STANDING ATHWART THIS ELECTION, YELLING STOP

I obviously haven't posted anything here for half a week. Sometimes I've had the urge, but not the time. Occasionally I've had the time, but not the energy. And when I've had the energy, sometimes I haven't had the urge. I'm afraid my interest in this election survived only until the last two weeks before the vote, and apparently no longer. Worse, I throw myself into the details every morning before dawn and don't emerge until the early afternoon. This is too much on top of enough already. If I worked in another industry I'd probably be blogging up a storm. Ironic, huh?

Wolf ads? Missing explosives? Clinton and Giuliani (and maybe Schwarzenegger)? Newspaper endorsements? Bush's travel schedule? I have opinions about all of these, but I can't say they're unique enough to warrant spending all the rest of my remaining time in front of a computer typing them out. If that makes me a bad blogger, well, so be it. I will continue to follow the race as closely as everyone else in this town, and I do care about the outcome, but that doesn't mean I'll be writing about it.

In other news, I have now cast my ballot in the state of Oregon (sorry, EYDP) and mailed it back. While the decisions I made on that ballot may not be a great surprise, I'll return on election day to summarize my votes. Will I return before that? It's possible. In fact, whenever I make announcements of hiatus, I'm usually back online in another day or so. I don't think that will happen this time, but you never know. At the very least, I'll see you on E-Day.

In the meantime, I'll be reading. From a book. About something other than politics. I should really do this more often.

IT'S OCTOBER

Don't look so surprised.

WHAT'S IN A HEADLINE?

Why oh why can't I kick my Slate habit? Frequent readers are sure to note that I cite Slate and its writers far more frequently than any other publication. Even my local daily, the Washington Post, comes in a distant second. Yet I read The Atlantic, National Journal, New Yorker and Weekly Standard regularly as well (ESPN, too), but almost exclusively in their print editions, which are mostly unlinkable. A few years ago I read Salon more often, but since they've turned (a) away from literature (b) toward relentless anti-Bush sensationalism and (c) a subscription/day-pass model, I don't read it very often.

Back to Slate. Here's today's read: "Political Poseur: Pretending to be a Republican in Blue California," wherein a Southern Californian wears Bush/Cheney gear in Democratic country, then Kerry/Edwards gear in predominantly Republican areas. What he finds is no great surprise to me -- the so-called liberals have a far lower threshhold of tolerance for dissenting views. This may have come as a surprise to the writer as well, but to his credit he sticks it out and takes the Dem-inflicted abuse.

But the headline writers didn't seem to pick up on that; as already noted, the subhead highlights his faux GOP adventures, though that amounts to maybe a third of the piece as a whole. Consider also the subhead to David Edelstein's "Team America" review: "The puppets of Team America skewer the right. If only they'd stopped there." Sheesh. Edelstein was critical of the movie's right wing humor to a point, and there was a tinge of exclusionary you-can't-make-fun-of-liberals-ism in his essay, but that subhead is an unfortunate distortion of his argument. I disagree with his piece, but to distill the teaser so crudely leaves almost any curious reader (left or right) disappointed.

I know Slate's editors primarily serve a left-leaning audience and so they craft their headlines and subheads to match those expectations. But I don't think they're doing their readers much of a service.

P.S. -- I happen to write a couple dozen headlines a day in addition to my regular writing duties for a Beltway publication (that I'll call only The Thermoqueue). So I can say with some professional certainty that the headline writers at Slate are not doing a bang-up job.

P.P.S. -- Is this trivial? Surely. But this is one of just a few posts in recent weeks that didn't end in a sweeping indictment of John Kerry or grudging endorsement of George W. Bush. I call it progress; this election cannot be over soon enough.

And now it's time to drink.

A HIP, HIP GRAY LADY, MAN

In flagrant defiance of Manhattan's elitist cocoon, New York Times TV writer Alessandra Stanley has just given given a positive review to "Stolen Honor," the anti-Kerry Vietnam documentary Sinclair Broadcasting planned, over the objections of some affiliates, to show sometime this coming week.

That is, until recently: The port side of the blogosphere (good phrase, CQ) has been all over this and can reasonably take credit for stirring up the advertiser discontent that eventually scuttled the original gameplan (just as the starboard side can take credit for CBS's Memogate).

So Stanley's review is nothing less than the equivalent of National Review dedicating a cover story to the greatness of "Fahrenheit 9/11." (Update -- I forgot to add: Come to think of it, A.O. Scott also recommeded "Team America.") Good work, New York Times Arts Section. You've been far less hysterical than Slate and far less opinionated than the front page of your own newspaper.

Then again, Frank Rich is a huge demerit. I take it all back.

Hat tip: Instapundit, which I actually started to read again, after awhile.

ROLLING EYES

As a friend and colleague of Armed Prophet's has noted before, it's nothing new for Jann Wenner to use his "music" magazine as a platform for political advocacy. Naturally, that's his right -- just as it was my right to cancel my subscription about five years ago and never look back (well, sometimes while standing in line at 7-11).

And now Jann is pulling out the stops for Kerry in the latest issue. There's a wide-ranging interview, a snapshot of his "icy efficiency" on the stump (funny, I thought Kerry was known for his lack of efficiency). And of course there he is, as you can see above-left, on the cover. Looks kind of sad, if you ask me. Almost as if he's thinking he might be seeing this very edition by the counter at the Georgetown 7-11 weeks after missing his ticket to the inaugural. Just kidding! That'll never happen -- Kerry doesn't go to Sevvies. Maybe once or twice during his Morgan Fairchild days.

And then there is the interview. This being Rolling Stone, there's the obligatory blurring of pop culture and reality:

Wenner: "How about Apocalypse Now? Was that what it was like going up river, on those boats?"

