Experience is Overrated. What About IQ?

Until four years ago, no one had heard of our current Democratic nominee. “Who is Barack Obama?” asked CBS News after he was picked to deliver the keynote address at the Dems’ 2004 confab. “Not exactly a household name.” Four years later, that speech remains his biggest achievement. No landmark legislation bears his name. His claim to fame is his gift of gab.

But Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s newly-minted fame makes Obama, saddled with a resume so thin he pads it with the entry “community organizer,” look like an elder statesman. Governor of one of the nation’s least populous states for a mere two years and the ex-mayor of a municipality that’s home to 7000 souls, Palin is now positioned to be a proverbial heartbeat away from the ability to order ICBMs fired at Russia. (On January 20th McCain, a cancer survivor and hardly the picture of health, will be two years away from the average life expectancy for an American male.)

At least Obama went to law school. Along with a solid background in history, knowledge of the law is essential for a president.

Palin is a total unknown. A McCain adviser admits to The New York Times: “The campaign’s polling on Mr. McCain’s potential running mates was inconclusive on the selection of Ms. Palin–virtually no one had heard of her.”

Welcome to the year of the nobody, when people you’ve never heard of can blog or reality-show or, in the case of the political class, schmooze their way to fame and fortune. My favorite nobody of 2008 was a kid named Efraim Diveroli, the fast-talking 22-year-old president of a two-man arms trading outfit by the name of AEY, Inc. (Speaking of thin resumes, his business partner was a masseur by trade.)

On the strength of a charming smile and the lowest bid, the Pentagon awarded this joker a $300 million federal contract to supply munitions to the U.S. puppet government in Afghanistan. Three hundred million dollars!

“By 2005, when Mr. Diveroli became AEY’s president at age 19, the company was bidding across a spectrum of government agencies and providing paramilitary equipment–weapons, helmets, ballistic vests, bomb suits, batteries and chargers for X-ray machines–for American aid to Pakistan, Bolivia and elsewhere,” reported The Times. Alas, all good things end. Diveroli’s firm sluffed off a bunch of repackaged, outdated and substandard Chinese-made shells from Albania to the Afghans, who knew enough about war materiel to complain to their American masters.

Lest I make myself misunderstood, I’m not claiming that experience is a reliable indicator of performance. The members of George W. Bush’s cabinet had collectively spent more than a century of their lives serving in federal government. That didn’t prevent them from bankrupting the treasury or standing by passively as a hurricane destroyed New Orleans. Nor am I impressed by fancy credentials. As many financial services workers can attest, few employees are more poorly prepared for real-world economics than those with MBAs. Journalism schools produce stenographers, not journalists.

Resume entries aside, history shows that certain personality traits–especially intelligence and open-mindedness–make for better presidents. Also helpful are a variety of life experiences, such as familiarity with other countries and cultures and overcoming tough times.

By most measures, Palin is a weird choice. Like Geena Davis in the 2005 TV series “Commander in Chief,” she could wake up one morning to find that McCain has shuffled off to the great POW camp in the sky. We would probably be in trouble.

As far as we know, Sarah Palin faced her biggest personal challenge a year ago. According to official accounts, she learned that she was pregnant with a child with Down Syndrome. She decided to keep him. It has to be heart-breaking. Still, as a right-wing opponent of abortion rights, however, the decision not to abort had to have been simple to make. Also on the knocked-up front, she and McCain actively attempted to cover up the fact that her 17-year-old daughter has a bun in the oven. Icky, icky. Zero integrity points for sucking up to the Christianist Right.

Palin’s teen daughter intends to carry the child to term–a decision one hopes she was able to make free of pressure from her ambitious mother.

More worrisome is an incurious intellect that dovetails regrettably with Palin’s past as a beauty queen. “Ms. Palin appears to have traveled very little outside the United States,” reported The Times. “In July 2007, she had to get a passport before she visited members of the Alaska National Guard stationed in Kuwait.” Yet Anchorage is a major hub for flights to Japan, Korea and China. She never felt like checking out Canada?

