There are still disgruntled Clinton supporters to deal with. Of course, few of them are as utterly fanatical as Lanny Davis but there are enough Clinton supporters out there who will be plenty mad if Hillary Clinton is not selected as the Vice Presidential candidate and who will be more than willing to take their anger out on the Obama campaign in the fall. And yet, if Obama selects Clinton as his Vice Presidential candidate, he will have to deal with the dysfunctional and nightmarish alternate reality she and her cohorts will doubtless bring into his campaign.

This post could have been titled “Thoughts That Bring Joyful Schadenfreude Into the Hearts of John McCain Supporters.”

Right on target. The McCain campaign has done nothing to suggest that people should vote against Barack Obama because of his name or background. And it is utterly wrong of Obama to suggest otherwise. Obama is perfectly free to take issue with and take on McCain’s critiques of his candidacy. But he should actually argue against McCain instead of some straw man that Obama says is McCain.

You know, this Internet thing is really useful for calling shenanigans on the characterizations of opposing political arguments. Maybe Barack Obama would like to keep that sort of thing in mind the next time he is tempted to put words in John McCain’s mouth.

No, but it counts for a lot. John McCain is not Andre Agassi but the Arizona Senator could take a lesson or two from the Las Vegas tennis star.

The Los Angeles Times properly points out that despite all expectations, Barack Obama has done nothing to open up a lead against John McCain. Quite the contrary; he has allowed McCain to hang around and is giving him a chance to take the race in the end. This despite one week of adulatory coverage while Obama was overseas and despite a fair amount of turmoil in the McCain camp organizationally.

The Times wonders whether all of this is attributable to the tough and bitter primary fight Obama had with Hillary Clinton. It is likely that a fair amount of it is, but how about asking whether Obama’s big government philosophy is really what Americans are looking for in their next President? I know that we are supposed to be entering an age of renewed liberalism but you would think that in such a situation, we would see more than the occasional Obamacon/can deserting the Republican Party and deciding to vote for the presumptive Democratic nominee. The Republican coalition is not in the best of shape, to be sure, but it is not nearly in the disastrous shape that so many believed it to be. In trying times, it is hanging surprisingly tough.

Maybe that will change in time. If I had to bet, I would still say that Obama will win the election. But with every day that he fails to close the deal, he gives John McCain a chance to prove me wrong. And McCain appears more than willing to take the opportunity Obama seems determined to give him.

He is immensely good at getting people to take Harry Reid to the policy woodshed. For this alone, people who are fans of the Senate and its reputation can thank him.

Once again, we are reminded that decreasing demand lowers the price of a commodity:

The drop in oil prices has come as gasoline demand in the United States fell sharply in recent months, thanks to Americans cutting back on their driving. Gasoline consumption fell 3.6 percent in the week ending July 18, compared with the year-earlier period, according to the Energy Department. Americans drove 9.6 billion fewer miles in May compared with the same period last year, a 3.7 percent decline and the biggest-ever drop at that time of year, the Transportation Department said on Monday.

And you know what? It didn’t take a windfall profits tax or increased regulations on speculation to bring any of this about. Something to keep in mind while the current Presidential campaign rages.

Yeah, this gives me all sorts of faith in the media’s ability to remain objective during this election cycle:

When Obama walked on stage at the McCormick Center, many journalists in the audience leapt to their feet and applauded enthusiastically after being told not to do so. During a two-minute break halfway through the event, which was broadcast live on CNN, journalists ran to the stage to snap photos of Obama.

The Illinois senator talked about his trip overseas, reiterating his opinion that violence is down in Iraq but worsening in Afghanistan. And he expressed his approval of the Senate’s passage of a major housing bill to help homeowners avert foreclosure.

Obama, who acknowledged that he needed a nap, stood up to say farewell to the audience of journalists, many of whom gave him another standing ovation.

(The following is not sarcasm, however): Of course, given that even the likes of Dana Milbank are beginning to get tired of the arrogance that now emanates from the Obama campaign, there is the possibility that the media will regain its sobriety. The question is whether it will be able to do so before Election Day.