Kerry: "That's exactly how it was, man. Sitting in that river, waiting for someone to shoot you -- but the later part of the movie, after the point where they get to the bridge, then everything becomes a little psychedelic. That got a little distant from me."

Riiiiight.

Wenner tries to goad Kerrry into calling Bush a fundamentalist, which is something you might expect a conservative journalist to do. But Unfortunately for all involved except for Kerry, Kerry doesn't bite. In fact, it's a pretty straightforward interview. Not much new except for a half-promise to scrap the color-coded terror alerts (I cannot say I'm dead against this).

But then there was Kerry's answer about America's place in the world that sounded a bit bold, a bit rash, a bit ... dare I say unilateral?

Kerry: "We are going to live up to American values in our foreign policy. Rather than building a new set of nuclear weapons, like President Bush is, we're going to lead the world in containing nuclear weapons -- with a whole new protocol for tracking and dealing with precursor chemicals and with nuclear fissionable materials. We're not going to wait to intervene in places like Liberia or Darfur, where another genocide is taking place.

Hold the phone! Since when is Kerry so hot and bothered to invade the Sudan? A sovereign nation with no yellowcake?! (Just ask that one guy who used to work for the campaign ... who was that guy? Wasn't there some reason why Kerry got rid of him?) Doesn't Kerry know that the United Nations has Darfur completely under control? (Well, sort of.) And if the U.N. decided in the end to do nothing -- which is basically what's happening now -- is Kerry prepared to enter a predominantly Muslim nation, attack its insurgents and rebuild society for the oppressed and displaced tribes? Does he realize how this squares with his Iraq policy?

Actually, I wonder if Kerry even remembers that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the deaths of over a million Iraqis, just between 1991 and 2000 alone. That leaves out Halabja, Iran, Kuwait and the final showdown early last year. I'll believe John Kerry about his commitment to Darfur when he persuades me of his commitment to Iraq.

P.S. -- Has Bush done everything he can? Maybe, maybe not. The Wikipedia entry for the Darfur crisis gives the impression that we've made some pro-active moves while the U.N. and African Union have pretty much sat on their hands. Bush did respond to Liberia, though. A paradise it's not, but the crisis there was dispatched without much trouble, and now refugees are able to return.

A REASONABLE RATION OF RATIONALIZATION

Reason has an interesting symposium up featuring both its own and like-minded writers, asking whom they'll vote for, whom they had voted for, etc. It makes pretty clear the post-9/11 libertarian right-to-left shift is well underway, as many are voting for Kerry. Harvard fellow and Grateful Dead crony John Perry Barlow:

I’m voting for John Kerry, though with little enthusiasm. This is only because I would prefer almost anything to another four years of George W. Bush. I don’t believe the Constitution, the economy, or the environment can endure another Bush administration without sustaining almost irreparable damage.

And then, a surprising number of these thoughtful people seem to think nothing of having thrown their vote away on minor candidates or apathy. Editor Nick Gillespie:

Probably no one but maybe Badnarik, if only to register dissent from the Crest and Colgate parties.

A few writers -- at least, a few more than in Slate's novelist symposium -- are actually voting for George W. Bush. If I had to write a short paragraph explaining both ideological and practical reasons for a Bush vote this year, it might look something like what UCLA law professor and Conspirator wrote:

George W. Bush. I almost always vote for the party, not the man, because the administration, its legislative agenda, and its judicial appointments generally reflect the overall shape of the party. I tend to think that Republicans’ views on the war against terrorists, economic policy, taxes, and many though not all civil liberties questions -- such as self-defense rights, school choice, color blindness, and the freedom of speech (at least as to political and religious speech) -- are more sound than the Democrats’ views. I certainly find plenty to disagree with the Republicans even on those topics, but if I waited for a party with which I agreed on everything or even almost everything, I’d be waiting a long time.

It's an explanation and not an argument, of course, but I think it explains precisely where I stand -- why I don't vote for Kerry, why I don't vote for a third party, and why I don't abstain. Taking one's vote seriously is salutary for the mind. In 2000, I changed my support from McCain to Bush based mostly on the presumption that Republicans would run the government more to my liking than the Democrats. I cannot say that's been the case. But when 9/11 happened, the Dems turned and ran left. Not just on the war, but across the board. For a while there was talk that Dean would supplant Clinton in the party; he did, at least through December 2003. Without terrorism on the table, I probably would have voted Republican again, barely, though I might have entertained a Democratic vote (but not for Dean or the fringe candidates) just to ensure a divided government. But never if I thought they could get anything done.

About that war: I thought then that Iraq was the logical second move after Afghanistan. I still think so, despite well-documented mistakes, many of which I am not sure could have been foreseen. Our successes in both countries vastly outweigh our failures. If the choice between Kerry and Bush is negligible because not much may happen in the next stage of the war (as Jonathan Rauch argues), I say: something just might, and what then? I'll vote for the guy who has shown he understands the conflict we are in and has acted accordingly. George W. Bush has done that. At times my confidence in him has wavered, but John Kerry has never done anything to earn it. Neither man may have a "plan" per se, but I'll vote for the one who has the right vision before I vote for one who has none at all.

If Bush wins, I will be satisfied and somewhat relieved that the electorate ratified -- however narrowly -- the difficult path we've taken these past few years. If John Kerry wins I will be displeased and a little more concerned about our approach to new challenges. I'd give him the benefit of the doubt that I don't think he deserves now. I'd have to. I'm not moving to Canada.

WHO'S YOUR DADDY?

Everybody's talking about Jon Stewart's appearance on "Crossfire" last Friday. I missed it at the time -- Friday afternoons are bar hours, you know -- but I've seen it now and I say:

• Stewart's criticism is inarguable; CNN's shoutfest is indeed less informative than the "Daily Show."


• But he took it out on the wrong guy -- Tucker Carlson is the only person on the show willing to change his mind or concede an argument.


