Bracing for Obama

Heading into the final weekend of Election 2008, things are not looking so good for John McCain. Although I don't think Obama is headed for a landslide victory -- indeed, he may not win at all -- I find myself devoting more and more of my mental energies speculating on what his victory would mean rather than whether it will come to pass.

Obama has done such a masterly job during the campaign of presenting an image of an inspiring, unflappable moderate, one can really only guess at what kind of president he will try to be. An optimistic (from my perspective) interpretation of his career would be that while he began his career as a race-obsessed extreme leftist, he mainly took that path out of political opportunism. There are actually several arguments supporting that interpretation. For one, when Obama first entered state politics in Illinois, there is no way he could have imagined ever being in a position to run for president. It seems probable he joined Jeremiah Wright's church as a means of establishing credibility in the black community. His other questionable associations may have been similarly aimed at ingratiating himself into left-wing political circles. Despite these troubling associations, it doesn't appear that Obama has ever personally engaged in extreme left-wing rhetoric. Moreover, in his first book, Dreams From My Father, Obama seems to eschew radicalism in its various forms, sometimes in mocking, dismissive tones.

There is also the matter of Obama's legislative career. While he is clearly a staunch liberal, there is no evidence he has ever tried to pull his party to the far left.

All of this suggests the possibility that Obama is, in fact, more or less a mainstream liberal with a genuinely moderate temperament.

As I indicated, that's the "optimistic" interpretation. At the other extreme, one can argue that Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers, the socialist New Party membership, "spread the wealth," etc., are all genuine red flags signifying a radical mindset that Obama has taken increasing pains to conceal as he's moved up the ladder of political success. If so, it follows that he will only display his true leftist colors after reaching the top rung on January 20.

I think either interpretation is entirely plausible. Unfortunately, the mere possibility that the latter interpretation is correct is more than enough reason to want to keep Obama out of the White House. Yet, if the polls are correct, the voters either don't recognize the risk or are willing to take a chance.

In acknowledging the possibility that Obama is just a mainstream liberal, I don't mean to imply that the country's fortunes wouldn't suffer as a result of his policies. They would, but the damage is likely to be less severe as compared to a program of radical socialist "reform."

There are mitigating factors, however, even if Obama turns out to be a radical in moderate clothing. First, since the country doesn't believe that's who they are electing, Obama won't have popular support if he seeks to govern as a hard-core leftist. In fact, he would lose a lot of Democratic support in Congress.

Another important factor is whether the GOP succeeds in holding onto at least 40 seats in the Senate. If they do, then Obama will be significantly constrained in his legislative agenda due to the requirement of 60 votes to end a filibuster.

Overall, while an Obama presidency would almost certainly be very bad for the country, it would not necessarily be the catastrophe that I have come to fear. Mainly I take solace in the fact that, however well Obama performs on Election Day, he will not have a mandate for radical change, having presented himself to the voters as a liberal-centrist. Provided Obama realizes this, we'll survive.

Obama's control over the media

Okay, so that's a pretty dire-sounding subject heading. Yet,as I write this, Drudge is headlining a 2001 radio interview in which Obama described it as "tragic" that the Warren Court's failed to interpret the Constitution as imposing an affirmative obligation on the part of government to redistribute wealth.

I'm no journalist, but that strikes me as newsworthy. Perhaps not as newsworthy as the cost of Sarah Palin's wardrobe, but newsworthy nonetheless.

Of course, the mainstream media seems to disagree, at least so far. After all, they have yet to report the fact that Obama belonged to a socialist fringe party in the 1990's.

Seriously, what the hell's going on here? Is this entirely a function of liberal media bias?

I'm not so sure it is. While liberal bias was clearly a big factor in Obama's success to date, I think the media are now gripped by something more powerful than mere ideological conviction.

They're certain he's going to win, and they're afraid he'll cut off their access if they raise embarrassing questions about him in the final days of the campaign.

There's no question that reporters and editors are willing to trade off journalistic integrity to preserve their access to power. A CNN producer even wrote an op-ed following the toppling of Saddam Hussein admitting that the network sugarcoated its portrayal of life under the Iraqi regime in order to keep its Baghdad bureau open. "This is CNN"? No, this is CNN.