Asked about rumors the Alaska governor was being considered as McCain’s running mate, she told CNBC: “As for that VP talk all the time, I’ll tell you, I still can’t answer that question until somebody answers for me what is it exactly that the VP does every day? I’m used to being very productive and working real hard in an administration. We want to make sure that that VP slot would be a fruitful type of position, especially for Alaskans and for the things that we’re trying to accomplish up here for the rest of the U.S., before I can even start addressing that question.”

“Working real hard”? Doesn’t the University of Idaho require its graduates to learn English? Does she know that she isn’t running for VP of Alaska? Or that the VP presides over the Senate? With the nation facing enormous economic, political and military challenges, do we need another numbnut in the White House?

At least Palin knows something many other Republicans don’t. “We are a nation at war,” she told Business Week, “and in many [ways] the reasons for war are fights over energy sources.” Palin has grammar trouble. But she knows why we’re in Iraq.

Two of Palin’s opponents in the 2006 Alaska governor’s race were baffled at Palin’s lack of substance. “She wouldn’t have articulated one coherent policy and people would just be fawning all over her,” Republican-Independent Andrew Halcro told The Times. “[Democratic candidate Tony Knowles] and I looked at each other and it was, like, this isn’t about policy or Alaska issues, this is about people’s most basic instincts: ‘I like you, and you make me feel good.'”

God bless America. We’re going to need all the help we can get.

COPYRIGHT 2008 TED RALL

Obama on the Ropes

Democrats are fired up about Obama. Belying Will Rogers’ adage that as a Democrat he didn’t belong to any organized political party, this year finds the DNC uncharacteristically well funded and startlingly organized. Running against an incumbent likely to go down as this country’s worst leader in history, Democrats couldn’t ask for a more favorable political climate. “Watergate is the last time things were so overwhelmingly tilted against the Republicans,” Duke University political scientist David Rohde tells the Bloomberg wire service.

McCain ought to be a pushover. At a time when Americans are tired of Iraq as well as the “good war” against Afghanistan, the GOP standard bearer’s narrative is military: career Navy, POW, wants to send more young men and women to Iraq.

Yet the latest Gallup poll (conducted August 22-24) has Obama neck and neck with McCain, with 45 percent each, with a two percent margin of error. CNN (August 21-23) yields identical results, a 47-47 tie with a 3.5 percent margin of error. What’s up?

This year’s presidential race, as I’ve been saying for months, is Barack Obama’s to lose. And though he hasn’t committed any major gaffes–no joy rides in any tanks or senior moments when asked how many houses he owns–he hasn’t taken the swings he needs to wallop this thing out of the park.

Obama leaves nothing to chance, coolly hugging every twist and turn of the campaign trail with pre-2000 Rovian efficiency. His campaign’s professionalism is a welcome departure from the witless incompetence that has characterized the last eight years of federal governance. But it comes at a price–the same joylessness of inevitability that killed Hillary in the primaries.

Joe Biden is yet another sacrifice to the gods of pragmatism, a chance to boldly seize the moment squandered. Memo to future campaign managers: don’t con millions of saps into telling you their cellphone numbers so they can get a personalized spam telling them about your VP pick an hour after it’s announced on TV. Even better, don’t make a big deal about your VP unless your VP is a big deal.

In 1996 Bob Dole enjoyed a nine-point bump in the polls after announcing Jack Kemp as his running mate. Bush and Gore in 2000 and Kerry in 2004 picked up between three and five percentage points after naming their veeps. The Biden bump was zero. Amazing but true–Joe Lieberman was a bigger asset than Biden. In Biden’s defense, big announcements don’t get much news traction when they break on a Saturday in late August.

Maybe Biden can deliver Delaware.

Obama and his advisers, probably still a little amazed that they got this far with what would normally have been a test candidacy designed to lay the groundwork for a later race, have apparently forgotten how their guy first broke out. Back in December, before the Iowa caucus, Obama was the guy who reminded Americans of a time when politicians knew how to talk and inspire them. He was young at a time when old guys like Dick Cheney were screwing up the world. He was optimistic when voters’ confidence was all but non-existent.

