As odd as it may seem there are other things happening in the world outside of the American presidential election. One of these is that it has been reported that Iran has increased the number of centrifuges it has deployed for enriching uranium to 4,000:
TEHRAN, Iran - Iran has increased the number of operating centrifuges at its uranium enrichment plant to 4,000, a top official said Friday, pushing ahead with the nuclear program despite threats of new U.N. sanctions.
The number was up from the 3,000 centrifuges that Iran announced in November that it was operating at its plant in the central city of Natanz. Still, it is well below the 6,000 it said last year it would operate by summer 2008, suggesting the program may be behind schedule.
Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Reza Sheikh Attar, who visited Natanz last week, said Friday that Iran was preparing to install even more centrifuges, though he did not offer a timeframe.
“Right now, nearly 4,000 centrifuges are operating at Natanz,” Attar told the state news agency IRNA. “Currently, 3,000 other centrifuges are being installed.”
If Iran is ever to start producing weapons-grade HEU it is likely to be at Natanz. This news is unlikely to make capitals in Western Europe feel any more comfortable with the situation in Iran. Nor in Washington, for that matter.
With its increasing international isolation over its activities in the Caucasus Russia is unlikely to feel in a cooperative mood about imposing increased sanctions on its client, Iran.
Team Obama is shrewdly lowering expectations, saying they may well not get any bounce at all from their convention.
That, of course, would be a first. Yesterday, when Gallup’s poll showed a 3 point uptick in their rolling average, I said that it could either be an actual bounce or random fluctuation caused by sampling error. Now, though, we’re starting to see the beginnings of a trend: Obama’s +4 (up 4 points) in Rasmussen and +6 (up 3 points) in Gallup, the only two national polls released since the convention started.
Here’s what the RealClearPolitics rolling average of polls looks like:
So, Obama’s up a little and McCain’s down a little. Since the new polls don’t include reaction to last night’s speech, which is what most casual observers in the process would have watched. We should expect, therefore, this trend to continue and the numbers to go up slightly.
My pre-convention SWAG was a bounce of 4-5 points. I’ll stick to that story for now.
BREAKING: Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has been tabbed as John McCain’s vice presidential running mate, CNBC reports.
________________________
Earlier this morning, all signs were pointing to Tim Pawlenty as John McCain’s running mate. He even had issued the requisite “I’m not the guy” statement.
His name has been on the short list all along and, while he’s not an exciting choice, he doesn’t bring the liability of the other names that we’ve been hearing.
Mitt Romney is the obvious choice. Despite Mike Huckabee ultimately getting a few more votes by hanging in long after it was over, Romney was easily the second choice of Republican primary voters. He’s attractive, relatively young, and has a strong resume. But he and McCain seem to genuinely dislike each other and there are plenty of negative sound bytes from the primaries for the Democrats to use in their ads. And then there’s the “he owns more than one house” problem. And the Mormon problem.
Huckabee would be the best choice if the election were going to be decided by Evangelicals. It won’t be, however.
Joe Lieberman would be the guy if it McCain had his druthers. The two are good friends and would work well together. It would also be the boldest serious choice available and a strong play in the contest to attract moderates and even conservative Democrats. But it’s too risky. McCain has enough trouble with the base that he’s not going to be able to pull the trigger on a pro-choice fellow who, despite being hated by the Democrats, votes with his former party 80 percent of the time.
Condi Rice, Sarah Palin, Bobby Jindal and other longshot choices would liven up the race. They’d also undercut key parts of McCain’s message. Neither Palin nor Jindal are more experienced than Obama and it’s hard to run as a maverick who’s not a third Bush term running with Bush’s chief foreign policy advisor.
UPDATE: ABC reports that Palin in still in Alaska, seeming to rule her out logistically. They also report that Pawlenty has received a call saying he’s not the guy. Which means, as it did with Biden, he’s either 1) actually not the guy or 2) telling a little white lie to keep the suspense going a little longer.
UPDATE II: Now AP says, “Two GOP strategists close to the McCain campaign said all indications pointed to Palin.” Drudge has had a McCain-Palin logo atop his site most of the morning, despite no links to stories (until this one) indicating Palin was a likely choice.
