dear to the PAC and to hook up with the site’s community of activists. They have redesigned their front page for the event, turning it into a Vertical Day blog.

Sayeth Huck:

We have offered each candidate the option to blog up to 4 times about the issues that matter most to them. No fundraising appeals, no calls to action, just a simple link to their website will be added to each blog post in case you want further information. These candidates aren’t just blogging to Huck PAC supporters within their home states and congressional districts, they are blogging to our community. They value what we accomplished during our campaign together and they are eager to offer their views for the way forward and their solutions to the problems we face.

Lamar Alexander has gone first.

Check it out if you get the chance. It promises to be an interesting exposition and discussion of conservative views and stances. (Governor Huckabee himself, as luck would have it, is stuck in Rwanda. Oh, I suppose it could happen to any of us.)

Vertical Day.

Over at NewsBusters.org, they have the vid. It’s NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell spilling the beans on Barry to Chris Matthews last night over on the Keefums Network (MSNBC):

MITCHELL: Let me just say something about the message management. He didn’t have reporters with him, he didn’t have a press pool, he didn’t do a press conference while he was on the ground in either Afghanistan or Iraq. What you’re seeing is not reporters brought in. You’re seeing selected pictures taken by the military, questions by the military, and what some would call fake interviews, because they’re not interviews from a journalist. So, there’s a real press issue here. Politically it’s smart as can be. But we’ve not seen a presidential candidate do this, in my recollection, ever before.

Matthews goes on to suggest that the Obama peeps might be picking the people in the military cheering lines, filling them with adulating African Americans.

MATTHEWS: Let me ask you about access to the troops, Andrea. A lot of African-American faces over there, very happy, delighted faces. Is that a representation of the percentage of service people who are African-American, or did they all choose to join someone they like, apparently? What’s the story?

MITCHELL: I can’t really say that. Being a reporter who was not present in any of those situations, I just cannot report on what was edited out, what was, you know, on the sidelines. That’s my issue. We don’t know what we are seeing.

Who is Obama’s media guy? Who chooses his interviews, his crowds, his venues, his backdrops?

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Bob Novak tells the world that his sources tell him that John McCain will pick his Veep this week. The reasoning? He wants to take some of the press away from Obama’s foreign adventures.

Novak will give no names, but he points out that “Mitt Romney has led the speculation recently.” If the campaign wants to steal some of Barry’s thunder, Romney is not the man to do it. McCain’s pick will have to be exciting in some way: a woman, a minority, an Independent-Democrat. Or a beloved public action-figure, like, say Charlie Crist. Yeah, right. Try Rudy, with whom McCain attended Sunday afternoon’s New York Yankees victory over the Oakland Athletics.

With how many grains of whose salt do we take this?