Remember hope? Audacity? Change? Platitudes all, and wonderful marketing for a country that was anything but post-partisan, much less post-political.

Audacity has been in short supply since Obama collected his 2118th delegate on June 3rd. Pandering to racist whites who think black guys are a bunch of child-abandoning layabouts, he delivered a speech slagging them as deadbeat dads. He flip-flopped on domestic spying, voting to grant immunity to telecommunications companies that illegally let the NSA listen to your phone calls. He even changed his mind about offshore oil drilling, which will crap up beaches while prices at the pump remain exactly the same.

There’s nothing wrong with Joe Biden. He’s a safe pick–experienced and smart, he offers foreign policy cred to make up for Obama’s short resume. Biden will be a good attack dog, assuming the campaign decides to use him as such. But he’s an uninspired and uninspiring choice.

Personally, I’m glad Obama didn’t pick Hillary. She would have overshadowed him. John Edwards, my pick for president in the primaries and for veep after he dropped out, has been hobbled by the revelation that he had an affair (with the apparent consent of his wife, but whatever). But either Clinton or Edwards would have been a better choice than Joe Biden. They’re different, they’re controversial, they’re…a change. Unlike Biden, people would have talked about them.

Obama’s politics are neither complex nor internally inconsistent. They are opportunist. Whatever works with voters is good. “His philosophy is ambition,” Cooper Union historian Fred Siegel told the New York Times. “I see him as having a rhetoric rather than a philosophy.”

Obama’s campaign relies on imagery, not ideology. He has fans, not supporters. He won the Democratic nomination by acting like a rock star, not a politician. Turning to traditional politics (as he did by picking Biden) will expose his weaknesses on a playing field on which he has little experience–and could cost him the presidency.

(C) 2008 TED RALL, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Polish Missile Crisis: Bush’s Last War?

The Cold War is over,” Condi Rice said last week. This may be true. She and her lame duck boss seem to be starting up a hot one instead.

Imagine Russian or Chinese military bases in Tijuana or Ciudad Juárez, across the Mexican border from El Paso. Add some more in Toronto and Vancouver. Now imagine that Russia managed to persuade Canada and Mexico to join it in some weird new Eastern bloc military alliance whose purpose was to “contain” the U.S., and then placed a battery of long-range missiles in one or both countries. How long would it take before we went to war?

Of course, you don’t need an imagination. The U.S. didn’t tolerate Soviet missiles in Cuba, and is still trying to overthrow its government.

Given America’s refusal to accept an unfriendly regime in its neighborhood–remember Grenada?–you’d think it would know enough to stay out of Russia’s hair. You’d be wrong.

Driven by its twin original sins of greed and arrogance, the United States began nibbling at Russia’s edges soon after the breakup of the Soviet Union. The Clinton Administration wooed oil-rich ex-Soviet states such as Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. It’s as if Florida were to declare independence, and crawled into bed with Iran.

Efforts to de-Russify the old Soviet sphere of influence accelerated under Bush, who used 9/11 and the “war on terror” as a pretext to establish permanent military bases in the Central Asian republics of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan. Bush’s CIA even funded a coup d’état in Kyrgyzstan, which overthrew Central Asia’s only democratically elected president.

Central Asia, under Russia’s sphere of influence for more than 150 years, began playing host to CIA “black sites” and other U.S. torture facilities.

The U.S. invited ex-Soviet bloc states–the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, the Baltic states–to join NATO, the Cold War-era anti-Russian military alliance. Recently, it even encouraged the former Soviet republics of Ukraine and Georgia to apply for membership, emboldening Georgia in its recent conflict with Russia.

Now the Bush Administration has convinced Poland to base ten RIM-161 Standard Interceptor Missiles (SM-3) along Russia’s western border.

Republics that were once part of or fell under the influence of the Soviet Union are sovereign states. They are legally and morally permitted to form alliances with any other nation they choose, including the U.S. Still, you have to wonder: Don’t these guys own a map? Doesn’t it make more sense to suck up to the superpower next door than the one an ocean away?

From our perspective: Why would the U.S. think provoking Russia by encroaching on its traditional sphere of influence is a good idea?