Aside from being young and hot-for-a-politician, though, Palin undercuts McCain’s entire campaign theme. She’s got less political experience and less foreign policy experience than Obama.
UPDATE: More from CNBC, which seems to be the first to go on the record with Palin as the choice.
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a self-styled “hockey mom” who has only been governor for a little over a year, is GOP Presidential candidate John McCain’s choice for Vice President, CNBC has learned. According to a Republican strategist, Palin is the nominee, though McCain’s campaign has not comfirmed this. [But have they confirmed it? -ed.]
[...]
At 44, Palin is younger than Obama and, like McCain, she calls herself a maverick.
I’d never heard of Palin before the VP buzz started on the blogs a while back. She’s supposedly an excellent campaigner. And, obviously, her youth and gender make her a bold pick. Ultimately, though, I think she doesn’t make sense. If you’re running on “the country’s security is too important to be run by neophytes,” you can’t have one as next in line.
While Joe Biden was, twice, an awful presidential candidate, he’s a plausible president. Sarah Palin is not.
Palin, 44, who’s in her first term as governor, is a pioneering figure in Alaska, the first woman and the youngest person to hold the state’s top political job.
She catapulted to the post with a strong reputation as a political outsider, forged during her stint in local politics. She was mayor and a council member of the small town of Wasilla and was chairman of the state Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, which regulates Alaska’s oil and gas resources, in 2003 and 2004.
The conservative Palin defeated two so-called political insiders to win the governor’s job — incumbent Gov. Frank Murkowski in the GOP primary and former two-term Democratic Gov. Tony Knowles in the 2006 general election.
Palin made her name in part by backing tough ethical standards for politicians. During the first legislative session after her election, her administration passed a state ethics law overhaul.
Palin’s term has not been without controversy. A legislative investigation is looking into allegations that Palin fired Alaska’s public safety commissioner because he refused to fire the governor’s former brother-in-law, a state trooper. Palin acknowledged that a member of her staff made a call to a trooper in which the staffer suggested he was speaking for the governor. Palin has admitted that the call could be interpreted as pressure to fire state trooper Mike Wooten, who was locked in a child-custody battle with Palin’s sister. “I am truly disappointed and disturbed to learn that a member of this administration contacted the Department of Public Safety regarding Trooper Wooten,” Palin said. “At no time did I authorize any member of my staff to do so.”
She’s going to make us pine for the days of Dan Quayle, methinks.
TIME, at least, is happy with the boldness of the pick, going with the headline: “McCain’s Surprise Pick: Sarah Palin.” The text, thus far, is just AP wire copy.
The move is the most dramatic in a series of efforts to appeal to Hillary Clinton supporters still disappointed that she didn’t capture the Democratic nomination. Gov. Palin also reinforces Sen. McCain’s reformer image. She took on her state’s political establishment that had been rocked by an FBI corruption investigation.
[...]
At the same time, her thin resume runs the risk of undercutting a central attack by Sen. McCain against Sen. Obama: That he isn’t ready to serve as president. The ability of Sen. McCain’s vice president to step into the top job is seen as particularly important given his age: He turns 72 today and would be the oldest person ever to enter the White House.
Even as Alaska governor, Gov. Palin has been criticized for her sparse experience. “Sarah is a small town mayor running Alaska as if it’s a small town,” says Frank Smith, a former union and Democratic Party activist in Alaska. “McCain is out of his mind. He has no foreign policy experience and she’ll help because she’s been fishing in Canada.”
[...]
The Republican Party’s conservative base — long wary of Sen. McCain and angry in recent weeks about hints he may pick a pro-choice running mate — hailed the move.
“Conservatives will be thrilled with this pick. Gov. Palin is a down the line mainstream conservative who will energize the base and reach across party lines attracting women voters, independents and blue collar Democrats,” Greg Mueller, a Republican strategist, and former aide to Republican presidential candidates Steve Forbes and Pat Buchanan, said in a blast email. “Governor Palin is a terrific contrast to the all Washington ticket of Obama-Biden. She is a wonderful contrast to Biden, and a truly outside the beltway pick.”