• Jon Stewart should remove the "partisan hackery" from his own show before criticizing CNN's. At least "Crossfire" is balanced hackery.


• Carlson's right -- once Stewart endorsed Kerry he lost all claim to not be an arbiter of what's important in the world.


• Very frequently I find myself hating both shows, but I rarely miss them.

Speaking of hate and partisan hackery, James Carville is unable to hide it when he's lost an argument, and he becomes unhinged. Sometimes this manifests in a funny way, like when he put a wastebasket on his head (at right) during election night in '02, once the Democratic debacle became clear. Sometimes it's just unsettling. Yesterday, frustrated by reports that Bush was inexplicably inching upward in the national surveys, he lashed out, face reddened:

"Let me tell you about these media polls. Children shouldn't play with matches. Media entities shouldn't play with polls. They're going to get burned. Mr. Gallup, Mr. Newsweek, I'm your daddy. ... I'm your daddy. You are wrong. I am right."

Sort of like Jon Stewart, you had to see it to really get it. Somehow I doubt this one will show up on Bitorrent, but if it does I'll let you know.

SO

Bush gains in the polls and all my readers/commenters go away, is that what happens?

TERRORIZE THIS

I saw "Team America: World Police" in a screening last weekend and loved every second of it (biggest laughs: the AIDS song, the hammer and Kim Jong-Il's pumas), but by this point I've obviously lost out on my chance to write an exclusive review/response. What I had is 500 words long, barely halfway finished, and going into my "unfinished" folder. So I'm just going to link to Roger L. Simon's take. He and a few of his commenters say it all, in particular about some left-liberals (that's you, Ebert -- you too, Kos) who can't take a joke when its directed at them.

"Team America" does poke fun at U.S. foreign policy in places, but conservative blogs have cheered it on anyway -- because the anti-war crowd gets hit harder and more frequently. The right is used to being disparaged in the mainstream media, but for the left it's new, uncomfortable, territory.

Besides, I'd much rather have this movie on "my side" than "Fahrenheit 9/11."

P.S. -- The Washington Post put its negative review by third-stringer Hank Steuver above the fold on the front of Friday's Style section. Where was the wildly positive review by Desson Thompson published? On page 33 of the Weekend section. I'm just saying.

P.P.S. -- But the Glorious Revolutionary Federation of Fortune 500 Killers hated it*. That's surely a good sign.

___
* This I would never have known if Google News didn't consider them a worthy source.

BUSH=MAO!

Well, that's a new one to me.

I'M JUST SAYING

CNN/USA Today/Gallup has Bush ahead by eight points among likely voters, which even I don't quite buy. This was embargoed until noon today. Drudge has has it up since that time, or very possibly earlier, considering his regard for media embargoes. Yet neither Gallup nor CNN have made the results available. Now it's after 5:00 p.m (though I realize it's always 5 o'clock somewhere). Inquiring readers want to know.

Also this weekend, Newsweek buried its likely voter results (Bush up 6) with the nothing-to-see-here headline, "Too Close To Call." Have some faith in your research already!

Democratic observers have criticized the Gallup poll's likely voter model this year, claiming new voter registration and other factors made Gallup's voter models out of date. Perhaps. Even Newt Gingrich told the Los Angeles Times: "We don't understand this election. No one does." But when last week's Gallup poll showed Kerry up one, those complaints magically disappeared.

I may believe the poll overstates Bush's lead, but last week's Gallup survey was one of two polls showing Kerry with a lead. AP/Ipsos, we're waiting...

P.S. -- Democratic polling expert Ruy Teixeira (a nice guy, from my experience) makes a weak attempt to knock down the poll at his blog, the cumbersomely titled emergingdemocraticmajorityweblog.com.

"The Emerging Democratic Majority" is the name of his 2002 book, his argument, his bid to be one of the "prophets of the new political order." So far it hassn't been working out.

ANOTHER ROUND, PLEASE

Well, I said I was waiting for the next round of polling, and all of the post-debate polls released so far show Bush ahead by an average of almost 4 points.

The Washington Post's tracking poll actually has Bush gaining 2 points and Kerry losing 1 compared with the previous day. I turn a skeptical eye toward the actual numbers of these rolling polls, but the trends they show are a good determinant of momentum. Kerry had it until a few days ago, and there's no doubt the race is closer than it was before the debates, but it seems Kerry's momentum stalled sometime in the past week ... say, just after the third debate.

Pretty much all of the post-debate talk has been about Mary Cheney. In contrast, Bush's erroneous "not concerned" statement about bin Laden has been a secondary topic at best. (I saw a partial transcript of last Thursday's "The View," and the ladies there came down on Kerry pretty hard.) This is probably a sign that the Bush campaign won the post-debate spin war, and an overwhelming majority of the public believes Kerry's comment was inappropriate. Even in the Kerry-sympathetic bar I was at, there was an audible gasp when he mentioned her name. Who's even asking about bin Laden? (I could mount a partial defense of Bush's statement based on Noah-esque selective hair-splitting, but it would be a waste of typing.)

Whether the goal was to highlight Republican homophobia, dissuade religious conservatives from voting Bush, it backfired. Putting Elizabeth Edwards out there to suggest Lynne Cheney was "ashamed" of her daughter, and Mary Beth Cahill's bizarre, seemingly mean-spirited assertion that Mary was "fair game" only compounded the problem.

Then there is anecdotal evidence that the debates, however widely-viewed they were, didn't change many minds. Nobody in this town really knows how much debates matter. Their importance is always viewed in terms of who took the oath of office the following January. Bush is said to have won the debates in 2000, but he did still lose the popular vote.

As of today, the race remains a toss-up, of course. If I close my eyes I can imagine either man declaring victory three Tuesdays from now. Yet just as John Kerry appeared to be gaining the upper hand, his own words may have leveled out those metaphorical hand positionings.