Remember this essay by law professor Cass Sunstein–who taught at the University of Chicago but will now be going to Harvard? In it, Sunstein assures readers that as a result of teaching at one of the more right-of-center law schools in the country, Barack Obama has had a unique and valuable exposure to right-of-center thinking that makes him impossible to pigeonhole as a conventional contemporary liberal. Quoth Sunstein:

[Obama} is strongly committed to helping the disadvantaged, but his University of Chicago background shows. He appreciates the virtues and power of free markets. In some of his most important disagreements with Senator Clinton, he suggested caution about mandates and bans, and stressed  the value of freedom of choice.

Comes now this article in the New York Times. Its take is . . . er . . . different:

At a formal institution, Barack Obama was a loose presence, joking with students about their romantic prospects, using first names, referring to case law one moment and "The Godfather" the next. He was also an enigmatic one, often leaving fellow faculty members guessing about his precise views.

[. . .]

But Mr. Obama’s years at the law school are also another chapter — see United States Senate, c. 2006 — in which he seemed as intently focused on his own political rise as on the institution itself. Mr. Obama, who declined to be interviewed for this article, was well liked at the law school, yet he was always slightly apart from it, leaving some colleagues feeling a little cheated that he did not fully engage. The Chicago faculty is more rightward-leaning than that of other top law schools, but if teaching alongside some of the most formidable conservative minds in the country had any impact on Mr. Obama, no one can quite point to it.

“I don’t think anything that went on in these chambers affected him,” said Richard Epstein, a libertarian colleague who says he longed for Mr. Obama to venture beyond his ideological and topical comfort zones. “His entire life, as best I can tell, is one in which he’s always been a thoughtful listener and questioner, but he’s never stepped up to the plate and taken full swings.”

[. . .]

Nor could his views be gleaned from scholarship; Mr. Obama has never published any. He was too busy, but also, Mr. Epstein believes, he was unwilling to put his name to anything that could haunt him politically, as Ms. Guinier’s writings had hurt her. “He figured out, you lay low,” Mr. Epstein said.

The Chicago law faculty is full of intellectually fiery friendships that burn across ideological lines. Three times a week, professors do combat over lunch at a special round table in the university’s faculty club, and they share and defend their research in workshop discussions. Mr. Obama rarely attended, even when he was in town.

“I’m not sure he was close to anyone,” Mr. Hutchinson said, except for a few liberal constitutional law professors, like Cass Sunstein, now an occasional adviser to his campaign. Mr. Obama was working two other jobs, after all, in the State Senate and at a civil rights law firm.

Several colleagues say Mr. Obama was surely influenced by the ideas swirling around the law school campus: the prevailing market-friendliness, or economic analysis of the impact of laws. But none could say how. “I’m not sure we changed him,” Mr. Baird said.

Because he never fully engaged, Mr. Obama “doesn’t have the slightest sense of where folks like me are coming from,” Mr. Epstein said. “He was a successful teacher and an absentee tenant on the other issues.”

Read More →

This is a disaster:

The Doha round of global trade talks, now in its seventh year, broke up without agreement yesterday after nine days of tense negotiations.

Divisions between the US, India and China about access to the agricultural markets of the developing world could not be overcome and the talks ground to a halt, scuppering efforts by Pascal Lamy, director-general of the World Trade Organisation, to broker a compromise.

The failure of the talks marks the third summer in a row that ministers have left a high-profile summit empty-handed. Several ministers and officials admitted that any substantive progress would now have to wait until a new US president was in the White House.

The breakdown followed marathon negotiating sessions among ministers from the world’s leading economies, with the talks running on long after their original schedule. Tempers occasionally flared during the meetings, with the US and China accusing each other of not making enough concessions.

Yet, in the immediate aftermath, there was relatively little trading of blame.

Susan Schwab, US trade representative, said the US remained committed to the Doha round, which was launched in 2001. “This is not a time to talk about collapse,” she said. “The US commitments remain on the table.”

Peter Mandelson, EU trade commissioner, said: “I realise that you will ask who is to blame for this failure. The answer of course is that it is a collective failure.” But Mr Mandelson said the agriculture talks had been harmed by the five-year programme of subsidies passed by the US Congress, which was “one of the most reactionary farm bills in the history of the US”.

Mandelson is dead right but what I worry about is that with the collapse of the Doha round, protectionists will be emboldened enough to try to hammer against other parts of the free trade system that has been so painstakingly created over the past few decades. And with the possibility that Barack Obama may become President of the United States and further slow down free trade efforts–assisted, of course, by an economically antediluvian Congress–the protectionists must feel that time is on their side in this fight.