We’ll see what the reaction turns out to be. I’m certainly not the target audience. But McCain’s first big decision is, in my mind, a truly awful one. Obama went traditional but steady in Biden. It wasn’t a bold pick but it was one that butressed his claim that he has judgment even though he lacks experience. McCain has done the opposite here.
Update: I’ll have more on Palin in subsequent threads as I get to know her a bit better and have time to digest it. Since my take has been so negative, though, I thought I’d add some praise from an unlikely source, Charles Homans, a new editor at Washington Monthly who “lived in and reportedon Alaska for the entirety of Sarah Palin’s tenure as governor.”
Palin can legitimately claim the maverick reformist credentials that McCain himself has long since lost. Her pro-life record helps McCain with the Republican base, her gender might lure away a few Hillary bitter-enders, and her youth goes a little way towards compensating one of McCain’s major weaknesses. Palin also manages the Obama-esque feat of commanding a great deal of popularity among people who don’t really know what she stands for–Dave Dittman, an Anchorage-based pollster, who has done a lot of polling and thinking about this, pointed out to me several months ago that Palin was maintaining a 85 percent approval rating among Alaskan voters even when her policies (particularly a natural gas line deal that has been a signature ambition of her administration) polled far short of that, and even when voters had trouble accurately describing her political leanings. She also pretty much guarantees a McCain victory in her home state, where Obama has been polling astoundingly well (Alaska hasn’t gone for a Democrat since Lyndon Johnson).
It’s not much, to be sure, but useful in an admission against interests sort of way. That Mark Levin and the like are stoked is, by contrast, decidedly less comforting.
There’s an interesting quote and observation in the New York Times article about the failure of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a regional organization consisting of Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, to support Russia’s action in the Caucasus:
Although the Central Asian states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan fall within what Moscow considers its sphere of influence, and all seem to accept Russian hegemony to a certain degree, they nevertheless strive to limit Moscow’s reach and preserve their own independence of action.
“It would have been very important to have gotten direct support from these states, which very closely work and depend on Russia, but Moscow didn’t get any support aside from general statements,” said Nikolay Petrov, an expert in Russian politics with the Carnegie Moscow Center. He added that the Central Asian states’ refusal to overtly back Moscow was an indication of the “limits of Russia’s influence.”
In the tug of war between Russia’s desire to secure international backing and China’s fear of encouraging any separatist movements, the Chinese position apparently won out. Beijing is concerned not only about Xinjiang but also about an independence movement in Taiwan, which it claims as a renegade province, and the claims for greater autonomy in Tibet.
Russia’s influence in the region had been thought to be increasing but the cost of its invasion of the Caucasus may not only have been to reveal that its influence is limited but actually to curtail it. The message here would seem to be that Russia’s influence there is based mostly on the force of its arms. When comparing Russia’s economic might to China’s, China is clearly the strong horse.
I wrote a quick post before bed last night giving my off-the-cuff reaction to Barack Obama’s nomination acceptance speech, arguing that, despite all the talk of “change,” it was basically a speech that Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, or John Kerry could have given.
The NYT has a six-page transcript of the speech as delivered. Let’s skip the biography and gotcha attack lines and go through the policy pronouncements. These are problems for which he’s blamed George W. Bush and has promised to fix if elected president.
[M]ore Americans are out of work and more are working harder for less. More of you have lost your homes and even more are watching your home values plummet. More of you have cars you can’t afford to drive, credit cards, bills you can’t afford to pay, and tuition that’s beyond your reach.
Exactly zero of these are within the power of the president to fix. Seriously, what does he propose to do about housing prices reaching equilibrium and people borrowing to live lifestyles they can’t afford?
We’re a better country than one where a man in Indiana has to pack up the equipment that he’s worked on for 20 years and watch as it’s shipped off to China, and then chokes up as he explains how he felt like a failure when he went home to tell his family the news.
So, we’re going to ban trade with China? Ban American companies from participating in the global marketplace? Radically raise the cost that 300 million Americans pay for consumer goods to keep a relative handful of people employed in sectors where First World nations have lost their comparative advantage?
We are more compassionate than a government that lets veterans sleep on our streets and families slide into poverty…
So, we’re going to return to locking up drug addicts and people with non-dangerous mental disorders? We’re going to guarantee everyone a minimum income?