°   °   °   °   °
Update, Sunday, 7:13 p.m. -- Slate's non-hysterical political correspondent, Chris Suellentrop, agrees that public disapproval of Kerry's invoking Mary Cheney probably explains Kerry's stumble in the polls this weekend. But he also highlights some purple state numbers that are definitely in Kerry's favor. Then again, national surveys sometimes have a way of influencing state polls. And now Gallup has delivered precisely the news he speculated about, as I've written above.

My guess -- not prediction -- is that Bush could win convincingly, depending on the news from Iraq and the campaign trail over the next two weeks. But if Kerry pulls it out, he'll do so by a narrow margin.

A LIKELY STORY

Quoth Tim Noah, my other favorite punching bag at Slate, objecting to Bush's disparagement of Massachusetts:

I could probably count on one hand the number of times I've heard any liberal sneer at any state of the union, and the people who did the sneering were usually morons.

Do you believe this? I don't believe this. Well, I believe the second clause. But the first is preposterous. The entire southern region of the country regularly comes in for abuse from the left, Florida and Texas chief among them in just the past four years. I've heard snide comments about this myself many more than five times, and Noah is two decades my senior. I call bullshit!

P.S. If he's made a mental reservation that he can count each finger as many times as he'd like, then he could be telling the truth.

THE FINAL DEBATE

Obviously, no debate blogging tonight: I went with some friends to a bar over in Adams Morgan to watch it there. This was by far Bush's best performance; he was much more confident than in recent debates, and the desperation in his voice previously was almost entirely absent. Too bad it took him three debates to mention that Kerry voted against Gulf War '91, which met all the criteria he seems to have wanted this time. Kerry did well enough, but stumbled some over tax policy, gay marriage and abortion. And bringing up Mary Cheney again was a big mistake. Was all this enough to be declared the loser? No. The media will call this a draw, I'm sure, which means they'll probably try to declare him the winner in another three days. The second round of polling will tell all.

Enough for now. It's late. Besides, all the action is happening in the comments section three posts down.

COLORBLIND

What's a "yellow state"? Anybody who knows anything about electoral parlance -- to say nothing of the color wheel -- knows we call swing states "purple."

MARK HALPERIN'S MAKE-UP CALL?

Surely by now you've seen the Drudge-published memo by ABC's top political editor, Mark Halperin. (If not, Halperin asserts that Bush, unlike Kerry, is trying to "win the election ... at least partly through distortions" of the opponent's record and positions, and so releases his staff from the need to "reflexively and artificially hold both sides 'equally' accountable.") Lefty bloggers, who believe Bush is "qualitatively more dishonest" than Kerry, approved mightily. Meanwhile, the Right side of the blogosphere complained that this was basically license for journalists at the network to be as liberal as they saw fit.

But today Salon import Jake Tapper and writer Dennis Powell hold both campaigns equally to account for various statements they've made in recent weeks. To summarize their conclusions:

• Bush cites a National Journal survey that found Kerry to be the liberalest senator last year -- but that's because he was out on the trail; his lifetime ranking is lower.


• Bush claims Kerry's health care plan would put 8 of 10 Americans on Medicaid, i.e. the government dole. Actually, the number is lower.


• Kerry claims Bush's mismanagement of the war is a primary reason for high gas prices, but the truth is there are several factors of greater significance.


• Earlier this week Edwards said stem-cell research would cure a host of ailments "when John Kerry is president," but no advocate of the research technique thinks it will yield such benefits for decades.

I agree with all four points. And if anything, Bush's statements are qualitatively less dishonest than the Kerry camp's. Bush's statements exaggerated things that are essentially true: Kerry is "among the most liberal senators" (quoth a National Journal editor) and his health care plan relies heavily on the government. No, it's not 8 of 10. But it is 6.5 of 10.

Meanwhile, Kerry's statement is an outrageous case of demagoguery without regard to the facts and a subtle appeal to the lunatic no-blood-for-oil crowd. ABC's expert notes, there are "issues in Russia [including the Yukos debacle], there's rampaging Chinese demand growth, there's a lack of tankers, a shortage of refinery capacity" and there are more -- count in Venezuela and the hurricanes.

And Edwards' statement, while perhaps not intended as it sounds, nevertheless politicizes the unfortunate passing of Christopher Reeve and encourages false hopes about what stem-cell research can do for people. Because there's no way it could do what Edwards said. Yet even today a campaign spokesman disingenuously insisted: "That's what the scientists tell us — that we're not that far away from breakthroughs." Please.

Read it for yourself -- it's pretty even-handed, but seems to identify more egregious statements on Kerry's part.

Was Halperin, via Tapper and Powell, calling a foul on one team to make up for a poor call made earlier in the game? I have no way of knowing, but it seems like a fair guess.

WHY SOMEONE WHO DISAGREES WITH THE PRESIDENT ON MOST ISSUES SHOULD VOTE FOR HIM NONETHELESS

My mother is a lifelong Democrat. In 1988, I remember that she voted for Jesse Jackson in the primaries before going on to support Dukakis in the general. Since then she's voted for Clinton twice and Gore once. Yet this year, to my surprise, she is currently undecided, and asked me to make the case to her why she should punch out a chad for George W. Bush. Here is what I wrote back to her:

I'm surprised that you're undecided. Politics has seemed so polarized in the last few years that I can hardly believe almost anyone is crossing party lines. Then again, I move in actively political circles; it's easy to forget people have lives outside of politics.

So, I don't know the particulars of your political priorities, nor do I know your opinion on Bush's defining decisions -- the tax cuts, the Bush doctrine in general and its application in Iraq in particular. I'll presume you're none too thrilled all around. So I'll focus on what I believe is the key issue -- terrorism -- and I'll try to confine myself to talking about what comes next. After all, what's done is done.

