September 16, 2008

9/16: Does McCain Feel Your Pain?

Liberal bloggers are blasting John McCain for repeating his claim that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong" -- a statement that they're calling "bizarre" and "politically tone-deaf". They also don't buy McCain's defense of his remark, in which he suggested that he was referring to the American workers as the "fundamentals" of the economy. Liberal bloggers clearly smell blood in the water, and they're hammering McCain for his economic proposals and his ties to ex-Sen. Phil Gramm, whom many hold responsible for the current crisis. Meanwhile, conservative bloggers appear divided: some are praising McCain's remarks about the economy, while others are criticizing them.

MCCAIN: You're Out Of Touch, I'm Out Of Time

Liberal bloggers are criticizing McCain for repeating his assertion that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong":

• Daily Kos' BarbinMD: "Well, sure. If you ignore today's Wall Street meltdown, the $7.7 trillion in national debt, the $10 or so billion we're spending in Iraq every month, and the recent taxpayer-funded bailout of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, things are going great. Once again, John McCain just doesn't get it."
• MyDD's Todd Beeton: "What makes this truly a bizarre statement for him to make today is not only that the real world events would seem to strongly contradict the claim, but also, as Joe Biden calls McCain 'Bush 44', McCain trots out a line that has been one of George W. Bush's stock bromides regarding the state of the economy. Does this sound familiar? Bush in August, 2007...In September, 2007...In February, 2008 [...] And I'm sure avid googlers can find still more."
• The Washington Monthly's Steve Benen: "There's being politically tone-deaf, and then there's being this politically tone-deaf. It's almost as if McCain wants to make it easy for Obama to call him out of touch."
• The Huffington Post's Sam Stein: "The line may seem like GOP boilerplate, save for the fact that this morning, the McCain campaign released a television ad that began: 'Our economy is in crisis.' Moreover, with financial and job markets in disarray, and with Lehman Brothers, the troubled investment bank, filing for bankruptcy, it may not be the wisest political message to tell voters that the fundamentals are a-okay."
• Think Progress' Matthew Yglesias: "Given the amount of crap he's taken for it, I find it pretty shocking that John McCain is sticking with his 'the fundamentals of our economy are strong' line [...] Now the 'to be fair' thing you're supposed to say is that he follows up the fundamentals are strong line with acknowledgment that 'these are very, very difficult times.' But this of course raises the question, even being as fair as possible to McCain, of what the heck he thinks this means. [...] The underlying financial system certainly doesn't seem especially sound. To my ear, the current line just sounds like a compromise between one adviser who wants to appeal to the [Donald] Luskin/[Sean] Hannity element in the base and another adviser who wants McCain to sound normal, and nevermind if the resulting text makes sense."

MCCAIN II: Doubling Down

Later in the day, McCain defended his earlier statement by suggesting that he was referring to Americans workers when he said that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong":

"My opponents may disagree, but those fundamentals of America are strong...Our workers have always been the strength of our economy, and they remain the strength of our economy today."

Liberal bloggers are criticizing McCain's explanation of his earlier statement:

• Atrios: "McCain has now defined the fundamentals of the economy as 'workers and small businesses,' so if you suggest something is wrong with the economy you're insulting workers. This follows the Bush strategy of saying that criticizing his Iraq policies is insulting the troops."
• TAPPED's Adam Serwer: "By this measure, the fundamentals of the economy have always been strong, and will always be, unless McCain thinks that The Great Depression was caused by American workers simply becoming selfish layabouts."
• Benen: "Fascinating. Most policy makers would look at 'fundamentals' like economic growth, wages, unemployment, inflation, trade imbalance, value of the dollar, budget deficit, interest rates, etc. But not McCain, who believes the 'fundamentals' of the economy are the American people. I see. So, by McCain's reasoning, the only time the 'fundamentals' of the economy are weak is when Americans are awful. [...] I realize there are some sycophantic supporters of the McCain/Palin ticket, but I have a hard time imagining how any reasonable person could actually believe McCain's nonsensical spin. He got caught saying something foolish -- it would have been much smarter of him to walk it back, rather than double down on it."

On the right side of the blogosphere, Jonah Goldberg thinks McCain shouldn't have defended his initial statement in the first place: "McCain shouldn't apologize for his initial statements. Indeed, McCain should stop being defensive about his political instincts in areas like this. Obama wants this to be about 'the economy.' McCain's instinct is to make this about leadership in a crisis. That's the right instinct. Obama sees nothing wrong with screaming that the sky is falling during a stock-market meltdown in order to score political points. McCain's impulse was to argue for calm at the moment when it is needed. McCain's response to Obama's attack shouldn't be to ratchet-up his own panic language to keep up with Obama, but to scold Obama for making the situation worse."