We measure the strength of our economy not by the number of billionaires we have or the profits of the Fortune 500, but by whether someone with a good idea can take a risk and start a new business, or whether the waitress who lives on tips can take a day off and look after a sick kid without losing her job, an economy that honors the dignity of work.
Don’t people start new businesses every day in this country? And isn’t his party the one that wants to erect regulatory barriers making it harder to start new businesses? For that matter, don’t waitresses get days off already? I’m pretty sure they do.
Implicit in this sentence, though, are the inherent contradictions in Democratic domestic policy. The more mandates we put on small businesses, the harder it is for them to succeed. Sure, it would be great if even unskilled labor got terrific benefits, including paid family leave. But somebody’s got to pay for that. If it’s the customer, it makes the product or service less attractive. If it’s coming out of the owner’s pocket, it makes hiring employees less attractive. If it’s the government, it takes money out of everyone’s pocket — including those with dreams of starting their own business. Including the very waitress who we’re trying to help. Whose salary, incidentally, will naturally go down as a result of the policy — if she’s hired to begin with.
Ours — ours is a promise that says government cannot solve all our problems, but what it should do is that which we cannot do for ourselves: protect us from harm and provide every child a decent education; keep our water clean and our toys safe; invest in new schools, and new roads, and science, and technology.
Now this is terrific line. It starts off appealing to conservatives and moderates and then promises a chicken in every pot. Who can be opposed to these things, after all? Why, mean old out-of-touch people like John McCain, that’s who!
But how does this translate into policy?
Protect us from harm. Keeping foreign enemies from attacking us and domestic criminals from terrorizing the innocent is the fundamental purpose of government, one could argue. But we’ve been trying to do these things since Day 1. One suspects, though, he’s defining “harm” much more broadly.
Decent education for all. I’m for it. But isn’t that a local responsibility? The federal government doesn’t run too many schools, after all, aside from those on military bases and diplomatic outposts. And what does “decent” mean, exactly?
Are we going to have government only do “that which we cannot do for ourselves”? Or is it going to invest in science and technology?
Change means a tax code that doesn’t reward the lobbyists who wrote it, but the American workers and small businesses who deserve it.
Don’t workers and small businesses have lobbyists? And why is government in the business of deciding who “deserves” to keep the money they earned?
I will stop giving tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas, and I will start giving them to companies that create good jobs right here in America.
They’re the same companies!
I will — listen now — I will cut taxes — cut taxes — for 95 percent of all working families, because, in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle class.
This is another great line. It sounds very New Democrat. But, really, it’s the same old class warfare: We’re going to cut taxes for most people — even though we’ve just listed trillions in new spending programs — while raising them on those already paying the largest burden. But, hey, 19 out of 20 people will like it! Democracy! As Dave Schuler likes to say, “When you rob Peter to pay Paul, you can always count on the support of Paul.”
And for the sake of our economy, our security, and the future of our planet, I will set a clear goal as president: In 10 years, we will finally end our dependence on oil from the Middle East.
We will do this. Washington — Washington has been talking about our oil addiction for the last 30 years. And, by the way, John McCain has been there for 26 of them.
And Joe Biden 35 of them, by the way.
This is sheer fantasy. Of late, it’s become a bipartisan one, since even President Bush has spouted similar platitudes. It’s simply not going to happen.
And I’ll invest $150 billion over the next decade in affordable, renewable sources of energy — wind power, and solar power, and the next generation of biofuels — an investment that will lead to new industries and 5 million new jobs that pay well and can’t be outsourced.
Man, if $150 billion would do this Exxon would already be doing it.
I’ll recruit an army of new teachers, and pay them higher salaries, and give them more support. And in exchange, I’ll ask for higher standards and more accountability.
I suppose they’ll work side-by-side with the 100,000 new policemen Bill Clinton put on the beat.
Teachers are hired, trained, and supervised at the state and local level. Even if we federalize them, how is it that we’re going to attract better caliber people to do a job that’s often thankless and repetitive? Simply by paying them more? And what are these “higher standards”? Test scores? Democrats don’t like that measure. No Child Left Behind, Part Deux.