With the broadcast networks and especially newspapers struggling to hold viewers and readers, they have a strong business incentive to remain on the Obama camp's good side as The Messiah prepares to assume the reins of power. They don't want to be deprived of one-on-one interviews with the new president and first lady. Moreover, they don't want to be demonized in the lefty blogosphere for trying to rain on the Democrats' big parade.

If editors and reporters for major media outlets have any qualms about failing to report on Obama's socialist-leaning past, they can console themselves with the knowledge that McCain appears headed for defeat regardless. That, along with their ideological affinity for Obama, makes it a no-brainer for them to look the other way for another week as yet further revelations surface over Obama's radical mindset.

On misleading rhetorical devices

Political campaigns provide astute citizens with an opportunity to reflect on the ways rhetorical devices are used in support of or against the various candidates. I wanted to point out a few such devices that are commonly employed in what I would consider a misleading manner. I'll post more of these if and when I think of them.

"GUILT BY ASSOCIATION" - McCain's attacks on Obama's association with the likes of William Ayers has been dismissed in some quarters as "guilt by association." That's incorrect; nobody is accusing Obama of being a terrorist simply because of his association with a terrorist. What Obama is being criticized for is the association itself. It shows bad judgment and an apparent tolerance for the repugnant things Ayers represents. Although it is a fallacy to treat a candidate as a criminal simply because of his association with a criminal, that doesn't mean the candidate's association with a criminal is irrelevant in evaluating the candidate himself.

QUOTING SOMEONE "OUT OF CONTEXT" - This argument is overused for the simple reason that ALL quotes are taken out of context. If there is any unfairness involved, it's not that the person's words were taken out of their original context, but that this in some way altered the words' meaning. Unfortunately, asserting that a quote was "taken out of context" has become sort of an automatic response whenever a candidate's own words come back to haunt him. Rarely does a candidate ever explain how restoring the words to their original context would obviate the embarrassing quality of excerpted version. Even when they purport to go to that next step, they typically invent "context" that doesn't exist, such as the notion that they were only speaking "hypothetically," or in the past tense, etc.

USING "FEAR TACTICS" - The charge that a candidate is engaging in fear tactics assumes that there's never anything to fear from the policies our political leaders may choose to pursue. That assumption is, of course, nonsense. People rightly fear war, poverty, and the loss of freedom, among many other things. To the extent that a candidate's policies pose a significant threat of bringing about such consequences, it is only appropriate that people should fear the candidate and/or his policies. Obviously, the fear may not be justified in all cases, but that's not the point. The point is that there's nothing intrinsically wrong with using fear tactics. Depending on the circumstances, appealing to the voters' fears may be entirely appropriate.

10/27/2008 update:
"NEEDING A REASON TO VOTE FOR THE OTHER CANDIDATE" - This comes up in the context of negative campaigning. The idea is that a candidate can't rely solely on negative campaigning but must also give voters an affirmative reason to vote for him. It's a clever-sounding concept, but it doesn't really make sense in a two-candidate race. Voters are often presented with a choice between two deeply flawed candidates. Assuming a voter is going to pull the lever for one candidate or the other (as opposed to not voting at all or writing in the name of his pet hamster), then demonstrating that Candidate A is completely unacceptable does give that voter an affirmative reason to vote for Candidate B. Moreover, even if the negative attack only succeeds in driving up the write-votes in favor of domesticated hamsters, that still benefits Candidate B enormously. If Candidate B can flip a potential vote from Candidate A to "Fred the Hamster," that's a marginal gain of one vote for Candidate B. Sure, it would be better to flip the vote from Candidate A to Candidate B -- net gain of two votes -- but that doesn't diminish the value of eroding Candidate A's vote totals.

A Bachelor's Degree "Overrated"

Here's an interesting read on a topic I find increasingly depressing: "America's Most Overrated Product: A Bachelor's Degree".