MCCAIN III: The Right's Reaction

Conservative bloggers are criticizing the Obama camp for quoting the first part of McCain's statement ("The fundamentals of our economy are still strong...") but not the second ("...but these are very, very difficult times."):

• Townhall's Matt Lewis: "[The] new Obama ad selectively edits McCain. [...] McCain's controversial line was preceded by talk of a difficult economy. And McCain's next line was: '...but these are very, very difficult times.' Of course, that part did not make it into Obama's ads, which is why the ads are fundamentally misleading. Just as Obama spent months spreading the falsehood that McCain wanted a '100 year war' in Iraq, Obama is once again misrepresenting McCain's statements. Think the media will call him on it?"
• NRO's Jim Geraghty: "If the new standard is that you can pick and choose which parts of the sentence you want to quote, can we point out that Obama admitted that McCain has not talked about 'my Muslim faith'?"

Other righty bloggers are praising McCain's remarks about the economy:

• RedState's Kevin Holtsberry: "McCain's argument is that the American economy is strong because it is based on the hard work and innovation of American workers. He is saying that our free market economy works because it allows for this innovation and hard work to pay off. The problem is that those with power in Washington and Wall Street (and elsewhere) often subvert this system for their own gains. When this happens the problem isn't the system but those who are abusing it. [...] Obama wants to run on an America on the brink of disaster, but voters need to be aware of both the real challenges and the real strengths of the American economy. A knee jerk lurch towards big government liberalism is not the answer."
• Hot Air's Ed Morrissey: "McCain gets off to a good start, focusing his efforts on the lack of oversight enabled by the lobbying efforts from the financial sector. He continues to exude optimism and promises a robust effort to force players to stick to the rules. We need to hear more specifics, but what we don't need are plans to take capital out of the system at a time when we need to reward honest risk-taking."

Still others are criticizing McCain's remarks:

• AmSpec Blog's Philip Klein: "McCain has it completely wrong. The United States has the most prosperous economy in the world not as a result of the sheer awesomeness of the American people, but because of a free market system that allows them to take risks in the name of their own self interest. Allowing people to make decisions freely can result in failures like we're witnessing today, but it has also led to the greatest creation of wealth in the history of humankind. In McCain's populist view of things, only Washington and Wall Street got it wrong -- but none of the blame rests on the shoulders of Americans who bought houses that they couldn't afford. As president, McCain would govern not based on any understanding or belief in free markets, but on his own level of outrage."
• AmSpec Blog's James Antle: "This is why this election is so depressing for supporters of free markets and limited government. Obama is overtly hostile to anti-statist arguments and McCain doesn't understand them, basing his ad hoc economics entirely on his sense of justice and outrage. That makes the federal government likely to receive new powers to solve economic problems it played a large role in causing."

MCCAIN IV: Gramm For Treasury Secretary? No, Thanks

Many liberal bloggers are focusing on McCain's economics adviser, ex-Sen. Phil Gramm, who they believe enabled the current crisis through his efforts to deregulate the financial industry:

• TPM's Josh Marshall: "The man most responsible for the financial services and banking deregulation that made today possible, fmr. Sen. Phil Gramm, is the man John McCain wants to put in charge of the whole economy."
• Daily Kos' Hunter: "Given that Enron-linked former senator, McCain economic advisor, and mortgage-industry-specializing banking lobbyist Phil Gramm has been credited as mover and shaker behind the very law that allowed the current financial meltdown to happen, I'd love to hear what McCain and Gramm think should be done to solve this crisis."
• AMERICAblog's Chris in Paris: "McCain has ZERO history to suggest he will properly regulate Wall Street. [...] McCain has relied on Phil Gramm, former Senator who set up the economic problems on Wall Street today and who now works for exclusive Swiss bank UBS. Gramm helped rescue a failing McCain campaign last year and McCain has repeatedly referred to Gramm as his economic brain and his rumored Treasury Secretary. Gramm has a long history of changing Wall Street rules, creating an 'anything goes' atmosphere that never, ever, never includes regulation. So for McCain to suggest he is now in favor of regulation is a ridiculous assertion."

MCCAIN V: His Ad Was Right!

Although several news organizations and fact-checkers have criticized McCain's "Education" ad (which accuses Obama of supporting legislation to teach comprehensive sex education to kindergartners), NRO's Byron York argues that the ad is accurate:

"Obama's explanation for his vote [that he voted for it because of his concern over inappropriate touching] has been accepted by nearly all commentators. And perhaps that is indeed why he voted for Senate Bill 99, although we don't know for sure. But we do know that the bill itself was much more than that. The fact is, the bill's intention was to mandate sex education, especially concerning contraception and the prevention of sexually-transmitted diseases, for children before the sixth grade and as early as kindergarten. Obama's defenders may howl, but the bill is what it is."

• AmSpec Blog's Shawn Macomber: "Once again, Byron York does right what the rest of the media does wrong and finds out -- surprise, surprise! -- the much maligned McCain 'comprehensive sex education' ad is totally accurate. Hopefully York's reporting here gets the attention it deserves because the idea that the ad is a scurrilous lie has already become an article of faith out in the national echo chamber."
• Townhall's Carol Platt Liebau: "Barack has tried to peddle the meme that McCain is 'lying' about his support for the bill -- and that his support for the bill was predicated on a desire to do nothing more than to protect little children from unwanted touching by sexual predators. As York points out, the facts are different. There is plenty of other stuff the bill handles -- including removing any normative language in sex education, along with any overt expectation of abstinence (which becomes just one choice among many). It seems more focused on protecting children from peers than from adult predators. It also calls for AIDS education, yes, in kindergarten. The content of the entire bill seems completely consistent with Barack's far left world view. [...] Much of the press, which has gleefully denounced the ad, owes Senator McCain an apology."