Granted, Clinton and others have made this promise and it’s almost certainly rhetoric that won’t translate into policy. If it did, though, we’re likely to see the repeat of federalizing airport security screeners: The same people doing the job as before but making more money and even harder to fire for poor performance.
And we will keep our promise to every young American: If you commit to serving your community or our country, we will make sure you can afford a college education.
What does this mean, exactly? If, say, you work in a soup kitchen a couple hours a week, we’ll send you to Harvard?
If you have health care — if you have health care, my plan will lower your premiums. If you don’t, you’ll be able to get the same kind of coverage that members of Congress give themselves.
So, if I don’t have a job, I get the same coverage we provide for 535 elites making executive salaries? Groovy. No scaling problems there.
I will make certain those companies stop discriminating against those who are sick and need care the most.
I think we have different definitions of “insurance.”
Now is the time to help families with paid sick days and better family leave, because nobody in America should have to choose between keeping their job and caring for a sick child or an ailing parent.
See our earlier discussion on this. Look, I’m for this. That’s a situation I’ve never been in and would dearly hate to be in. But who’s going to pay for it? A small business owner with, say, five employees almost certainly can’t afford to pay one of them for an extended period while not reaping the benefits of their work. Nor, realistically, can he afford to pay a temp to come in and do that work while paying the person he’s replacing. Large companies can probably absorb this sort of thing more easily — and many in fact do so — but, then again, large companies have more employees and therefore a greater likelihood of having to pay this out.
Or is this going to be some sort of government insurance program? If so, are we going to pay everyone on a capped basis, as with unemployment insurance? Or are we going to pay, say, an executive with a sick kid $20,000 a month while she’s out? What if her company sends good American jobs to China?
And now is the time to keep the promise of equal pay for an equal day’s work, because I want my daughters to have the exact same opportunities as your sons.
Dude, the 1970s are over.
Obama’s a bright guy. He anticipated these objections and dealt with them squarely:
Now, many of these plans will cost money, which is why I’ve laid out how I’ll pay for every dime: by closing corporate loopholes and tax havens that don’t help America grow.
But I will also go through the federal budget line by line, eliminating programs that no longer work and making the ones we do need work better and cost less, because we cannot meet 21st-century challenges with a 20th-century bureaucracy.
I mean, seriously, we’re going to pay for all this by closing loopholes?! We quite literally couldn’t pay for it if we closed the entire federal government excepting the Defense Department and the Social Security Administration.
Yes, government must lead on energy independence, but each of us must do our part to make our homes and businesses more efficient.
The cameras didn’t show Jimmy Carter but I’m sure he was smiling. And wearing a sweater. While turning his thermostat down to 72.
[W]e must also admit that programs alone can’t replace parents, that government can’t turn off the television and make a child do her homework, that fathers must take more responsibility to provide love and guidance to their children.
Agreed. One small problem: They ain’t gonna.
Turning to foreign policy, the speech was actually much stronger there. I actually agreed with much of it, including some of the contrasts he drew with Bush and McCain. Two exceptions:
You know, John McCain likes to say that he’ll follow bin Laden to the gates of Hell, but he won’t even follow him to the cave where he lives.
We have no clue as to which cave bin Laden lives. Or if he lives in a cave. Or he’s still alive.
Do we seriously believe that, if he could, Bush wouldn’t be killing or capturing bin Laden? His approval ratings would jump 25 points.
We are the party of Roosevelt. We are the party of Kennedy. So don’t tell me that Democrats won’t defend this country. Don’t tell me that Democrats won’t keep us safe.
I agree with the underlying premise here: Of course Democrats want to keep the country safe and, goodness knows, Democrats aren’t any more reluctant to send troops into harm’s way than Republicans. One probably doesn’t want to invoke JFK here, though. Bay of Pigs. Taking us much closer to the brink of nuclear holocaust than we’ve ever been. Vietnam.
Look, I realize that I’m not the target audience here and that convention speeches are often full of platitudes and sops to the base. My guess is that John McCain’s will be, too — and we’ll criticize that, too. But don’t base your entire campaign on “CHANGE” and give me warmed over ideas from the Carter administration.
Obama Photo: Linda Davidson/The Washington Post. Magic pony via Adam Stein.