Part of the problem seems to be our habit of measuring higher education success by the number of kids getting into college. We would be better off with fewer people going into traditional four-year degree programs and the rest going into direct career-training programs that are appropriate to their interests and abilities. Instead, colleges are taking in more students than they can reasonably hope to educate, the students getting in are less likely to succeed, tuition rates are running rampant, families are being swamped with debt that will take years to erase, and the federal government is facing increasing demands to pay for it all.

Conventional wisdom is generally unwise

I just saw this headline from Joan Vennochi of the Boston Globe: "That's_It_For_McCain." As one can surmise, she is referring to the fact that John McCain has emerged from the final debate still trailing Barack Obama.

This sort of conventional "wisdom" drives me nuts. It assumes that, in the absence of further debates, it is impossible for a candidate who is trailing in the polls to overcome a single-digit deficit in the polls with only three weeks left in the campaign. It's a ludicrous proposition.

This race isn't going to be over until Election Day. That's not a prediction of any massive movement toward McCain, it is simply an observation of fact.

The only value of Vennochi's column is that it helps to illustrate what has become the media narrative for the final stages of this race. The narrative now holds that Obama has safely emerged from the Republican Smear Machine gauntlet and is coasting to a landslide victory. Conservativism is now a discredited ideology and its remaining adherents have been exposed as bloodthirsty thugs screaming racist threats from the rafters of Sarah Palin events, which are now oddly reminiscent of the Nuremberg Rallies.

It's important to keep in mind that the narrative shapes the news, and not vice-versa. Anything that tends to support the narrative goes on the evening news. Anything that cuts against it is ignored.

Obama's "questionable" associations

Obama's associations with the likes of Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Tony Rezko, and Frank Marshall Davis doesn't seem to be hurting him much politically, but they do tell us something about how he would approach the problems he would (will?) face as president.

If there's a theme to Obama's "questionable" associations, it's that he always seems to perceive quite a bit of good in certain characters most Americans would instantly perceive as evil. In fact, this tendency of Obama's has reached comic proportions. The line "That's not the [insert name] I know" has become familiar joke during this campaign.

If there's any truth at all to the "post-partisan" label Obama has hung on himself, it's that he envisions himself as something of a mediator between parties in conflict. As a general rule, mediation assumes that there is some merit in both sides of a conflict. Thus, in his speech decrying certain extreme pronouncements by Rev. Wright, Obama went out of his way to contextualize those diatribes as a manifestation of the racial animosities that all Americans supposedly harbor. Rather than condemn Wright's hateful sermons and let it go at that, Obama had to use the moment to try to explain that Wright was merely expressing the same kind of racial fears that white people experience when they encounter a young black man in a darkened alley. Nobody is right, nobody is wrong; we all just need to understand one another.

Unfortunately, the American presidency is not an appropriate job for someone who basically craves compromise and reconciliation. First, a president is expected to provide leadership, not reconcile opposing viewpoints. While there's nothing wrong with showing respect for the opposition's position -- John McCain does this all the time -- the president's job is to make the ultimate decision and to persuade Congress and the American people why it is the right one.

Second, and more important still, it is essential to the role of the president that he never appear to be a disinterested party when it comes to America's relations with other countries. In the realm of foreign policy, the president should be an unapologetic advocate for America's interests and values. Unfortunately, there is reason to question whether Obama accepts that vision of the presidency. Obama wants to meet with the leaders of Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela, without any sort of preconditions. In the absence of preconditions, such meetings would necessarily imply that there is some merit to the anti-American (and anti-Israeli) ravings of such lunatics. Clearly, Obama wouldn't hold summit talks with, for example, Hugo Chavez, merely to tell him, "We're right and you're wrong." The mere fact of a face-to-face meeting would implied an acknowledgment that there is some common ground to be found between the two countries. Even if Obama made it clear he had no intention of altering U.S. foreign policy toward Venezuela, he would be forced to dignify Chavez's predictable railings by sitting and listening to what the Venezuelan nutjob had to say. It's frankly ludicrous to think that Chavez wouldn't come out ahead in the exchange. And yet that would be, from the American point of view, the best case scenario. In the worst case, Obama would, in fact, liberalize U.S. policy toward Venezuela in some way, thus signaling weakness and implicitly suggesting that Chavez was somehow right all along.