By now you may have seen the new Bush ad relying on quotes from an interview Kerry gave to the New York Times this weekend. One of the most distressing things he said in the ad was: "We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance." I'm afraid that Kerry thinks we can go back to pre-9/11 complacency. In a generation's time, perhaps we can. But not in the short term. I'm afraid this may lead Kerry to declare victory in Iraq too soon -- losing soldiers is terrible, but losing Iraq would be far worse, for our own safety especially. The future depends on getting it right.

The same goes for relationships with our allies. One of Kerry's most frequent claims is that we need to repair those friendships, particularly those in Europe. That may be, but I think he misunderstands the differences. It's not that we pushed them away first; it was that the UN Security Council was going to veto the Iraq invasion no matter what. So, what is Kerry missing? Primarily that the foreign policy goals of most European countries are very different from our own. They believe force is no longer necessary, because having been protected under our security umbrella during the Cold War, the only power they can project is in diplomatic settings. Hence they are resentful when the U.S. uses the power we have. (Also, Saddam bribed many high-ranking French, German, Russian and Chinese officials, and even a few in Britain.) Should we be friends with our allies, even if they are but nominal allies? Sure, but it's naïve to pretend they see the world the same way we do. We're also unpopular because we're the biggest kids on the block; that just comes with the territory. Australia just re-elected its pro-war prime minister; Iraq hasn't cost us as much support as Kerry would have us believe. But as Bush said at the debate the other night, sometimes unpopular policies are the right ones. I think that's the case here.

Meanwhile, I don't think Bush's resolve is in question. His policy decisions are controversial, but ultimately can prove successful, if the U.S. electorate shares that resolve. (Such is my hope.) Bush sometimes comes off stubborn, and he is loath to admit his mistakes. But we're making progress; see the elections in Afghanistan, the coming elections in Iraq, Gadhafi has surrendered his weapons program, etc. Plenty of mistakes have been made in the past few years, but war is unpredictable, especially one like this. While Kerry has been busy over-emphasizing Bush's missteps, he has overlooked making any useful proposals about where to take this fight. Frankly, I don't believe Kerry has said a single original thing about Iraq or terrorism since declaring his candidacy; he's tacked back and forth between the dovishness of Howard Dean and the hawkishness of the president. That doesn't inspire much confidence.

Let me also offer two similar points of view. One is the reluctant endorsement of Bush by the Vancouver, WA newspaper. If this is about picking the lesser of two evils, they make a good case why that's Bush.

The other is from Sebastian Mallaby, one of the editorial board members of the Washington Post. His politics are fairly liberal, but he's fair and willing to criticize both sides. He also decides Bush is the more credible commander-in-chief.

So, it's mostly about foreign policy for me. I've been rather disappointed with Bush's domestic policy, which has meant a significant expansion of government spending. (Not that I like Kerry's proposals much, either.) But there is one matter Bush will tackle that Kerry has ignored completely: reforming Social Security.

I may have framed this too much as "reasons not to vote for Kerry" and not enough "reasons to vote for Bush." But it's my guess you don't want to sit out, so I've put it in comparative terms. My own vote for Bush will be less enthusiastic than it was last time, but I think he's done well enough considering the very, very unusual circumstances of these past few years.

I assume she will still go ahead and vote for John Kerry in the end. She pulls down a pretty impressive income, but claims to not mind paying taxes. On most domestic issues, she is very much a mainstream Democrat. But she also has five children, and my youngest sisters are under ten; whether the "security mom" phenomenon is real or media-created, that would still be her. So if she is to base her decision on foreign policy -- not the only issue in this election, but by far the most important one -- then I can't imagine why she would do anything but punch out that chad for George W. Bush. And that goes for the rest of you.

P.S. -- My father is a lifelong Republican (albeit one who did cast his ballot for H. Ross Perot in 1992) and I assume she hasn't consulted him because if she did cross party lines, she'd never hear the end of it. So for those of you who are not reading an anonymous blog right now, please keep this under your hat.

WHEW

The good news from down under today is that John Howard did not meet the same fate as Spain's Jose Maria Aznar. Australia knows what's up.

Meanwhile, this is not so good. But didn't we all expect Karzai to win, anyway? I'll take bitterness from the losers over car bombings at polling stations. It hasn't been violence-free, but I'm staying optimistic.

Plus, Iran says: Why yes, we'd let a President Kerry bribe us! That sounds like a swell idea!

PRE

Okay, that's enough blogging for right now. This time I'm going to watch the debate without turning away every moment or so to type notes to myself. How bloggers like VodkaPundit can liveblog (while drinking, of course) and still follow the debate is beyond me. And believe it or not, I am actually 100% sober right now. On debate night! On a Friday! But fear not -- I will have a whiskey and coke with the evening's entertainment.

Back later.

POST-POST POST

It's past time to drop the Cheney-Edwards talk, so we'll call this the last one.

Partisans on both sides saw a win for their man; so-called disinterested observers saw a draw. And like the first debate, few minds seem to have been changed. A few of my readers have taken me to task for saying Cheney won. Note, these are my readers who are also planning to vote for Kerry or skip the election altogether. In any case, I tend to forget that Cheney has relatively low approval ratings, and that Edwards is still too new to most viewers for strong opinions to have formed. That counted in Edwards' favor.

Plus: You think I'm living in a dream world? Check out how Slate's Will Saletan opened his debate recap:

Now are you sorry you didn't nominate this guy for president?

That's what I wanted to ask Democrats as I watched John Edwards knock Dick Cheney around the ring tonight.

Sheesh. Did I mention it was arrogant, too? Saletan's is not just a minority viewpoint; it's an extreme minority viewpoint (and one Andrew Sullivan also holds; that's another strike against him). It's one thing to say the edge goes to Edwards, but quite another to argue that he "took Cheney completely off his game."