Can somebody send this link to Wikipedia’s entry on deadweight loss to the Obama campaign (and the McCain campaign too)? This is one of the reasons why there is no such thing as a magic energy pony that is going to allow us to “end our dependence on Middle Eastern oil.” And please spare me the complete bravo sierra about creating millions of “new” jobs.
I share James’ view that the first part of the speech could have been delivered by any previous candidate. About the only place the speech differed is that Obama is clearly a more gifted public speaker than Kerry or even Gore. The speech is the same old stuff we’ve heard before. There are more people unemployed, income is down, more people don’t have health care than before Bush, and elect me and I’ll make the economy dance like a puppeteer makes a marionette dance. And since you are part of the economy I’ll make you dance too. Meh. No thanks.
And I’m getting so sick of hearing this magic energy pony (using James’ term). If it was the case that these technologies could generate profits right now then firms would be entering these new markets. Even if, as Dave Schuler pointed out, that firms are holding back in the expectation that the government will subsidize initial investments, this only points out the perversion of government involvement in the economy. The government has to subsidize even profitable industries?
And what is this nonsense that a firm has a responsibility to employ people. I’m sorry, but a firm exists for the purpose of generating profits. No profits, no firm and no employment. And what exactly are the “rules of the road” for a firm? To sacrifice profitability for workers welfare? Do that long enough and soon there wont be a firm to employ the workers. And what about the responsibility of people to fend for themselves, make the right decisions and not expect government to bail them out? I guess that is too much to ask. If you keep bailing people out, then you will keep having people make bad decisions. After all the downside has been reduced or even eliminated. Have too many kids, no problem we’ll increase taxes on those who didn’t. Can’t afford or decide not to have health care? No problem we’ll increase taxes on those who can?
And what is it with this “each of us has the freedom to make of our lives what we will…” baloney? If I make the right decision and don’t treat my house like an ATM machine getting home equity loan after home equity loan to fund trips and large ticket purchases. If I don’t try to get a house that is beyond my means to afford and also made sure to lock in at a good interest rate why should I be punished if some other bonehead down the street doesn’t? How come I have to stop making of my life what I will to help the fool? Yes it is nice to be compassionate and help out others, but just because I made smart decisions doesn’t mean I am in a position to help others. But here comes Barack Obama telling me I have to help these people whether I can afford to or not.
This is the same old mealy-mouthed crap we’ve gotten in the past. Do Democrats understand the problems of incentives? I’m pretty sure they do which makes all of this kind of blather rather cynical and manipulative.
Barack Obama’s speech accepting the Democratic presidential nomination was . . . long. Too long.
The last fifteen or twenty minutes of it, when he went into preacher mode and talked of unity and reconciliation and change and such, were uplifting and solid political theater. Whether it’ll meet the ridiculously high expectations that he had coming in — and which he amplified by moving it to a sporting arena rather than staying in the convention hall — we’ll see.
The irony of the speech, though, is that the talk of a new politics followed forty minutes or more of a speech that, with some minor biographical edits and obligatory references to current events, could have been delivered by any Democratic presidential nominee in my memory. I’ve watched all of them since Jimmy Carter’s 1980 convention and they’ve all, with the possible exception of Bill Clinton’s re-election campaign in 1996, had the same theme: the country’s going to hell in a handbasket but, don’t worry, I’ll fix everything that ails you — even if it’s not remotely within the scope of federal authority — and pay for it by taxes on the top 5 percent, greedy corporations, and ending trade with foreign countries. Oh, and the magic energy pony will end our dependence on foreign oil, too!
The first rock concert I ever went to was Men At Work in August, 1983. INXS opened up for them. I enjoyed the whole show, of course, but I don’t need to tell you which band was objectively better. I saw them again on the post-TV show tour a couple of years ago. They were still fun, but it just wasn’t the same.
The McCain team spent the day touting a commerical spot that they’ll be running during and around Barack Obama’s acceptance speech tonight. The ad, named “Convention Night,” turns out to be a nice one:
Senator Obama, this is truly a good day for America.
Too often the achievements of our opponents go unnoticed. So I wanted to stop and say, congratulations.
How perfect that your nomination would come on this historic day. Tomorrow, we’ll be back at it. But tonight Senator, job well done.