Any student of American history knows that, in order to be successful, a president must be decisive, strong, and fundamentally unapologetic about the course they are steering on the nation's behalf. Lincoln, both Roosevelts, Truman, and Reagan all capitalized on these qualities. Even George W. Bush, whose persuasive skills proved a perpetual liability, had a successful first term as a result of confident leadership in the War on Terror and various domestic reforms. Some of our worst presidents, notably Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Grant, and Carter, failed because of their apparent lack of strength or resolve in dealing with the key issues facing their administrations. Whether it was Buchanan's refusal to deal with the succession crisis, Johnson's inability to gain control over the Radical Republicans in Congress and in his own cabinet, Grant's unwillingness to confront the apparent epidemic of corruption within his administration, or Carter's weakness in responding to foreign and economic turmoils, all of these presidents suffered due to a failure of leadership.

In Obama's case, it is not even clear he aspires to lead the country. Although the country would undoubtedly move to the left under his administration, it seems more likely than not that Congress will be the moving force and Obama merely a reliable rubber stamp. If and when real presidential leadership is required, such as during a foreign policy crisis, it is highly unlikely Obama will take an assertive position. He will find reasons not to impose or even threaten the use of military force because he will want to be perceived as a peacemaker who can lead the parties to a peaceful resolution. He will resist taking firm positions on America's behalf because he won't want to tarnish his image as a "citizen of the world." He will seek to elevate the role of international organizations and disparage the notion of American exceptionalism. He sees America in much the same way the world sees America, or he at least sees some merit in that point of view.

Obama may be a talented man, but he can't be trusted to stand up for American interests and values on the world stage. He is simply too tolerant of those who hold anti-American views and too enamored by his own perceived ability to rise above the fray and reconcile parties who are locked in conflict. America needs a president who sees the world as it is, not one who will try to reconcile Americans to a lesser vision of themselves.

A how-to guide to socialism

Here's a great way to introduce socialism to America.

First, take a major sector of the economy, be it health care, automobile manufacturing, or banking, and find some way to destroy it.

For banking, you could, say, make banks give mortgages to people who can't repay them.

For automakers, impose CAFE standards that will make it impossible for them to sell cars profitably.

For health care, force insurers to provide coverage to people with preexisting conditions.

Then, when these industries go belly-up, use trillions of taxpayer dollars to buy them out.

Just like that, the federal government ends up owning the economy!

One last thing: When the government starts jumping in to take over industries, be sure to call it a "rescue." That way, Washington comes off sounding like the good guy!

Ayers and Keating

The Obama camp is attempting to proclaim a sort of moral equivalency between Barack's association with William Ayers and John McCain's association with Charles Keating. Although this tactic will probably work to blunt the Ayers attack, the two situations are clearly quite distinguishable.

The issue with Ayers is Obama's decision to be associated with him in the first place. By the time Obama first met Ayers, the latter was already a notorious ex-fugitive with a well-known terrorist past. To this day, he has never repudiated that past. I've heard him described in the mainstream media as a "former radical." It would be more accurate to call him a "retired terrorist." This is not the case of someone who realized the errors of his ways and atoned. This is someone who was wanted by the feds and eventually got tired of living his life on the lam. Since extricating himself from legal jeopardy, he may have forsaken his violent criminal behavior, but he hasn't apologized to his victims or otherwise shown remorse for his crimes.

Obama's defense in regard to Ayers has two main components. First, he has downplayed the nature and extent of the relationship. Second, he points to the fact that, around Chicago, it's not regarded as socially unacceptable to be associated with Ayers.

As for the first part of Obama's defense, it seems rather beside the point. Obama may not have been close friends with Ayers, but so what? Ayers was someone Obama openly associated himself with on a number of high-visibility projects, including Obama's own campaign for the Illinois State Senate. The fact that he allowed Ayers to host a campaign event in his honor and served with Ayers on various boards and panels implies a degree of respect and approval for what Ayers represents. It doesn't matter if it was one campaign event or twenty, or if it was a dozen boards and panels or a hundred. It's the fact that Obama was willing to attach his own good name to Ayers that is so telling.