Saletan is well ensconced in the "liberal cocoon" he's helped to spin, and which his colleague Mickey Kaus writes about. So much so that Kaus actually called him out on this, and Slate editor Jacob Weisberg faulted Saletan for the same mistake on another topic (in the follow-up to the Saletan-Weisberg piece I criticized earlier this week), admonishing him for being too impressed with Kerry's latest batch of TV ads. Wrote Weisberg:

Will, I agree with you about everything except the ads. You're reading your own lucidity into them. Unfortunately, they don't reflect anything like the kind of message clarity you've been hoping for.

The more convinced William Saletan is that Kerry is rebounding is all the better for Bush. Four years ago in mid-September, Saletan decided to explain "Why Bush is Toast" in a column that I find extremely fun to read. Please, Will, whatever you do, keep spinning.

POLL DANCE

I've never liked the cable news nets' online polls. As they admit, the polls are unscientific; what they won't admit is they're just trying to generate web traffic and turn occasional viewers into dedicated watchers. We've always known that these polls serve no legitimate news function, but now that we know they're being deliberately manipulated shouldn't there be some demand to discontinue the practice, at least in those malleable, first few post-debate hours?

The possibility exists that these polls might actually show voter enthusiasm or organizational strength (as this blog argues), but the act of going out to vote at a polling station is quite different from voting in an online poll. Nor do we know if the majority of online participants are themselves going to vote. I would expect many are college students or dilettantes less interested in supporting Kerry and more interested in skewing public data for the fun of it.

PREDICTION

George Bush will comport himself much better than last week. His easygoing manner will contrast well with the stiffer John Kerry. But because Kerry will make no major gaffes, the debate will either be scored a tie or slight Kerry victory. This isn't so much a prediction as it is a pessimistic guess. Once again, the president has lost the expectations game. Bush is under pressure in large part because the media keeps saying Bush is "under pressure."

Stay tuned. I'll probably have some thoughts after the debate is over.

TAXACHUSETTS

It is understabdable that the Boston Globe's Rick Klein is defensive about his state's liberal reputation. It's understandable that he would write an article about how this is playing, election-wise. It's even understandable that he might defend Kerry from unfair association with his home state. But on the last point, I'm not sure he succeeded:

The "Taxachusetts" label has persisted despite the fact that the state's tax climate has gotten better in recent years. According to the Tax Foundation, a nonprofit research group based in Washington, D.C., Massachusetts residents' state and local tax burden is 9.4 percent of their income, the 36th highest nationally and below the national average of 10 percent. The state had the third-highest tax burden in 1980.

When federal taxes are included, however, Bay State residents still face the fourth-highest tax burden in the nation, since Massachusetts is a higher-income state, and federal rates rise with income. As a US senator, Kerry has no role in setting state and local tax rates.

All right, fine. But John Kerry did vote to raise the federal income taxes, right? Whether it's the 98 times cited by the Republicans or some lower number excluding routine procedural votes, that's been his voting record. More recently, out of political calculation, he's backed some middle-class tax cuts while voting against cuts for higher-income earners. Now he's said that if elected, he will raise taxes on the wealthy. In which case Massachusetts would be even more heavily taxed.

So it would be to the Bay State's detriment if Kerry was elected president (not that he's doing them many favors in his current position). Moreover, a new Senator could be a real plus, if Massachusetts decides to elect someone who's interested in actually proposing laws of his or her own.

POST-VP DEBATE: THE LONG VERSION OF A SHORT VERSION I DIDN'T GET AROUND TO WRITING

What could and should have been three posts has become one, like the lyrics of a polygamist pop song. On that inappropriate note, let's get into last night's debate between John Edwards and Dick Cheney:

• Conventional wisdom of the last 20 hours has decided last night's debate was a draw, with a slight edge to Cheney (though some won't even grant that). I tend to think the non-partisan press rushed to call it a draw simply because it seemed closer than the Thursday debate between Bush and Kerry. Not unlike that debate, it's generally said that the Republican won on substance, the Democrat on style. Cheney walked all over Edwards on the only subject that mattered: foreign policy. Meanwhile, did Edwards score any big moments? Not that I saw. Yet it's universally pronounced "a draw."


• Likewise, I thought Kerry and Bush was a draw last week; it turned out people thought Kerry won. I thought Cheney trounced Edwards last night; everyone but the MSNBC panel last night called it a draw. Obviously, my own bias is at work here. I'll try to adjust for Friday, but it's not easy. This bias isn't so much because I like Cheney, though I do, but because I really, really dislike John Edwards. It's almost pointless to get into here. I'm sure I'll have the opportunity to go on at great length about this loathing before the month is out.


• But my dislike of Edwards partly explains why I thought Cheney's response to the question about his background was effective. Cheney's background is not so different from Edwards', but Cheney has never tried to campaign on his humble roots. That's all Edwards talked about last year. (I trust the analogy to Kerry's Vietnam crutch is not lost on the reader.) Meanwhile, Cheney came off to me as a real person -- far from "Darth Vader," as some print reporters have tagged him.


• On style points, Cheney won by a country mile. For the second two-thirds of the debate, Edwards was inattentive, occasionally unpoised and got the rules mixed up (okay, so maybe Gwen Ifill asked some goofy questions). Did nobody catch the moment when he grinned and mouthed something to someone (his wife, I assume) off-stage, and get caught doing so when it was his moment to respond? At another point, he seemed to be writing out his shopping list. Some point out that Cheney was dour and scowling -- "grumpy." Hello! Cheney is always scowling.


• And Cheney had all the good lines, including the bit about having first met Edwards for the first time on that stage. That unraveled pretty quickly, and it may well dog him. But he could get away with it, as Kerry got away with his assertion that the subway was stopped in Manhattan during the convention. (I was there; it wasn't.)