Which it may well be. Of course, many people won’t realize that the protectionists have the argument over trade completely wrong until enough poverty has hit enough places and enough people to remind the world that the protectionist ideology should long ago have gone the way of the dinosaur.

It has gotten a huge boost. This is a win-win situation for Republicans. If a package passes, Republicans–who have been most associated with offshore exploration for oil–will easily take the credit since they worked the hardest to push for new exploration to take place. If a package does not pass, Republicans will be able to continue the pressure on Democrats throughout the election cycle. I imagine that there are a lot of Democrats who are upset with Harry Reid’s decision to grant a vote on the issue and wish that Reid was as tough as Nancy Pelosi in refusing to let the issue come to the floor.

It may be coming to an end.

See this story and this one, which cover Senator Tom Coburn’s efforts to bring excessive government spending to heel by refusing any and all expenditures unless there are appropriate offsets to those expenditures. I am not a fan of term limits but it is impossible to deny that Coburn’s decision to limit himself to two terms has freed him from the need to engage in horsetrading with his colleagues, thus allowing him to completely and gloriously tick off Harry Reid and bring some sanity to the legislative process in the Senate.

Some Senators appear to be upset that Coburn actually has the temerity to, you know, do his homework by actually taking the time to learn the substance of bills and taking the time to master the rules of the Senate so that he can stand up to pork-barrel artists like Reid. The best refutation of this dubious argument comes from the Times article:

“I think Coburn is one of the hardest working senators and maybe one of the smartest,” said Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama. “People who read a bill and have constructive suggestions ought to be respected rather than criticized. What the Democrats want to do is intimidate people to give unanimous consent, and that is not in the tradition of the Senate.”

If there were a hundred Tom Coburns in the Senate, the upper body would be a better place. You may not agree with all of his policy prescriptions. But it is pretty hard to deny the fact that your tax dollars would be better spent if more people like Coburn were around.

And what’s more, you probably wouldn’t have to send as much money to Washington to begin with.

From time to time, it would serve us well to remind ourselves just how hollow that claim really is.

But of course, Barack Obama is going to get into a world of trouble for this.

One gifted orator whose soaring rhetoric was not matched by specific policy proposals is telling another gifted orator whose soaring rhetoric is not matched by specific policy proposals to get more specific about policy.

Irony can hit you from all kinds of unexpected places.

This is one of the most important stories not to get much publicity:

The mighty Service Employees International Union (SEIU) plans to spend some $150 million in this year’s election, most of it to get Barack Obama and other Democrats elected. Where’d they get that much money?

That’s a question the Departments of Labor and Justice are being asked to investigate by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. Specifically, the labor watchdog group wants Justice to query a new SEIU policy that appears to coerce local workers into funding the parent union’s national political priorities.

That’s just a taste of the shakedown engaged in by organizations like SEIU. Read the whole thing. And remember that in addition to giving its members the “nice job you have . . . be a shame if anything were to happen to it” spiel, SEIU and other like minded organizations want to ditch democracy in the workplace.

An example of his intelligence can be found here:

The top U.S. military commander in Iraq isn’t buying the increasingly popular idea of a publicly stated timetable for American troop withdrawal.

Gen. David Petraeus, the Iraq commander, said in an interview with McClatchy that the situation in Iraq is too volatile to “project out, and to then try to plant a flag on, a particular date.”

With violence at its lowest levels of the war, politicians in both the United States and Iraq are getting behind the idea of a departure timetable. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was first, suggesting he would have combat troops home within 16 months of Inauguration Day. The idea got a big boost during his overseas trip, when Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki indicated support for that general timeline.

During a Friday interview on CNN’s “The Situation Room,” Republican candidate John McCain, who had opposed setting a timeline, appeared to shift ground. McCain said that 16 months “is a pretty good timetable” but must be based on conditions on the ground.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration has embraced “time horizons” as it negotiates with the Iraqi government a status of forces agreement over the future role of U.S. troops. Petraeus said any timetable must have “a heck of a lot more granularity than the kind of very short-hand statements that have been put out.”