As for the second part of Obama's defense -- the notion that Ayers is considered a respectable public figure in Chicago political circles -- this sounds more like a confession than a defense. If Ayers is considered respectable in Chicago it is precisely because people like Barack Obama , who should know better, are willing to offer him mainstream legitimacy. At best, it sounds like Obama deferred to the judgment of others in his assessment of Ayers rather than forming an independent judgment.

No matter how you slice it, Obama's voluntary, public embrace of Ayers reflects poorly on his own character. Either Obama doesn't find any repulsive about Ayers and his wife and partner-in-crime Bernadette Dohrn, or he does, but has been too craven to say so.

Now let's look at John McCain's association with Charles Keating. Keating owned an S&L. He had no criminal or violent past as far as know. What he did have was a bank, Lincoln Savings, that was in precarious financial shape due in part to investments that were both bad and, at least in part, illegal. The regulator for Lincoln Savings, FHLBB, was investigating Lincoln with an eye toward a possible federal takeover. In the meantime, Keating sought the assistance of five U.S. senators, both Democrats and Republicans, in an effort to head off that move. For his part, McCain attended a meeting with FHLBB board members and wrote a letter, but didn't pressure the board to take any action one way or the other in regard to Keating. Rather, he wanted the FHLBB to make a decision one way or the other as soon as possible so as to avoid further delay in resolving the matter.

The "Keating 5" scandal was fully investigated at the time -- this was about twenty years ago -- and McCain was exonerated from any charges of improper conduct. That's not end of the story however.

The Keating 5 scandal represents an important chapter in John McCain's political biography, not because of what he did at the time, but because of how it affected the future course of his public service. Despite his being cleared of any formal charges in the matter, observers have cited the episode as a being instrumental in focusing McCain on issues of public corruption and the corrosive influence of campaign donations on the political process. He clearly felt that campaign donations had influenced the senators to take actions on behalf of a constituent that they would not otherwise have taken, with a resulting undermining of the public's confidence in their government officials. McCain resolved to make "cleaning up Washington" a part of his political agenda ever since.

Whatever one thinks about McCain and the Keating 5, the situation bears no resemblance to Obama's association with William Ayers. If anything, McCain's response to the scandal demonstrates an acceptance of responsibility and a willingness to make amends. Nothing similar can be said about Obama and Ayers. Obama has characterized his involvement with Ayers in a misleading fashion in order to avoid be tainted by it in this election. He has never expressed regret for helping to legitimize Ayers in public circles. Both the Ayers connection and the Keating 5 are revealing episodes in the careers of these candidates. However, what the Ayers matter reveals about Obama is far more disturbing than what the Keating matter reveals about McCain.

The role of trust in an era of transparency

It occurred to me that Barack Obama may be the beneficiary of two historical trends in the relationship between the president and the people.

In the early days of the republic, citizens had no effective means of monitoring the activities of the president. Although there were newspapers, the press had no regular access to the president. Moreover, because the papers tended to be openly and stridently partisan, editors were more interested in sparring with their opponents than in engaging in what we would recognize as journalism. Finally, because news couldn't travel any faster than a horse could canter down a country road, folks in distant towns and villages wouldn't learn of events in the capital until weeks after the fact.

Since those early days, Washington has been steadily transformed into an open book. There is now something called a "White House press corps" with permanent offices in the West Wing. Armies of journalists can spread news across the country at light speed. Moreover, the Washington media now operates without any of the deference or restraint that defined previous eras of reporting.

And it's not just the press that has changed. The exponential expansion of the government's payroll makes it nearly impossible for the White House to keep information under wraps even when state secrets are involved. In fact, secrecy is rarely the goal. Hordes of press officers and hundreds of government websites exist for the sole purpose of advertising the administration's activities and plans.