• Edwards' job in part was to drive home the point that there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11, even several debate rounds after Cheney had dismissed the possibility. I don't see this as fertile ground except for the MoveOn crowd, and I thought Cheney handled it well. Firm, but calm. Same with Hallburton. Some have hit Cheney for not bothering to defend his chairmanship of Halliburton, but I thought he turned the question back around on Edwards quickly enough. And besides, Halliburton's faults are not a central question in this election. Or shouldn't be. Like the phantom draft, Democrats use to stir up division and fear.


• Blog didn't get to watch it live, but he might be amused to find out that Edwards made the same Saddam/Osama mix-up Bush did last week; Edwards caught it, too. For Bush, that's not so good. I read a number of comparisons between Edwards' debate performance and Bush's, favorably in neither case.


• Edwards made the case that Iran is more threatening today than it was four years ago. I'd agree, but I don't think the case can be made it's Bush's fault. Edwards certainly didn't. His complaint seems to be that we've let our European allies dick around over there while the ayatollahs get away with murder. But isn't this, along with their half-mumbled North Korea plan, the reverse of the Kerry-Edwards position on Iraq? In that case, we haven't delegated enough. It was incoherent, and it didn't erase Kerry's debate blunder saying he'd give nuclear material to Iran (regardless of the details, it was a blunder).


• Shortly after John Edwards argued that we hadn't passed the "global test" in Iraq, he mentioned that the UN was organizing the January election in Iraq. He did so to complain that there were but 200 UN workers on the ground for the East Timor elections, but right now there are just 35 UN workers in Iraq. To which I wonder, (a) didn't he just say we had no coalition? (b) does Edwards think every UN failing is the United States' fault? and (c) won't it be easy enough for them to reserve enough flights over there when the time comes? I'd give the point to Cheney, but he didn't pounce on it. I'd prefer to give it to him.


• Edwards gleefully pointed out that Bush flip-flopped on DHS. But he flopped the right way, didn't he? Kerry supporters often defend Kerry this way, though they usually mean Kerry has flopped in the supposedly popular (i.e. anti-war) direction.


• I have a theory about the result from the last debate and Lockhart's "consensus that it was a draw" comment: Kerry's team may have watched the race and thought it was a draw -- but decided to spin it their way as hard as they could. The Bush campaign did nothing of the sort, and lost control of the spin immediately.
  
  Sound conspiratorial? Maybe, but earlier that day the Kerry campaign was ruthless in spreading a false story that they had demanded the timed lights be removed from the podiums; it wasn't true, but they didn't admit that until the following day. Meanwhile, expectations in the media had swung enough to give Kerry the "underdog edge." It was one of their few truly ingenious moves since Iowa.
  
  This is essentially what Bill Clinton did after his 1992 second-place showing in New Hampshire. Tsongas had won all right, but Clinton had also come back following the first of what would be many "bimbo eruptions." Clinton declared himself the "comeback kid" and acted like it, while Tsongas wilted.


• Cheney clearly won gay marriage. Edwards praised Cheney, then attacked Bush, then made it clear he didn't believe in gay marriage either, but wouldn't explain why. Cheney should have seemed like the one on the defensive, but Edwards was the one trying to explain things away. And I think his mentioning of Mary Cheney was unnecessary, and bad form. Not only is it Cheney's family member, but since when has the private life of a campaign aide been a debate topic? (If you didn't notice, Mary Cheney's girlfriend was in the audience and onstage after; neither were on stage at the Republican convention.)


• The news since this morning has been bad only bad for Bush. American WMD inspector Charles Duelfer reports that Saddam's potential to produce chemical weapons was diminishing. Paul Bremer's comments that we didn't put enough troops in Iraq to quell the initial unrest are still percolating. So these things affected the general shape of the election aside from the debate. I can't possibly think the public wants to hear a uniformly negative assessment of the war like they hear from Kerry-Edwards. Nor do they want a uniformly positive one, like from Bush-Cheney. If one could locate the middle ground, they could win.


• Cheney made a bold, and I think wise, move toward that point last night by defining coalition casualties as to include Iraqis. It was a salient and underreported point, but it was also a brilliant argument. Edwards wasn't prepared for it, and was reduced to protesting that he values the Iraqis, too. Oh yeah? Then why hasn't a single Democrat remarked that Iraqi casualties are allied casualties? Point to Cheney -- big one.


• We often say that vice presidential debates don't matter at all, because it's the man at the top of the ticket people vote for. But I wonder if even today people still recognize that Cheney has been much more than a typical vice president. And do they realize Edwards would likely be much more in the George H.W. Bush/Al Gore model than Cheney? Which do people prefer? Perhaps it's like Clinton's 1992 "two for the price of one" line about how Hillary would be involved in the government as well. Before his advisers were telling him to shut up about it; people didn't want that. Perhaps people like the traditional vice president better.

To conclude, if you're still reading, allow me to finally reaffirm my bold statement from last night: Kerry's momentum is stalled, at least until the Friday debate. Edwards may not have been blown off the stage, and he may not have made a critical mistake, but neither did he shine. Meanwhile, Bush needed Cheney to turn in a solid performance, and he did that exactly. The race is "frozen" until Friday. And Friday will be here very shortly.

Update, 8:14 p.m. Thursday -- Tons of typos, as I expected when I hit "Publish Post." It's now been cleaned up a bit. Hey, you try blogging 1500 words on a complicated subject, based on faulty memory and elliptical notes, while inebriated.

THE VP DEBATE

It's on tonight. I'll be watching it, but I won't be blogging it. You may have noticed a decrease in posts since the weekend; work is like that right now. It's going to be a busy month, for obvious reasons. Nevertheless, I'll keep posting daily. And most days I will write more than this.