“We occasionally have commanders who have so many good weeks, (they think) it’s won. We’ve got this thing. Well we don’t. We’ve had so many good weeks. Right now, for example we’ve had two-and-a-half months of levels of violence not since March 2004,” he said from his office at Camp Victory.

“Well that’s encouraging. It’s heartening. It’s very welcome. But let’s keep our powder dry. . . .Let’s not let our guard down.”

Being farsighted enough to resist faddish intellectual trends is certainly a sign of intelligence and Petraeus proves anew why he can be trusted with leading American military efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan in his new role as CENTCOM commander. But as good as his advice is, it will only be effective if it is implemented by his civilian superiors.

Thus far, those superiors are implementing his advice. Should John McCain be elected President, they will continue to do so.

Should Barack Obama be elected President . . . well, you know the rest. And between Petraeus’s judgment and Obama’s, I know where I put my trust.

Brother Lane has already covered this matter at great and effective length, but it is certainly worth noting anew that a little more than a year after we were being told by the bien pensant community that we had lost in Iraq, it is now clear that we are winning and that for all practical purposes, the military stage of the reconstruction effort may be reaching an end. I am a cautious fellow, of course, and I would rather that we not let up but if the question of whether we can let up is in any way a reasonable question to ask these days, it is solely and exclusively due to the surge, the counterinsurgency effort and the extraordinary leadership of people like General Petraeus–who, of course, was mocked for the very ideas that have so dramatically turned the tide for American forces in Iraq.

Of course, Barack Obama has tried to be a Johnny-come-lately on this issue, telling us that we can leave now because the surge he derided, the surge he still won’t admit was appropriate to implement, helped bring about a significant improvement in Iraq. He will tell us that our troops and General Petraeus performed brilliantly but he won’t admit that the very plan they so brilliantly implemented was one that he opposed and one that he still will not give credit to for making life in Iraq better. I don’t know if he will get away with using the surge to his advantage to pursue a withdrawal plan that may be precipitous and will not consider conditions on the ground. But if he does, then the electorate and the punditry class will have fallen down on the job and will have paved the way for the implementation of a strategy that could reverse all of the gains the surge and the counterinsurgency plan have made.

Just a thought: Let’s try not to let that happen.

I haven’t yet had a chance to watch the speech Barack Obama gave in Berlin. But I have a feeling that it will not measure up to all of the hype and hysteria that have surrounded it. When a candidate for President gives a speech overseas, his audience is mainly used as props and the real focus of the speech are the folks back home. You know, the ones that vote. When a President gives a speech overseas, that speech is necessarily filled with substance and serious diplomatic meaning. The words of a President are consequential. The words of a candidate for President don’t amount to anything in diplomatic terms because a candidate for President is in no position whatsoever to promise anything.

Thus, I am not surprised by Andrew Ferguson’s review of the Obama speech. Seeing as how Barack Obama really didn’t have anything consequential to say and was just looking for a fabulous set of television images to be beamed back hom, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that for all of the great imagery, the speech Obama gave struck Ferguson as being nothing more than fluff. I will reserve full judgment until I have a change to watch the speech myself. But I imagine that I will wonder what the big deal was.

Somewhat relatedly, we are reminded anew that Obama does not meet with the foreign press to answer their questions. That’s the thing about his campaign. His undoubted eloquence causes many people to miss the fact that lots of times, he doesn’t appear to have anything interesting to say. But eventually, they catch on.

In the current round of Doha trade negotiations, the United States has made a positive gesture concerning agricultural subsidies:

The US on Tuesday made the first significant move in this week’s politically fraught meeting of trade ministers in Geneva, cutting its proposed ceiling for farm subsidies to $15bn a year.

The move would reduce US farm subsidies deemed to distort inter­national trade by about $2bn (€1.3bn, £1bn) compared with the current offer in the so-called “Doha round” of trade talks, much lower than the present ceiling of about $48bn.

But it would be comfortably above the US’s recent real spending in trade-distorting farm support, estimated at $7bn-$9bn a year.

Not bad. But not all that great either. Brazil is right on the money here:

Brazil and India, two of the US’s main negotiating partners in the struggling World Trade Organisation talks, dismissed the offer as inadequate. “This is a nice try but it is not enough,” said a spokesman for the Brazilian foreign minister, Celso Amorim. “It is not the final offer they can do.”

Indeed it isn’t. Agricultural subsides should be eliminated completely.