I would argue that the trend toward increased transparency in government has made trust a much less valued commodity when it comes to choosing a president. In the old days, the people had to trust the president to do the right thing, because they couldn't tell what was really happening in Washington. Today, with the goings on within the administration being broadcast in excruciating detail, there is comparatively little fear of a president taking surreptitious actions to the country's detriment. Presidents can still take or support controversial moves, but the controversy will be aired in public.

Our modern media leave much to be desired, but there is no question we live in an age of remarkable governmental transparency. That transparency creates at least the threat of holding presidents publicly accountable for their official actions. We no longer have to simply trust that our presidents are doing right. Today, it's "trust but verify."

A would-be president like Barack Obama could be a major beneficiary of this trend. A majority of Americans seem prepared to hand him the keys to the White House despite evidence of an extremely left-wing mindset. Since America is anything but a left-wing country, it is perhaps surprising to find Obama doing so well. Perhaps voters realize that Obama could never get away with a truly radical transformation of the country's political, economic, and social institutions. Thus, while they don't necessarily trust Obama not to try to take the country down the wrong road, they do trust the ability of the Republicans, the media, and popular opinion to stop him.

In order to test the validity of this argument, let's conduct this simple mind experiment. Imagine that instead of electing a president next month, America were electing a dictator. I submit that, if we were electing a dictator, John McCain would be out-polling Obama by a significant margin. The difference in Obama's electoral prospects under the two scenarios, I would argue, relates to trust. In an election for dictator, voters would necessarily place a great deal more importance on whether they could trust the candidate, and Obama would come up short in comparison to McCain. However, so long as the issue is "merely" who is chosen as president in the present-day atmosphere of extreme transparency, Americans feel than can afford to choose Obama.

I made reference to a second historical trend that seemingly favors Obama. I have long believed that politics has become a form of entertainment for many Americans. It's sort of a cross between a professional sporting event and a character drama. It has more to do with the personalities of the people involved than it does with the health and welfare of the country. People identify with certain politicians or parties and they want them to succeed. Or, they dislike the other side and want to see them fail. How the outcome of these dramas affect the country is of secondary concern. Indeed, many people are convinced it makes no difference in the real world which side comes out on top.

To whatever extent Americans regard politics as a form of entertainment, Obama holds that as an advantage over McCain. There's no question he's newer, trendier, and more interesting to watch than the 70-something Washington veteran. As McCain has already pointed out in this election, Obama makes for a pretty good celebrity.

What I find interesting is that the two concurrent trends -- increased transparency and increased focus on politics as a form of entertainment -- are really two sides of the same coin. Both are the product of the fact that the president now operates under a media spotlight. The spotlight allows an attractive candidate like Obama to appeal to people in the same way a movie star appeals to people. But the spotlight also arguably constrains him from taking radical,transformative moves for which there would be a lack of widespread popular support.

Obama as Reagan, Part II

I recently blogged about the apparent similarities between this election and the election of 1980. That post focused on Reagan's success in demonstrating, primarily through the debates against Jimmy Carter, that he was not the wild-eyed extremist Carter and the media had portrayed him as. I thought a similar phenomenon might be working in Barack Obama's favor this year. Despite all the troubling aspects of his candidacy, he has crafted a public persona that seems both moderate and assuring.

There's another point to be made about Ronald Reagan that is perhaps even more relevant to understanding the 2008 campaign. Reagan is the only president since JFK to really inspire his party's base. Among other things, that means the Democrats have not really had an inspiring candidate reach the White House in over 45 years. Since then, the closest they've come to experiencing the spirit of Camelot was in 1968. That dream, however, was ended by an assassin's bullet in a Los Angeles hotel. The election of 1972 was a fiasco for the Democrats. Carter won in '76, but he hardly made the party faithful swoon. The '84 and '88 elections both featured boring candidates who lost in landslides.

The Clinton presidency failed to ignite liberal passions for a number of reasons. First, Bill Clinton was widely regarded as a scoundrel and a rogue, words we don't generally associate with inspiring heroes. Second, he ran and governed as something of a centrist, and tended to play small-ball in crafting a domestic agenda. Midnight basketball programs are hardly the stuff of Mount Rushmore. Finally, while the Democratic faithful at times truly appreciated Clinton, they knew he would never be measure up to Reagan in the eyes of the nation as a whole.