Update -- I take that back, in part. Longish post-debate post forthcoming.

Update, post-debate -- Wow. The liberal blogs are spinning and don't quite know it. If Bush had said what Cheney did tonight in the same manner, the media would have called the election for the president last Friday. More thoughts tomorrow.

POST-POST DEBATE, OR PRE-PRE-DEBATE, OR PRE-VP DEBATE, OR WHICHEVER

So do I feel a bit better after seeing today's Washington Post/ABC News and Pew Resarch polls? Yeah, just a bit. Certainly better than when I saw this weekend's Newsweek poll.

Though surveys in past weeks have showed somewhat different standings between George Bush and John Kerry, their average, mean and mode were all in Bush's favor. Even with Kerry's post-debate surge, that is still the case. The "Kerry is surging" story was all over the place this weekend, but it is not tied as some savvy Kerry supporters were openly saying in the press. It seems the media and public both perceived Kerry as having won the last debate almost immediately afterward. What happens when one or the other notices -- say, tonight -- that Kerry didn't pull ahead or tie or even come within the margin of error, not when you look at the whole polling landscape. Will that halt Kerry's upward movement? Thee polls did move toward Kerry, of course. I wonder if Kerry hasn't already gotten all the bounce from the debate he's going to get.

One reason this might be -- and you can dig through those links above for details -- is that though Kerry was shown having won the debate, several of Bush's key internal numbers (i.e. which candidate shows more leadership, is better on Iraq, is better on terrorism, etc.) stayed comfortably above Kerry's. All across this country, news outlets are finding that focus groups and local polls are showing nobody's mind was changed by the debate. So what if Kerry is the better debater, they seem to say, Bush is still a better choice for president. But if those numbers show Kerry ahead for longer than a week, well, Bush is probably toast. So keep an eye on it.

Another note: So far, Blog and I have been proved entirely wrong about Bush's "Osama/Saddam" slip-up. I think it would take a crazed, conspiratorial point of view to think Bush truly had them confused (Blog probably doesn't), and frankly that's partly why I thought MoveOn would jump all over it. Instead, the moment when Kerry pointed out that Saddam didn't attack us and Bush responded "I know" seems to have been taken in a similar way. Why one and not the other? The latter involved Kerry outmaneuvering the president; that's pretty big. On the other hand, Bush caught his own mistake and corrected it before he'd gotten past "Sadda-". Think of Gerald Ford's infamous 'free Poland' gaffe in '76: Bush caught his own mistake; Ford didn't. But I'll bet it shows up in an online ad at some point.

SLATE-RHOUSE DIVE

Will Saletan says the Bush campaign's "Windsurfing" ad is the best he's seen all year, and I agree. He then proceeds to attack it, as he must, lest he lose his liberal bona fides:

The narration accompanying the spliced footage of Kerry windsurfing is equally, fittingly false. "Kerry voted for the Iraq war, opposed it, supported it, and now opposes it again," says the announcer. Untrue. Kerry never "voted for the Iraq war." He voted for a resolution that Bush advertised as leverage to avoid war.

Saletan has been listening to the Kerry spinners' talking points a bit too long. If Kerry didn't actually believe that the likely result of his "yea" vote on October 11, 2002 was a war with Saddam Hussein, then he really doesn't have the kind of judgment it takes to be president. Kerry likely believed then, as he seems to believe now, that the United Nations was just a little diplomatic finesse removed from signing up to help. Saletan continues:

The difference between the war Kerry supported and the one he opposed is the difference between the war Bush promised and the one he delivered.

Fine. If you know which French restaurant Colin Powell should have suggested to Dominique de Villepin, I'd like to hear it. So far, the essential argument against the war, against Bush and the entire post-9/11 foreign policy has been a negative one. When John Kerry gets realistic, and prescriptive, I'll be ready to listen. In the meantime, Saletan and his friends are free to explain away Kerry's inconsistencies as much as they'd like. But they'll be doing it to themselves.

LAZY FRIDAY AFTERNOON UPDATE

After a week or so of Kerry's supporters lifelessly insisting on John Kerry's renewed competitiveness in the presidential campaign, last night Kerry managed to breathe some life into his campaign, and not least his supporters. By virtually all accounts, debate one goes to the Massachussets senator. And what of it? Too soon to tell. This could be the beginning of a "closing" to put all previous Kerry closings to shame. At best, I think, this will get close again. No one with a straight face can say Kerry trounced Bush. Most judgments are based on Kerry appearing calm and occasionally making uncharacteristically forceful statements, while Bush was a bit too plaintive and repetitive. Yet each made their blunders, and I daresay Kerry made more misstatements, i.e. Treblinka Square. Right now it's clear that Kerry won the expectations game, while Bush lost it. As president, it was perhaps foolish to think he would be judged by the same debating standards as four years ago. I'll plead guilty to that. But Kerry beat expectations with his "reporting for duty" speech in Boston; it was reported as a success and even I told friends I thought it was cheesy but effective. By the time all the polls had reported, Kerry's post-convention bounce was nowhere, and the term "negative bounce" had even entered the political dialogue. So I remain skeptical that the next round of polls will show huge movement. Kerry is bound to go up some on the apparent strength of his performance, but I wouldn't expect Bush to sustain any real damage.

P.S. -- It turns out another longtime friend of Armed Prophet is blogging the election -- Pretty Little Head of the eponymous blog has joined/co-founded/commandeered a new blog, Kerry's Amateur Speechwriters Club. As the title implies, her politics don't line up with mine so well. She's like Josh Marshall -- only smarter, funnier, and prettier -- but just as relentlessly partisan. And she can drink you under the table. Should be a good read.

Plus, I've taken a moment to update my sidebar, adding a few sites I've been following recently, and removed one that has ceased to publish.