PALIN: Her Assault On The Truth Continues

Liberal bloggers are disgusted that Palin repeated her debunked line about telling Congress "thanks, but no thanks" for the infamous Bridge to Nowhere. Palin has now made this false claim ten times, even though it has been debunked by multiple news organizations:

• Marshall: "[This is] brute force lying. [...] You'll note that while Palin is continuing to restate the lie, there's a tone of defensiveness in her voice this morning, since they clearly know they've been caught."
• Atrios: "That, my friends, isn't straight talk we can believe in."
• Benen: "I suspect the McCain campaign assumes that it's easier to get away with a brazen lie by repeating it ad nauseum -- reporters will simply get tired of calling the liar out. No news outlet wants to republish the same story -- 'Palin still lying about infamous bridge' -- every day for three weeks. And so, Palin just keep telling the lie, hoping her supporters are fools, and thumbing her nose at reporters who clearly, by now, know the truth. It remains breathtaking."
• Balloon Juice's John Cole: "Did I mention that after dropping her Bridge to Nowhere lie for three days while she was in Alaska and people know better, Palin was out west yesterday repeating the lie again? Pathological liars."

Meanwhile, liberal bloggers continue to assail McCain and Palin for distorting the truth in their recent statements and ads:

• Marshall: "The big press story of the campaign is shaping up to be how reporters are and will react to McCain's deliberate strategy of full-court-press lying. The corrupt, though normal, approach is for reporters to try to dig up whatever Obama exaggerations they can find to try to balance the coverage. If that doesn't work, then they will try to hang the charges on Democrats -- i.e., 'what Democrats are calling "lies"' etc. And of course using the dictionary term -- 'lies' -- for repeated and intentional misstatements of fact is almost always forbidden. But the lying is so extreme in this case that a few reporters are beginning to actually report the story accurately."
• Cole: "Apparently some crazy people at the DNC have decided to attempt the herculean endeavor of counting and chronicling all of the lies coming from the McCain campaign. I have no idea how they have time to sleep, but here is what they have so far. They might want to head over to Think Progress, where we learn that even Fox news reporters are calling the McCain campaign liars. [...] Maybe this is the McCain campaign's unemployment solution -- lie so much that an army of fact checkers is needed to keep up with all the bullshit."

PALIN II: How To Get A Tan In Alaska

The netroots are mocking Palin after liberal blogger Al Giordano reported that Palin installed a private tanning bed in the AK Governor's Mansion (The Politico's Ben Smith confirmed Giordano's report):

• Ezra Klein: "Sarah Palin had a tanning bed installed in the Alaska governor's mansion? Seriously? That's like knocking the eight ball into the pocket on the break. Isn't there some CNN rulebook whereby that ends the election right now?"
• Yglesias: "Nothing says 'just folks' working class credibility like owning your own tanning bed."
• TPM's Kate Klonick: "The news of Palin's luxurious purchase -- beds can cost as much as $35,000 -- presents a sharp contrast to the blue-collar persona she projects on the campaign trail."
• AMERICAblog's John Aravosis: "Remember, the media had no problem making fun of John Edwards' $400 haircut..."
• Jonathan Zasloff: "Her spokesman claims that it wasn't paid for with state funds. Do you believe her? What about the workers who had to install it? What about the rewiring in the mansion? How many community organizers do you think can afford a tanning bed? Or would want one?"

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: The Moral High Ground

NRO's Ramesh Ponnuru:

"One of the themes of the liberal commentariat over the last few weeks, in addition to the claim that McCain is 'lying' about various things, is that what his campaign has been saying, even if true, is a distraction from the 'real issues' that ought to concern voters. We have been talking about lipstick and flag pins instead of health care and housing. Whatever you make of this point, can liberals really make it in a partisan way with a straight face? Are they prepared to maintain that the truly important issue in this election is how often McCain uses email? (Or how many houses he owns?) Now of course liberals could retort that the email 'issue' is a stand-in for the larger question of whether he is out of touch. But the flag-pin and lipstick controversies involve larger concerns about Obama, too. I don't mind that liberals want to win this election, but do they have to affect so much moral superiority about their tactics?"

LEST WE FORGET: I Can See Your Lips Moving, But...

From Overheard in the Office:

Employee (during global teleconference with CEO): I don't have a question, but I just wanted to thank you for the opportunity to work here. Although I am deaf, it hasn't stopped me from having a chance of proving myself.
CEO: I appreciate your comment. That is a subject that is near and dear to my heart, since I have a son who is deaf.
Employee: What?

Posted by Ian Faerstein at September 16, 2008 01:17 PM