That brings me to the main point of this walk down memory lane, which is this:

Democrats are deeply envious of the fact that the Republicans produced a star like Ronald Reagan in their recent history. They want one, too. And they've been waiting a long time.

In Obama, the Democrats have found someone who they think has the potential to become another JFK: a president who is young, sophisticated, smooth, glamorous, and smart. With those qualities, they don't see how he can fail.

Importantly, Obama is the ultimate "no compromises" candidate for the Democrats. He's as liberal as the party's base could ever hope for, and he's not from the South. He's the ideal candidate for liberals longing for a return to the days of the Kennedys.

All of this helps explain the outpouring of Democratic hatred for Sarah Palin. Not only does she represent an immediate threat to Obama's electoral prospects, she seems to hold the potential to become another Reagan! If Obama were to lose this election, and Palin's dazzling star power were to land her in the White House in her own right in four or eight years, that would represent such as cruel fate for Democratic faithful, they would never get over it.

Unfortunately, it's looking increasingly likely they won't have to.

Supreme Court decisions I disagree with

Evidently Katie Couric asked Sarah Palin to name some Supreme Court decisions she disagreed with. I'm not sure what the legitimate point of such a question would be. Is it really necessary to state one's disagreement with the Dred Scott decision?

Just for fun, I'll pretend that question was asked of me in a television interview setting. I would name Dred Scott, Plessy v. Ferguson, and the Japanese-American internment decision (Koramutsu, I think?). I'd probably not mention Brown v. Board of Education since my disagreement would be with the rationale of the decision, not the result. I'd probably not mention Miranda or Gideon only because I wouldn't trust the interviewer to allow me to explain my disagreement with those kinds of cases. I would mention Roe v. Wade. I would mention Kelo (the fairly recent eminent domain case).

Given a lot more time to think about it, I might come up with a few more bad decisions that I could actually name (as opposed to describe). However, as the list stands, I could only come up with five that I would definitely have mentioned, and two of those (Dred Scott and Roe) are pretty obvious.

Five decisions.

It's worth mentioning at this point that I have studied Constitutional law.

The gotchafication of presidential campaigns

I was feeling alright this morning until I heard a pre-debate "analysis" from Larry Sabato. He opined that tonight's clash between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin would be important because "Biden is a gaffe machine" and "Palin has demonstrated that she doesn't know much about foreign policy or domestic policy." (These are as close to direct quotes as my memory will allow.)

What the hell has happened to this country? Apparently, we have reached the point where the only thing that matters in elections is which candidate makes the fewest glaringly stupid statements.

Gaffes have always mattered in campaigns, but never before have they been the central focus of an election.

Charles Gibson and Katie Couric spent hours upon hours interviewing Gov. Palin. They aired a fraction of that footage, and then the media at large endlessly replayed a total of perhaps 60 seconds of tape in which she appears ignorant or off-balance. Thus it works out that the worst, most unflattering minute out of probably 20 hours of videotape gets all of the attention.

The emphasis is all wrong. What really distinguishes the two presidential tickets is not their personalities, their styles, the manner of speech, or how they look. It's where they plan to take the country. That's the debate we should be having. Instead, the media approach debates as if they were auditioning actors for an ad campaign. The economy is teetering on the brink of collapse and all anyone can talk about is John McCain's failure to make eye contact.

We desperately need a serious press in this country.

Prediction

Sometime after the election, media types will gather at various symposia to conduct a searing self-examination of their coverage of the presidential campaign. They will conclude that their coverage of Barack Obama was both excessive and insufficiently critical in relation to that of his main presidential rivals, John McCain and Hillary Clinton. They will attribute the bias in coverage to "the overwhelming historical significance of electing the nation's first African-American president" which, they will say, "at times superseded the application of ordinary journalistic judgment."

Having thus sanctified themselves at the altar of fairness, they will then put on their tuxedos and proceed to Obama's Inauguration.