For Russia, using newfound oil wealth to rebuild its military, the Polish-American missile deal is the line in the sand. Annual defense budget increases of 20 percent or more, which should bring at least half of its hardware up to modern standards by 2015, have transformed the dying dog of Yeltsin-era “shock economics” back into a growling bear.

“Poland, by deploying [U.S. missiles] is exposing itself to a [nuclear] strike–100 percent,” says top Russian general Anatoly Nogovitsyn. The Russian government stood by his threat.

The U.S. claims the Russians have nothing to fear. “It [the missile system] is not aimed in any way at Russia,” says Condi. Indeed, interceptor missiles are designed to shoot down other missiles, not launch attacks. But the Russians don’t want to see their ability to strike first–a right also reserved by the U.S.–degraded by an anti-missile system. They also worry about the slippery slope: what new weapons will the U.S. place in Eastern Europe later on?

Russia’s concerns are no different than ours would be if they were the ones arming Canada against us. But Condi’s reassurances are too cute by half.

Shortly before signing the missile deal with Poland, she commented: “This will help us to deal with the new threats of the 21st century, of long-range missile threats from countries like Iran or from North Korea.” Sounds reasonable–except for geography.

Nearly 2000 miles separates Iran and Poland. North Korea is nearly 5000 miles away from Poland. But Iran’s longest-range missile, the Shahab-3, can only go 1200 miles–about the same as North Korea’s equivalent. When you factor in the fact that America’s Poland-based SM-3s only travel about 300 miles, it is mathematically impossible for them to intercept anything launched by Iran or North Korea.

The U.S. is occupying two of the largest nations bordering Iran–Afghanistan and Iraq. Wouldn’t building a missile shield there make a zillion times more sense? As for North Korea, well, we have a base in Okinawa, not to mention 25,000 troops in South Korea.

Meanwhile, Condi is trying to recruit more former Soviet republics for NATO. “We are going to help rebuild Georgia into a strong Georgian state,” Rice told Fox News. “The Russians will have failed in their effort to undermine Georgia. And we will be looking at what we can do with the states around that region as well.”

Are the Bushies trying to create a “national emergency” pretext for canceling the presidential election? Are they crazy Christians lusting for the end times? Or are they just nuts? No one knows their motives. But it’s hard to escape the conclusion that, after lying us into two losing wars, Cheney & Co. are using their closing months to try to provoke the mother of them all.

COPYRIGHT 2008 TED RALL

Why Obama Is in Trouble

Unless something happens, John McCain will win.

Of course, “unless something happens” is the biggest qualifier in the world, more than adequate to CYA me should Obama prevail. It’s politics. There are almost three months. Odds are something will happen.

Still, it wasn’t supposed to be this way. Obama’s electoral handicaps–his racial identification and short resume–should have easily been eclipsed by Bush’s–er, McCain’s well-stocked aviary of albatrosses. McCain was and remains short of money. His campaign organization is a mess. Republican bosses are unenthusiastic, both about his prospects and about the direction he would take his party should he win. He has aligned himself with the most unpopular aspect of the wildly unpopular outgoing administration, the Iraq War. At a time when economically insecure voters are staring down the barrel of a recession-cum-depression, McCain promises more of the same–no help is on the way. And he’s old. Sooo painfully I-don’t-use-the-Internet old.

What is it that has the politerati betting on a McCain Administration? Historical precedent. During most presidential election years, Republicans tend to surge in the last few months of the campaign. For a Democrat to win in November, he must have a comfortable lead in the polls at this stage in the game.

The classic example is 1976, Jimmy Carter led incumbent Gerald Ford by 33 percentage points. Ford was hobbled by Watergate, a recession, and his pardon of Nixon, as well as his dismal performance in the debates, where he claimed that the Soviet Union wasn’t dominating eastern Europe. Nevertheless, Ford closed the lead, losing to Carter by just two points. This follows the pattern, albeit by a wider margin than in most elections.

In recent years, the countervailing example is the 1992 contest between Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, the incumbent. After the Democratic National Convention in August, Clinton was only ahead of Bush by a few points. Clinton won, but only because independent Ross Perot, a businessman with libertarian leanings, attracted so many votes from registered Republicans.

Perot ran again in 1996, but was less of a factor. So the old pattern reasserted itself. Clinton led Bob Dole by roughly 20 percent in mid-August, but won by eight. Republicans always close the gap.

It happened again in 2000. In mid-August, Al Gore had an eight-point lead ahead of George W. Bush. Gore won the popular vote by 0.6 percent.

If you’re a Democrat, being ahead isn’t enough. In 2004 John Kerry was ahead in mid-August–but by just two points. Bush was an incumbent with potentially grave weaknesses–he hadn’t found Osama or Iraq’s supposed WMDs, and he was already losing the war–yet the pattern reasserted itself. Bush gained four points, prevailing in the popular vote by 2.4 percent. (I won’t comment on the electoral vote, aside from mentioning that it was stolen in the key state of Ohio.)

If Barack Obama ends up beating John McCain, he will have done so with the smallest August lead for a Democrat in memory–three points, within the statistical margin of error for tracking polls. A columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times argues that’s good news: “Out of the gate,” writes Carol Marin, “the thoroughbred who leads too early and by too great a margin is more often than not the vulnerable one, the one in danger of losing it all to the horse who strategically holds back, waits, and then thunders in the final furlongs to finish first.” Nice metaphor, but presidential campaigns aren’t horse races. They’re boxing matches. The last man standing wins.

If the election were held today, Obama would win. But it won’t be, so he might not. Republicans fight harder than Democrats, so Republicans land more punches. Democrats, at least Democrats of the wimpy post-LBJ variety–need to start ahead in order to eek out a victory.

Unless Obama starts swinging soon, he’s done for. Insiders are tut-tutting over Ohio, an important swing state this year. Given the decade-long recession and voter anger there–not to mention a significant African-American population–Obama ought to be kicking McCain six ways to Sunday. But the two candidates are neck and neck in fundraising. “For McCain to even be competitive is surprising to me,” says Chris Duncan, chairman of the political science department at the University of Dayton. “I don’t think it’s that he’s doing better than expected. I think it’s that Obama is doing worse than he would expect.”

Vincent Hutchings of the University of Michigan wonders if the Obama campaign is counting too much on young voters. “Is he generating enough enthusiasm to excite people who lack a formal education and are disproportionately young, and not likely to vote?” he asks.

As I argued in my 2004 polemic “Wake Up! You’re Liberal: How We Can Take America Back From the Right,” American voters feel besieged. At home, they see prices rising while their salaries get gnawed away by inflation. From a foreign affairs standpoint, they see a world full of terrorists and hostile rivals–Iran, North Korea, Russia, China–out to get them. As a psychologist would say, the fact that there isn’t much truth to this perception doesn’t make it less real.

Americans want their presidents to be a National Daddy–an ornery cuss willing to err on the side of kicking some innocent schlub’s ass to protect them.

Last time around, in 2004, John Kerry repeatedly turned the other jowl as Bush and his proxies pounded him with the now-notorious Swift Boat ads. Of course, whether Kerry’s Vietnam service rose to the level of heroism was debatable. What wasn’t was that Bush weaseled out of going at all. But Kerry never responded. If the guy won’t fight for himself, voters asked themselves, how will he fight for me?

Obama has already traveled too far down the Path of the Kerry, repeatedly voting for funding a war his entire candidacy is predicated upon opposing, not to mention government spying on U.S. citizens and, most recently, the embarrassingly cheesy spectacle of endorsing offshore oil drilling. I mean, really: Do any right-wing conservatives believe he really means any of this stuff?

If he is to make history by salvaging his campaign from its current neck-and-neck status with McCain, Obama will have to rally the Democrats’ liberal base by throwing them some red meat: immediate withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, socialized medicine and a sweeping credit crisis bailout plan (all interest rates legally reset to prime) would be a start. He’ll also need to beat up McCain (fairly) for agreeing with Bush about just about everything–and pledge to hold the Bushies responsible for their crimes.

COPYRIGHT 2008 TED RALL